Over the past few years tens of thousands of people have
made an arduous and perilous journey from their homes in Africa to Europe. Endemic violence and anarchy in Somalia,
brutal civil war in Sudan, an increasingly violent and repressive government in
Eritrea, and the chaos that has descended on Libya after the ouster of Qadhafi
have impelled desperate people to pay smugglers for the opportunity to board
boats in Egypt, Libya or Morocco and hope to land in Greece, Spain or
Italy. The journey across the
Mediterranean is usually miserable and all too often fatal. Somewhere between one and two thousand people
have drowned each year when overloaded, decrepit boats or flimsy rubber rafts
sank. (As I am finishing this blog entry
the Spanish coast guard is announcing that a raft trying to cross the 9 miles
from Morocco to Gibraltar overturned in high seas. Fifteen people were rescued, 11 people died.)
The countries of the European Union have developed processes
and policies for dealing with this influx.
Migrants are held in camps until they can be registered, then permitted
to travel within the European Union to a country where they can hope to be
given a residence permit. Germany and
Sweden have been the preferred destinations because their strong economies and
relatively low unemployment have led to more liberal criteria for issuing
temporary residence permits that allow people to seek jobs and find a place to
live. France has long been a magnet for
people from their former North African colonial possessions, especially
Algeria.
Ultimately each migrant=s
case will be reviewed by a local court to determine if the person will be
allowed to stay or must return home. The
decision will hinge on whether the applicant is deemed an economic migrant or political
refugee. [Click here
if you want a discussion of the various international legal categories of
people who have been left their homes.]
The system worked reasonably well until this summer when the
flow of people was more than doubled by desperate Syrians. The EU countries accommodated some 250,000
migrants in 2014; more than one million will have arrived by the end of this
year. The approaching winter weather
will slow the flow somewhat but will make even more miserable for those on
their way or who have already arrived.
I want to address three major points:
- why the sudden influx of Syrians;
- the short term impact of the crisis;
- the longer term implications for Europe
Why the sudden surge in Syrian refugees?
Five years of civil war have forced roughly half of all
Syrians to flee their homes. Around 7.5
million of the 12 million Syrians who
have been displaced by the war have stayed within the country. Those who have left Syria have ended up in
Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. While
some have found shelter with relatives or have had enough resources to live on
their own, most have ended up in refugee camps in Turkey or Lebanon run by a
collection of international NGOs (Non-Governmental Organization).
Desperate Syrian refugees began showing up in significant
numbers in the flow of people from North Africa to Europe in the spring of
2015. The increasing flow of people and
some highly publicized sinkings of boats carrying hundreds of refugees led to a
shift in strategy by European countries.
Patrols by Spanish, Greek and Italian naval vessels increased sharply in
an attempt to curtail the smuggling traffic, as well as respond to ships in
distress.
A combination of push and pull factors has fueled this
year’s Syrian exodus.
The biggest push has been the steadily worsening conditions
in the countries of refuge. More people
cross the border from Syria every day, swelling the population in the refugee
camps or joining the thousands of their countrymen who have the means to rent
some shabby living quarters and buy enough food to survive or who find shelter
with relatives. Syrian refugees get food
aid from the UN’s World Food Programme but donations from member countries have
not kept pace with demand and the amount of food aid has been slowly decreasing
since last January and more cuts loom in the days ahead. Each day life in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon or
Jordan gets a little more difficult. The
World Food Programme has just announced that they will have to start
classifying recipients in terms of how badly they would suffer if food aid were
cut off. The shortage of funding may
mean they will have to restrict food aid to individuals and families who would
starve without it.
One major pull factor has been the belief that life in
Europe will be better than the camps.
This has been fueled by reports from those who have survived the
treacherous journey that Germany is particularly welcoming.
A second pull factor has been the creation of an overland
route to Europe. The EU crackdown on the
Mediterranean routes plus the economics of the sordid business of smuggling
desperate and vulnerable people from the Middle East to Europe encouraged the development
new routes. All you need is a long haul
truck and driver who meets “clients” somewhere in Turkey, instead of moving people from Lebanon or
Jordan down to North Africa then procuring passage on a boat to cross the
Mediterranean. The number of smugglers has increased substantially and the cost
of the journey has dropped. By some
accounts the standard rate was $6,000 per person for a trip to Europe in
January of this year, while it is now about $1500. In the same week that the heartbreaking photo
of a 3 year old boy who drowned off the coast of Turkey became a social media
sensation, a truck with 60 decomposing bodies was discovered in Austria …
apparently abandoned by smugglers who were on the verge of being apprehended.
The result was the arrival of thousands of migrants,
primarily Syrian but also Afghans and Pakistanis, at the Hungarian border every
day beginning in the late spring. Unable
to register and process the wave of migrants, Hungary initially loaded migrants
onto buses and trains and expedited their arrival in Austria. But soon Hungarian authorities tried to stem
the flow altogether by building fences and barriers in their borders with
Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. They were
quickly forced to relent by pressure from the rest of the EU and the flow of
desperate people continues, putting pressure on governments to cope. Meanwhile thousands of people keep arriving
from across the Mediterranean.
The members of the EU have tried to respond to the
administrative, financial and political burdens the migrants have placed on
member countries with a package of financial assistance and waiving the
requirement that migrants register in the first EU country they enter. This shifts much of the burden to Austria and
Germany, and to a lesser extent France and Sweden.
