The important task of the federal election, which was brought about by special circumstances, is to nominate candidates. The candidates have started going door-to-door with election programs to attract voters with their issues in line with the character of their party.

 There are many preparations to reach the voters. Among them, the manifesto, which reflects the policy framework in line with the political line adopted by the parties in principle, is also a major aspect. The manifesto indicates the program, strategy and goals of the candidate and the party, and that is the basis for attracting voters. It has been known for some time that the parties have also formed a committee to prepare the manifesto. During the preparation of this article, some 

party committee-affiliated leaders and activists said that the manifesto will be made public soon, which is natural. Not only when and how the manifesto will be made public, but also what issues will be given priority in it is an important question.

When analyzing the manifestos of previous elections, it is found that the main issues of all parties are economic prosperity and good governance. However, the implementation of those commitments does not seem to have been given priority in the programs of the governments formed after the elections. Let us hope that the people's representatives elected from this election and their parties, which was caused by special circumstances, will not forget the issues they raised.

This time too, the parties have raised good governance and economic prosperity as the main issues, which is a positive aspect. When we talk about economic prosperity and good governance, there is no need to keep analyzing the explanation that immigration is a topic directly linked to these two dimensions. Because immigration has been the lifeblood of our economy for the past three and a half decades.

When considering the context of ensuring good governance within this, it is not possible to separate the brokering prevalent in the labor market. But when analyzing the manifestos of previous elections and listening to their election-focused speeches, there was no clarity on revising the challenges of corruption, instability and brokering that have been thrown into immigration in the spirit of economic prosperity and good governance.

This trend applies to all parties, including those called new or alternative. On the contrary, some party candidates had said that if they won, they would easily send so many thousand youths for foreign employment. The leaders of the new party, who call themselves the messiah of good governance, claimed that they had a new and alternative solution to control corruption and made irrelevant promises such as repatriating migrant workers and creating millions of jobs in the domestic labor market if they won.

Now the party and its candidates should not mislead the youth, families of migrants and the general public who are looking for jobs. Rather, since labour migration is a major basis for our economic prosperity, attention should be paid to making it safe, dignified and systematic. While debating the issue of ensuring good governance, the context of brokering, instability, economic and policy corruption linked to the migration process should not be left out.

When analyzing the nature, trend, needs and disorder of our migration, if we are truly to address corruption by focusing on good governance and prosperity, the parties should commit to making radical improvements in the following aspects from the perspective of migration management. This election could be an opportunity to make such a commitment, and it would be relevant to include the following aspects in the manifesto:

What are the issues of good governance in migration?

1. The inevitability of labor diplomacy

When talking about migration in the context of Nepal, the dimension of short-term and periodic labor migration comes to the center. This is a dimension that the country's economy has adopted as an integral part of liberal democracy. The instability and disorder that have plagued this dimension while our economy continues to depend on the dimension of formal labor migration, which began as a policy three and a half decades ago, must be addressed.

However, for that, a framework for a timely integrated migration policy has not been established, nor has a new diplomatic concept been drawn that can address the challenges of the global labor market by adding the dimension of labor diplomacy to our traditional political diplomacy. As a result, labor migration has been pushed into risky decisions and unequal agreements in the discriminatory labor market rather than safe and dignified employment opportunities. The treatment of Nepali workers in the global labor market today is enough to understand this complexity.

Therefore, without delay, parties should realize that immigration is an important part of economic prosperity in their manifestos and formulate a concept in the context of labor diplomacy. If we can incorporate the concept of timely labor diplomacy into our overall diplomatic framework, bilateral and multilateral labor agreements with destination countries can become the basis for making not only foreign employment but also the entire labor migration process systematic, dignified and safe, labor-friendly, labor-market-oriented, and balanced in our foreign relations.

Why is the global labor market relatively balanced towards Filipino and Chinese migrant workers today? We can learn from the labor diplomatic dimension used in their immigration management. If we start brainstorming and working on labor diplomacy today, it may be easier to implement the issue of migrant workers' voting rights in the future.

2. Ending policy confusion is necessary

If we are to properly manage immigration and connect the multidimensional capital acquired from it, including economic, socio-cultural, and technical capital, to the process of not only economic prosperity but also to the overall social transformation, we must first determine a national perspective on what immigration is in today's era in the context of Nepal.

Due to the open border with India, the dimension of our immigration is different from that of other countries in South Asia. Based on that national perspective, a national integrated immigration policy framework should be determined. The administrative relationship of that national framework should be clearly defined down to the provincial and local levels. Because our political parties, government employees, foreign employment professionals, and other stakeholders have an understanding of immigration that suits their own convenience. There may be some commercial, economic, and political interests behind this, but the main reason is the lack of policy.

