Ecuador President Rafael Correa announced in his weekly radio address the creation of national Ministry of Migration, which would “be in charge of regulating the situation of our emigrants abroad, so that they can come back as often as necessary and return to their homes,” said the president, according to an El Universo report.

Although this is the major responsibility of the ministry, President Correa noted that there would be “multiple projects” to aid emigrants, including a Migrant Bank, which will lower costs and channel money transfers to the families of immigrants.

We look forward to the decree to create this ministry as well as the budget that will pay for its function. President Correa already named the official who will lead the ministry – William Murillo, who led the Country Alliance Movement in New York.

We salute Correa’s initiative to create the Migrant Bank, as it is something our community has wanted for a long time.

Without much information or details, newspapers report that Correa will create a digital consulate, reducing the costs of documentation, and “the different consulates will be staffed by local personal rather than by bureaucrats sent from Quito.”

The minister of migration, Correa emphasized, will look out for the well being of his countrymen abroad and their families inside the Andean nation.

At the same time, President Correa said that emigration will be reduced with his new social and economic plan that will create jobs and distribute the nation’s wealth. He also said that there will be six immigrant representatives in the Constitutional Assembly if the country votes in favor of it.

The idea of a Ministry of Migration is not new. In 2003, ex-President Lucio Gutierrez created the Immigrant Agency at the level of a ministry and also pompously announced that emigration would be treated as a national policy issue; however, none of this happened. His projects were forgotten in the Sub-Secretariat of Immigration, a dependency of the ministry of foreign affairs. This body only served to send government officials abroad to have meetings with immigrant communities to hear about their needs, but of course did not do anything to meet them, because the immigrants needed economic assistance.

We hope our community will have better luck with this opportunity, and that the creation of this ministry will do something to help our immigrant brothers. We hope it does not cause more divisions, because there are people who would use this government institution to hand out cushy jobs.