International migration and citizenship today

International Migration and Citizenship Today

International migration has emerged in the last decade as one of the world’s most controversial and pressing issues. This thought-provoking textbook offers the reader a carefully nuanced and knowledgeable understanding of the complex economic, political, cultural, and moral concerns that arise when people move across borders seeking admission into other countries. Splitting the text into five broad sections, Steiner facilitates easy navigation of the complex discussions that surround the issue of migration: • • • • •

Section I – Introduction: examines how the central questions that frame the book will be addressed, including: What criteria should countries use to admit migrants? and How does a country decide which migrants should be granted citizenship? Section II – Immigrants: discusses the criteria for accepting immigrants, dealing with the unwanted, and assessing the economic, cultural, and political impacts. Section III – Refugees: evaluates the methods used to protect refugees, the controversies surrounding asylum and the shortcomings of current refugee definitions. Section IV – Citizenship: charts the rise of nationalism, presents modern issues of minority rights and diversity, and examines processes of naturalization across the globe. Section V – Conclusion: considers more unconventional approaches to migration and citizenship and suggests moving toward a more holistic approach.

Carefully constructed to spark discussion and student reflection and featuring suggested resources at the end of each section, this book offers dozens of contemporary examples and case studies from across the globe. International Migration and Citizenship Today is essential reading for students not only of migration and citizenship, but also of globalization, international relations, and democracies. Niklaus Steiner is Director of the Center for Global Initiatives and Adjunct Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. His research and teaching interests are immigration, refugees, nationalism, and citizenship, and his publications include The Problems of Protection: UNHCR, Refugees, and Human Rights, eds. Niklaus Steiner, Mark Gibney, and Gil Loescher (Routledge, 2003).

“An excellent and accessible introduction to the complex issue of migration and citizenship. Its substance and style encourages discussion of topics that are too often dealt with in simplistic ways. Steiner effectively challenges our outdated concepts and thinking on migration and citizenship and challenges us to reimagine and remodel our analytical framework to meet the demographic, economic, and political challenges of the 21st century.” Demetrios Papademetriou, President, Migration Policy Institute “This brief yet substantive book is an unconventional and conceptually rich overview of the complexities and debates within global migration. The critical questions on immigration, refugees, integration, and citizenship are debated in a very engaging and accessible way that will be of great interest and value to teachers, students, policymakers, and the wider public. Having examined many books on migration, I will be using this contemporary study as the core text in my upcoming courses in Global Migration and Global Studies.” Safia Swimelar, Elon University, USA “Every college student should read this book. Niklaus Steiner guides the reader through the complexities of immigration, including research on global migration, naturalization, citizenship, border protection, and much more. The purpose of the book is to inform the current debate on immigration by providing information and perspective on how to create better policies for one of the most salient issues of our time.”  Regina Cortina, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA “Niklaus Steiner’s book on migration should be required reading for all citizens of every country, including students and policy makers. The reason is that migration is a key issue in a global world that entails both frequent movement of people and maintaining boundaries of nations. He offers an analysis that is at once clear and accessible as well as humane, informed by both legal and cultural understanding. This is an important text for courses ranging from social sciences to law and administration.” James L. Peacock, former President, American Anthropological Association “This book does a wonderful job of bringing together elements of political science, law, demography, history, economics, and ethical considerations that help to broaden our understanding – and our overall approach – to issues relating to human migration.  This is highly readable and thought-provoking at the same time.” Mark Gibney, University of North Carolina Asheville, USA

International Migration and Citizenship Today

Niklaus Steiner

First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa company

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2009 Niklaus Steiner All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Steiner, Nicklaus International migration and citizenship today / Niklaus Steiner   p. cm.   Includes bibliographical references.   1. Emigration and immigration – History – 21st centuruy.   2. Emigration and immigration – government policy.   3. Immigrants – Social conditions – 21st century.   4. Immigrants – Economic conditions – 21st century.   5. Citizenship – History – 21st century. I. Title JV6035.S74 20089 304.8–dc22      2008054416 ISBN 0-203-87554-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-77298-2 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-415-77299-0 (pbk) ISBN10: 0-203-87554-0 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-77298-3 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-77299-0 (pbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-87554-4 (ebk)

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgments

viii x

SECTION I

Introduction

1

1

3

The nature of this book Introduction  3 Unique modern juxtaposition  3 Focus on wealthier countries  4 Two questions and one goal  4 Types of migrants shaping our debates  5 Moral obligations toward migrants and hosts  6 Looking ahead  9 Suggested resources  9

SECTION II

Immigrants

11

2

13

Accepting immigrants Introduction  13 High-skilled immigrants  13 Low-skilled immigrants  17 Guest-worker programs  19 Admission for sale and admission by chance  23 Family connections  24 Foreign students and scholars  26 Conclusion  29

vi  Contents 3

Dealing with the unwanted

30

Introduction  30 Border control  31 Deportations  33 Discouragements  35 Employer sanctions  38 Amnesties  39 Conclusion  42 4

Impact of immigrants

43

Introduction  43 Economic impact  43 Political impact  46 Cultural impact  48 Remittances  51 Brain drain and brain circulation  53 Conclusion  56 Suggested resources  56 SECTION III

Refugees

57

5

59

Modern efforts to protect refugees Introduction  59 The origin and role of UNHCR  59 Refugee definition and the principle of non-refoulement  60 Refugee protection in the Cold War and beyond  63 Asylum and its controversy  66 Alternatives to asylum  70 Refugee repatriation and resettlement  73 “Others of concern”  73 Conclusion  75

6

Problems of protection Introduction  77 Perceived shortcomings of the definition of a “refugee”  77 Expanding the definition  79 What is persecution?  80 Universality vs. cultural relativism  82 Parliamentarians debate asylum  84 Conclusion  87 Suggested resources  88

77

Contents  vii SECTION IV

Citizenship

89

7

91

Citizenship and the rise of nationalism Introduction  91 Nationalism and nation-states  91 The rise of nation-states, sovereignty, and democracy  95 Legal and identity citizenship  96 Minority rights and citizenship  98 Dealing with diversity  101 Conclusion  103

8

Naturalization

105

Introduction  105 Born into citizenship  105 Citizenship through naturalization  109 Comparing naturalization processes in different countries  113 Going through the naturalization process  115 Conclusion  117 Suggested resources  118 SECTION V

Conclusion

119

9

121

Beyond conventional approaches to migration and citizenship Summary of the complexity  121 Demographic shifts  123 Alignment of labor supply and demand  124 Danger of marginalization  125 Rights of non-citizens  126 Open immigration opportunities  128 Needed: a holistic approach  129 Notes Bibliography Index

130 139 147

Illustrations

Plates 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 5.2 6.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 9.1

Worker (Niklaus Steiner) Workers (Niklaus Steiner) Families (Niklaus Steiner) Border (Cooper McGuire) Destinations (Niklaus Steiner) Routes (Niklaus Steiner) Storefront (Niklaus Steiner) Web banner of SVP Fan (Niklaus Steiner) Money (Niklaus Steiner) Kids (Thomas Cluderay) Coat (Andrea Lu) Protection (Eva Canoutas) Identity (Chris Straka) Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art Proud (Mumukshu Patel) Style (Linda Quiquivix) Singaporean? (Niklaus Steiner) American? (Niklaus Steiner) Welcome American too? (Niklaus Steiner) Benefits

20 22 26 32 35 40 44 47 52 53 69 72 81 92 94 98 103 106 107 111 116 127

Figures 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

Refugee population by country of origin Refugee population by country of asylum Iraqi refugees in existence vs. Iraqi refugees in United States Refugees in the United States: authorized admissions vs. actual approvals Refugees, asylum-seekers, and total population of concern to UNHCR (1997–2007) 8.1 Persons naturalized by top regions of birth: fiscal years 1991–2007

65 65 67 74 75 115

Illustrations  ix

Tables 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 4.1 5.1 5.2 6.1 7.1 8.1

Canada’s points system Canada’s table for allocating points according to age Canada’s table for allocating points based on education Temporary worker admissions into the US by world region United States Diversity Lottery: random selection of 15 countries and number of visas issued (2008) Global ranking of universities (2008) Impact on sending country States party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and/or the 1967 Protocol as of 2008 Top refugee-hosting countries ranked by ratio of refugees to per capita GDP The multifarious roles of international norms in asylum debates US citizenship by country of origin, 2006 The Australian and Canadian oaths of allegiance compared

15 15 15 19 24 28 55 61 76 86 102 112

Acknowledgments

I was inspired to write this book because of the wonderful experiences I’ve had teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as at North Carolina State University and Northwestern University. The book is a reflection of the discussions that have taken place in my classroom over the years. Because it is built upon my students’ engagement with the topic of international migration and citizenship, I wanted to bring them into the process of writing it. I therefore used my undergraduate seminar in Fall 2006 and Fall 2007 as a platform for researching and writing this book. The students in these two classes wrote their term papers on topics directly addressed in International Migration and Citizenship Today, and they proved invaluable to the process of producing it. I therefore gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Gia Branciforte, Kaylan Christofferson, Matt Craig, Olivia De Lancie, Kristin Economo, Pablo Friedmann, Mark Godfrey, Laura Gustafson, Melissa Henderson, Kate Horton, David Kennedy, Amanda Koser, Casey Lesawyer, Grant Ligon, Katie Littlefield, Julia Marden, Katie Mason, Alyssa Morrison, Sarah Press, Josh Rivera, Caroline Schneider, Jesse Soloff, Nathan Stern, Joao Toste, Mantas Valiunas, and Sara Wise. I especially want to thank Matt Garza, John Tabor, and Laura Williamson for the work they did outside of class. This book is dedicated to all the students I’ve had the privilege to teach.

Section I

Introduction

1 The nature of this book

Introduction Human migration is a truly global phenomenon. Not only does it involve every country on earth, but it also connects with a wide range of diverse issues ranging from farm subsidies and militias to democracy and demographics. Because migration is interwoven into so many places and issues, it is enormously complex. This complexity often catches people off guard who at first glance think it is fairly straightforward. Scratch the surface, however, and it quickly becomes clear that it is not simple to “help refugees” or “get rid of illegal immigrants” or “become a citizen.” Because of the unexpected complexity that lies just beneath its surface, migration has emerged in the last decade as one of the world’s most controversial issues. And migration will continue to press us, and may well become one of the defining issues that marks the twentyfirst century as fundamentally different from the last one. This book sets out to explore the complexity and controversy of migration. The Global Commission on International Migration, in its 2005 report Migration in the Interconnected World, notes that some of the key reasons people migrate are wage disparities (almost half the people in sub-Saharan Africa live on less than $1.00 per day), unemployment (the unemployment rate in the Middle East and Africa is nearly twice the rate of that in industrialized countries), differentials in life expectancies (58 years in low-income countries compared with 78 years in high-income countries), and education gaps (58 percent of women and 68 percent of men are literate in low-income countries while there’s almost full literacy for both in high-income countries).1 Simply put – life is better in some countries than in others, and this discrepancy drives international migration.

Unique modern juxtaposition While migration has marked the human experience for thousands of years, what is unique about migration today is the juxtaposition of two truths: the ability of people to move and the ability of governments to control this movement. Never before has it been possible to travel so far so quickly and so easily – it simply astonishes me that I could walk away from my desk right now in Chapel Hill, NC drive out to the airport with nothing more than a credit card and a passport, and be in Beijing, China, within 18 hours. Crucially, at the very same time, never before have governments had so much power to control the movement of people. Both the Chinese and the American governments could easily prevent me from completing this trip. Held in juxtaposition, these two truths bring into stark relief the reasons why migration is such a complex and controversial issue in world politics: there is now a monumental struggle

4  Introduction between the ability of migrants to seek admission into countries and the ability of countries to control this admission.

