Living Up to Their Responsibilities

I wanted to remark on the editors’ of the Washington Post’s recent editorial about asylum-seekers. Before I do I probably should stake out my position.

I think that we should accept more refugees than we do—closer to the Obama Administration’s cap of 110,000 than to the Trump Administration’s cap of 50,000. That’s consistent with the international accords to which we are signatory. We have an obligation to accept refugees; we don’t have an unlimited obligation to accept refugees.

I also think that societies have carrying capacities for the number of immigrants they can accept without political turmoil. I think that capacity is around 15%. We don’t really know what percentage of the U. S. population is composed of immigrants. It may be as low as 14% but, since the number of illegal immigrants in the U. S. is estimated at anything between 10 million and 30 million, it could be higher.

Said another way, accepting more refugees will require us to accept fewer non-refugee immigrants, whether legal or illegal.

Now back to the editorial. They open with a statement that I believe is unquestionably true:

THE CRISIS involving migrants fleeing violence in Central America, seeking sanctuary in the United States and overwhelming American immigration courts is real. The Obama administration was flummoxed by it when the numbers of women and unaccompanied children crossing the border spiked in 2014.

following that with a statement that may or may not be true:

The Trump administration, predisposed against immigrants of almost any kind, has responded to it by means of outright cruelty, splitting up families to deter migration , shattering the lives of children and parents in the process.

I’m referring to the clause I’ve highlighted. The”almost” bothers me. It smacks of “no true Scotsman”. The entire statement may be true. It may be untrue. How would one go about proving it empirically?

They continue:

That outrage doesn’t diminish the urgency of dealing with the waves of Central Americans flooding northward. What would constitute a reasonable, humane and legal response?

Fair enough. What would?

One option examined by the Obama administration, and now being pursued more actively by the Trump administration, is to push the problem to Mexico. The idea is to strike a bilateral deal requiring migrants to seek protection by applying for asylum there rather than here. In theory, it makes some sense; Europe pursued a similar deal with Turkey in 2016, at a cost exceeding $6 billion, to stanch the flow of refugees from Syria.

That actually makes a substantial amount of sense. Travel alone is dangerous in itself; I suspect that approach would be less expensive than accepting a substantially larger number of refugees since refugees are immediately eligible for certain federal benefits. However, the editors oppose it:

In practice, it is a terrible idea that would subject migrants from Central America and elsewhere to further violence and danger, and probably do little to curb illegal immigration to the United States.

In 2002, the United States and Canada secured a similar arrangement, known as a “safe third country” agreement. It has worked because Canada is, in fact, a safe third country: Migrants who apply for asylum there are secure, and their cases are fairly adjudicated.

By contrast, Mexico is patently unsuitable as a place of refuge for most migrants, especially those from Central America, who suffer exploitation, violence and sexual assault almost routinely as they make their way north. In a recent report, Doctors Without Borders noted that two-thirds of Guatemalan, Salvadoran and Honduran migrants in Mexico have reported being victims of violence; almost a third of migrant women there had been sexually assaulted. Twelve of the world’s 50 most violent cities are in Mexico.

And four of the “world’s 50 most violent cities” are in the United States, despite our spending several orders of magnitude on law enforcement than Mexico does. That sounds like an argument for barring refugees from the U. S. for their own good.

Additionally, I have a cavil about the way that the editors are playing fast and loose with the terms “migrants” and “refugees”. A better term to use throughout would be “asylum-seekers”. Presently, something between 50,000 and 100,000 people are applying for asylum annually. About 10% of those applications are actually granted. The definition of refugee in the accords to which the U. S. is signatory is:

A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

It is obvious that women fleeing their husbands or individuals fleeing crime aren’t refugees under those terms. The American judges who have determined otherwise are engaging in egregious legislation from the bench. If we wish to extend our definition of “refugee”, we should do so by the ordinary legislative process rather than by executive or judicial fiat.

I find this extremely condescending and patronizing:

Forcing refugees to seek sanctuary in Mexico would thrust tens of thousands of them into a country with weak law enforcement, a flimsy judicial system, an anemic asylum process and predatory criminal gangs.

If Mexico is in a state of chaos and unable to live up to its international obligations, then we have a problem with Mexico and we should take it up with Mexico. The choice is between a Westphalian order in which Mexico is a sovereign equal of the United States or one in which Mexico is a client of the United States.

I actually agree with their conclusion:

Rather, the right response, and the one most likely to succeed in the long term, is for the United States to redouble efforts to strengthen governments and fight the lawlessness that has seized Central America’s refugee-producing countries.

I wish they had fleshed out how we would go about doing that.

I think we need to look ahead. The economy of the U. S. is considerably different from what it was in 1970. In 1970 agriculture employed 4.6% of the labor force; today it’s about 1%. In 1970 about 20% of Americans were employed in manufacturing; today it’s about 10%.

The number of asylum-seekers will only grow over time. Most will not be engineers, accountants, or physicians. Demographics suggest that they will be speakers of languages which most Americans do not understand, i.e. neither English nor Spanish. Increasingly, they will be poorly prepared to thrive in the post-industrial society we have become and will be in competition with our own native population struggling to survive in a post-industrial society whose wages have been stagnant for a generation.