the Council of Europe denounces a “hypocritical system” which bases its economy on several million “invisible workers”

While 78 migrants died in a shipwreck off Greece overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday and the French government is preparing its immigration bill, a Council of Europe report denounces a “hypocritical system” which bases its economy on several million “invisible workers”explains its rapporteur Ada Marra, member of the Swiss Parliament and of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, on franceinfo this Sunday.

In this report, you use the term “invisible workers”. How many are there in Europe?

There are four to five million of these people in Europe, in all countries, from north to south. I call them “workers without rights”. For me, we are getting out of the migratory theme. Even if the route to arrive in Europe is migratory, these are now workers who have no rights, and therefore who are subject to precariousness and the danger of exploitation. In the domestic economy, the employer knows very well who and how he hires a person. It is the responsibility of all companies, even if they subcontract, to look at what types of contracts are given to workers. I do not believe at all that employers are not aware.

The “invisible”, sometimes “undesirable”, as we hear in certain political speeches, but useful for creating the wealth of countries?

There is a whole hypocritical system. Whole sections of the economy live through these people (agri-food, service platforms, etc.). They are invisible because their social and economic rights are not recognized. But they are visible because they went through an asylum procedure, so they were registered somewhere at the state level. In France, for example, when you change employers, you no longer have a work permit, so no longer a residence permit, so you are illegal when you have existed for years. The State is aware of this operating system.

Are these people very poorly protected?

One of the fundamental issues is access to justice for these people. Many do not go there for fear of being denounced without a residence permit. In this report, it is recommended that the various administrative services do not cross-check the data – in other words that the immigration authorities do not have access when an undocumented person files a complaint. And above all, if there is a complaint, in particular for human trafficking or in the context of work, that these people automatically receive a residence permit, at least temporary while the investigation is carried out.