Focus on wealthier countries This struggle is most strongly felt in the wealthier countries, not because they have more people seeking admission than poorer countries (quite the opposite in many cases), but because wealthier ones have more capacity to control this admission. Britain, for example, has significantly more control, power, and influence over Ghanaians entering than does Togo. Because of this capacity, Britain and other wealthier countries face difficult questions as they consider the issue of admitting migrants. This book, then, focuses on the struggle in wealthier countries over admitting and accepting migrants. As for defining “wealthier” countries, a useful list comes from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which as of 2008 had 30 members.2 OECD countries are the primary focus for several reasons. First, they are all struggling with outsiders trying to move in and insiders trying to control this movement. Second, they all demonstrate a commitment to the tenets of liberalism (open-market economies, democratic pluralism, individual freedom and equality, and respect for human rights), and, as we’ll see throughout the book, this liberal commitment is central to the controversy over migration. Finally, readers of this book will largely be from OECD countries, and so by drawing heavily on these countries for examples and issues I hope to make the material most accessible. “Wealthier” and “poorer” are, of course, relative terms, and people often move to another country that is only relatively better off than their own. Romania, for example, is attracting workers from China both because the wages are better and because many Romanians have left to find better jobs in even better-off Western Europe. The New York Times reports on one textile company in Romania that had to suspend its operation in 2003 because it no longer had enough Romanian workers, even after the owner posted hundreds of job offers with local agencies that went unanswered. The owner then began recruiting workers from China, and one such worker, Xiu Xian Hong, plans to stay at least three years and then return home to her husband and daughter with the money saved to open her own business. Critics of hiring such migrants charge that if the company would raise its wages it could attract enough Romanian workers, but the owner says that his products would then be too expensive to compete on the international market.3 It is important to note that despite the heated rhetoric in OECD countries, the number of migrants worldwide is relatively small. The Global Commission on International Migration reported in 2005 that about 200 million of the world’s total population of 6.5 billion (or about 3 percent) live outside of their countries of origin. This is surely a significant number, but it is not the “overwhelming horde” about to overrun us that we are led to imagine by some sensational media outlets and politicians. And the Commission reports that migrants make up only about 8 percent of Europe’s population and about 13 percent of North America’s.4 So you may reasonably ask, “Why are we so exercised about migration?” The answer is that, as we’ll see repeatedly in this book, migration cuts to the very heart of national identity. How we citizens deal with migrants is a mirror in which we see ourselves and also a window through which others see us.

Two questions and one goal This book is framed by two central questions: (1) what criteria should we use to admit migrants who want to come into our country? and (2) what criteria should we use to grant

The nature of this book  5 citizenship to those migrants we have decided to admit? Note the emphasis on we, by which I mean we citizens of democracies, because the overarching goal of this book is to help citizens engage thoughtfully in discussions over admission and citizenship. Regrettably, too often the debates surrounding migration are either shrill or naïve or both. This book seeks to spur on deeper and more nuanced discussions surrounding the myriad of complex issues raised by people moving across international borders. Only by engaging in thoughtful discussions can we hope to get a handle on an issue that everyone, regardless of political affiliation, agrees is fraught with problems but that has no easy solutions. I have taught classes on international migration for a decade, and this book deliberately focuses on those issues that spark particularly engaging discussions among students. Not surprisingly, these same issues are also prominently featured in everyday discussions among family and friends, debated in the media, and fought over by policy makers and politicians. Because I truly believe that the struggles over migration can only be effectively addressed through thoughtful discussions, I seek here to provoke debates among the readers by raising many questions with no clear answers. Rather than offering lots of detailed facts and statistics, which are now readily available with a few clicks of a mouse, I am instead interested in presenting broader concepts and controversies raised in the debates over migration and citizenship by academics, politicians, practitioners, and policy makers in order to help the reader engage with them. For more details and up-to-date information about specific aspects of the concepts I raise, please consult the suggested readings and resources at the end of each section, as well as the bibliography.

Types of migrants shaping our debates The debates over migration are complex because there are so many different types of migrants moving around the globe, and an approach that may work for dealing with one set of migrants is likely to be inappropriate for another. Of the almost 200 million people currently living outside their country of birth, the vast majority moved for economic reasons. In some cases, their decision to move was a comfortable one in which they were pursuing job offers with nice salaries. In other cases, the move was a desperate quest to feed themselves and their families. About 185 million people around the world are unemployed, and almost half of the world’s 2.8 billion workers earn less than $2.00 per day.5 We therefore tend to think that it is mainly poor people who are on the move, and that they are heading toward rich countries. In fact about the same number of people (60 million) move from one poor country to another poor country as move from a poor country to a rich one, and almost that many people move from one rich country to another.6 While much of the debate over migration focuses on economic migrants, another important set of migrants are those who flee across borders to escape persecution. Such fleeing migrants are in crucial ways different from economically motivated migrants, especially in our tendency to feel a moral obligation to admit them. It is, therefore, helpful to think of international migrants as an overarching term for people moving across borders, and immigrants and refugees making up two subsets – the former move voluntarily and the latter move involuntarily. As Section III will explore in great detail, despite the significant differences between immigrants and refugees, there are also significant overlaps between them, and much of the controversy today, especially in Europe, revolves around the perceived overlaps and differences between these two types of international migrants. Having now described what this book sets out to do, I should add that it will not deal with two important aspects of migration: internal migration and human trafficking. Internal

6  Introduction migration is the movement of people that takes place within a given country. It therefore does not involve citizens in another country debating the implications of such movement for their own admission and citizenship policies and so is beyond the scope of this book. I do urge readers to explore internal migration elsewhere because it is of great importance to understanding the contemporary world, whether the focus is on Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Darfur or the more than 100 million Chinese who are moving about in their own country. Another important movement of people that is beyond our scope is human trafficking. Trafficking is commonly defined as the coercive or deceptive movement of people who upon arrival in a new country are forced to work against their will in exploitive settings such as prostitution. While trafficking is a profoundly troubling issue, it is illegal and so does not raise debates among us about admission. Instead, our debates revolve around effectively preventing people from being moved across borders in such cruel ways and for such exploitive purposes.

Moral obligations toward migrants and hosts If we could deal with immigrants and refugees on purely selfish grounds, things might be simpler: we would try to devise policies that would let them in when they helped us and keep them out when they didn’t. But migration policies, like most public policies, are infused with moral concerns that we must consider when we set them. We therefore must decide whether different types of migrants have different claims on our sense of moral obligation to help them. Refugees fleeing a brutal dictatorship, for example, are commonly thought to have a greater claim to admission than a doctor seeking a higher salary. What about a healthy young woman versus an invalid grandfather? Of course, not only do we need to consider the moral obligation we have toward migrants, but also the obligation we have to ourselves. Striking a balance between what we owe migrants and what we owe citizens is difficult and leads to much of the tension over admission and citizenship policies. A great deal has been written on the question of such moral obligations and I can’t do justice to all its richness. Let me try, though, to sketch the outlines of two important pieces that have shaped much of the debate in the last two decades. One piece, written by Michael Walzer, stresses the right of the community (i.e. the host country), while the other piece, by Joseph Carens, stresses the right of the individual (i.e. the migrant). Where one comes down on this debate will significantly affect what type of admission and citizenship policy one articulates and defends. Michael Walzer wrote in 1983 that migration policies can be guided by the principle of mutual aid along the lines of the Good Samaritan story, in which someone comes across a stranger in need along the side of the road. He explains: What precisely they owe one another is by no means clear, but we commonly say of such cases that positive assistance is required if (1) it is needed or urgently needed by one of the parties; and (2) if the risks and costs of giving it are relatively low for the other party. Given these conditions, I ought to stop and help the injured stranger, wherever I meet him, whatever his membership or my own.7 Walzer says this principle can be extended to the collective level so that groups of people should help strangers in need when they are encountered. However, he believes there are sharply drawn limits to what we owe such strangers, writing “I need not take the injured stranger into my home, except briefly, and I certainly need not care for him or even associate

The nature of this book  7 with him for the rest of my life. My life cannot be shaped and determined by such chance encounters.”8 Walzer believes that when considering whether to help strangers by admitting them into your country, the most important thing to weigh is how the strangers will affect the country as a political community. He draws the parallel between a country and a club because both distribute membership, and he stresses that such membership must be restricted to some extent for the sake of the community, which he thinks must have boundaries. He writes: Admission and exclusion are at the core of communal independence. They suggest the deepest meaning of self-determination. Without them, there could not be communities of character, historically stable, ongoing associations of men and women with some special commitment to one another and some special sense of their common life.9 Walzer, however, argues that the community’s right to self-determination is not absolute, because it is constrained by the moral principle of mutual aid, which imposes some obligation. It is further constrained by the fact that if a country does decide to admit a stranger, then it must also offer that stranger the opportunity of full membership in the community, i.e. citizenship in the case of migrants. While the country can of course determine the eligibility requirements of citizenship, it may not rule over people in its territory to whom it does not grant citizenship, because this is, in Walzer’s view, a form of tyranny. “Indeed, the rule of citizens over non-citizens, of members over strangers, is probably the most common form of tyranny in human history … The denial of membership is always the first of a long train of abuses. There is no way to break the train, so we must deny the rightfulness of the denial.”10 While Walzer stresses the right of the community, Joseph Carens in a 1987 article stresses the right of the individual, based on the assumption of the equal moral worth of all individuals. If one accepts this assumption, then he sees little basis for drawing the fundamental distinction between those inside of a community and those outside of it, which, in the case of migration, is the distinction commonly drawn between those inside a country and those wanting to get in. Carens therefore concludes that there is little justification for restricting immigration policies and argues that “borders should generally be open and that people should normally be free to leave their country of origin and settle in another, subject only to the sorts of constraints that bind current citizens in their new country.”11 He feels that his argument is strongest when applied to people from poorer countries wanting to move to richer countries; after all, their life chances are significantly affected by something over which they had no control – the place of their birth. Neither people born into rich countries nor people born into poor ones deserve their citizenship, which he argues is basically an inherited privilege or curse. “Citizenship in Western liberal democracies is the modern equivalent of feudal privilege – an inherent status that greatly enhances one’s life chances. Like feudal birthright privileges, restrictive citizenship is hard to justify when one thinks about it closely.”12 In other words, people born into a given country are no more entitled to the benefits of citizenship of that country than those born elsewhere. Carens criticizes Walzer for emphasizing the importance of the differences between countries as political communities, because within countries there are also different political communities, and yet we would not think to restrict a New Yorker’s move to Mississippi. He writes: No liberal state restricts internal mobility. Those states that do restrict internal mobility are criticized for denying basic human freedoms. If freedom of movement within the

8  Introduction state is so important that it overrides the claims of local political communities, on what grounds can we restrict freedom of movement across states?13 Carens acknowledges that more open immigration would change the character of liberal democracies, but rather than diminish it he thinks such changes would affirm our character because it would bring us more in line with liberalism, which is a central part of our culture. Other cultures that assume fundamental moral differences between people have an easier time drawing distinctions between insiders and outsiders “[b]ut we cannot dismiss the aliens on the ground that they are other, because we are the product of a liberal culture … [T]he general case for open borders is deeply rooted in the fundamental values of our tradition. No moral argument will seem acceptable to us, if it directly challenges the assumption of the equal moral worth of all individuals.”14 He therefore concludes: The current restrictions on immigration in Western democracies – even in the most open ones like Canada and the United States – are not justifiable. Like feudal barriers to mobility, they protect unjust privilege. Does it follow that there is no room for distinctions between aliens and citizens, no theory of citizenship, no boundaries for the community? Not at all. To say that membership is open to all who wish to join is not to say that there is no distinction between members and nonmembers. Those who choose to cooperate together in the state have special rights and obligations not shared by noncitizens. Respecting the particular choices and commitments that individuals make flows naturally from a commitment to the idea of equal moral worth. … What is not readily compatible with the idea of equal moral worth is the exclusion of those who want to join. If people want to sign the social contract, they should be permitted to do so.15 Let me add a final note to this brief discussion about liberal democracies’ moral obligation toward migrants. As mentioned earlier, we often make a distinction between immigrants and refugees, and this distinction rests to a significant extent on the fact that it is broadly accepted that there is a greater moral obligation toward refugees than immigrants. Within the Western tradition that gave rise to the modern refugee protection system, refugee advocates most often build such moral arguments on either a Judeo-Christian or a liberal foundation. Using the former, some argue that a moral commitment toward refugees is solidly grounded in the Bible. They point out that the Bible is filled with images of refugees and commands to help them, and they note broader commands to help the weak, to love one another, and to believe in the commonality of humans. Others argue for protecting refugees by appealing to moral arguments based on liberalism’s central ideals of equality and liberty. Those who present liberal arguments on behalf of refugees do so for one of two reasons: either they want to help refugees because they are morally repulsed by the injustices refugees face, or they argue for a more open refugee policy because of their respect for individual liberty and their distaste for government restrictions. The French village of Le Chambon, whose 5,000 Huguenot villagers harbored 5,000 Jewish refugees during World War II, well exemplifies such religiously inspired refugee protection, while Britain’s nineteenth-century refugee policy, which did not exclude or expel a single refugee between 1823 and 1905, drew largely from its dedication to liberalism.16 I do not at all mean to imply that these two moral codes are the only ones that can be used to argue on behalf of refugees, because of course other moral arguments based on other religions and ideologies exist, but these two tend to be the most common ones articulated in OECD countries.

