A Solution to the Coming Global Migration Crisis

Western nations cannot possibly take in everyone who will seek asylum in the next few decades.

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Recently, the United Kingdom agreed to pay Rwanda to accept asylum seekers who had originally arrived on Great Britain’s shores. Rwanda would process applications, and those who were granted asylum would be allowed to stay there (but not relocate to the United Kingdom). In addition to financial compensation, the African country would also receive and receive a number of other perks. 

The U.K. deal has been controversial and so far not a single asylum seeker has been moved to Rwanda, as the European Court of Human Rights struck down the deal. (The U.K. has so far agreed to remain under the jurisdiction of the ECHR even though it is no longer a member of the EU, although this ruling has led to prominent conservatives calling for this to change.) 

Whether the U.K. will ultimately succeed in “outsourcing” its asylum migration is not clear, but this type of bold move will certainly be necessary to handle refugee flows in the future, and its deal can be viewed as a kind of pilot program for how other developed nations can handle the influx. 

The world is soon going to face a refugee crisis, not from Ukraine, but from a combination of climate change and the collapse of oil-dependent economies. Climate change will, even under the best of scenarios, render uninhabitable portions of the world that are currently inhabited. The recent floods in Pakistan show how rapidly this can happen. Some degree of climate change is unavoidable, and migration will follow from the areas most affected to those least affected. In other words, from the developing world to the developed world.  

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  1. Rick Love

    Given the global nature of the anticipated population relocations, could an international agreement be forged where countries would agree to accept a set number of refugees, or fund refugee settlements in countries willing to take people? Creating a logical system to address a continuing challenge would leave to less stress - and hopefully less misery - than continuing to wrestle with each country's response to a wave of refugees crashing against its borders.

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  2. Natty Bumpo

    Interesting perspective on immigration and distinctions between asylum and general immigration. The proposed arrangement between the UK and Rwanda reminded me of a news piece I saw the other day about the US seeking a similar arranging with Suriname for some Afghanis who 'do not qualify' for entrance in the US (the story noted that no details were available on whether do not qualify).

    Immigration is often a complicated issue and the plain fact is that receiving nations will usually resist large influxes of people, whether reasonable or not. I would like to see more thoughtful and functional system for the US and think that having the same will improve acceptability. I believe immigration is generally beneficial to the US and should be a more positive prospect for the nation and the immigrant.

    I also believe that the US should work on our asylum policies to identify as clearly as possible what situations qualify and what reasonable documentation is required to admit asylees. I am sure we can improve on our current system.

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    PGC

    So at what point do we consider going into these countries from which people are fleeing and making them livable? For example, Venezuela is a disaster. The government was not legitimately elected and the people are starving and fleeing by the tens of thousands and coming here. At what point does the world intervene and say this has got to stop? I'm not talking about building a democracy or anything of that sort. It doesn't work. But neither does having them flee to the "developed" countries.
    Just to sit back and watch while Maduro and his thugs destroy the lives of the citizens of an entire country, well that ain't working out so well either. And this is just one example among multitudes.

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    Mudskipper

    Thanks, by the way, for mentioning climate change as a major driver of migration. The extent to which some conservatives have their heads in the sand about the effects of climate change really annoys me.

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    Dexember

    There was always a word game being played with the migrants from the Syrian War that flooded into Europe. They had escaped the war by mostly fleeing to Turkey as refugees.

    At that point, moving to Europe for work was no longer an issue of asylum seeking. They were looking for work because Turkey could care less about them and was happy to push out thousands of young men who weren't Turks and would just cause trouble.

    Dictatorships, Socialist Narco-States, and poorer countries in general are going to disincentivize migrants from staying in their country and will push out the poorest and most vulnerable. Why are poor people not settling in Mexico? Because Mexico is terrible to immigrants and allows the cartels to prey upon the weak.

    If we don't help build up regional powers that are liberal, stable and beacons for these migrants in their own right, then they will keep flooding to our shores. It is actually the logical and best thing for many of these families to do: to migrate to the US or Europe. So we have to change the incentives, and that starts by actually helping other regions with stability. You know, like NOT withdrawing from Afghanistan and creating a humanitarian crisis and abandoning tens of thousands to the Taliban.

    This is like climate change and nuclear power. You may not like nuclear power, I personally do, but if you are serious about anthropogenic climate change then you will support the cleanest, most abundant energy source we have. If you are serious about helping stop illegal immigration, work migrations on massive scales, and refugee crisis then you need to be looking at the only proven vehicle for large scale stability and security: the US military.

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    Mrs. Marion Coatsworth-Hay

    I think I was one of the original "lifetime" subscribers to The Dispatch. I followed some of the NR writers here. I became so disillusioned with public affairs, 'though, that after about December 2020, I just stopped reading a lot of things. I kept National Review and I kept the WSJ. Nothing against The Dispatch -- I just hadn't worked it into my regular queue at that point.

    Kevin Williamson is who brought me back here, and gosh, I've found so many pieces that have been a welcome combination of conservative thinking, decency, common sense, and pragmatism. I appreciate this piece, in particular, because it talks of the different reasons people want to migrate, and respectfully. It puts the reader in a position to consider the reasons, their relative merit given limits on what a country, continent, an NGO can do. And it speaks of those people respectfully.

