How Not to Manage Europe’s Refugee Emergency

The editors at Bloomberg do a pretty fair job of summarizing the proposals that are on the table for the EU to deal with the refugee crisis that Angela Merkel created and their shortcomings:

At least three proposals are being discussed. The first is to end the EU’s so-called Dublin rule, which requires the first EU nation in which an asylum-seeker sets foot to take the application. This hardly seems worth debating: The Dublin rule has already been repealed by force of events.

A second proposal is for EU nations to set refugee quotas. Horst Seehofer, leader of Germany’s Christian Social Union party, has been trying to press this approach on Chancellor Angela Merkel. And Austria recently said it would set its own cap on the number of asylum applications it will accept in 2016, at 37,500 (compared with 90,000 last year).

The problem with this is easy to see: What happens to genuine refugees who are turned away? Will other countries be willing to take up the slack? More likely the opposite: The pressure will mount on other governments to accept fewer people. The spurned refugees won’t go home, so one way or another they will remain Europe’s problem. Shunted from place to place, their distress will be compounded, and Europe’s citizens will be no happier.

Denmark advocates a third idea. It wants to rewrite the 1951 Refugee Convention so it would no longer be possible for people fleeing the Syrian war to spend time in the relative safety of Turkish or Lebanese refugee camps and then claim asylum in the EU. In principle, there’s some logic to this, but again it’s impractical. Lebanon already has one refugee for every four inhabitants. Turkey is host to more Syrian refugees than the 28 nations of the EU combined. Neither country will agree to a treaty change that eases the burden on rich nations at their expense. Nor should they.

but their alternative proposal borders on lunacy:

It should spend far more on helping countries such as Lebanon provide a haven for refugees. (Governments are providing the United Nations with barely half of what’s needed.) It should create a greatly expanded resettlement program, so that refugees in countries such as Turkey can be vetted for a safe and orderly move to the EU. It should collectively secure the bloc’s outer borders, so sea crossings to Greece and Italy become less attractive to attempt. Once all that is in hand, it should regard accepting the refugees who do arrive as a joint responsibility, and strive to spread the burden equitably.

Europe is a rich continent, of 500 million people. It can accommodate more of Syria’s refugees. Indeed, in the longer term, it can benefit from having them. Leaders should be mindful of their citizens’ concerns and not deny the short-term stresses or the longer-term challenges of integration, but it’s their job to drive the larger message home. Here too, as long as they act together, they can do it.

First, the Germans will never go for it. Open any German newspaper and you’ll see what the Germans want: quotas (alternative #2 above). The Germans’ preferred strategy is nuts, too. It doesn’t matter what Hungary’s or Slovakia’s or Estonia’s quota is. The migrants want to go to Germany or Sweden and that’s where they’ll go.

Second, does anybody really believe that tiny, teetering Lebanon can accommodate more than a tiny fraction of the number of refugees that are streaming across the border?

Here’s my alternative proposal. Pay the Turks a lot to keep the refugees. By “a lot” I mean at least €7,000 per refugee. Inspect the camps to make sure the Turks are treating the migrants humanely. Dangle the carrot of EU membership before the Turks’ noses. Stop paying if the Turks aren’t living up to their part of the bargain and keeping the migrants within Turkey.

My prediction is that the flood of migrants will stop miraculously.