Category Archives: immigration

Stem the Flow of Migrants

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That’s what the EU is trying to persuade Turkey to do according to a Wall Street Journal article.

Before I get into that, there are a couple of points of clarification that are necessary. First, there is confusion on the part of the WSJ and/or the European Union leadership regarding who it is that’s traveling. Most of the present flow consists of refugees, not migrants; although there are certainly migrants in the mix, along with terrorists.

From that, it’s easy to see the moral distinction among the three concerning their “right” of entry into any nation of the EU or into the EU generally. Terrorists have no right to do anything but die. Migrants have no moral right to enter a nation that doesn’t want them—the nation is sovereign over its own territory; sovereignty is the purpose of borders. It’s a highly useful thing, from a mutual prosperity perspective, to permit an influx (and outflow) of migrants, but that utility is purely…utilitarian. There is a moral obligation to permit entry of refugees, but that entry cannot be without limits and controls: the receiving nation must be able to set the conditions under which the refugees can enter, under which they can stay, and for how long they can stay, or else the nation will be unable to handle those refugees in anything approaching a humane manner.

Within that, then, there’s this about the EU’s pushing Turkey to impose a metaphorical, if not physical, barrier on the flow of refugees (not “migrants”) at the Turkish borders.

In a draft statement to be adopted later on Monday, the [EU] leaders are set to tell migrants that the route north of Greece is completely closed, a move that without Turkey’s help will leave huge numbers of people trapped within the already overwhelmed country.

Here’s Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel:

There is only one possible solution: make sure the Schengen borders are perfectly hermetic against uncontrolled and illegal migrant flows[.]

Sure. And do what with them? The originating situation does not permit them to go back. Where they are cannot sustain them.

What the EU is proposing (instead?) makes little sense. They want Turkey to agree to take back refugees that have already made it into continental Europe (even Metropolitan Europe, to stretch an analogy), including Greece, and the EU will accept via direct transport (no harrowing and dangerous overland treks) “registered” refugees taken straight from UN-run camps in Turkey.

This raises a couple of questions. One is the nature of that registration: on what basis is the UN registering anybody, on what basis is the UN vetting anybody who’s being registered, on what basis do we even trust the UN to make a serious attempt at vetting? The other question concerns Turkey: the take backs and the direct-from-camp transports amount to little more than swaps of one population for another. How does this help Turkey deal humanely with the existing supply of millions of refugees already within its borders? There’s no easing of stress here.

Here’s an example of that stress, in one Turkish border town. Kilis sits within kilometers of the Syrian border and so is an early stop on refugees’ travels.

Home to about 100,000 Turks before the Syrian war, Kilis is straining from the arrival of more than 125,000 Syrians. The town’s water and sewage systems are struggling to cope. Schools are filled to capacity. Although Turkey is developing plans to build more classrooms, for now many Syrian children roam the streets, stay at home, or spend their days working in shops, cafes, and factories.

It’s been downhill from there, for the local Turks, for the refugees, for the nation of Turkey.

The Cost of Schengen

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The Schengen Agreement is a 1985 European Economic Community treaty, carried over into the European Union as the Schengen Convention, which essentially did away with border controls along the borders between participating nations. Today, those nations are the EU member nations. Schengen had, and continues to have, considerable economic benefits beginning with smoother, delay-free travel across borders for people, goods, and services; citizens of one nation being able to work in another nation; reduced costs of border policing; and on and on.

Given the explosion in refugees, and others, from the Middle East, those “refugees'” misbehaviors and outright criminality (see the rapes in Germany and Sweden), and other “refugees'” outright terrorism (see Paris), there now is a move to drastically modify or eliminate Schengen and reinstitute national border controls. Of course the EU leadership is objecting, and part of its objection is a claimed cost.

The French government’s economic planning agency, France Stratégie, estimated in a report released this week that the reintroduction of permanent border controls within the EU would cost the bloc €110 billion, and make the EU economy 0.8% smaller within a decade.

The cost to the EU may prove to be what France Stratégie estimates it will be. However, that’s the wrong measure and the wrong responsible body. It’s the individual nations that are at risk: it wasn’t French women being raped in Germany or Sweden, it wasn’t Italian citizens butchered by terrorists in Paris.

Neither is the EU as a whole doing anything—and it doesn’t intend to do anything beyond hectoring Turkey and Greece about their southward-facing borders—to protect the citizens of the member nations from the depredations and butcheries of the terrorists and thugs mixed in with the flood of refugees. The EU isn’t even prepared to help its member nations deal with the floods that have already arrived in those members.

The decision by particular nations to suspend (or, in extremity, to withdraw from) Schengen must be respected as those nations move to better safeguard their people. Moreover, the costs of doing so plainly are national costs, not EU costs.

[T]he Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) estimated that border controls would cost Germany €10 billion a year.

Perhaps it would be that much. However, this cost must be weighed against the cost of the damage done via insecure borders.

In the end, too, the putative EU costs aren’t worth the worry. A 0.8% move in the EU’s €14.3 trillion GDP “within a decade” is economic measurement noise.

Two Mistakes

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One by folks on the far right and one by The Wall Street Journal. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R) gave the Republicans’ response to President Barack Obama’s vaporous SOTU.

Her conservative critics unloaded. “Trump should deport Nikki Haley” went one tweet. The next morning on Fox & Friends, Donald Trump declared that Gov Haley is “very weak on immigration.”

Of course, these are slurs and comments utterly devoid of facts, as the WSJ noted.

The woman who says “illegal immigration is not welcome in South Carolina?” Who signed a law toughening the state’s illegal immigration reform act, which requires employers to verify the immigration status of new hires? Who has fought President Obama’s bid to resettle unvetted Syrian refugees? And whose state has joined 16 others in a lawsuit against Mr Obama for what they say is his unconstitutional executive order on illegal immigration?

But then the WSJ committed its own error.

A party that rejects Nikki Haley as a spokeswoman is one that doesn’t really want to build a governing majority.

Conflating these criticizers with Republicans also is a claim devoid of fact, beyond the most narrow, literal sense.

No Pandering Here

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Mm, mm. Nosirree, Bob. Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton wouldn’t do that.

Democratic Party presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton joined her rivals Monday in opposing the Obama administration’s deportation raids targeting Central American immigrants who entered the US illegally and ignored deportation orders.

Never mind that just a bit over a year ago, in 2014 before she announced her candidacy, she said that

unaccompanied Central American minors who had crossed the southern border should be returned to their home countries.

What is it with Democrats that they’re all for things before they’re against them? Except when they’re against things before they’re for them?

A Difference in Philosophy

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British Prime Minister David Cameron is…discussing…the British requirements for continued membership in the European Union with the rest of the leadership of the EU. One of the points of contention is the degree of welfare participation migrants from mainland EU should receive while in Great Britain. Cameron wants to

curb[] welfare benefits for other EU citizens working in the UK for four years.

EU leaders have voiced strong opposition to his plan, saying it would breach the fundamental principle of free movement of people within the bloc.

The EU leaders’ objection, of course, is nonsense. A benefits freeze would leave migrants free to come and go as they please; the British position is a benefits freeze, not a movement restriction. The only thing being frozen would be the migrants’ ability to freeload off the British taxpayer.

Cameron also points out that a benefits freeze would help reduce migration to the UK. Well, duh. Reducing the incentives to come where the freeloading is easy certainly reduce the amount of movement in that direction.

The difference between Cameron and the European leaders is the difference between a measure of self-determination and individual responsibility on the one hand, and Government Knows Better on the other.