The nature of this book  9

Looking ahead Raising the moral dimensions of migration is crucial for understanding why migration debates can be so emotionally raw. For those in favor of stricter policies and of emphasizing the rights of the host society often face the accusation from the other side of being anti-foreigner and implicitly (or even explicitly) racist. Given the morally repulsive standing of racism in democracies, such charges are vehemently denied by all but the most marginal figures. As we’ll see throughout the book, this charge and its denial crop up in various contexts, and it raises the touchy question of whether and how one can hold an anti-migration position without this position being anti-migrant. Or perhaps holding an anti-migrant position is acceptable as long as it doesn’t bleed into a racist position, but how is this balance struck? I seek to raise many such difficult questions, because only by engaging with such questions can we hope to come to some kind of consensus about what constitutes a “good” migration policy. Over the course of reading this book, you will find that the modest proposal of articulating a good migration policy is in fact devilishly complex – hence the controversy in every OECD country. And all too often overlooked in our migration debates is the fact that a good migration policy is unlikely to be effective without addressing the root causes of poverty, hardship, and persecution in sending countries. While the root causes of migration warrant a whole other book, I urge us to be mindful that by adjusting our migration policies, we are addressing only half the story. We must also address policies as diverse as selling military hardware abroad, consuming fossil fuels, and exporting subsidized wheat, all of which contribute to people moving about the globe. Some of this movement is positive and should be encouraged, while some is detrimental. In either case, our migration policies will be ineffective if dealt with in isolation from the other ways we conduct ourselves in this global community. Coming up with newer, broader, interconnected policies is our major challenge.

Suggested resources 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Aleinikoff, Thomas Alexander, and Douglas B. Klusmeyer. Citizenship Policies for an Age of Migration. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002. Castles, Stephen, and Mark J. Miller. The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, 3rd edn. New York: Guilford Press, 2003. Cornelius, Wayne A., Takeyuki Tsuda, Philip L. Martin, and James F. Hollifield, eds. Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective, 2nd edn. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004. Dying to Leave, a two-hour special on human trafficking in the series Wide Angle, WNET New York, directed by Chris Hilton and Aaron Woolf, 2003. Global Commission on International Migration. Migration in an Interconnected World: New Directions for Action. Geneva: GCIM, 2005. Jacobson, David, ed. The Immigration Reader: America in a Multidisciplinary Perspective. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998. Joppke, Christian. “Why Liberal States Accept Unwanted Immigration.” World Politics, 50 (January 1998), pp. 266–93. Martin, Philip L., and Gottfried Zürcher. Managing Migration: The Global Challenge. Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau, 2008.

10  Introduction   9 Messina, Anthony, and Gallya Lahav, eds. The Migration Reader: Exploring Politics and Policies. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006. 10 Migration News, University of California, Davis (quarterly), online at http://migration. ucdavis.edu/. 11 “Open Up: A Special Report on Migration.” The Economist, January 5, 2008. 12 Passel, Jeffrey S., and D’Vera Cohn. U.S. Population Projections: 2005–2050. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2008.

Section II

Immigrants

2 Accepting immigrants

• • • • • •

High-skilled immigrants Low-skilled immigrants Guest-worker programs Admission for sale and admission by chance Family connections Foreign students and scholars

Introduction The focus of this book is on how wealthier countries deal with the acceptance of migrants, and the previous chapter emphasized the overall aim of raising the kind of thought-provoking questions that will spark searching discussion of this complex topic. That chapter also sketched in outline the important difference between immigrants and refugees and suggested that we think of these as two subsets of the larger category of international migrants. In this section we turn to immigrants, defined earlier as people who move voluntarily from one country to another; we will turn to refugees in Section III. To deal with immigrants, this section is divided into three chapters, each of which tackles different, but overlapping, aspects. We begin by focusing on how countries seek to attract desirable immigrants. Then in the next chapter, we explore how countries deal with unwanted immigrants. The final chapter of this section deals with the impact of both desirable and unwanted immigrants. As we turn to discussing the admission of desirable immigrants, it is important to note that, too often, such discussions paint immigrants with broad brush strokes when in fact they vary widely in terms of skills, connections, and contributions. For this reason, this chapter breaks down the broad term “immigrants” into more useful categories. By doing so, we come to appreciate the difficulty of setting admission policies. Should we favor high-skilled workers over illiterate grandmothers? Should we sell admission to rich foreigners? Why not randomly select who to let in? Precisely such questions make the admission of immigrants such a controversial issue in wealthier countries.

High-skilled immigrants Around the world there is currently a huge demand for high-skilled workers. In Europe, the European Union (EU) has proposed a plan to admit 20 million high-skilled workers from Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the next 20 years, especially in the health and engineering fields. This effort is a direct attempt to divert such workers from going elsewhere, especially to the United States. “To maintain and improve economic growth in the EU, it is essential

14  Immigrants for Europe to become a magnet for the highly skilled,” says Franco Frattini, the EU justice and home affairs commissioner.1 Similarly, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong declared in his 2006 National Day Rally that attracting foreign talent is a crucial policy that must continue.2 In Australia, where nearly 10 percent of the workforce is made up of foreign high-skilled workers, demand for IT workers tripled between 2002 and 2007, and of the 30,000 jobs open in the field less than half are filled.3 In Japan, the Nikkei Weekly reports that the youth are becoming apathetic about studying science, and so Japan is being forced to import engineers from India. To compound the matter, Japan also faces dramatic demographic shifts as its baby boomers begin to retire, and it will lose a fifth of its workers in the next decade alone.4 Even India faces problems. Despite producing half a million engineers each year, India does not adequately train many of them, so that the unemployment rate among its engineers is 17 percent at a time when its IT sector is booming.5 Remarkably, Business Week reports that 1.3 million people applied for IT jobs with Infosys Technologies in 2006, but the company found only 2 percent employable. Not only is there concern about the quality of Indian engineers, but fewer will be trained in the future. Kiran Karnik, president of India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies, expects a shortfall of 500,000 IT professionals by 2010.6 He complains “Nobody wants to study technology. We are lucky in India so far, but a lot of people ask me, is the next generation of Indians also going to be interested in technology? Or will they want to do finance, business, humanities, literature?”7 The Economist reports that Asia suffers in branches besides IT. India and China will need 12,000 and 40,000 pilots respectively by 2025. China has only 4,000 doctors in general practice but needs 160,000 to carry out a plan to provide adequate healthcare for 500 million urban residents. And the McKinsey Global Institute reports that China will need 75,000 business leaders in the next decade and currently has about 4,000, the vast majority of them not suitably trained for foreign companies.8 Given these staggering numbers, there is an intense demand for global talent, and countries are debating how to adjust their admission policies to meet this demand. The following discussion focuses on two particular approaches to this vexing problem because of their interesting differences and the questions they raise: Canada’s point system and the US temporary visa system. Canada’s point system Canada is remarkably frank on who it wants to admit and how it will evaluate the applicants. On its citizenship and immigration website, Canada states that it “recognizes the benefits of attracting highly skilled workers. Nearly 59 percent of Canada’s immigrants are in the skilled worker and business immigrant categories. They help fill shortages in our labour market or invest in our economy and contribute to Canada’s economic growth.”9 An important tool for assessing whether to admit a skilled immigrant is the points system, which scores an immigrant’s application on six criteria: education; abilities in English and/ or French (Canada’s two official languages); work experience; age; whether applicant has arranged employment in Canada; and adaptability to life in Canada. These six criteria are scored on a scale with a maximum of 100 points and a passing score of 67 (see Table 2.1).10 The scoring of these criteria is remarkably straightforward. For example, Tables 2.2 and 2.3 show the criteria for allocating points according to Age and Education. Some politicians and scholars in the United States are envious of this model for explicitly seeking well-educated workers, and similar plans have been debated in Congress. However,

Accepting immigrants  15 Table 2.1  Canada’s points system Education Ability in English and/or French Experience Age Arranged employment in Canada Adaptability Total

Maximum 25 points Maximum 24 points Maximum 21 points Maximum 10 points Maximum 10 points Maximum 10 points Maximum 100 points            67 points

Pass mark

Table 2.2  Canada’s table for allocating points according to age Age

Points

16 or under 17 18 19 20 21–49 50 51 52 53 54+

 0  2  4  6  8 10  8  6  4  2  0

Table 2.3  Canada’s table for allocating points based on education Education maximum

25 points

You have a master’s degree or PhD and at least 17 years of full-time or fulltime-equivalent study. You have two or more university degrees at the bachelor’s level and at least 15 years of full-time or full-time-equivalent study. You have a three-year diploma, trade certificate, or apprenticeship and at least 15 years of full-time or full-time-equivalent study. You have a university degree of two years or more at the bachelor’s level and at least 14 years of full-time or full-time-equivalent study. You have a two-year diploma, trade certificate, or apprenticeship and at least 14 years of full-time or full-time-equivalent study. You have a one-year university degree at the bachelor’s level and at least 13 years of full-time or full-time-equivalent study. You have a one-year diploma, trade certificate, or apprenticeship and at least 13 years of full-time or full-time-equivalent study. You have a one-year diploma, trade certificate, or apprenticeship and at least 12 years of full-time or full-time-equivalent study. You completed high school.

25 points 22 points 22 points 20 points 20 points 15 points 15 points 12 points   5 points

16  Immigrants the Canadian point system also has some significant flaws. First, the system does not require the applicant to have a job offer in hand, so high-skilled immigrants can be admitted on the basis of a passing grade but then may have a hard time finding a job, resulting in doctors driving taxis. Second, Canada faces a backlog of over 800,000 applicants because it is slow to evaluate such matters as the value of a degree from a little-known Chinese university. Finally, because it favors high-skilled workers, industries like the oilfields in Alberta which need lowskilled workers face a shortage.11 US temporary visa system In addition to seeking high-skilled immigrants on a permanent basis, the United States also admits high-skilled foreigners as temporary workers by issuing them H-1B visas. These visas are only issued for a maximum of six years, after which the person must leave the country for one year before another H-1B visa can be issued; some exceptions, however, are made so that workers can stay longer. H-1B visas are issued to workers in specialty occupations, which the government defines as occupations that require “theoretical and practical application of a body of specialized knowledge along with at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. For example, architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences, medicine and health, education, business specialties, accounting, law, theology, and the arts are specialty occupations.” Employers must apply to the government for such visas on behalf of foreigners they want to hire. Once the government has received all such visa applications for the year, it puts them into a computerized lottery and randomly selects recipients. The number of H-1B visas issued annually is currently capped at 65,000.12 Business executives, including Bill Gates, complain about this cap and want it raised. They point out that within hours of the government starting to accept applications in 2007, 150,000 had applied, signalling that US employers need many more such workers. Gates argues that the US faces a critical shortage of scientific talent and that “our economic future is in peril.”13 Such advocates for more H-1B workers note that over half of all engineers with advanced degrees in Silicon Valley are foreign-born and more than half of all PhDs in America are immigrants. The Kauffman Foundation reports that the rate of entrepreneurial activity for immigrants is substantially higher than for native-born.14 Between 1995 and 2005, a quarter of engineering and technology companies launched in the US had an immigrant founder, and these companies employed 450,000 workers and generated $52 billion in revenue in 2005.15 Gates, in fact, recommends no cap at all, arguing that “America has always done its best when we brought the best minds to our shores.”16 The other side fires back that there is in fact no shortage of high-skilled workers in the US. In congressional testimony, Michael Teitelbaum of the Sloan Foundation told lawmakers that “although I know you routinely are told by corporate lobbyists that their R&D is being globalized in part due to shortages of scientists and engineers in the U.S., no one who has studied this matter with an open mind has been able to find any objective data of such shortages.” Similarly, Harold Salzman of the Urban Institute and Lindsey Lowell of the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University write that “purported labor-market shortages for scientists and engineers are anecdotal and also not supported by the available evidence.”17 Other defenders of the cap on temporary foreign high-skilled workers believe such caps are an important tool for protecting American workers. They argue that H-1B visas have become a way to outsource jobs to foreign companies, especially Indian ones, noting that about two-thirds of such visas issued in 2006 went to Indians. Not only does this displace

Accepting immigrants  17 American workers, critics charge, but it also depresses wages; one study found that H-1B workers on average earn $12,000 less than comparable US workers annually.18 In proposing legislation to keep the cap on H-1B visas, Democratic Senator Durbin of Illinois and Republican Senator Grassley of Iowa share these concerns. Temporary foreign workers, they argue, often accept lower wages than natives, are less likely to know the full extent of their rights, and are more likely to be malleable because of their fear of losing their visas. “Supporters claim the goal of the H-1B program is to help the US economy, allowing companies to hire needed foreign workers,” Durbin says. “The reality is that too many H-1B visas are being used to facilitate the outsourcing of US jobs to other countries.”19 Such arguments, in turn, lead supporters of lifting the cap on temporary foreign workers to warn that US businesses will increasingly look to move operations overseas to get the needed workers if the US is unwilling to supply them. This side also argues that to meet its demand for high-skilled workers, the US should shift its priorities for admission. As we discuss below, the US currently favors family reunification over economic considerations, and critics think this priority should to be reversed.

