How to tackle immigration challenge and inequality?

November 9 marked the 30th anniversary of the fall of Berlin Wall. However, we still have many "invisible walls" such as the lack of mobility. That is why policymakers, politicians, and scholars converged at Paris for the second Peace Forum. To take a look at cross-border migration and how to level the playing field to ensure social equity, CGTN Dialogue sat down with experts at the forum.

Cross-border immigration

It has been decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, but ironically there is a new wall being constructed between Mexico and the United States, Martha Delgado Peralta, Mexico's undersecretary for multilateral affair and human rights, said. And from history, we have learned that "walls" only divide and cause disagreements, and are no good for societies, she added.

According to Peralta, what sparked the wall idea between the United States and Mexico is immigration, and Mexico is one of the few countries that both receives and sends out large numbers of migrants due to its geographical location.

The only way that Mexico has found out to solve the immigration – though its decades of dealing with the issue – is through regional development, she said.

"We need to implement a human rights approach on asylum seekers, refugees, even to migrants," said Peralta. Since we are addressing people who are looking for better condition of living, it won't be solved in the short term and economic and social development of those communities are needed to regulate the situation; to make sure immigration is not forced by economic circumstance.

Mobility to overcome inequality is limited

Gabriela Ramos, OECD Chief of Staff & Sherpa to the G20, outlined existing challenges in social inequality.

Each time the OECD analyzes the issues, it shows inequality widening faster and faster in the OECD and G20 countries, according to Ramos.

"Wealth is really very badly distributed because those top 10 percent earners keep 50 percent of wealth in our economies, and then what happens is that wealth and income produce inequalities on the quality of education, inequalities on access to health, inequalities on access to infrastructure, and therefore it gets to inequalities of opportunities", said Ramos. And all these are what causes the discontent that exists in many countries, where families feel that they have not been benefiting from the growth process.

She mentioned one of the latest reports from OECD "A broken social elevator," which suggested that five generations are needed for someone who is born in a low-income family to reach the middle-income group.

Gaps in the digital economy

Regarding whether digital economy will help level the playing field and enhance individuality for consumers, Ramos thinks the digital economy has a "winner-takes-all" kind of dynamics because there are very few groups that are producing the technologies, and there is still half of the world population that is not connected to any mobile or any broadband or any technology at all.

On this matter, she questioned: "If we do not address the very basic divide on income, on opportunities, on education, and health, how could those people at the bottom of the income distribution benefit from the digital economy?" Therefore, Ramos urged all sides to invest in people, in places and in firms that have been lagging behind and only by doing this can we fill the gaps in the digital economy.