Because, we do not have a policy framework for immigration yet, we only have the ‘Foreign Employment Act, 2064’. That too is about two decades old, which puts the interests of foreign employment entrepreneurs at the center rather than the interests of migrant workers. Therefore, in practice, the management of labor immigration began to be dictated by foreign employment entrepreneurs rather than the government. And they themselves emerged as fraternal organizations of political parties and started acting in the interests of their parent parties.

Some even entered the parliament through political bargaining and started getting decisions on labor immigration management favorable to their interests. They started influencing labor agreements. Most of all, they started influencing the political and administrative leadership of the Ministry of Labor.

As the influence of political leadership increased in immigration management that should have been done under administrative leadership, it became easier for policy corruption, extreme exploitation of workers, and human trafficking and smuggling under the umbrella of labor immigration to flourish. Since political protection was given when legal questions were raised against foreign employment entrepreneurs, workers no longer had access to justice. Instead, human trafficking and smuggling have become institutionalized in state agencies, creating chaos in the labor migration process.

Therefore, to address such multifaceted complexities, an integrated policy framework is indispensable that holds accountable the agencies directly concerned with migration and remittances, such as the Ministry of Labor, Ministry of Women, Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, Finance, National Planning Commission, Health, Tourism, Education and Training agencies. Unless we do so, we will not be able to make improvements in the management of migration, which is becoming increasingly complex as a breeding ground for economic and policy corruption, in line with the era and generation.

The parties should not delay in including policy frameworks in this context in their manifestos and addressing this complex issue in the upcoming federal parliament. The challenge of migration cannot be addressed by creating confusion by asking for votes, as in the previous elections, by saying that we will create jobs for a few hundred thousand youth in the domestic labor market or that we will return a few thousand youth from the destination country. To address this multifaceted and complex issue, a multifaceted but integrated policy framework (law) is needed, which replaces the current irrelevant law.

3. Need for institutional restructuring

It is not possible to properly manage the multifaceted dimension of immigration by focusing on economic prosperity and obtaining socio-cultural, technological and other multifaceted benefits and linking it to the process of overall social transformation with the current traditional and centralized structure of the state. Therefore, just as there is a need for a unified immigration policy framework (law) to replace the current law in terms of policy and to adapt it to the time, labor market and employment choice trends of the current working generation, similarly, there is a need for a multifaceted body with the capacity to implement that multifaceted policy framework.

There may be different forms of such bodies, that can be a matter of debate. But what would be relevant to the nature of Nepal's migration is a powerful Ministry of Immigration at the federal level, replacing the current Ministry of Labor, which has the capacity to provide leadership in addressing the major dimensions of Nepali migration - labor migration, which is colloquially called foreign employment, human trafficking and human smuggling in a coordinated administrative manner.

At present, neither the Ministry of Women has been able to address the problem of human trafficking, nor has the Ministry of Labor managed migration. And neither have the relevant agencies of the state, including the home, been able to properly address the network of human trafficking and human smuggling carried out by foreign employment entrepreneurs and their networks under the umbrella of foreign employment. Therefore, these three different but interconnected dimensions require a Ministry of Immigration or a similar structure with a vision, authority, and resources at the federal level.

The scope of this structure should be broad and integrated, which has the status of coordinating with our embassies through foreign countries, coordinating horizontally and vertically with planning commissions, judiciary, finance ministry, national bank, health, education, women, home and tourism ministries and other agencies, and at the provincial and local levels. And the current labor ministry, which is under the influence of foreign employment agents, can be comprehensively restructured and limited to issues such as domestic labor and social security.

Similarly, the women's ministry can be restructured and focused on issues other than human trafficking. In this way, creating confusion by dividing interrelated issues on a single issue into ministries is encouraging chaos. That is what is happening now. A broad but integrated structure can be useful to coordinate the chaos created by this fragmentation of responsibilities.

4. Issues of foreign employment entrepreneurs

Fraud against young workers in the name of foreign employment, economic and labor exploitation, sexual crimes against women and gender minorities, and the root cause of the hardships faced by a worker from the beginning of the immigration process to the labor market of the destination is the political cover used by foreign employment entrepreneurs. And the reason why the worker does not receive a hearing and is deprived of justice when he complains to the police, the Foreign Employment Department, and the courts against fraud is also the political cover used by foreign employment entrepreneurs.