Forced migration will only make it worse US needs a long-term strategy

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The United States has gone through a new crisis on its southern border. The 15,000 Haitian refugees crammed in stifling heat under a bridge in Texas have been transferred to treatment centers in the United States, returned to Mexico or repatriated to Haiti.

While the immediate problem has been resolved, the long term problem remains. Forced migration is not a series of isolated crises, but a chronic problem requiring a comprehensive solution. In a crowded world with dwindling resources, even prosperous nations like ours face the difficult question of how many immigrants they can absorb.

Migration is as old as humanity. The first communities were made up of hunter-gatherers who followed the seasonal migration of wild herds. From the 16th to the 19th century, European nations sent their surplus populations to the overseas colonies, where they displaced the indigenous peoples, often quite brutally. The Industrial Revolution created a demand for factory workers and farmers to feed them. A growing economy and vast tracts of land attracted waves of Europeans, Asia and Latin America to the United States.

Forced migration, the compulsory movement of people, is quite different from voluntary emigration in search of employment and opportunities. Since ancient times, people have fled wars and natural disasters. In recent years, however, the frequency of displacement and the number of people affected have increased exponentially. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees monitored just over 40 million displaced people in 2010. By 2020, their number had more than doubled.

Americans perceive this mass movement as a series of independent events: the Syrian refugee crisis, the Rohingya refugee crisis, and the border crisis between the United States and Mexico. But these upheavals are part of an almost continuous wave of forced migration. Most of those fleeing war and natural disasters are internally displaced people who flee their homes without leaving their homeland. Of those crossing an international border, the largest number land in neighboring countries. Those who can afford it make the long and perilous journey to Western Europe or the United States.

International law defines refugees as persons outside their country of origin who are in need of international protection because of a serious threat to their life, physical integrity or freedom in their country of origin. as a result of persecution, armed conflict, violence or serious public disturbance. However, US law provides a narrower definition. In addition to fleeing persecution, the person must have special humanitarian concern for the United States, “” not be firmly established in another country, “and” be admissible to the United States. These caveats allow Washington to be very selective about who it admits.

International and US law increasingly distinguish between asylum seekers fleeing persecution and economic migrants seeking a better life. A person fleeing famine caused by drought is no less desperate than a person fleeing a war zone, but only the latter can claim refugee status. The patterns are often mixed. Many young men who left Syria during the war were in danger, but some insisted on going to Germany because it offered better benefits than other European states, which raised questions about their real intention.

As war and persecution continue to drive people from their homes, natural disasters caused by climate change are causing more and more people to flee. Of the more than 80 million displaced people identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2020, 21.5 million were climate refugees, people forced to migrate due to climate change disasters. Rising sea levels alone could threaten up to 630 million people by the end of this century. Recurrent floods, fires and droughts will displace millions more.

These factors ensure continued pressure on America’s borders as desperate people in poor and violent countries seek a better life in more prosperous countries. We desperately need a comprehensive, long-term immigration strategy that takes into account our ability to welcome immigrants and addresses the root causes of forced migration. Instead, we saw a series of ad hoc responses to each ensuing crisis. Immigrant rights groups demand a path to citizenship for the nearly 12 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States and advocate for more humane treatment and expedited treatment of asylum seekers. Both measures are necessary, but what about the next 12 million and the next 12 million? How many people can we accommodate? Progressives and even moderate Democrats do not have a satisfactory answer to this painful question.

For their part, the Republicans have militarized immigration. They embraced the Nativist ideology that produced the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1924, which favored immigrants from northern and western Europe. The America First agenda of the previous administration included a ban on Muslims and the infamous border wall. Such xenophobic measures fail to protect us and ignore the economic reality that immigrants from Mexico and Central America (including those here illegally) pick our vegetables, clean our homes and hotels, and wait for us in restaurants. They take jobs that most Americans don’t want, as well as much of the work in meat packing and other industries. The same populist pundits who rail against Muslims and Mexicans seem remarkably indifferent to the 50,000 undocumented Irish immigrants living in the United States. Their racist agenda couldn’t be clearer.

A rational immigration policy must also take into account the role the United States has played in creating the conditions that force people to flee. Washington had a bad habit of supporting Latin American dictatorships that forced many of their own people to flee persecution. The Afghan refugees’ claim on us hardly needs to be emphasized.

We are a nation of immigrants who still have room for more people seeking freedom and opportunity, as well as a genuine obligation to some of those fleeing persecution. But our ability to absorb newcomers is not unlimited. This awareness should prompt us to develop a humane but rational approach to immigration.

If we fail to formulate a coherent policy that does not change with each administration, we can expect to see uglier scenes on the southern border.

Tom Mockaitis is Professor of History at DePaul University and author of Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat. Twitter: @DrMockaitis

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