Bad governments create externalities, a.k.a. refugees

Bad governments produce refugees, hundreds of thousands of them — fleeing for their lives, livelihoods, or both. The US is by no means alone in facing unwanted crowds of refugees heading for its borders.

For some countries under some circumstances, refugees can be a boon. Europe’s refugees who came to US shores in the 19th century opened up the farmlands of its vast interior and helped man its nascent industries. Europe’s refugees in the 1930s made US universities and science faculties the finest in the world, and in recent years, many important new businesses have been founded by immigrants.

But refugees aren’t always — indeed, aren’t usually — blessings for the countries to whom they flock:

• The Christian-civilization-based countries of the European Union are now riven politically by a huge influx of mainly Muslim immigrants from wars and poverty in Syria, Libya, and elsewhere in Africa and the Near East.
• Bangladesh can’t or won’t absorb the Muslim Rohinga fleeing systematic policies [paywall] of murder, rape, and discrimination practiced against them by the military of Buddhist Myanmar.
• Columbia and other countries neighboring the collapsing socialist state of Venezuela are overwhelmed with economic refugees they can’t absorb.
• The caravans of asylum-seekers heading to the US from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala contain thousands of mostly unskilled Spanish-speaking individuals who are a poor fit for the US economy, its presently divided polity, and its English-based culture. Mexico has generously offered a home to some of these refugees but almost certainly can’t productively absorb their entirety.

Each crisis above has its own particular genesis and will require its own particular resolution. In the short run, the US must reject almost the entirety of refugees presently heading toward or already banging on its southern portals. Not to do so will be to invite many hundreds of thousands more refugees. In the intermediate term, the US should work with a “coalition of the willing” south of the border to improve governance and economic opportunity in the dysfunctional Central American states and Venezuela.

In Venezuela’s case, a threatened, if not actual, military intervention by a “coalition of the willing” might be helpful.

In the case of Central America, the US has to end its de facto support for Latin drug gangs and do what it can to encourage rule-of-law forces in those countries, versus corrupt officials. Again, this should be done in close collaboration with those Latin American countries willing to work with the Norteamericanos to solve problems hurting both our interests.

As for the refugee crises in Asia and Africa, let us hope that the European Union and the countries of south Asia — the parties most immediately affected — can find humanitarian solutions.

Click here to go to the previous issue of Founders Broadsheet (“Chinese leaders unhinged as economy weakens”)