Illegal immigration in global perspective
UNITED NATIONS — The number of political asylum seekers arriving in Western countries fell sharply reaching its lowest level in sixteen years according to the UN refugee agency. Still despite the steep drop, those seeking to enter industrialized states still number 368,000 — with France, the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Germany being the primary destinations of refuge.
There's a silver lining to the otherwise gloomy clouds of illegal immigration which have shadowed horizons in Europe and North America. Namely that improving political conditions in places like Afghanistan and Iraq have now radically reduced the numbers of people fleeing formal political persecution. That's the good news.
But before my readers rightfully remind me of a near ridiculous myopia in not seeing the millions of illegal aliens which have flooded it into the American southwest, California, New York and even Canada, let's focus on the issue.
Illegal migrants from Mexico, Bangladesh or El Salvador for example, are not in any large numbers seeking formal political asylum. They are not fleeing their countries based on a clear and well founded fear of political or religious persecution. Rather they are coming to America for the economic benefits simply not found in their homelands. There are estimated to be at least five million illegal aliens in the USA; besides a large drain on social services, such a large undocumented group naturally poses a lurking security risk.
The asylum seekers who came to the USA last year fall into a totally different category. According to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) "The top receiving country in 2004 was France, with an estimated 61,600 asylum seekers. The U.S. came in second with 52,400. The UK fell to third place with 40,200 and Germany — the top asylum county in 13 of the past 20 years — was in fourth place with 35,600. Canada came in fifth with 25,500."
The Balkan wars in the early 1990's caused a terrible human tragedy including a massive dislocation of mostly Bosnian and Croatian refugees to Austria, Germany, and the U.S. They fled based on a real and genuine fear of persecution by the ruling Serbians. Equally the Hungarians who escaped their homeland in 1956-57 seeking freedom after the anti-Soviet revolution (mostly to Austria, Canada and the U.S.) as well as the Poles who fled the communist crackdown on the Solidarity trade union in the early 1980's, usually fit the proper qualifications for asylum status.
According to UNHCR today the largest number of asylum seekers come from the Russian Federation 30,000 (mostly Muslim Chechens), Serbs 22,300, and Mainland Chinese 20,000. The good news is that the number of Afghans — the top group in 2001 with 50,000 has fallen dramatically to 8,800 in 2004. This is clearly due to the both the political liberation of the country from Islamic Taliban extremism as well as a stabilizing socio/economic situation.
All well and good. But again readers may rightfully ask "What about the two million refugees now displaced from Darfur in Sudan?" Here we certainly have a clear case of religious and ethnic persecution. Ditto for many ethnic minorities fleeing Burma's benighted leftwing military regime, or so many decent Zimbabweans who escaped Mugabe's thuggery.
The answer is simple. Most Sudanese flee to neighboring Chad and Zimbabweans go to neighboring South Africa or Botswana.
Naturally there are many clear cut and willful abuses of asylum where refugees exaggerate the threat to their personal safety and simply seek presumably better lives abroad. Well organized criminal gangs profit from the process and feed a steady stream of South Asian, Mainland Chinese, Turkish Kurds and Chechens into the political blood stream. Many enter the U.S. and EU countries illegally and few can really qualify for formal political asylum.
Only better and more effective asylum laws in the U.S., Canada and the European Union and genuine focused investigation of asylum seekers, followed by quick deportation of phony applicants, will to some degree begin to stabilize a situation for those truly seeking freedom.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense
issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.  |