    All I had to do is click the "forgot password" button! ;)

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      John Gustavsson @Nationstatist

      I'm glad you liked my article, and glad to have you back here at the Dispatch.

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    Scarlette Tarte

    Oh Jesus. Can you all not see what is actually going to occur?

    First of all...corruption is endemic in Africa. There is no way we can give the president (or whoever) of Rwanda billions of dollars and say "here, take care of these people for us, give them freedom and economic opportunity" and then walk away. The money is going to go right into various government officials pockets. Our asylum seekers are mostly from western nations, with a Christian background. The culture of Rwanda is not western. The main religions are Catholic and Animism. But the food, music, "way of being", is very different from these asylum seekers we have here in the US. The main language is Kinyarwanda. Spanish has the some of the same Latin roots as our language, you can suss out similar phrases and roots. It's far easier to pick up on English and French than it is, say Gaelic or Kinyarwanda.

    Not only would they receive very subpar services, their chances of creating a "better life" in a place so different, with such a different culture and language would be pretty close to nil.

    I can't believe England is even thinking of this...it smacks of old "penal colonies". A way to colonize areas with some element of a population that they don't want.

    Then we get to the idea of citizenship. Are these people just to remain "stateless"? Are they to go home at some point? If it's climate change that's the reason they are seeking asylum, then no, they can never do home. Do we demand of Rwanda that they give them citizenship at some point? How can we demand that of them, when we don't want to do it ourselves? Would they not be allowed to be, but their kids? How long do we support them? How many generations? When would they be able to have political voice?

    And without citizen ship, they cannot vote. Without a vote, they have no chance of making their new home a better place...so they really can't improve their conditions.

    I would only consider this if our asylum seekers were sent to some nice, tropical island, protected by us, and had some pathway to eventually being allowed political self determination. We have such islands under our control. This would allow us some measure of actual control over how the money is spent, it allows us to ensure rights are protected, that the migrants are protected, and that they actually are safe, and they actually can work and build a life. They must be allowed, if they wish, to become citizens of said island nation. This would also allow them to be in a place not that culturally different from their own homelands.

    But there is no way this works sending people to corrupt nations we have no control over. It's wrong. It is also dehumanizing and against our own ideals.

    I also don't get why you (or anyone) is against economic migration. I would venture that most of our ancestors came for economic opportunity. Unless you believe that our economy is zero sum? That if someone else does well, somebody has to lose? That's not very conservative of you.

    Even an old liberal like myself knows that growing economies mean more opportunity for everyone, not less. Immigrants help us, who don't have even enough children to replace ourselves, to grow our economy.

    But one thing you are right about is that climate change is going to drive huge amounts of immigration. And when we are being flooded by migrants pouring in, or having to pay billions in tax money to "offshore" then somewhere, I am gonna laugh and laugh at those repubs and cons who didn't want to do anything about climate change because it would be 'too expensive".

    They are gonna be weeping with how expensive taking care of climate migrants and their descendents is gonna be. Far more expensive than switching to renewables, installing solar panels, and driving an electric car.

    Really, instead of trying to convince Americans to pay up and sell out their values by offshoring people who are going to need help, why don't you work to get Americans onboard with mitigating climate change?

    This would be helping Americans. Because vast swaths of our country are going to be negatively affected by climate change, including the west. The West is already experiencing water issues. The south is going to experience heat so hot, along with drought, that parts of it will become arid. The temperate zone is moving north. Arizona has experienced a huge influx recently, as has Texas, but these people would have been better moving north, to say, Michigan.

    We need leaders who are not afraid to spell out exactly what climate change has in store for us, and advise Americans on what the best course of action would be for their lives, instead of playing politics with the situation and trying to profit by gaining power or influence by telling them what they want to hear.

    It's not coming, it's here. We are already experiencing the effects of it. We are already seeing climate driven immigration. When will we have leaders from the right who help devise sound policy around it?

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    Adicesa14

    Putting aside the current national migration crisis, diverting asylum seekers and some economic migrants toward safe, developing destinations is a reasonable solution. What’s missing in this, and all immigration conversations is vetting. We should know who we let into our country and those we divert to others.

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  9. Bob Simrak

    A world in transition is a giant can of worms. Hard to adapt to in the best of times.

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    Robert Knudson

    I suppose I am far more amenable to accepting more refugees in the US, but appreciate this perspective. I will note, regarding Afghan refugees, that I have encountered many Afghan refugees from Iran, where they were discriminated against as an ethnic minority and even denied citizenship on the grounds that they were Afghans (which effectively made them stateless). I think their claims to refugee status are as valid as those of others who are fleeing war and persecution in their home nations.

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      John Gustavsson @Nationstatist

      I am aware the situation in Iran isn't good, but these people claimed to have been fleeing war in Afghanistan when applying for asylum, effectively using a loophole that existed at the time (that gave virtually everyone with an Afghan passport asylum). Syrians who had lived their whole lives in Turkey and even Greece also used this loophole.

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