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The fragile nature of the state had turned emigration into a major feature of Haitian life even before the earthquake displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

This chapter provides an overview of contemporary mobility patterns in the Americas and evaluates them from a regional rather than a single-case or sub-regional perspective. In examining these new mobility patterns, it explores migration conditions and intersections devoting special attention to historical continuities and changes. This chapter covers five main topics: violence and migration; political and legal responses to changing migration patterns; lifestyle and high-skilled North–South migration; spaces of transatlantic and transpacific migration; and new patterns of intraregional South–South migration. The chapter argues that contemporary patterns link the entire region in a complex web of transnational and transregional movements connecting origin, transit and receiving countries. It further posits that new patterns are having major impact on states’ policies and sociopolitical conditions and are shaping in significant ways the lives, roles and identity of people on the move including migrants and refugees.

Based on the general research and observations derived from on site visits of the Special Rapporteurship on Migrant Workers and their Families of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, this chapter discusses the components of due process guarantees for individuals who are subjected to immigration proceedings. While this analysis centers on situation of migrant workers in the Western Hemisphere, its general considerations can be applied to refugees and asylum seekers beyond that region. The examination is for the most part informed by decisions of the Inter-American Commission system organs, although it also relies on case law of the European human rights system. The chapter provides an overview of migration as a political and social phenomenon and reviews international human rights norms and state practice pertaining to migrants in the Americas. It then presents suggestions concerning a quantum of due process in cases on status, exclusion, and expulsion of foreign nationals. Keywords: asylum seekers; European human rights system; foreign nationals; immigration proceedings; inter-American commission on human rights; migrant workers; refugees