Germany has shouldered the primary responsibility for
housing the migrants and adjudicating their status. Political refugees are
entitled to residence permits in Germany and eligible to look for work and
accommodations outside settlement camps.
Economic migrants are subject to being returned their home countries.
Some Syrians and many migrants from Pakistan or sub-Saharan
Africa would like to make it to the United Kingdom where they have relatives or
acquaintances from their home countries.
Since they lack formal authorization to enter the UK, a favored strategy
is to make it to the city of Calais, the French terminus of the Chunnel, and
hop onto one of the many trains ferrying cars and truck on flatbed rail cars
under the English Channel. “The Jungle”
is the aptly named informal settlement that houses some 10,000 migrants outside
Calais while they wait to try their luck.
Short Term Impacts
- For those who survive
the perils and rigors of the long trek through the Balkans to Western Europe or
the dangerous trip across the Mediterranean in overloaded, often decrepit boats,
the major short term impact is that life is markedly better. Germany may end up housing as many as 800,000
migrants by the end of the year in camps that are cleaner, safer, and with more
certain access to food and medical care.
- For the governments at whose doorsteps the migrants first
arrive, particularly Greece, Spain, Hungary and Italy, there is a large
financial burden in providing temporary shelter and humanitarian services to a
growing number of people. There is the
cost of processing each migrant, examining papers and registering people before
they can move on to their desired destination elsewhere in Europe. And there is the logistical challenge of
physically moving people from the entry point across the country.
- For governments like Germany who have become the destination
of choice for migrants, there are the financial and logistical challenges of
taking care of such a large number of people.
(One might even say a staggering number of people: if there really are
800,000 migrants by the end of the year, that will be equal to 1% of the German
population. If that were to happen in
the U.S. it would mean about 3.2 million people!)
- For the European Union as a whole coordinating efforts to
deal with the crisis and the impact on local governments has been politically
challenging. Efforts to develop an
EU-wide approach have often been stalled by the sharp differences in short term
interests among member states.
- The EU is attempting to negotiate an arrangement with the
government of Turkey to expand and improve refugee facilities in Turkey. The obvious hope is that better living
conditions just across the border from Syria will encourage refugees to stay
put. Turkey has tried to strike a hard
bargain, asking for not only more financial support but also progress on the
long stalled negotiations to join the European Union.
- I think there is relatively little the U.S. can do in this situation. I think the practical issues, from transporting people to the U.S. to the lack of facilities for housing thousands of people while their status is determined, make it unlikely that we could offer refuge to enough Syrians to make a difference. In addition, a proposal to bring thousands of refugees to the U.S. in the next few months might well ignite a political firestorm . The initial reaction to the Obama administration’s announcement of a slight increase in accepting refugees over the next three years included charges by some Republican Presidential contenders that terrorists would lurk among the refugees and put us at risk.
Longer Term Impacts
- Helping refugees adapt to life in Germany or elsewhere is an
enormous task. Imagine what kinds of
help you might need if you suddenly found yourself in a country where you did
not speak the language, were unfamiliar with the culture, were priced out of
all but the most rudimentary housing, and could not expect to find any but the
most menial job. And if you had young
children ....
- The longer war rages in Syria, the greater the economic and
political strain on host nations.
Europe has far less experience with immigration than the U.S. and arguably
less tolerance for diversity.
- There has been an initial outpouring of support and sympathy
from many people in Europe. German
public opinion has been strongly supportive of the government’s leading role in
dealing with the crisis. Individuals from
all over Europe have volunteered money and time to help with the crisis. But the longer the crisis goes on, the more
likely it is that people will become increasingly sensitive to the costs of
hosting so many refugees. The
anti-immigrant, xenophobic, faintly Fascist appeals of extreme right wing
parties will sound more reasonable to a growing number of people (this is
already happening in Hungary) and resentment of and discrimination against
refugees will become a significant problem. Neo-Nazis in Germany, the National
Front in France, and Greece’s New Dawn are a few examples of parties currently
far to the right of the mainstream who might be expected to gain support as the
problems posed by refugees and migrants continue.
- There are some people who argue that the great wave of migrants is actually a great benefit for Europe. The optimistic, perspective points out that Europe has a long term demographic problem. The birth rate in many countries has fallen below replacement level: populations are growing older and smaller. There are fewer workers to fill available jobs and shoulder the burden of supporting a growing number of retirees. In the medium to long run, settling both refugees and economic migrants in Europe would offset the graying of the population and forestall an economic crisis.
The road ahead
The sudden addition of hundreds of thousands of Syrian
refugees to a persistent flow of migrants from Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan
and elsewhere in the Middle East transformed a persistent problem into a highly
visible crisis.
I think the flow of Syrians refugees will slow sharply as
winter sets in and travel to Europe gets even more difficult and dangerous. The flow may not resume at the same level
next spring because conditions in the countries bordering Syria will improve,
there will be fewer Syrians with the financial means to pay smugglers, and the
challenges imposed on Western European economies and political systems by the
large number of refugees who have arrived this year will reduce the
attractiveness of those countries to new refugees.
I do not think the hardships and disruptions suffered by
Syrians who have been forced from their homes will end very soon. While there is some reason to think that a
political process is beginning to emerge that could lead to an end of the worst
of the violence in Syria, that is probably many months away and in the meantime
the level of violence will probably escalate.
I will try to address those issues in the next blog entry.
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