Europe’s Refugees and Immigrants Fatigue (Brussels Morning)
Channel: Sam Vaknin's Musings
Date: 2023-05-30

Column in Brussels Morning https://brusselsmorning.com/europes-refugees-and-immigrants-fatigue/32504/

Greek coast guard officers were caught on camera by the New York Times transferring asylum seekers - including women and children – to a boat at sea and then abandoning them to their ineluctable fate on a raft. 

Migration from the Mediterranean to Europe often ends in death. Refugees are fleeing conflict, persecution, and, above all, hopeless poverty. They do not seek to improve their lot – they want to have a lot to start with. Many women consent to be trafficked just to extricate themselves from their domestic inferno.

Europe is focusing its efforts, such as they are, on defensive “security”. There is no real, coordinated, strategic attempt to tackle the root causes of immigration because sending hapless refugees to their death is way cheaper than mitigating penury or resolving conflicts in their home countries. 

For example: the budget of Frontex, the EU’s border control agency has quadrupled to 24 billion euro in 2021-7. More than 30,000 met their deaths at sea or are missing since 2014, according to the IOM (International Organization for Migration).

Stereotypes are often wrong and it is no exception when it comes to migrants: their involvement in crime and social unrest is not higher than the general population’s. One is left wondering who is churning out these convenient and self-justifying Trumpian prejudices, cui bono.

Moreover: the EU is working closely with rogue states and quasi-militias in countries like Libya and Tunisia to wall off immigration. Values like democracy, free speech, human rights, and the rule of law be damned.

Immigrants are corralled by the coast guards of the very polities they have fled and held in concentration camps, aka detention centers, in violation of a bevy of principles of international law (such as non-refoulement).

Such self-defeating choices result in a panoply of far right and alt right mindsets: xenophobia, racism, euroskepticism, and anti-Semitism. Recently, these foul attitudes have been extended to apply to Ukrainian refugees. 

The impact on the labor supply of these victims, displaced by Russia’s savage aggression, is far more immediate and akin to a sugar rush: 4 out of 8 million are of working age. Many are high-skilled women with children and endowed with a college degree. 

Contrary to populist messaging, immigration enhances GDP in the long run – especially in developed countries. But, in the short term, immigrants compete with locals for employment opportunities and scarce economic resources.

Had the EU acted rationally, this is what it would have done:

It should establish a few immigration hubs and redistribute incoming flows to all members of the EU according to their population and GDP per capita.

It should invest in economic development and conflict mitigation in the countries of origin.

It should establish worker migration programs on European soil (including for temp labor and gigs) and provide humanitarian and family reunion residency visas as well as accelerated pathways to citizenship.

It should open distance learning campuses of its major higher education institutions where immigration originates.

It should establish safe, formal, and legal migration routes to Europe with EU-trained guides and forward application processing and visa granting (consular) centres. This step alone is likely to decimate human smuggling and human trafficking.

Migrants availing themselves of the aforementioned routes should be immediately offered welfare benefits, education, healthcare, legal aid, and employment opportunities, and a clear, irrevocable trajectory to residency and citizenship.

The EU must take over the management and financing of all the refugee detention centres in Africa and Asia. 

It should also compensate host countries for their hospitality, however coerced or reluctant it may be. It should provide economic and humanitarian aid as well as reskilling programs for local labor faced with competition from a burgeoning immigrant population.

Above all, the EU must abolish the Dublin Regulation. Immigration is a Europe-wide systemic problem, not to be dumped on frontline states such as Italy or Greece. 

Finally, search and rescue operations must be augmented and financed centrally. Immigration is not going anywhere any time soon. Europe is rich. Its neighbors across the seas are poor. End of story. Better accept reality and cope with it in a mature way and on a long-term, prophylactic basis.