Low-skilled immigrants We often think of low-skilled immigrants as being on the opposite end of the spectrum from high-skilled ones. However, just like high-skilled immigrants, low-skilled immigrants, too, are important to the economies of many countries. And just like high-skilled immigrants, they, too, face charges that they depress wages and displace native workers. A crucial difference between these two types of immigrants, however, is that because most low-skilled immigrants tend to be from poorer countries with limited education and do work that is often too dirty, dangerous, and undesirable for natives, these immigrants are stigmatized and looked down upon in ways that the Indian engineer or the British doctor is not. Low-skilled immigrants, therefore, find themselves in the unenviable position of being needed but unwanted. This paradox leads many countries to try to fill their demand for low-skilled workers with temporary workers, not permanent immigrants. It is this temporary approach to getting lowskilled workers that is the focus here. Because low-skilled workers are often needed but not wanted, richer countries prefer to admit them on a temporary basis. One way the US meets its need for low-skilled workers is similar to how it gets high-skilled workers: through a temporary visa program. H-2A visas are issued to temporary agricultural workers, while H-2B are for temporary non-farm jobs such as construction, landscaping, au pairs, and hotel workers. Both types of visa are renewable for up to three years, and to receive one, the applicant must have a job offer from a US employer and must show proof of intent to return home after the visa expires. Both types of visa allow spouses and minor children to accompany the visa holder to the US if the visa holder is able to demonstrate he/she will earn enough money to support them, but dependents are not allowed to work. One important difference is that there are no caps on how many H-2A visas are issued annually, but H-2B visas are capped at 66,000 per year.20 Before an H-2A visa is issued, the employer must state that there are not sufficient native workers who are “able, willing, qualified, and available” for the job, and that the employment of the foreign worker “will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed US workers.” Not only does the government seek to protect US workers by insisting on these requirements, it also seeks to protect the immigrants by stipulating that they are paid the minimum wage or the prevailing wage rate (whichever is higher). According to the law, employers must also provide free housing to workers “who are not

18  Immigrants reasonably able to return to their residences the same day. Such housing must be inspected and approved according to appropriate standards.” The government also states that regarding meals, the employer “must provide either three meals a day to each worker or furnish free and convenient cooking and kitchen facilities for workers to prepare their own meals. If meals are provided, then the employer may charge each worker a certain amount per day for the three meals.”21 As with the debate over high-skilled workers, two main sources of controversy are whether low-skilled workers are getting jobs at the expense of American workers and whether they are depressing wages. On the one hand, some people argue that these workers are taking only jobs that are no longer appealing to American workers; in other words, Americans refuse to do this kind of work and so foreigners must be brought in. On the other hand, some people argue that if wages were raised, these jobs would surely attract enough Americans but wages are kept low because foreign workers are willing to accept them. This latter position is taken by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who wrote in the Washington Times that “There are no jobs Americans won’t do. No matter how physically difficult, intellectually challenging or personally dangerous an occupation might be, Americans will do the job that needs to be done – provided the compensation is right.” He goes on to suggest that the agricultural industry, which he says cries the loudest about its need for foreign labor, could be offered prison labor instead.22 This argument about wage levels raises a crucial question: is it true that wages for certain jobs are simply too low and that if wages were raised, Americans would take them? Or is it the case that native workers have reached a certain level of education, or comfort, or attitude, so that some jobs are beneath them and no (reasonable) amount of money will lure them? Perhaps supporting this latter view is the fact that Michigan, despite having the nation’s highest unemployment rate, has had to launch a program to attract more migrant workers to work in agriculture, its second largest industry. Called “Venga a Michigan,” which is Spanish for “Come to Michigan,” this recruitment effort specifically targets Hispanic workers in Texas and Florida in order to avoid past problems of labor shortages that hurt the harvest.23 Low-skilled workers, especially Hispanics, have become essential in many sectors, especially farming, construction, and the slaughtering of animals. Steve Striffler, an expert on migrant labor in the poultry industry, sent me this interview he conducted with a 46-year-old Mexican worker who describes the work in a poultry plant: When I first arrived in the plant there were no Mexicans. There were a few blacks, a few Native Americans, but pretty much all the workers were white. I never had any problems, but it was hard because of the language. Then, little by little, the gringos all left the plant and the Mexicans and Salvadorans, and then the Asians came in. Eventually there were almost no gringos, except the supervisors. They’re all white. Now they say this is work only a Mexican will do. I know people say this. It doesn’t bother me. I guess the gringos left because they were able to get better jobs. Who wouldn’t? I would leave if I could. The work has only gotten harder. The lines are faster. There are fewer workers doing more work. They always want more out of you. The hardest part for me is the boredom. The pace hurts you, physically. My hands and shoulder are permanently damaged. And they don’t pay us enough. That’s for sure. But the boredom is what kills you. Day after day doing the same thing over and over again. It’s like you are a machine. You never use your brain. You just do the same thing over and over. Sometimes I want to scream, but no one would hear me over the machines. Other times I feel like I am going to have a panic attack. But somehow I keep it together. I

Accepting immigrants  19 play games in my head. Think about my family, about Mexico, anything to stop thinking about the clock. You have to support your family no matter how bad the work. That’s why I am here. That’s why I come back every day. But one day I hope to get out. As we’ll discuss later, labor markets are of course driven both by the demand for workers and by the supply of workers. Therefore, there is no guarantee that wages will always rise for native workers if immigrant labor disappears. Some employers may decide that they can’t afford to pay higher wages and instead begin to mechanize production and introduce other labor-saving measures, or employers may choose to import the goods from elsewhere.

Guest-worker programs The crucial thing to note about all three of the visas mentioned above (H-1B, H-2A, and H-2B) is that they are temporary in nature. However, while high-skilled workers coming on the H-1B may end up getting the right to stay permanently through other channels, lowskilled workers are expected to return to their countries of origin after their visa expires. As such, these are essentially guest-worker programs not immigration programs. Workers in such programs are brought in as guests, and, like all guests, are expected to go home again. In the US, this temporary approach to filling labor needs for low-skilled workers is not new. From 1942 until 1964, the Bracero Program allowed US farmers to bring in several million workers, mainly from Mexico, on short-term contracts, and it began as a way to fill labor shortages caused by American workers serving in World War II. This program, heavily concentrated in Texas and California, was ultimately shut down by the government because of concern over widespread abuses of the workers. This abuse was highlighted by such labor rights activists as César Chávez and came at a time when civil rights were high on the American political agenda. Furthermore, new farm technology and increasing illegal immigrants reduced the demand for the Bracero workers. Around this time, Europe was also making heavy use of guest-worker programs to fill low-skilled labor needs. As countries in northern Europe were rebuilding their economies after the massive destruction of World War II, they had severe labor shortages and so began to import workers from southern Europe, especially Italy, Spain, and Portugal and later Greece and Turkey. Until the recession of 1973 basically put an end to these guest-worker programs, millions of workers under tightly controlled temporary contracts came. Each country operated Table 2.4  Temporary worker admissions into the US by world region (fiscal year 2005) Region

H-1B (high-skilled)

H-2A and H-2B (low-skilled)

Total Africa Asia Europe North America Oceania South America Unknown

407,418    7,860 174,728 109,676   50,999    8,862   51,892    3,401

129,327    2,707    2,344    5,275 112,787    1,932    3,464     818

Source: US Department of Homeland Security. 2005 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. Table 33, p. 85 (www. dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2005/OIS_2005_Yearbook.pdf).

20  Immigrants

Plate 2.1  Worker (Niklaus Steiner)

slightly different versions of the guest-worker program, but the essential element was always the same – these countries wanted temporary labor but not immigrants. However, many of these workers, despite the intention of the guest-worker programs, did not go home again, and so the guest workers of yesterday have become the de facto immigrants of today. There are various reasons why this settling of guest workers occurred, but one especially relevant to our discussion is that these labor-importing countries were democracies and so felt compelled to uphold certain standards in their treatment of their guest workers. While initially quite restrictive, over time, these countries loosened controls over guest workers and improved their conditions. Switzerland, for example, initially only allowed single men to come for nine months and then forced them to leave for three months before allowing them back in for another nine-month work stint. Over time, a sense emerged in Europe, similar to the sense that emerged in the US regarding the Bracero Program, that democracies just cannot treat workers this way. As the Swiss novelist Max Frisch famously (and sardonically) noted, “We wanted workers but realized that we got people instead.” Guest-worker programs, which insist on workers being guests, require a considerable amount of government control and restriction, but it appears that because of ideological concerns, democracies are ultimately not willing to exert the necessary control, and so such programs end up being unacknowledged immigration programs. Such ideological qualms do not seem to affect countries like the Gulf States and Singapore that also rely heavily on guest-worker programs. Initially when the Gulf States had to meet the low-skilled labor needs of the 1960s, they recruited workers from surrounding Arab

Accepting immigrants  21 countries, but by the mid-1980s, well over half of the guest workers came from South Asia. Female domestic workers were especially sought because having an Asian maid had become a status symbol for upwardly mobile households in the region. With the massive construction boom in countries like the United Arab Emirates, construction workers are also in high demand. But these guest workers are always kept strictly segregated within society, and they can easily be deported if no longer needed or wanted. Living, working, and health conditions are notoriously poor for such workers, who also face having passports confiscated to control their movement, payments being late or too low, and generally being on the very margin of society. In recent decades, Singapore has significantly moved its economy from a manufacturing to a knowledge-based one, which has required it to invest heavily to develop a well-educated population. This move, in turn, means there has been an increasing demand for low-skilled foreign workers, especially in construction and as domestic help. About a third of Singapore’s population is foreign-born, and the vast majority of these foreigners are low-skilled workers. These low-skilled workers come largely from the surrounding Asian countries, especially Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Commonly, these workers are allowed to enter on two-year visas with the possibility of renewing the permit twice, so that they may spend a total of six years in Singapore. It is, however, practically impossible for low-skilled workers to get permission to stay beyond these six years. While in Singapore, these workers are strictly regulated. They are not allowed to change jobs without the permission of their current employer, are not permitted to bring their families, and are not permitted to marry a Singaporean. Also, if a worker is injured, is fired or, in the case of a female worker, becomes pregnant, the worker is automatically deported. While workers may reapply for a new permit once back home, this is a cumbersome and expensive process. A final way to control these guest workers is by charging employers a levy for each one they hire and by imposing a “dependency ceiling” that spells out the ratio of foreign workers to domestic workers that an employer may have. The intention of this ceiling is to prevent employers from becoming overly dependent on low-skilled foreign workers. In sum, Singapore is quite clear: it is admitting workers, not people, i.e. they are allowed to participate in the economic sector but not in the social, political, or cultural ones. Among others, Human Rights Watch has been critical of how both the Gulf States and Singapore treat their guest workers, especially female domestic workers, who face physical and sexual violence at the hands of their employers. It writes that the restrictive nature of work permits creates a strong power imbalance between employer and employee, so that the workers are less likely to complain about the wide range of abuse they face for fear of retaliation and deportation. “We have documented many cases of migrants receiving no pay after working backbreaking hours for months and even years in jobs that no one else wants,” said William Gois, regional coordinator for Migrant Forum in Asia, a regional network of migrants’ organizations. “Migrants often cannot escape abusive conditions because their employers confiscate their passports and immigration policies give employers the legal power to decide whether the worker can seek another job.”24 Despite the harsh treatment, such workers keep coming because the pay is so much higher than what they could receive in their home countries. Guest workers have become a crucial source of income for the family that remains behind; foreigners in Singapore, for example, send home an estimated $500–700 million each year. Interestingly, Singapore is recently showing signs of having second thoughts about its treatment of low-skilled guest workers, and it is taking tentative steps to improve their conditions.

