Immigrants who helped drive the rich world's economic growth during the boom years now face exclusion as the global economic crisis pummels economies and drives unemployment to the highest levels in 50 years, a Paris-based economic organisation said today.
In response, governments have begun taking measures to protect their native workers, leaving the immigrant work force more exposed to unemployment, discrimination and xenophobia, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in its annual report on international migration.
"Migration is not a tap that can be turned on and off at will," OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria wrote in the report. "In tackling the jobs crisis, governments need to make sure that immigrants do not fall prey to increasing xenophobia and that discriminatory practices do not worsen an already difficult situation for them."
The OECD is a forum for its 30 member countries, including the United States, Britain and France, to address economic, social and environmental policies related to globalisation.
In its report, the OECD noted that in the decade before the crisis, immigrants accounted for a large share of increases in employment, reaching 58 per cent in the United States and 71 per cent in Britain.