As I read the large number of articles, posts, etc. on the large number of refugees (or migrants, depending on your point-of-view) fleeing the Middle East and North Africa and the hostilities in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Afghanistan, there’s a question that occurs to me: how do you weigh the competing interests of life, liberty, and property involved?
If you believe that people in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa have both a right to self-determination and to flee their home countries for destinations of their own choice, then you necessarily challenge the rights to property and self-determination of the people in the receiving countries. Think it through and you’ll see that is so.
The question has all sorts of alternative phrasings. One I’ve been asked is do we have not just a right but an obligation to overthrow the government of, say, Syria and install one more to our liking? That’s an extreme formulation and it would clearly be a denial of the Syrians’ rights to self-determination and self-government. Another formulation I’ve seen comes in the form of nostalgia for colonialism. See also this lament from Fred Hiatt.
I don’t know the answer to this question but I imply my view in the title of this post: I don’t think there is an absolute answer. I think it comes down to weighing competing interests and that to some degree is a matter of preference for which there is no hard and fast answer. Chacun à son goût. One man’s meat, etc.
Nonetheless I want to put the question on the floor. How do you weigh the competing interests?
If you are going to take responsibility, you should take full responsibility, and you should damn well not leave me worse off than you found me. Burning down my house will solve my mold problem, but it is going to cause a lot more problems than it solved. Likewise, outlawing my affordable health insurance for unaffordable insurance does me no good.
The problem with do-gooders is that they are real good at the tearing apart phase, but they are ready to move on when it is time to start the rebuilding and reconciling phases. They will tear apart your country, 401(k), neighborhood, health insurance, or anything else they can get their hands on.
I start with the belief that most of these people are not refugees, but migratory workers and as such they should be admitted to states that have jobs for them. States that decide to make more generous interpretations of their treaty obligations make their own bed.
One way of looking at the issue of refugees was that the 1951 treaty was drafted with a European war in mind, and essentially only applied to European refugees. The notion of “persecution” was based upon a European experience of ideologically charged victimization by states, either fascist or communist. By 1951, it was clear which of these was seen as causing more problems. Neither the Soviet Union, nor its Eastern bloc, signed the treaty. The Soviets believed the treaty was designed to harm the East by encouraging people of skill and talent to migrate.
I’m not really arguing for some originalist intent to the treaty (which has changed), but it is tempting to observe that it was largely intended for intra-European transfers, within modern economies, with strong states and post-war population shortages. No, the point I would emphasize is the harm to the country that loses its refugees. That has to be a consideration.