Excellencies,

Emigration is a right that must be respected. It is unfair and cruel to be forced to emigrate and leave homeland and family behind in order to provide food, healthcare and education to your children.

Sending remittances to family back home is a noble act which should be facilitated but it is humiliating for a country to have to depend on this money.

The fact that rich countries are adopting ever more restrictive, abusive and xenophobic measures on emigration is morally unacceptable.

The wall on the Mexican border and the immigrant hunts that take place there are proof, if any were needed, of the contempt that the powerful feel towards all those who are not as powerful, even if these governments are their allies.

Alongside this form of emigration is another which is just as shocking. Doctors, computer programmers, teachers, nurses and other professionals and technicians are encouraged to migrate to rich countries, and are offered wages and conditions unavailable to them in our countries. For them there are no walls or forced returns, on the contrary, there are plans and programs in place to lure them. Around 240,000 Latin American university graduates migrated last year. Training these professionals cost no less than 5 billion dollars. We should be paid compensation and I propose that we make this demand.

These émigrés, whose rights we justly defend, are a consequence of the plundering, exploitation and unequal distribution of wealth.

Nothing will stop this migration as long as there is underdevelopment and poverty, as long as the current neoliberal economic policies are imposed on the countries of the South, and as long as the current international economic order remains unchanged.

I want to make something perfectly clear. In most underdeveloped countries there is no political will or economic or human interest to change this situation. The opulent and spendthrift North uses immigrants while discriminating against them. The South is providing raw material to the North, while serving as a kind of warehouse from where they get all their resources, from mineral supplies to human talent.

Just one example that confirms this: the Millennium aims and goals, which represent nothing more than a modest palliative for the problems currently endured by underdeveloped countries, will not be fulfilled. The developed world did not have any intention of providing the minimum financial aid asked of them and billions of people continue to live without access to food, healthcare or education.

 Spending on arms and wars now exceeds one trillion dollars; another trillion is spent on commercial publicity, which in the case of medication, for example, means that the price is multiplied by up to ten times; the debt still hasn’t been cancelled and the official development assistance is subject to an increasing number of conditions: advisers coming from the North must live in luxury, purchases must be made in donor countries, and less and less cooperation is given to healthcare and education while more and more is given to the struggle against drug trafficking and for good governance and human rights advice.

 Instead of trying to change the current situation, the United States issues certificates on “good conduct regarding migration”. Good conduct means letting the professionals migrate, restricting the emigration of non-professionals and accepting back those undesirable to them, after these have taken a postgraduate course in lawbreaking on the streets and in the jails of the United States.

 The United States, which depended and still depends so much on immigrants for their economic development, and the European Union, which has been a great source of emigrants in its time, are now the greatest persecutors of immigrants in the world, and apply the most restrictive policies.

 The free exchange of commodities that the developed world wants to impose and the free flow of capital that it demands are nothing but a snare if they are not accompanied by the free passage of people.

 In this regard, and in others, the hypocrisy and double standards of the world in which we live are laid bare.

 The issue of migration in Cuba deserves a special mention.

 A Latin American who goes to live in the United States is an immigrant but if Cuban this person is labeled a political exile fleeing the communist regime.

 A Latin American must wait in his or her country for a permit to migrate to the United States. If this person is an illegal immigrant, they are returned, but if this person is Cuban, once in the United States, they are immediately granted residency and work, and after one year they automatically receive permanent residency, in compliance with the Cuban Adjustment Act.

 The Bush administration cancelled migration talks, once again limited remittances to a total of $300 every three months and imposed travel restrictions that allow Cuban immigrants to travel to Cuba only once every three years and that to visit only parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren or siblings; that is, to Mr. Bush, a cousin or aunt is not a family member.

 The United States government offers shelter and impunity in their country to terrorists who have committed murder and hijacked boats and planes in order to migrate; it restricts legal emigration while encouraging illegal emigration in order to use this as propaganda against Cuba, heedless of the fact that countless people have lost their lives in the Florida Straits.

 This policy, enforced for decades, seeks to eventually promote a massive exodus which can be used to intensify the anti-Cuban campaign and, ultimately, serve as a pretext for military aggression.

 A program financed by the United States government is aimed at luring Cuban doctors and other healthcare specialists who are rendering important services in various countries, but they are coming up against the iron will of the new generation of professionals trained by the Revolution and our solidarity programs will not be stopped.

 In hardly two years, Operation Miracle has helped over 450 thousand people from Latin America and the Caribbean to recuperate their vision, and all these services have been provided free of charge. By now, conditions have been created to operate on one million people every year.

 Even though our country’s own resources would not suffice to provide these services, if imperialism succeeded in its offensive against Cuba’s economic resources, the capacity would be removed to perform eye surgery on one million Latin American and Caribbean people during 2007. Such figure does not include operated Cubans whose number this year is almost 100 thousand.

 The new concepts applied to the massive and urgent training of physicians, from Latin America and elsewhere in the world, will make it possible to have, in a rather short time, over 10 thousand new doctors annually, who will not practice private medicine but will take healthcare to and preserve the lives of millions of people.

 Today, cooperation in the field of health enables Cuba, and increasingly Bolivia and Venezuela, to ensure all of its citizens, without exemption, medical care of excellence provided free of charge.

 At this moment, 2,400,000 Latin Americans from 11 countries are no longer illiterates and thousands of Cuban specialists work as sport instructors.

 Although blockaded and harassed, Cuba has never surrendered, and the countries of Latin America can always count on Cuba to fight for their rights which, as we know, will not be handed to us on a plate.

 Thank you very much.