The Caravan and Our Conscience

[The Octavian Report]

A caravan of migrants, at least some of whom will likely be seeking
asylum, is headed towards the U.S. while President Trump furiously
demagogues the issue. Here is former U.K. Foreign Secretary David
Miliband laying out in our current issue the moral case for aiding
refugees and asylum seekers.















Octavian Report: Some observers draw a draw a parallel between the
refugee crisis now and what happened in the 1930’s. Is that an
accurate parallel, in your opinion?




David Miliband: I think there are many differences, the biggest
difference being is that we've had the 1930’s behind us so we have
that in our historical memory. And it's there as a chastening warning
that we can use today. Secondly, I think that the shape of the world
is very different than it was in the 1930's. You can try and draw
parallels between how Russia feels it was treated at the end of the
Cold War with how Germany was treated after the First World War, for
example, but it doesn't really hold. I think that the geopolitics are
different.




And I think that it's also the case that in various ways, the
international system is much stronger than it was in the interwar
period. So I don't think one should reach for those comparisons.




Yet there are some very obvious parallels. Above all, the demonization
of people who are actually innocent victims, not malign perpetrators
of evil. I don't like the attacks on the media, I don't like the
attacks on the judiciary, I don't like the trends that one can see in
parts of eastern Europe, in Turkey, and in some ways in the U.S., and
I think it's serious enough without it being called the 1930’s action
replay. There was an interesting article suggesting that it's more
like the 20’s at the moment than the 30’s, and I think that's quite a
powerful point. It's more like the age of Harding, Coolidge, and
Hoover than the age of Roosevelt.




OR: Why do you think that, for the first time in decades, migration in
general and refugees in particular have become such a hot button
political issue?




Miliband: The confusion between refugees and immigration is a big part
of the story of the public dissatisfaction with governments on these
issues. We know from the U.K., in the 1990’s, that when asylum issues
and immigration issues get confused, it's not good either for
immigrants or for asylum seekers. And certainly in the U.S. the “11
million undocumented” trope created conditions in which the arrival of
Syrians became almost an example of that, despite the fact that
refugee resettlement is the most documented, most vetted arrival route
into the U.S.




The second thing is that I think that the scale of the refugee and
internal displacement crisis — with one in every 110 people on the
planet being currently displaced by conflict or persecution — makes it
frightening. It's easier to conjure up the image of a marauding horde
when there are a lot of people, not a few people.




Thirdly, I don't think one should fall for economic determinism. But
after the financial crisis, there's no question that the shrinking
middle class creates a climate of fear where people are more
vulnerable to political rabblerousing. I think those are all part of
it.




I think there's a fourth thing as well: there was an element of
complacency that somehow the case for refugee resettlement, in Western
countries, had been won. Ronald Reagan resettled 200,000 refugees in
1981. George W. Bush restarted the refugee resettlement program two
months after 9/11. I think there was a complacency that meant that the
case wasn't made in a clear enough way. Put those four reasons
together and you have the conditions for assault.




OR: Do you think that Angela Merkel’s decision on this issue was
correct? Why do you think that Europe has had such difficulty in
dealing with those refugees?




Miliband: I defend it, but there's no question it was not perfect. The
original sin in European policymaking was to ignore the refugee crisis
in 2012, 2013, and 2014. The systems for sharing out responsibility,
for helping frontline states, were not put in place. And so by 2015
the system had already broken down. In a way what Mrs. Merkel did was
recognize reality, that these people were in Germany. Because the
frontline states were happy for them to transit using the Schengen
internal movement arrangements. What she did was brave and principled.
Technically, it's been shown to have been manageable. Germany has
processed one and a half million asylum cases, it is integrating half
a million people into its society, it is going through the process of
removing those who don't meet the standard of a well-founded fear of
persecution, which is the test of being a refugee.




Ironically, the political trouble in Europe is inversely related to
the number of refugees arriving in Europe. So it's a much bigger
political problem now in seven or eight countries than it was in 2015,
when it was a bigger practical problem.




Turkey is bottling up people in the Middle East, and the Libyan system
is stronger than it was. Now, none of that means that this is over as
a roiling issue. And of course, I always say to people: when Europeans
refer to a European refugee crisis or Americans refer to an American
refugee crisis, people living in Uganda or Bangladesh or Lebanon have
got good reason to laugh their heads off. They are dealing with many
times the number of refugees in countries with many fewer fractions of
the annual income. Bangladesh has just received 750,000 or 700,000
refugees from Myanmar this year.