Local and regional authorities play a crucial role in ensuring the implementation of fundamental rights of undocumented migrants, with the particular example of access to health care. We see this in our research at Malmö University and it is also confirmed in a newly published report by PICUM. “Sanctuary cities” in Canada and in the US are referred to as encouraging examples of local and municipal governments offering comprehensive protection measures for undocumented migrants’ human rights. Examples are given, from Spain, on local communities’ legislative steps in order to counter the negative impact of the new proposed federal regulation and to guarantee access to health care for undocumented migrants in their territory. Four main reasons for these local actors’ actions can be identified:
1. Maintaining social cohesion and social inclusion;
2. considering access to health care as a basic fundamental right;
3. ensuring public health and preventing transmission of infectious diseases;
4. economic efficiency: in the long term it is more cost-efficient to maintain a system of social care and social assistance that ensures an equal level of treatment amongst everybody within the society…
A worrying trend is also identified in the report, towards more restrictive policies in health systems as regard entitlements to rights. “In line with naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine”, according to which a good crisis provides an ideal cover for national governments to drive through the changes that they have long wanted to make, it can be argued that the spanish Government is currently taking advantage of the economic crisis in order to promote a new model of health care services, based on social exclusion rather than social inclusion.” Read more here: http://picum.org/picum.org/uploads/publication/CoR%20Report%20Access%20to%20Healthcare%20EN_FR_IT_ES%202013.pdf