The un-compact Compact
The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (here) has created a lot of heat (but not much light) in the press. This heavy-weight international agreement sponsored by the UN comes at a fraught time for the subject of migration. Populist/nationalist politicians have made migration a dirty word. High profile waves of migration from the Middle-East and Africa to Europe and from Central America to the USA have kept the issue in the public spotlight. How migrants are treated by other countries (e.g. Australia) also highlight problems beyond the volume of the migration. And so the Compact has become a lighting rod from every angle of the debate on how to deal with immigration and immigrants.
The compact aims to codify how countries treat and deal with immigrants of all types, albeit in a non-binding form. It has a specific focus on specifying the rights of migrants that countries should aim to uphold. Unfortunately, the agreement is incredibly tone-deaf to the political environment, to the point of being counter-productive. For countries affected by unpopular migration (e.g. in Europe, USA), the Compact represents a policy likely to be rejected outright. For unaffected countries (e.g. NZ, Canada), the Compact is seen as a mechanism for virtual-signalling, by signing-up to an agreement that has little impact on them.
My, that's a large elephant you have there...
The elephant in the room is the migrants that either cross-border without authorisation, or present themselves at the border requesting entry as refugees or asylum seekers; I call them "unwanted" migrants for want of a better word. They present a moral, social and economic conundrum for the destination country. Letting them in costs their taxpayers money, introduces "strangers" to their society with potential for societal change, and most importantly encourages more migrants to come. Detaining, mistreating, and deporting these people triggers different downsides; moral outage, dead children in the news, and divisions in society as people take different sides.Of course, there is an infinite spectrum of policy settings between these two positions but there is no setting that is universally agreed within a single country, let alone internationally. The Compact focuses on defining and upholding rights of migrants "regardless of their migration status" lumping all migrants in together. But this ignores the conundrums mentioned above and that a large chunk of countries' electorates feel that mistreating unwanted migrants is a valid policy response. The Compact seeks to dictate that their preferred policy settings are off limits. Signing even a non-binding agreement opens politicians to accusations of betrayal or hypocrisy as they try and negotiate the conundrum.
A better elephant?
There are a lot of good ideas in the Compact. It promotes creating legal migration channels, and proactively addressing conditions in the source-countries of migration. But they are lost in the shadow of the elephant in the room.Rather than trying to establish "hard" standards, the Compact should have focused primarily on a reporting/publication framework where key data can be compared across destination countries. That allows for meaningful comparison of the data across countries and consequent naming and shaming of poor performers. For example, key metrics would cover:
- How vulnerable is a country to unwanted migration? E.g. proximity to poor/unstable countries.
- How many unwanted migrants is it getting?
- How is it treating them?
- How easy is it for people to migrate legally to the country?
- How much has the country done to address conditions in the source countries?
Countries that are highly vulnerable to unwanted migration, and have done a lot to address root causes of unwanted migration, should be viewed more favourably if they fail to treat the remaining unwanted migrants well. The target outcome is for destination countries to either be vastly more generous in assisting source/transit countries to develop, or for the unwanted migrants to be welcomed and supported when they inevitably arrive at the border. Or even both.
Such data that informs the debate in a country with unwanted migration is a good thing. It brings nuance ans perspective to arguments that too often descend into binary shouting matches.
Or maybe just a different one
In a better world with these incentives, the US would eliminate trade barriers with Mexico and central America. Temporary visas for those people in those countries would allow people to work in the US and help provide for their families. Generous US assistance to help develop those countries would mean migration to the US for economic opportunities and safety would be unnecessary. Even focusing on development of Mexico would help (well, help the USA) by making Mexico the destination for unwanted migration.The EU might have to take a more aggressive approach to conflict in the Middle-East. In Syria, the EU have had to set-up military no-fly and safe-zones to allow Syrians safe self-governing areas until a political solution in Syria was found.
The options for proactively addressing unwanted migration aren't easy, risk-free or cheap; but they allow a way out of the unwanted migrant conundrum.