The flood of immigrants and refugees from the Middle East has caused a crisis in Europe. With the number of dead in ships and trucks mounting and the living crossing borders, finding themselves alternately ushered through or warehoused in transit countries, the humanitarian crisis that engulfed the Middle East years ago is spreading into Europe. The response from Europe has been mixed. At the state level, the responses have ranged from xenophobic speeches in Hungary to Icelandic citizens opening their homes. The EU will meet in the coming weeks to determine a strategy for addressing the calamity going forward.
It’s important to take a moment here and consider the plight of the people travelling to Europe. Their homes, families, friends, and livelihoods have been uprooted by war and strife. In many cases, these people are what remain of a close social network rent asunder by the Islamic State. They have seen loved ones killed and stolen. Given a choice, many if not most would choose to return to their homes if they were safe and pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. These people are fleeing a horrendous life on the road, being taken advantage of by human smugglers and avoiding modern day slavers just to find a place where they can live in peace, or at least in a place more peaceful than the homes they were driven from.
The EU has a problem. As an advanced confederation of Western democracies, closing its borders is morally and ethically unacceptable. Culture aside, this an issue of humanitarianism. Moreover, it is unthinkable that the EU could create any conditions that would convince the refugees to stop or turn around. The bureaucratic barriers of the EU pale in comparison to the horrors of the refugee camps and ISIL from where they come.
This brings us to the other side of the Atlantic and the wave of nativism swamping US domestic politics. Anti-immigrant rhetoric has become a staple of Republican presidential candidate campaign speeches. Led by the shrill call of Donald Trump, other candidates and the GOP itself despite its best intentions have been pulled into what is perceived by many to be a xenophobic orbit.
The cost of building border walls, capturing illegal immigrants, and returning them to their home countries is prohibitive, to be diplomatic. In point of fact, it is wholly impractical in even the rosiest economic scenario. Localities that have experimented with a harsh stance on illegal immigrants have paid a high price, and in many cases reversed course after the true economic costs were felt.
This problem pales in comparison to the forces acting upon illegal immigrants to come to the US. Unemployment, lack of opportunity, poverty, lack of access to food and water, criminal and government violence in countries where the rule of law is weak all drive people to the US. For many, even detainment in an immigration hold facility is an improvement over the lives people abandon when they choose to make the dangerous and expensive trip to the US.
The US and the EU face similar immigration challenges. While the plight of Syrian refugees is certainly more dire, the underlying rationale is not so dissimilar and the both the US and EU lack the capacity to make themselves unattractive to refuges in any meaningful way. The US however has a key advantage over Europe in that it has a long, if fitful history of immigration and integration. Despite bouts of nativism, generational integration is the rule rather than the exception in the United States. We should play to our strength by embracing and welcoming those with the courage and ambition to overcome obstacles in pursuit of a better life for themselves and their families. That is what the American dream is all about, after all.
