Presented by Rodolfo García Zamora, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, México
After 40 years of a long and rising emigration from Mexico to the United States, where from 800 thousand migrants in the 70’s, the amount of mexicans increased to 12 million in 2006, and having as consequence an increasing input of remittances, which in 2007 was reaching $26 million dollars, the lessons of states like Zacatecas and Michoacan, characterized by their high intensity of international migration, are that the increasing migration and remittances input do not achieve economic and social development, because the structural causes of migration as backwardness, unemployment and marginalization are persisting, and this raises the need for new policies on Development, Migration and Human Rights, that allow exercising the right to not emigrate in a medium term.

One of the positive products of this long migration are Mexican Migrant Clubs and Federations such as the ones in Zacatecas and Michoacán, which are recognized by the promotion of the 3×1 Program, by the incidence in new government programs to migrants and their communities, for their participation in global Forums on development and migration, and recently (2010-2013), for their suggestions to the new Immigration Law and Regulations, and this year in the battle to include the issue of migration as a central axis within the National Development Plan (Plan Nacional de Desarrollo) 2013 – 2018. The possibility that these proposals can become a Development, Migration and Human Rights, comprehensive and long term State Policy will depend on the capacity and participation of Mexican civil society and transnational communities in both countries.