22  Immigrants In part this change is taking place because it wants to see itself, and be seen by others, as a modern, progressive country. However, as the US and Europe discovered, it may well not be possible for a democracy to make guest-worker programs work. The problem seems to be that liberal democracies hold as core values equality, individual rights, and free markets, and these values cannot tolerate the inherent social hierarchy, power imbalances, marginalization of workers, and the strong arm of the state that guest-worker programs spawn and require. The Gulf States, not yet moving in this direction, remain comfortable with hierarchies and inequalities, and countries that can tolerate inequality can allow in a huge influx of poor people as guest workers.25 This, then, is the central quandary of guest-worker programs in democracies – if guestworker programs are to achieve their goal of providing a fluid labor pool that does not settle, then we must be willing to take firm steps to enforce the temporary nature of such work. We must allow our government to keep careful track of where workers live and work in order to get rid of them when we no longer want them. But at what point do such steps become unacceptable to our values? Most people would declare that we would have gone too far if we start implanting GPS tracking devices into guest workers (although keep in mind that the US and Japan already take photographs and fingerprints of every foreigner, not just guest worker, who comes into the country). To help ensure that guest workers leave again, the South Korean government can withhold significant amounts of the workers’ money until they appear at the airport for their return flight home. In Singapore, employers can be forced to pay the government a security deposit for each worker they bring in, and that money is not returned until the worker has gone home again. Such efforts to control guest workers speak to a recurring question raised by this book: how far are we willing to go to control the flow of people? Not coincidently, an important justification for guest-worker programs and for tracking such workers closely is to fight illegal immigration. The Bush administration in defense of a guest-worker program during the

Plate 2.2  Workers (Niklaus Steiner)

Accepting immigrants  23 debate over the failed 2007 immigration bill, argued that by keeping track of guest workers, we prevent them from overstaying their visas and slipping into the underground economy. Whether such programs can in fact meet this goal remains to be seen. So far, democracies have proven unwilling to implement sufficiently strong tactics to ensure that guest workers go home again. Paradoxically, the result is that, as Cindy Hahamovitch writes, “Guestworker programs lead to illegal immigration, which leads to guestworker programs.”26

Admission for sale and admission by chance Moving away from the intertwined and complicated nature of admitting foreigners temporarily or permanently on the basis of their skills, let’s turn now to two forms of admission that are remarkably straightforward. First, some countries admit foreigners through “investment programs.” Canada, for example, has the Immigrant Investor Program, which seeks to attract experienced business people who will invest CAN $400,000 into Canada’s economy. This investment is managed and guaranteed by the Canadian government and will be returned, without interest, about five years after payment. In addition to making this direct investment, investors must have a minimum net worth of CAN $800,000 that was obtained legally and be able to demonstrate that they have business experience.27 The United States, too, has a price for admission, and it is higher. Each year, 10,000 visas are allocated for individuals who invest a certain amount of money (in general $1,000,000) in a new business in the US and who can demonstrate that this business will directly or indirectly create 10 or more full-time jobs, not counting the jobs created for the investor, the spouse, or the children. The investment may also be made in an existing business if that investment causes a “substantial” rise (defined as at least 40 percent) in the net value of the business or in its number of employees. The government is especially keen to foster such investments in rural areas or in areas that have high unemployment rates. Despite the large numbers of visas allocated for this type of immigrant, on average across the last decade only a few hundred were actually issued each year.28 An alternative approach, and in some ways the exact opposite of the deliberate, targeted nature of investment programs, is the US Diversity Lottery. Each year, this lottery randomly issues 55,000 permanent visas to people from countries that have low rates of immigration to the US. By “low rates” the government means fewer than 50,000 people have come from that country within the past five years, so people, for example, from Mexico, Canada, India, and China are not eligible.29 To be eligible for entering this lottery, applicants must have a minimum of a high school diploma or its equivalent or two years of work experience within the past five years in a job that requires at least two years of training. There is no fee associated with entering this lottery, which is open for about two months each year and accepts applications only online at www.dvlottery.state.gov. Winners may bring their spouse and unmarried children under the age of 21. Table 2.5 randomly lists 15 of the 190 countries in the 2008 lottery to give a sense of the distribution of the winners.30 I am intrigued by the randomness of this approach, which seems to take the emotion out of the debate over whom to admit. Of course it also takes the calculated reasoning out of it, which may not allow us to maximize the positive impact of immigration.

24  Immigrants Table 2.5  United States Diversity Lottery: random selection of 15 countries and number of visas issued (2008) Country of origin

Visas issued

Central African Republic Madagascar Malawi Djibouti Malaysia United Arab Emirates Belgium Czech Republic Monaco Uzbekistan Romania Fiji Kiribati Chile Cuba

     8     43    171     20     87     27     89    158      4 3,101 1,526    630      9     26    691

Family connections Emotions and calculated reasoning are once again at the forefront when debating the admission of immigrants on the basis of family members already in the host country. Various international documents stress the importance of family to the individual, but international law offers no definition that would answer the crucial question of what exactly constitutes a “family.”31 There are several important questions that need to be addressed when we discuss letting immigrants bring their families with them. Hiroshi Motomura has drawn up a useful list of questions to consider as we draw up an immigration policy that takes the immigrant’s family into account:32 1 2 3 4 5

Which family relationships will count? In sponsoring immediate relatives, will citizens be preferred over resident aliens? Will different perspectives on the “family” be accommodated? What will be the procedures for deciding eligibility? What share of total legal immigration will be family-based?

To get at these questions, let’s first consider a 21-year-old immigrant who has just been offered a job in the US and granted status as a resident alien (i.e., is allowed to stay permanently with a green card but is not a citizen). Should he be allowed to bring his parents and his siblings with him? What if his siblings are no longer minors, and are in fact married? Now let’s assume, instead, he’s waited five years to bring his family and in the meantime has become a US citizen – should becoming a citizen make a difference to who he can bring in, and should the process be faster for the family of a citizen than for the family of a resident alien? A third possible scenario is a couple who came to the US, chose never to become citizens, had a child who automatically became a citizen by being born in the US, and 21

Accepting immigrants  25 years later extended family members would like to join this nuclear family. Of these three scenarios, does one need or deserve a more expansive definition of “family” and a faster process for bringing them here? As hard as it may be to decide whether to let in an aunt who lived in the same household, it seems even harder to decide about people who are not related by blood but who are nonetheless considered part of the “family.” Or maybe that’s an easy case: we simply decide that one must be biologically related to be considered family, and we will determine this relationship through DNA testing, as France has recently decided to do. An important pitfall with this approach, of course, is that such tests will not identify adopted children. Another important issue is the admission of homosexual partners. The US, for example, does not allow US citizens to bring in their same-sex partners, even when such homosexual partnerships are legally recognized as marriages by other countries. This policy stands in contrast to countries such as Canada, Spain, Belgium, and South Africa that do allow family reunification for homosexual couples regardless of the legal status of the marriage in their home country. And because immigration is a federal issue in the US, state-level recognition of homosexual marriages is of no help. In other words, a US citizen who married a same-sex Canadian citizen in Canada is not allowed to bring that person into the US, even to live in Massachusetts, which recognizes the marriage. The group Immigration Equality estimates that more than 25,000 homosexual couples find themselves unable to bring partners from other countries legally into the US. The United States has emphasized family reunification in its immigration policies since the Immigration Act of 1965. This Act, reflecting the sensibilities of the civil rights movement of the time, was a deliberate effort to reverse the racist policies imposed in the 1920s that blocked much immigration of those who were not Western Europeans. This modern emphasis on family-based immigration through the 1965 Immigration Act has led to about two-thirds of immigrants today being admitted because of family connections. In Canada, by contrast, the number is less than one third, because that country emphasizes economic considerations, as discussed earlier. Critics of US policy, such as the economist George Borjas and CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, argue that US policy, too, should attract more high-skilled workers at the expense of family reunification. Defenders of family reunification argue that the economic impact of family is undervalued. Elderly family members take over household chores such as cooking, cleaning, and babysitting, which frees up younger members of the family, especially women, to enter the labor market. Family connections also facilitate entrepreneurship and small businesses because new immigrants often find it difficult to raise capital and hire workers, but family members are able to provide both needed capital and affordable labor to launch a new business. Furthermore, immigrant businesses are able to fill niches in growing ethnic and immigrant markets in ways that native entrepreneurs, unaware of the needs or unable to cross the language barrier, are not able to do. Finally, some observers also argue that family members provide emotional support that cannot easily be measured in economic terms. In testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Law Professor Bill Ong Hing used an anecdote to explain the psychological value of family immigrants, citing the example of Ming Liu, a design engineer for a US telephone and electronics equipment company from China. Liu was doing fine, better than his boss expected, and always had his nose to the grindstone. But he became an even better worker after his wife and child rejoined him following a two-year immigration process. Liu’s productivity skyrocketed. His boss observed Liu’s

26  Immigrants personality opening up after his family arrived, and Liu came up with a completely new, innovative concept that helped the company change direction and increase sales. In Liu’s words, after his family immigrated, he could “breathe again.”33 Perhaps we are setting up a false debate when we portray this as a simple choice of family reunification versus economic considerations. After all, we can put these two factors together in various constellations depending on skill levels of both the immigrant and family members. While a Mexican biology professor looking to bring in her dentist husband may spark little controversy, the Chinese laborer bringing in his illiterate grandmother is another matter; but what about the Mexican biology professor bringing in her illiterate grandmother? Ultimately, this issue is far more complicated than first meets the eye for the reason that author Max Frisch had already given 40 years ago: when dealing with immigrants, we are dealing with human beings, not with labor commodities. Workers don’t simply come to work, they also come to live, and as they do, they build social networks that inevitably include family. In the long run, we may not be able to have the immigrant worker without the family network.

Foreign students and scholars A final important group seeking entry into other countries are university students and scholars. Given that we are witnessing the globalization of higher education, how countries deal with this group is becoming increasingly important to immigration debates. Of course, students and scholars have always enrolled and worked at universities abroad, but two noteworthy things make the current situation significantly different from the past. First, there is a much greater demand for higher education, because countries all over

Plate 2.3  Families (Niklaus Steiner)

Accepting immigrants  27 the world have been moving toward mass education. As part of a concerted development strategy that has been stressing the role of education in recent decades, poorer countries have been dramatically expanding the number of children who receive a K-12 education. Having successfully expanded education at this level, countries now face a growing body of students who seek a college education as well, once the privilege of a tiny elite. China, for example, tripled the number of university students between 1999 and 2004 from 6 million to 18 million and is adding 2.5 million students per year but still cannot meet student demand for higher education.34 In China and elsewhere, a lack of enough quality institutions to accommodate these students and a lack of opportunities upon graduation are prompting more and more students to study and work abroad. A second factor that is reshaping higher education globally is that it is becoming increasingly standardized. Universities in different countries are coordinating efforts so that course credits are easier to transfer, degrees are more widely recognized, grades and transcripts are more easily compared and calculated, English is increasingly the language of instruction, and the length of time it takes to earn a degree is being standardized. These adjustments in how universities are organized all make it easier for students and faculty to move around the world. And moving they are. The UNESCO writes in its 2006 Global Education Digest: “The start of the 21st century marked a dramatic rise in the global number of mobile students, from 1.75 million in 1999 to 2.5 million in 2004.”35 Given that students and scholars are increasingly mobile and have more options, universities worldwide are increasingly competing with each other to attract the best ones. This global competition is quite new. For decades, US universities dominated higher education and faced little competition. A recent global ranking shows that US universities are still dominant, but the fact that such polls are even being carried out (itself a recent occurrence) is a sign that higher education is increasingly looking beyond national borders for comparisons.36 Importantly, the US’s share of the growing number of international students is shrinking as these students begin to study in other countries. US universities are responding to this decline by beginning to recruit foreign students more aggressively. Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the Institute for International Education says “[US universities] used to think international students were going to come anyway, but the situation has changed.”37 Frank Lavin, the US Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, notes that this is the first time in history that the US government has actively marketed its education system overseas. “Attracting the best students from around the world is more competitive than ever,” explains Lavin, “So we are making a special effort to reach out.”38 The Chronicle of Higher Education writes that the reasons for this increased competition for foreign students are obvious. “Foreign students provide some of the strongest talent universities can find, particularly at the graduate level, and the money they spend on tuition and living expenses helps an institution’s bottom line. In the United States alone, they contribute more than $14 billion to the economy. So countries are working hard to recruit, and retain, these students.”39 The decline in the US’s share of the worldwide foreign student market is of course partly due to 9/11 and the subsequent tighter visa restrictions and less friendly environment. Crucially, though, it also has to do with foreign universities working to attract students and scholars. In Europe, the most significant effort is the Bologna Process. Started in 1999, this seeks to create a single European Higher Education Area that allows faculty and staff to transfer seamlessly between any of the universities among the 40-plus European signatory countries. One of the fundamental goals of this process is to make European universities more competitive and attractive to both European students and to students from other parts of the world, especially to divert them from going to the US. British, French, and German

28  Immigrants Table 2.6  Global ranking of universities (2008)   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9 10 11 12 13 13 15 16 17 18 19 20

Harvard University Yale University University of Cambridge University of Oxford California Institute of Technology Imperial College London University College London University of Chicago Massachusetts Institute of Technology Columbia University University of Pennsylvania Princeton University Duke University Johns Hopkins University Cornell University Australian National University Stanford University University of Michigan University of Tokyo McGill University

US US UK UK US UK UK US US US US US US US US Australia US US Japan Canada

Source: Times Higher Education Supplement, 2008.

universities already attract well over a third of the world’s international students, and the hope is that this number will rise as the Bologna Process progresses. Elsewhere in the world, the effort to improve higher education is less about trying to create a single system and more about creating partnerships with other universities. In the Middle East, for example, countries like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are building universities in partnership with universities from other parts of the world, including US institutions such as Texas A&M, Cornell, Virginia Commonwealth, Carnegie Mellon, and Georgetown. In Asia, likewise, the National University of Singapore is partnering with various US universities, including the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill to establish joint-degree programs so that a student can earn a degree from both an Asian and an American university. Almost 30 percent of US graduate schools have established joint- or dual-degree programs with international universities and another 25 percent plan to do so in the future, according to a recent study by the Council of Graduate Schools.40 At this point, efforts to attract foreign students and scholars to universities are still uncontroversial. Just one example of how much governments value foreign students and scholars is the fact that the US government imposes no limit on the number of H-1B visas that universities may issue. However, given the globalization of higher education, the admission of foreign students and scholars will at some point reflect the other debates we’ve covered in this chapter and raise questions about, for example, whether this admission comes at the expense of natives. On a national scale, many public institutions in the US have long had this debate with reference to the admission of out-of-state students. The University of North Carolina, for example, limits the number of out-of-state freshmen admitted to 18 percent because of its concerns about serving in-state students. The same concern will surely be carried into the

Accepting immigrants  29 international realm: should institutions seek to attract the best students and scholars regardless of where they are from, or should a clear priority be given to those from the institution’s own country?

