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Poverty and conflict migration

Airfix

Graduate Poster
Airfix
Joined
Aug 11, 2016
Messages
1,047
Firstly, immigrants keep the gene pool healthy and most positively contribute economically and socially to their adoptive countries.

But, extreme poverty, conflicts and dangerous political environments create refugees.

There are people smugglers, there's modern slavery, there's an illegal economy including drug cultivation, and sometimes people die illegally trying to migrate to another country.

This happens all around the world.

Many "democratic" countries in fear of being "flooded", have very hostile policies towards such migrants. The UK is no exception. :(

But it's not really the migrants who are the problem; but extreme poverty, conflicts, and dangerous political environments that are the problem as well as organised crime inside our country.

So what can be done to address the root causes ?
 
Migration is a really complex issue, and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions.

Working to end military conflicts would help, sure, but it is wrong to think that migration is something that needs fixing - it needs managing.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Migration is a really complex issue, and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions.

Working to end military conflicts would help, sure, but it is wrong to think that migration is something that needs fixing - it needs managing.
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Agreed.

And I don't recall writing that "migration is something that needs fixing".
I agree with you, it needs managing.
 
The most important thing western countries can do is to manage the hostility towards migration within their own citizenry, because we will see more, not fewer, migrants in the future.

The reason is a curious effect that happens when impoverished countries start to get back on their feet: once people get a basic education and can accumulate resources beyond the daily needs, they are able to migrate when they could not before.
So increased emigration can be positive signal, counter-intuitively.
 
The scale of the inequality being dealt with means that country borders become irrelevant for refugees. They just want to get to somewhere stable and safe, and borders be damned.
 
Agreed. But also we need to stop backing dictatorships like Saudi Arabia's government, which we presently provide a lot of weapons to.
 
From a US point of view (though I'm sure it works for other countries as well) we need to avoid the temptation to think that we can sustainably meddle in other countries and wall ourselves off from the consequences.

Which is not to say that we should have open borders--but a problem must be primarily approached at the root, not the branch.
 
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The Great Zaganza said:
The most important thing western countries can do is to manage the hostility towards migration within their own citizenry, because we will see more, not fewer, migrants in the future.

The reason is a curious effect that happens when impoverished countries start to get back on their feet: once people get a basic education and can accumulate resources beyond the daily needs, they are able to migrate when they could not before.
So increased emigration can be positive signal, counter-intuitively.
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Which is a shame, because those who leave are often those who might be the best ones to stabilise their own countries.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
but they will probably do more good by accumulating know-how and sending remittances.
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Only if they take the knowhow back - otherwise they're effectively doing nothing more than giving overseas aid with the money. Still, at least the overseas aid will be going directly to a family not a government.
 
gnome said:
From a US point of view (though I'm sure it works for other countries as well) we need to avoid the temptation to think that we can sustainably meddle in other countries and wall ourselves off from the consequences.

Which is not to say that we should have open borders--but a problem must be primarily approached at the root, not the branch.
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Agreed.

And whilst we should take refugees in, taking refugees in doesn't fix the whole problem.
And it's a complex problem.

Trying to bomb countries into democracy doesn't work.
 
OF COURSE we should have open borders to migrants if we have open borders to capital.

If we restrict immigration, we have to give developing nations control over the flow of money in and out of their banks.
 
Airfix said:
Agreed. But also we need to stop backing dictatorships like Saudi Arabia's government, which we presently provide a lot of weapons to.
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It's not that easy I'm afraid. The Saudi Government is actually quite populist and the polices that we rightly view as repressive are usually supported by Saudi citizens themselves. Where they are not, the Saudi citizens usually want even more extreme policies.

While it is a military dictatorship, it spends much of it's efforts alternately suppressing and appeasing people with even more extreme views then it's own. It's virtually impossible for there to be a government that is more moderate without it being an even more repressive dictatorship. If the Saudi government collapses Saudi Arabia will become an even more chaotic and repressive place and that will be exported to the whole region and beyond.

Pulling support from the Saudi Government would make thinks much worse than they are now.
 
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I guess I see this a little differently than everyone else.

If Person A's existence in Country B is so poor and/or so further down the quality of life scale than their existence would be in Country C ("your" country in this equation) that letting them into Country C crosses over into being a moral imperative, then you shouldn't be tolerating the continued existence of Country B in its current state.

Letting people into this country so they can escape problems in other countries that we have no intention of fixing seems like... selective morality I guess. Something like that.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I guess I see this a little differently than everyone else.

If Person A's existence in Country B is so poor and/or so further down the quality of life scale than their existence would be in Country C ("your" country in this equation) that letting them into Country C crosses over into being a moral imperative, then you shouldn't be tolerating the continued existence of Country B in its current state.

Letting people into this country so they can escape problems in other countries that we have no intention of fixing seems like... selective morality I guess. Something like that.
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It's simpler than that. Those affected so badly they choose to flee their homes don't care about "Country A or Country B" or stuff like that. They just want safety and the ability to live and thrive peacefully. Countries and citizenship and borders become immaterial. Is is as simple as wanting to move from "somewhere really bad" to "somewhere else better".

In that context, the T*** administration policy was not to make the hell-holes theses people are fleeing better, it was to make the USA as a destination a bigger scarier hell-hole than the one they were in. And humanity be damned.
 
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