The Obstacles to Legality

To get an idea of just how difficult the migrant's life was, my research team and I opened a small garment workshop on the outskirts of Lima , Peru. Our goal was to create a new and perfectly legal business. The team then began filling out the forms, standing in the lines, and making the bus trips into central Lima to get all the certifications required to operate, according to the letter of the law, a small business in Peru . They spent six hours a day at it and finally registered the business?289 days later. Although the garment workshop was geared to operating with only one worker, the cost of legal registration was $1,231-- thirty-one times the monthly minimum wage. To obtain legal authorization to build a house on state-owned land took six years and eleven months, requiring 207 administrative steps in fifty-two government offices. To obtain a legal title for that piece of land took 728 steps. We also found a private bus, jitney, or taxi driver who wanted to obtain official recognition of his route faced twenty-six months of red tape.

My research team, with the help of local associates, has repeated similar experiments in other countries. The obstacles were no less formidable than in Peru; often they were even more daunting. In the Philippines, if a person has built a dwelling in a settlement on either state-owned or privately owned urban land, to purchase it legally he would have to form an association with his neighbors in order to quality for a state housing finance program. The entire process could necessitate 168 steps, involving fifty-three years. And that assumes the state housing finance program has sufficient funds. If the dwelling happens to be in an area still considered "agricultural," the settler will have to clear additional hurdles for converting that land to urban use-- 45 additional bureaucratic procedures before thirteen entities, adding another two years to his quest.

In Egypt , the person who wants to acquire and legally register a lot on state-owned desert land must wend his way through at least 77 bureaucratic procedures at thirty-one public and private agencies. This can take anywhere from five to fourteen years. To build a legal dwelling on former agricultural land would require six to eleven years of bureaucratic wrangling, maybe longer. This explains why 4-7 million Egyptians have chosen to build their dwelling illegally. If after building his home, a settler decides he would now like to be a law-abiding citizen and purchase the rights to his dwelling, he risks having it demolished, paying a steep fine, and serving up to ten years in prison.

In Haiti , one way an ordinary citizen can settle legally on government land is first to lease it from the government for five years and then buy it. Working with associates in Haiti , our researchers found that to obtain such a lease took 65 bureaucratic steps -- requiring on average, a little more than the two years--all for the privilege of merely leasing the land for five years. To buy the land required another 111 bureaucratic hurdles--and twelve more years. Total time to gain lawful land in Haiti: nineteen years. Yet even this long ordeal will not ensure that the property remains legal.