Conclusion Debates over immigration typically distinguish between “high-skilled” and “low-skilled” workers, and because this book seeks to engage in these debates I use these terms as well. I do so, however, somewhat critically because the terms tend to stress levels of formal education, and therefore we seem to value the former over the latter. While it is true that “high-skilled” workers (chemists or engineers, for example) have many more years of formal education than “low-skilled” workers (such as bricklayers or nannies), we of course want our buildings to be built and our children to be fed by workers we consider highly skilled in these tasks as well. A stonemason from Portugal may not have the years of formal education of a PhD in microbiology, but few people have his skills to build a wall, and in certain sectors he is essential just as the PhD is (only) essential in certain sectors. My point is that instead of talking of “high-skilled’ and “low-skilled” workers, perhaps “essential” and “non-essential” workers are more useful terms. In our discussion of admitting such workers, it may be easier to agree that we prefer essential workers to non-essential ones, and that their essentialness should be the focus of our admission policy. As we debate who to admit into our country, we need to be aware there are many different types of immigrants and that our debates need to be nuanced to reflect this diversity. A good argument and policy for admitting one type of person will be irrelevant for another. And the debates need to reflect the many different needs rich countries have for immigrants. Because of this variety, wealthier countries have devised a whole host of schemes for handling their admission. And yet these admission schemes can fail, and wealthier countries have lots of foreigners who were not admitted but got in anyway. How countries deal with these unwanted immigrants is the topic of the next chapter.

3 Dealing with the unwanted

• • • • •

Border control Deportations Discouragements Employer sanctions Amnesties

Introduction So far we have discussed various types of people who seek admission into a country and various ways countries decide who to admit. But how does a country deal with people whom it did not admit but who are in the country anyway? Such people may have gotten in by entering without being formally admitted (i.e. they crossed the border illegally), or they may have been formally admitted but then overstayed the right to be there (i.e. overstayed their tourist, student, or work visa). As is so often the case, the term we use to describe such people says a lot about our view of the matter. Those who favor a tougher stance tend to call them “illegal immigrants” or “illegal aliens,” while those with a more sympathetic attitude prefer terms like “undocumented” or “unauthorized” immigrants. Not for ideological reasons but simply because it is more commonly used in debates, I’ll consistently use the term “illegal immigrant” rather than alternating between the various options. Crucially, both sides agree that it is a significant problem and that a country should rid itself of it. For example, reacting to reports of poor working conditions in the poultry producer House of Raeford Farms, Republican Congressman Bob Inglis from South Carolina said that such abuse of workers illustrates the need for immigration reform, because the industry relies increasingly on Hispanic workers who are often illegal and reluctant to complain. He said: “It shows a need to get a handle on illegal immigration, because it is a system that hurts both the host country, plus the people who come here illegally. Illegal immigrants can end up in a system of economic slavery because they have no rights.”1 However, the two sides see the problem of illegal immigration in fundamentally different ways and propose radically different solutions. One side emphasizes the illegal nature of this immigration and argues that it undermines the authority and credibility of a country’s laws and policies, it harms native workers and their culture, and it is unfair to law-abiding immigrants. This side advocates more punitive action toward such immigrants, such as tighter border control, increased deportations, and cutting education and health services in hopes of discouraging future illegal flows. The other side focuses more on the exploitive nature of illegal immigration. It points out

Dealing with the unwanted  31 the harm that comes to both the immigrants and the natives by having immigrants live in the shadow of society where they are exposed to exploitation by smugglers and employers. They also stress the harm that comes to the host society if such marginalized immigrants do not have access to proper healthcare and education; having unhealthy and uneducated people living on the fringes of society is a financial, practical, and moral drain. In other words, both sides want to get rid of illegal immigrants, but how? In this sense, the debate over illegal immigration is somewhat like the debate over abortion, where both sides agree that abortions are a problem but the motivation for, and the methods of, reducing the number of abortions being performed are quite different. As argued in Chapter 1, we live in a unique time in history where two forces are colliding: never before have people had the ability to move so easily, quickly, and cheaply, while at the same time never before have states had so much control over this movement. While of course a country’s control over migrants who want to enter is not absolute, it can be more or less successful depending on the technical, political, economic, and moral resources the country wants to allocate to the task. This chapter explores some of the options a country has for dealing with migrants it doesn’t want, and it considers the feasibility and impact of such policies. The difficulty of assessing feasibility and impact is illustrated by the recent debates among experts seeking to explain the drop in illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States in 2007. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, signs of this slow-down were widespread: in public opinion polls, fewer Mexicans said they planned to seek work in the United States; the US border authorities arrested fewer illegal crossers; and both the employment of Mexicans in the US and the flow of remittances to Mexico slowed considerably. On the one hand, proponents of tighter borders and increased deportation such as Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors tighter immigration controls, argue that such measures have acted as successful deterrence to discourage new arrivals. On the other hand, Wayne Cornelius of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California at San Diego acknowledges that such measures have had an effect but argues that the decline has more to do with the decline in the US economy.2

Border control Building walls has long been a method for keeping outsiders out (or in the case of East Berlin and North Korea for keeping insiders in). Israel against the West Bank/Gaza, India against Pakistan, Thailand against Malaysia, China against North Korea, and the United States against Mexico are just some of many examples given by columnist Gwynne Dyer, who notes “If good fences make good neighbors, then the world is experiencing an unprecedented outbreak of neighborliness.”3 The United States’ wall against Mexico was significantly expanded in 2006, when the federal government agreed to extend the wall to 700 miles. But one wonders why the government stopped there? After all, when in 1994 the border in California was fortified with walls by the Clinton administration in Operation Gatekeeper, the flow of illegal immigrants simply shifted east into the Arizona desert, even though it was a much harsher and more dangerous trek, one that killed nearly 500 people in 2005.4 If the United States is serious about trying to control the border, why not build a 2,000-mile wall all the way from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego, California? And there is also of course the 5,500-mile border with Canada, which since 9/11 has been seen by federal authorities as a crossing point not for illegal immigrants but for terrorists.

32  Immigrants

Plate 3.1  Border (Cooper McGuire)

Walls are difficult to make impenetrable, but there can be no doubt that some are much more effective than others. While not perfect – about 5,000 people still managed to escape over and under it in the 28 years it stood (and about 300 died trying) – the Berlin Wall did prove remarkably effective in stopping the movement of people; after all, in the eight months before it was erected in August 1961, over 150,000 people moved from East to West Berlin. From a technical point of view, the United States could build a Berlin-type wall along the entire Mexican border. It could build it 30 feet high, run a lethal amount of electricity through it, and just for good measure mount it with motion-sensing machine guns pointing outward that would kill anyone moving within 100 yards. Of course, not even the most ardent anti-immigrant advocate would support such a monstrous construction, which would violate every possible democratic principle we hold, not to mention raising environmental concerns over migratory animals and delicate desert eco systems. As much as democracies may complain about illegal immigration and argue for border controls, we all acknowledge that there are limits to how far a democracy can go to control its borders. We simply do not have, and indeed cannot have, the will to put up truly effective walls. Nor does the polar opposite appear politically feasible: the absence of border controls, something along the lines of what we saw Joseph Carens arguing for in Chapter 1. Therefore, somewhere between the extremes of open and closed borders, democracies must find a border policy to keep the unwanted out. This debate is highly controversial because setting the policy between these two poles raises many difficult questions regarding financial costs worth bearing, human rights worth violating, and moral norms worth upholding. As we consider border controls, we must ask ourselves what price are we willing to pay to keep the

Dealing with the unwanted  33 unwanted out? I suspect that, after a thorough cost–benefit analysis, democracies will always find the price too high. Continuing with the case of the US, considerable effort has actually been put into controlling the border with Mexico over the last decade; the size of the Border Patrol, for example, tripled and its budget increased fivefold in the decade after the mid-1990s. And yet illegal immigration continued to climb. What conclusion are we to draw from this paradox? On the one hand, one may argue that the United States needs to allocate even more resources for border control until the flow of illegal immigrants is stemmed; surely sooner or later we will have allocated sufficient resources to be effective in our goal. This position raises the question of just how far we want to go before we feel that our border has become uncomfortably like the Berlin Wall. On the other hand, some argue, counterintuitively, that the tightening of the border is in fact the cause for the rise in illegal immigration, and interestingly this position is shared by people from diverse ideological positions. The migration scholar Doug Massey and the libertarian Cato Institute, for example, both agree that before this significant tightening of the border, there had been a circular flow of illegal immigrants, with male workers coming and going while their families remained behind in the sending country. With the border becoming harder to cross, this circular migration of individuals has been replaced by entire families coming once and then settling.5 Additionally, Wayne Cornelius believes that building up the border has had the unintended consequence of driving more migrants to rely on professional smugglers, who have a higher success rate getting them into the country.6 It has also driven up the price charged by smugglers, from $500 in the mid-1990s to $2,000 a decade later. Tamar Jacoby of the conservative Manhattan Institute draws an analogy between restrictive border control and Prohibition: both are unrealistic bans that are all but impossible to enforce, and she instead argues for a more open immigration policy with limits that can be implemented relatively easily.7

Deportations After border controls have failed to keep unwanted people out, a country may consider deporting them. This option is popular in some circles, but deportation, like border control, is more complex than it first appears, especially if it is attempted on a massive scale. While countries with weaker or no democratic traditions are freer to act in this way, we are constrained so that the mass deportation of illegal immigrants is not a realistic option for various reasons. First, while it is easy to declare on talk-radio that all illegal immigrants should be kicked out of the country, this suggestion has simple practical limitations, as pointed out by conservative columnist George Will. He writes: “We are not going to take the draconian police measures necessary to deport 11 million people. They would fill 200,000 buses in a caravan stretching bumper-to-bumper from San Diego to Alaska – where, by the way, 26,000 Latinos live. And there are no plausible incentives to get the 11 million to board the buses.”8 Second, the economic impact, at least in the short term, would likely be crippling, because illegal immigrants often make up a significant part of the work force. Jeff Passel estimates that in the United States, for example, there are 7.2 million illegal workers (or almost 5 percent of the total work force), and he estimates that 24 percent of farm workers, 17 percent of janitors and 14 percent of construction workers are illegal.9 Third, mass deportations would require a significant amount of racial profiling, because a disproportionate number of illegal immigrants in the United States are people of color. However, as a society we already seem a bit squeamish about small-scale racial profiling in such cases as traffic violations so it is hard to imagine that we would tolerate it on a massive scale.

