Gaming Refugees

September 2, 2021

Europe braces for another flood of Afghans fleeing their country. But the world is awash with people who want to escape persecution or simply get out of crummy countries, cultures, religions, and societies. The lucky ones earn the right to immigrate, but those who leave without permission are deemed as refugees. And after the Second World War, the United Nations came up with a humanitarian refugee system designed to protect the vulnerable but also to protect destination countries from being overrun.

Since 1951, the United Nations Refugee Convention has defined a refugee as “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” Those who arrive must prove they are being persecuted, and are not merely opportunistic immigration queue-jumpers.

The “Safe Third Country Agreement” rules require asylum seekers to make their refugee claim in the first safe country in which they land, then stay there until approved or rejected. If rejected they are to be deported back home. Unfortunately, the system has been weaponized by Belarus and manipulated by Mexico and, some claim, by Turkey.

Belarus, a dictatorship controlled by the Kremlin, is using refugees to get even with the European Union for imposing stiff sanctions on its dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, following his brutal crackdown on his people in 2020. For weeks, Belarus has been recruiting and importing thousands of Afghan, African, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian refugees – for-profit -- then letting them cross its borders into Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. Notably, Belarus prevents its own persecuted people from leaving.

Belarus President Lukashenko gets even

“This aggressive behavior [allowing refugees to enter the EU] is unacceptable and amounts to a direct attack aimed at destabilizing and pressurizing the EU,” said a statement by Slovenia, current holder of the Bloc’s rotating Presidency. “The European Union will need to further consider its response to these situations in order to increase its effectiveness and to deter any future attempts to instrumentalize illegal migration in this manner.”

The result is that Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania have had to erect fences, barriers, and deploy troops to guard their perimeters. Several thousand have slipped through, but many more have been kept out and remain in Belarus but are being fed and housed by Europeans because Lukashenko refuses to do so. As one European leader said: “This is no refugee crisis, but this is a hybrid [warfare] attack on the European Union.”

Unless stopped, the numbers could be catastrophic as tens of millions in Europe’s neighboring regions want to leave their homelands. Most who leave end up in camps or in limbo. The UN Refugee Agency said there are currently 82.4 million displaced persons worldwide – 48 million “internally displaced” who live in their home countries but have been uprooted; 26.4 million refugees awaiting approvals; 4.1 million asylum seekers applying for placements; 3.9 million displaced persons living abroad with temporary status.

Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, one of the world’s biggest

The biggest single refugee catastrophe in recent years has been the Syrian Civil War, which partitioned the country, and left homeless or disenfranchised 7.1 million people. Most remain in the Middle East, living in refugee “cities” in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. Millions more are displaced within what’s left of the country or have been able to legally get into European or North American countries.

Europe has borne the brunt of this post-9/11 refugee crisis, due to geography and its prosperity, but has been able to fob off most of the problem to Turkey, Jordan, and others by paying them billions to “host” these refugees. The “European Migration Crisis” began in 2015 when more than 1.2 million migrants simply poured into Europe by foot or boat, sparking Britain’s departure from the EU as well as the election of several autocratically-minded and anti-migrant leaders, notably in Poland and Hungary.

Turkey — the biggest “host” of immigrants in the world with 3.7 million — signed a deal in 2016 with Europe to accept and house these people for billions of Euros per year, but has just been accused of gaming the “refugee” system by “blackmailing” Europe to get more funds by purposely allowing thousands of refugees to cross its border into Greece illegally in 2020. Now Turkey is busily erecting fences along its border with Iran as well as with Greece and Europe to avert the estimated 400,000 more Afghans who are on the run.

Guarded fence along Turkish-Greek Border

Other “holding” nations are filled to the brim too. Jordan “hosts” 2.9 million and Lebanon, 1.4 million more, with financial help from the UN and the European Union. The Afghan crisis will also add to Pakistan’s burden, with 1.4 million refugees already; Iran with nearly the same number; and India. These countries worry about costs, but also about the fact that criminals and terrorists slip through with the throngs that arrive. This has already happened in Europe where hundreds of violent attacks and crimes have been committed by “refugees” since 2015.

Iran has also closed its border crossings and requested that the UN or NATO support refugee camps inside Afghanistan. These are known as repatriation centers — where people await approvals to enter destination countries — but all too often become permanent settlements. For instance, seven million Palestinian “refugees” have lived in camps in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank as well as in Jordan and Lebanon for decades.

Meanwhile, Turkey is warning the EU that it cannot “shoulder the wave of refugees that may come” and is now asking for EU cooperation, i.e. more funding. It is already paid billions annually by the EU and World Bank to take care of refugees and has also obtained benefits such as visa-free travel for Turkish citizens and improvements regarding the Turkey-EU customs union agreement. But Turkey claims that costs have risen because it must now fortify its borders with sensors and cameras to stop flows. As a result, the EU is considering upping its ante to Turkey, leading one diplomat to comment after a closed-door meeting in Brussels that “the EU is the target of a blackmail.”

The Western Hemisphere has its own refugee problems. A total of 4.9 million Venezuelans have left their country since the political crisis began after Hugo Chavez died in 2013 but have scattered themselves in many countries, including in makeshift squatters’ camps in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. But the biggest “refugee” crisis afflicts America’s border with Mexico, where tens of millions have illegally entered over decades, and where criminal cartels in Mexico and the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua) charge billions to poor people for guiding them to the border and training them to claim asylum as “refugees”

Most are not bona fide refugees, as defined by the Refugee Convention, but the problem is that Mexico has refused to sign the Safe Third Country Agreement (to house them while they await approval by the U.S.) So the cartels escort them across the border or, if unable to, take them to the border where they declare asylum. Mexico refuses to support them so cartels have figured out how to bypass rules by bringing unaccompanied children to the U.S. border where they are taken in on humanitarian grounds then eventually placed with relatives. Once in, they try to sponsor their families into the U.S. and must repay cartels for getting them into the U.S., often by committing crimes.

Mexico should be forced to stop migrants at their southernmost border with Central America or to take care of them if they make it to the U.S. border while they await asylum hearings. If they won’t house them, then Mexico should deport them back to Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, or wherever they come from. But this hasn’t happened because cartels and Mexico’s corrupt police and governments profit from the trafficking. And complicating the situation is America’s powerful Hispanic diaspora which insists on allowing these “refugees” entry, which has encouraged a tsunami of arrivals. However, this month, U.S. Supreme Court ruled that asylum seekers must apply outside the U.S. -- in Mexico or their own countries. This is in accordance with the Refugee Convention.

People have chosen to, or been forced to, relocate throughout history. The Great Wall of China was a system of fortifications built in the 7th Century to keep out nomadic groups from the Eurasian Steppe. This worked for a while, like all barriers, until it didn’t. Now it seems the UN’s refugee system is breaking down. World peace and universal prosperity would help mend these crises, but that’s not in the cards anytime soon.

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