Ethnic compulsions present the biggest hurdle to global assimilation.
This week’s conferences in New York on refugees and mass migration were not expected to solve the problem on the ground. The sheer scale of the human traffic defies any simple or early solution. But the linking together of the two words – refugees and migration – may be a significant step towards admitting that current distinctions between asylum seekers, refugees and economic migrants are unsympathetic, artificial and, as Barack Obama indicated in a passionate address to the United Nations General Assembly, reek of race discrimination.
All migrants are economic refugees. Like millions of Syrians fleeing civil war, Rohingyas who escaped from Myanmar into Bangladesh, Hindus who trudged perilously from East and West Pakistan to India, or Somalis, Afghans, Eritreans and others in Libya, represent man’s indomitable will to survive. They want to live. To live, they need food, water and shelter. Above all, they need security which, in turn, demands stable economic conditions. What keeps them as prisoners of poverty, uncertainty and insecurity is the ethnic barrier.
It has been pointed out that Mark Joseph Carney, the current Governor of the Bank of England, is as much an economic migrant as a Senegalese lad trying to jump on a Britain-bound lorry in the insalubrious Calais refugee camp called The Jungle. But Mr Carney, a Canadian, is white. The anonymous young Senegalese also in search of a better life is black. Neither the UN which is trying to grapple with the task, nor President Obama’s White House which is clearly determined to leave behind a positive legacy, can afford to forget that ethnic compulsions present the biggest hurdle to global assimilation. It is the most important factor that affects the survival of a large chunk of mankind.
So many European Union members would not have been outraged by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s proposal to accept West Asian refugees if it had not been for their race and religion. Immigration was the biggest single reason for Britons to vote against the EU, Britons confusing the influx of East and Central Europeans with traditional migration from Afro-Asian countries of the Commonwealth. Nigel Farage of Britain’s far right UK Independence Party may be justified in claiming credit for the anti-EU vote for, like France’s Marine Le Pen, he canvassed vigorously against immigration. If Donald Trump wins in the United States, it will be largely because his thunderous diatribes against immigration touch a chord with many white American voters.
Officially, 65 million people worldwide are displaced and another 20 million are in danger. There are also 20 million displaced children. These are under-estimates that do not take into account the millions of Romanians, Poles and other Europeans waiting for a chance to cross over into Western Europe. Nor does it take note of the millions of Africans and Asians who are desperate to escape threats the UN and White House have not yet got round to recognising. Many are trying to flee conflicts that are not acknowledged because of political rather than economic or humanitarian reasons. Pakistan will not allow Balochistan to be identified as a flashpoint. India is even more adamant there is no Kashmir problem.
An “economic migrant” is not a legal category but an umbrella term for a wide range of people who move from one country to another (like Mr Carney or Lord Meghnad Desai) to advance their economic and professional prospects. An asylum seeker on the other hand is someone who has applied for asylum in another country and is waiting for that country’s government to take a decision on his or her claim. Thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils in Norway and Canada fell into that group until they were accepted. Finally, a refugee is someone whom the host government has already allowed to take up permanent abode.
The Calais camp inmates are neither refugees nor asylum seekers from Britain’s point of view as long as they remain on French soil. In order to become an asylum applicant or recognised as a refugee in Britain, they need to be on British territory. That explains why many Syrian refugees landed on a British military base in Cyprus over which London claims sovereign rights. But – race again! – the British government decided that the base would not count as British territory for the purpose of legitimising asylum seekers. Like most countries in Europe that have signed the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Britain is making it increasingly difficult for asylum seekers to enter its sovereign territorial jurisdiction.
It’s a classic Catch-22 situation. You cannot seek asylum until you are in Britain; but there is no legal way of breaching the tight cordon around the British Isles by boat or aircraft. And the moment someone lands surreptitiously, the media is tipped off and authority swings against the illegal migrant. Politicians then talk dolefully of the threat to British life and values from this clandestine influx.
Predictably, the UN meeting focused on abstractions rather than concrete practice. The conference was originally conceived with the intention of addressing the situation of Syrian refugees and the Mediterranean. It then morphed into a negotiation of two “Global Compacts” — one on refugees and one on migration. Now, thanks to the efforts of spoiler governments, there is only a declaration of vague principles. President Obama’s Leaders’ Summit about pledging funds was not a more striking success. Failing to persuade a Congress whose members are as hostile to foreigners as Mr Farage, Mr Trump or Ms Marine Le Pen, he decided to seek international commitments in three areas — additional humanitarian assistance, more resettlement places, and a focus on jobs and education. But with states experiencing donor fatigue, significant new pledges were never likely.
The basic idea in the 1951 Refugee Convention – that refugees should not be sent back to face serious harm – remains as relevant today as ever. However, its focus on refugees as people fleeing “persecution” is somewhat antiquated because, today, many of the people fleeing their native land are trying to escape mass violence. Irrelevant old distinctions result in arbitrary exclusions and erratic responses. In 2014 recognition rates for Eritrean asylum seekers ranged from 26 per cent in France to 100 per cent in Sweden. For many years Germany would not recognise Somali refugees because the peril they faced was from non-state actors rather than a persecuting government. To recognise Balochis or Kashmiris would mean indicting the governments of Pakistan or India, which the US (and, therefore, the UN) would be loath to do.
Definitions must be altered. But that can’t happen until perceptions change. The international monetary system reached its crisis moment in 1971 and was reformed. For 2016 to be a similar moment of truth in respect of refugees for global leaders, the prosperous West must accept that globalisation cannot be confined to goods and services. It must also include humankind.