34  Immigrants Furthermore, the financial cost of such a mass deportation would be significant. The federal government has put the cost at $94 billion, while a liberal think tank estimates the cost to be $206 billion to $230 billion over five years. Whatever the number is, even staunch anti-illegal immigration politicians such as former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado do not support mass deportations.10 Mass deportation would also require an extraordinary increase in the government’s power to intrude on individuals’ lives. We’d have to tolerate government agents stopping people on the street to demand identification, storming homes in the middle of the night to arrest people, and dragging them to holding cells to prepare them for deportation. While we already allow the government to do such things on a small scale, doing it to 12 million people would be an unprecedented escalation of the government’s power vis-à-vis individuals, one that surely the vast majority of society would adamantly reject because the cost to freedom would be unbearably high. Another important issue to keep in mind is that it may not be clear where the migrant is from and so to what country he or she should be deported. This has become a vexing question in Europe, where some migrants destroy their travel documents and identification papers with the result that officials have no idea of the migrants’ country of origin and therefore can’t deport them, because other countries won’t accept them without proof of origination. If the United States started trying to deport 12 million illegal immigrants, many might likewise refuse to reveal their country of origin, and while we assume a majority of them came from Mexico, the Mexican government would probably want proof of that. A final obstacle to mass deportation of illegal immigrants is the deleterious effect it would have on families and on notions of citizenship. Hiroshi Motomura reminds us that members of an immigrant household often include one parent who is lawfully in the United States and another parent who is not, plus children who may be unlawful, lawful, or even citizens if they were born in the US. The Urban Institute notes that about two-thirds of all children of illegal parents are US-born citizens who live in such mixed status families.11 In such common scenarios, deportation of the illegal parent amounts to de facto deportation of citizens, because the children who are citizens would likely leave as well, especially if the deported parent is the breadwinner. And deporting only the illegal parents but allowing the estimated 3 million children who are citizens to stay behind isn’t practically or morally feasible either. Because deporting citizens is so antithetical to the behavior of democracies, Motomura writes of “the tacit consensus that prevails in the United States to enforce immigration laws in ways that are knowingly ineffective and sometimes just for the sake of symbolism and political show. Total enforcement may require, among other things, that we ignore Max Frisch and imagine workers without families.”12 We will come back to the question of citizenship and especially the issue of citizenship based on being born in a country in subsequent chapters. In sum, there are practical, financial, and ideological reasons why mass deportations of illegal immigrants will not occur in democracies. Now, it is true that we do deport large numbers of illegal immigrants each year; in 2007, a record number of illegal immigrants were deported by the US (more than 280,000, many of whom were caught crossing the border), but this number is still relatively small compared to the total number of illegal immigrants (about 12 million) living in the country, and it would have to be raised considerably if we wanted to significantly reduce the number of such unwanted immigrants among us. As we saw earlier, some countries have fewer qualms about undertaking draconian measures to rid themselves of the unwanted, but I doubt we are willing or able to go down this road. While on the topic of deportations, it should be noted that we must think through the deportation not only of illegal immigrants but also of legal ones. After all, each year, the US deports thousands of longtime, legal residents who run afoul of the law. Such deportations

Dealing with the unwanted  35

Plate 3.2  Destinations (Niklaus Steiner)

occur even if the legal residents are married to US citizens, have children here, and came to this country as children themselves. Many who are deported are also barred from ever returning. The striking thing about this policy is that the list of crimes that can get a legal resident deported includes offenses that are considered misdemeanors under state law and do not result in jail time for citizens: shoplifting, jumping subway turnstiles, drunk driving, petty drug charges, urinating in public. How severe do we think a crime should be before we order a legal resident deported? Rachel Rosenbloom writes: “It is hard to see the rationale behind our inflexible deportation laws given that last year, according to news reports, 12 percent of new Army recruits had criminal records including felonies or serious misdemeanors such as aggravated assault and vehicular homicide.”13 In other words, by committing a crime, we might either accept you into our military or deport you.

Discouragements Since tighter borders and more deportations have largely failed to deal with unwanted immigration, another option is to treat illegal immigrants in ways that make them feel unwelcome so that they decide to leave of their own accord. Supporters of this approach believe that it will have the added benefit of discouraging new arrivals as well. Such an approach may stress enforcing existing laws, imposing new ones, or withdrawing social services. Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform believes that steps to discourage illegal immigration are “changing the mind-set” of would-be immigrants, adding that “Illegal immigrants are rational people. They will change their behavior.”14 This raises the interesting question of just how to go about changing their behavior.

36  Immigrants Federal, state, and local governments are using various types of measures in their attempts to discourage illegal immigrants. There are far too many methods to discuss, so let me mention just a few of the ones that have received a good bit of attention. Despite their tactical differences, they all follow the same strategy: send an unwelcoming message to those immigrants who are not wanted. The Federal Migration Office of Switzerland, together with the intergovernmental organization International Organization for Migration (IOM), has recently produced a film that aims to discourage migrants from coming. The movie, shot in a dark, gritty style, depicts a newly arrived African migrant calling home and putting a brave face on his situation, which in fact is marked by police chases, begging on the streets, and homelessness. “Don’t believe everything you hear. Leaving is not always living” is the tagline that ends the film, which has been shown on television in Nigeria and Cameroon. Eduard Gnesa, head of Switzerland’s Federal Migration Office, explains that “We have the duty to show these people what the consequences of fleeing their country might be for them.” The IOM has worked with Spain on similar films that are shown in Senegal and Niger, and IOM spokesman Jean-Philippe Chauzy said the film’s intention is to “inform would-be migrants of the dangers of using smuggling networks and the realities of life as an undocumented migrant in Europe.”15 Jürg Krummenacher, director of the Swiss relief agency Caritas, thinks the film is basically well intentioned but notes that people in sending countries have a steady flow of positive images from Europe to counterbalance these negative ones. Indeed, it is remarkable how saturated the world is with images of wealth in rich countries, and even the worst poverty in Switzerland is relatively comfortable compared to the poverty in much of the world. Because of such contrast, Pape Ndiaye Diouf, of Switzerland’s Institute of Development Studies, believes the IOM film is a “too simplistic response to a very complex problem” and argues for more rigorous and responsible solutions. He believes that “It’s important to correctly inform people in those countries about what the situation is like [in Europe] but it should go much further. It has to be accompanied with development and job creation opportunities on the spot so young people have alternatives and don’t think they absolutely have to go abroad.”16 While this IOM film may be well intentioned toward the unwanted, other measures are less so. One of the best-known of such efforts in the United States was Proposition 187, which was approved by 59 percent of Californian voters in 1994. This initiative barred illegal immigrants from receiving many government services including public education and non-emergency healthcare, and it required public service providers to report to government authorities any illegal immigrant using such services. The measure directly challenged the 1982 Plyler v. Doe US Supreme Court decision that had struck down a Texas law that similarly attempted to deny public education to illegal children of school age. The Court argued that these children were not acting on their own but were victims of their parents’ actions and therefore not guilty for their illegal status. Because of similar concerns, Proposition 187 was subsequently overturned in the federal court. Many observers note that the measure remains popular with conservative voters in the state but that it deeply hurt the Republican Party by galvanizing the immigrant vote against them and especially against Governor Pete Wilson, who was a strong supporter of it. Along similar lines, in 2004, 56 percent of Arizona voters approved Proposition 200, which requires public officials to check the immigration status of anyone who applies for “public benefits.” If public officials fail to notify immigration authorities of any offender, they face a $750 fine and four months’ imprisonment. Although the measure deliberately did not include education as a “public benefit,” it did not otherwise define the term and so is open to widely

Dealing with the unwanted  37 different interpretation. This breadth, opponents argue, makes it unfeasible: does using a city park constitute using a “public benefit” which would require a park ranger to check the legal status of people at a Sunday picnic? Such state and local measures often reflect a frustration with the federal government for not properly handling the issue of illegal immigration. State and local officials say they are being unfairly burdened by issues that should be dealt with on the federal level, but because of federal inaction, they must take the initiative. Hazelton PA, Riverside NJ, and dozens of other local communities are drawing up and passing ordinances that seek to discourage illegal immigrants from settling among them. A common approach is to seek to prohibit business owners and landlords from hiring or renting to illegal immigrants. Such local measures are, however, repeatedly struck down in the courts when suits are brought by business owners or civil rights groups. Courts argue that not only are such measures sometimes discriminatory, but that immigration is a federal, not a state or local issue. Supporters of such measures are not deterred: “I am prepared to fight this to the highest court in the country if we have to,” says Hazelton mayor Lou Barletta. “The message is: Illegal aliens are not welcome here.”17 Another example is a program known as 287(g), whereby federal officials from the United States Department of Homeland Security enter into a written agreement with state and local law enforcement agencies to train and authorize officers from such agencies to check the immigration status of people they have arrested. If the arrested person is illegally in the US, then the local official can detain that person until federal officials deport him or her; local authorities do not have the authority to deport. This program is increasingly popular among sheriffs, who are almost always elected and who may believe that it is politically popular among voters to be seen as deporting illegal immigrants who commit crimes. These sheriffs are also reimbursed by the federal government for each illegal immigrant they detain (about $66 per day in North Carolina) although local taxpayers also incur some costs for the program. It may well seem reasonable to us to deport illegal immigrants who have committed a crime, but how significant must the crime be to warrant such action? In August 2008, five men in North Carolina faced deportation because Officer Jeff Brown of the NC Wildlife Resources Commission caught them fishing without a license. Critics charge that such examples illustrate that the 287(g) policy is less concerned with reducing serious crime than with reducing the number of illegal immigrants in a community. Supporters of 287(g) argue that the policy is a useful deportation tool that allows local officers to assist federal officers who are overwhelmed; after all, being in the country illegally is already a deportable offense. So, we must decide whether to focus on deporting illegal immigrants for merely being here, or for being here plus committing a misdemeanor, or for being here plus committing a serious crime. Again, it’s a question of allocating scarce resources. While such measures may well have the desired local effect, one wonders whether they have the national effect of returning these unwanted immigrants to their home countries; perhaps they simply move to another less hostile community, especially to communities, such as New Haven CT, that have declared themselves to be “sanctuary cities” for them. Now, the mayor of Hazelton may not really care where they move to as long as they are no longer in his community. In terms of a national solution, however, such discouraging measures are probably not going to rid a country of unwanted immigrants unless a significant number of cities, towns, and communities were to adopt similar measures simultaneously, which seems unlikely. More likely is that squeezing the unwanted is like squeezing a balloon – the pressure only shifts things around instead of forcing things out.

38  Immigrants Because a disproportionate number of illegal immigrants in the United States are Mexican, the Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, criticized United States crackdowns on illegal workers in this 2007 State of the Union address. He declared: I again issue an energetic protest against the unilateral measures taken by the Congress and the United States government that exacerbate the persecution and the vexing treatment against undocumented Mexican workers. The insensitivity shown toward those who have contributed to the economy and the United States society has been an inducement to redouble the struggle to recognize the enormous contribution to the economy of both countries and to defend their rights.18 One must note here the irony of his outrage, given how poorly Mexico treats immigrants (both legal and illegal ones) coming across its southern border from Central America.

Employer sanctions A final punitive approach is to punish employers who hire illegal immigrants. With this approach, the focus is not on illegal immigrants but rather on businesses. On the surface, such employer sanctions may seem the most promising. After all, much of international migration is driven by the economic motivation to find work, and if there is less work for migrants then we will likely have fewer of them. One way to have less work for them is by cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. Having concluded that mass deportation is not feasible, many politicians, including former Congressman Tancredo, suggest this approach.19 The first federal attempt to punish employers for hiring illegal immigrants was made by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). Under this law, if employers were found to knowingly hire illegal immigrants they could be fined hundreds or thousands of dollars or spend six months in prison. While Congress was debating IRCA, it asked the General Accounting Office to research how employer sanctions were working in other countries. After exploring 19 countries, Peter Brownell reported that the GAO found sanctions were largely ineffective for two reasons: first, employers were either able to avoid punishment or punished too lightly if caught; and second, there was a lack of resources and political will to properly implement sanctions. He cited studies by the Urban Institute and the Rand Corporation carried out in the late 1980s and early 1990s on the early effects of IRCA’s employer sanctions which draw essentially the same conclusions. Brownell concluded in 2005 that while not much additional research has been done on the effectiveness of employer sanctions since the early 1990s: “Clearly, the data show employer sanctions enforcement activities have dropped to levels that cannot reasonably be expected to create an effective deterrent to the employment of unauthorized immigrants.”20 What are the problems with employer sanctions? First, punishing employers for hiring illegal immigrants has led to widespread hiring discrimination. Because some employers are either unwilling or unable to properly verify the immigration status of workers, they avoid the issue altogether by refusing to hire workers they suspect may be illegal on the basis of their ethnicity, accent, or name. While discriminating against illegal immigrants is not a problem (in fact it’s the law), such discrimination may also target legal immigrants and citizens. And once this happens, the employer has run afoul not only of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination, but also of IRCA itself, which, anticipating this potential problem, took steps to prevent it.

Dealing with the unwanted  39 Second, employer sanctions can spawn a significant black market for false documents, as evident in the aftermath of the passing of IRCA in 1986. By 1992, the New York Times reported that government agents raided an operation in Los Angeles that provided fake immigration documents to perhaps a million people across the country. “In Los Angeles, for example, street vendors, for about $50, offer a basic packet including a Social Security card and some sort of identity document like a voter’s registration card; in Houston, an alien registration card goes for about $250, immigration officials say. … Last summer, agents arrested two doctors who, officials say, headed a ring in the Laredo, Tex., area selling Texas birth certificates for $1,200 each.”21 This forgery business thrives not only because it is so lucrative but also because IRCA did not explicitly require employers to verify the documents but only made employers punishable if the documents were clearly fraudulent, and the standard for such a credible document was relatively low. Another reason that employer sanctions have not been effective, according to Brownell, is that since 9/11, they have overwhelmingly focused on businesses considered vitally connected to national security such as airports, nuclear power plants, and military bases, but such a focus has left restaurants, farms, hotels, and garment factories even less scrutinized for employment violations; yet, of course, a disproportionate number of illegal immigrants work in these latter sectors. Finally, there has been resistance from employers, who complain that they can’t reasonably be expected to become immigration officers. They say they lack the training to detect false documents and to keep up with new federal regulations, both of which they say should be the responsibility of the federal government. Because IRCA did not insist on a single form of identity, many different types of documents, including drivers’ licenses and social security cards, can be used by immigrants to demonstrate their legal status, and this range makes it difficult for employers to know what is acceptable. Some unscrupulous employers of course also oppose cracking down on illegal immigrants because such workers are cheap and exploitable. Whatever the motivation, employers have considerable political clout, and their resistance has translated into weakening the political will of the government to execute employer sanctions effectively. The Federation for American Immigration Reform writes that the federal government must take responsibility for verifying the legal status of immigrants: “However, for Congress to take action, it will need to feel enough public pressure for action to offset opposition from seasonal crop agriculture and other employers that have become addicted to cheap, easily exploited illegal workers.”22

Amnesties A final way to get rid of illegal immigrants is to make them legal. Such a legalization program is usually referred to as an amnesty and is intriguingly simple. Unlike the measures discussed above, there are few technical obstacles, imposing government measures, or heavy financial costs to bear. It is really just a question of political will. With the flick of a pen, the United States Congress can rid the country of all 12 million illegal immigrants from one day to the next. Congress has in fact already done this several times. Such an amnesty program was a cornerstone of IRCA (1986), by which about 2.7 million illegal immigrants were given legal status; subsequently, six other targeted amnesties legalized another 3 million by 2000.23 Likewise, Spain, Italy, and Greece have all passed various amnesties since the 1990s, when they, too, started facing significant numbers of illegal migrants. Spanish Prime Minister José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero has defended the legalization of 600,000 illegal immigrants as

40  Immigrants

Plate 3.3  Routes (Niklaus Steiner)

“necessary, convenient and positive.”24 Interestingly, while unions often oppose legal immigration, they tend to support amnesties because it helps bring illegal workers out of the black market, where they are exploited and where they may depress wages of legal workers and also displace them. Business owners also tend to support amnesties because it creates a more stable work force and frees employers from having to double as immigration officials. So, do amnesties work? In the short term they indeed get rid of illegal immigrants by simply getting rid of their illegality but without of course getting rid of the immigrants. The long-term effect is less clear. In the United States, for example, within a few years of the 1986 amnesty, the number of illegal immigrants was back up to the original numbers. This resurgence leads to one of the most common charges against amnesties: they encourage more illegal immigrants to come in the hopes that sooner or later they too will be granted amnesty. The anti-immigration backlash of the 1990s, epitomized by California’s Proposition 187, reflects this position, and indeed the very term “amnesty” has become so toxic that supporters try to avoid it, while opponents throw it around freely to tar the idea. Surprisingly, little research has been conducted into this important charge; but at least one study concludes that granting amnesty does not cause more illegal immigration.25 The connection between amnesty and illegal immigration is a good example of the difference between correlation and causation. There is clearly a correlation between granting amnesty and rising illegal immigration in the US: the number of amnesties and the number of illegal immigrants have both risen together. However, this correlation does not prove causation,

Dealing with the unwanted  41 because it is not clear that illegal immigration rose because amnesties were declared. More likely, illegal immigration rose because the United States economy demanded it, and illegal immigration would have risen even if amnesties had not been granted. A second common charge against amnesties is that they reward law breakers. Opponents argue that amnesties are unfair to law-abiding immigrants who must stand in line for many years to get their proper papers, while illegal immigrants receive them through amnesties more quickly. This discrepancy is indeed unfair and rightly irks law-abiding immigrants and citizens alike. However, rather than being a problem with amnesty per se, this queue-jumping is a process problem that should be addressed by streamlining the immigration system, hiring more officials to deal with visas and citizenship, and putting amnesty recipients at the end of the line. Another and closely related argument against amnesties is that they violate the law-abiding nature of our society. The term amnesty implies forgiveness, but far from forgiving law breakers, opponents argue, we need to punish them or else our judicial system’s credibility is weakened. To counter such fear, in a cover story in defense of amnesty Time magazine wrote in 2007: But our legal system is not a house of cards, one flick away from collapse. U.S. jurisprudence has in fact always been a series of hedged bets, weighing the potential harm of a violation against the costs of enforcement. That’s why people get arrested for assault but not for jaywalking. It’s time to think seriously about exactly where the act of illegal immigration lies in the spectrum of criminality.26 This article goes on to point out that we should focus not only on the actions of immigrants but also on the complicity of US employers, ranging from multinational corporations to suburbanites looking for gardeners.While reasonable, this suggestion takes us back to the issue of employer sanctions and all the problems associated with trying to make them work. Ultimately, it could be that much of the opposition to amnesties is rooted in simple frustration with an immigration system that is perceived to be broken. By declaring an amnesty, a country is essentially acknowledging a failed system. While this declaration may be frustrating, it may also be refreshingly realistic, given the alternatives for dealing with illegal immigrants. An amnesty recognizes that illegal immigrants are here and are unlikely to leave anytime soon, both because we need them and because it is better here than in their home countries. Perhaps countries that depend on cheap foreign labor must accept that, periodically, an amnesty has to be granted not in hopes of solving the problem of illegal immigration but only in hopes of managing it. More optimistically, Time magazine writes that solutions to illegal immigration are possible if we can match amnesty with tough enforcement measures. “There is both the political will and the technology to make enforcement a serious part of any amnesty plan. National ID cards, real employer verification, high-tech border controls can all aid in making sure that this would be the last amnesty of this size.”27 Can we in fact muster the will to accept such government-imposed enforcement measures that infringe on personal freedoms, or will we instead resign ourselves periodically to accepting those already among us? The problem is that if we are unwilling to accept them and unable to get rid of them, then we create a permanently marginalized, exploited, unassimilated segment of society whose costs to us will be much higher than if we had legalized them. To avoid this fate, we need to make them part of us, and how we do that will be discussed in the final section of this book.

42  Immigrants

Conclusion When considering how to deal with the unwanted, we tend to reach for punitive measures, but as Tamar Jacoby of the conservative Manhattan Institute writes, punitive measures “only drive immigrants further underground, deeper into the arms of smugglers and document forgers.” Writing in favor of amnesty, she argues: The only practical solution is to give these unauthorized workers and their families a way to earn their way onto the right side of the law. This should be done not just for their sake but also because it is the only way to restore the integrity of the immigration code, bring the underground economy onto the tax rolls, and eliminate the potential security threat posed by millions of illegal immigrants whose real names no one knows and who have never undergone security checks.28 In evaluating the merits of amnesty or deportations or any of the other measures used against illegal immigrants, it is helpful to consider the measure’s feasibility and impact. Ideally, of course, one wants to implement policies with high feasibility and high impact and avoid those that are not feasible or have little impact. Given the various approaches to dealing with illegal immigrants, we need to evaluate carefully how each one stacks up against these two measurements. To make this evaluation even richer, we should introduce the element of time as a third dimension. Adding this element means we may conclude that in the short term, a given policy has high impact but in the long term the impact is low, or that it is not very feasible in the first year but 20 years later it becomes highly feasible. The element of time seems especially relevant to amnesty, which in the short term gets rid of illegal immigration very effectively but is unlikely to be a long-term solution as it does not address the root causes of the problem. When listening to simplistic discussions about immigration, one gets the sense that the movement of people can be controlled like water out of a faucet: we open it when we need more and tighten it when we need less. While we certainly have significant control over migrants’ movement, so do they. International migrants are not merely objects moving about the world who, when confronted by a wall, roll back to where they came from. Instead, they consider the costs and benefits of staying at home versus leaving and then act upon this calculation. As long as the situation is so much better “here” than “there,” they will continue to want to come. It is, therefore, wise when setting an immigration policy to consider not only the impact international migrants have on our country but also the impact we have on their country. This impact is the topic of our next chapter.

4 Impact of immigrants

• • • • •

Economic impact Political impact Cultural impact Remittances Brain drain and brain circulation

Introduction As we consider who to admit, one of the obvious questions we ask ourselves is what impact will they have on us? Keep in mind that, as an earlier chapter discussed, “they” is not a single category but rather a wide variety of people, and all these different people have different kinds of impacts on us. This chapter explores some of the major economic, political, and cultural impacts immigrants (both legal and illegal) are having on host societies. These impacts fundamentally shape the debates over immigration, and so it is important that we understand them, especially because these impacts are often subjective and can be interpreted in varying ways. Finally, the chapter asks to what extent, if any, we should consider the impact of our admission policy on the immigrants’ home countries.

Economic impact Among economists, there is a general consensus that in broad terms the economic impact of immigrants on a host society is positive. Many countries’ recent economic growth is connected to the impact of immigrants. Singapore’s remarkable growth in the past several decades, for example, has been significantly due to foreign workers, who make up about a third of the total population, and to keep this growth going, the government plans to admit even more foreigners in the future. Israel’s population grew by 30 percent in the 1990s largely because of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and this massive wave of people was a crucial dynamo for picking up a sluggish economy. In the United States, where about 15 percent of the workers are immigrants, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers writes “On average, U.S. natives benefit from immigration. Immigrants tend to complement (not substitute for) natives, raising natives’ productivity and income. Careful studies of the long-run fiscal effects of immigration conclude that it is likely to have a modest, positive influence. Skilled immigrants are likely to be especially beneficial to natives.”1 This broad positive impact on the US economy comes from both high-skilled and lowskilled immigration. Of the former, a report written by researchers at Duke University and

44  Immigrants

Plate 4.1  Storefront (Niklaus Steiner)

the University of California, Berkeley states: “What is clear is that immigrants have become a significant driving force in the creation of new businesses and intellectual property in the U.S. – and that their contributions have increased over the past decade.”2 The impact of low-skilled workers is evident in North Carolina, Chapel Hill which, between 1990 and 2000, had the highest percentage increase of Hispanics (394 percent) of any state in the US, most of them low-skilled. In a report from the University of North Carolina, the overall economic impact of the Hispanic population on the state in 2004 was over $9 billion dollars, and if current migration trends continue this positive economic impact will continue.3 However, as the Council of Economic Advisers writes, while it is both uncontroversial and unsurprising that immigration has fueled US macroeconomic growth, assessing how immigration affects the well-being of US natives is more complicated. Two issues are especially vexing to assess and, therefore they get a disproportionate amount of attention: whether immigrants hurt native workers by suppressing their wages or by displacing them, and what the fiscal impact of immigrants is. Hurt native workers? As discussed in an earlier chapter, the main controversy over issuing the H-1B temporary visas for high-skilled workers is whether they hurt native workers. On one side, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies believes that older American workers are being squeezed out by young immigrants who are “willing to sleep on the floor and work 18 hours a day because they get something else: a shot at living in the United States.” On the other side, the National Foundation for American Policy issued a report that claimed, contrary to the common impression that high-skilled foreign workers are flooding the market, that new H-1B visas account for only 0.07 percent of the total US workforce and that native computer and math professions are at “virtual full employment.”4 Similarly, The National Science Foundation reported at about the same time that the unemployment rate of US scientists and

Impact of immigrants  45 engineers has dropped to a record low (2.5 percent) and those who had either a doctorate or a professional degree had an even lower unemployment rate (1.6 percent).5 The controversy over wage suppression is especially prevalent among those researchers studying low-skilled workers. David Card and George Borjas are among the most prominent economists addressing the issue of wage suppression, and they come to different conclusions because of the different methods they use. Card, who compares the wages of immigrants and natives across regions, finds no significant difference, while Borjas, who compares wages across categories of workers, sees about a 5 percent drop in the wages of native workers.6 The University of North Carolina report weighs in on this issue, stating “Hispanic immigrants often depress wage levels of non-Hispanics, especially in lower-wage, labor-intensive sectors. Given the downward pressure less-educated Hispanics place on wages in these sectors, not everyone in North Carolina benefits from the influx of Hispanic workers.”7 The Economist, meanwhile, concludes that in the long run, immigration has only a small negative effect on the wages of the least skilled native workers and that even this conclusion is debatable.8 The debate over job displacement appears to be equally inconclusive. On a broad, national scale, there is little evidence to support the claim that natives are losing their jobs to immigrants, except for certain groups like high school dropouts who do face small negative effects from immigration. Does this finding mean we should admit fewer low-skilled immigrants for the sake of protecting a section of the native work force? The Presidents’ Council of Economic Advisers thinks not, arguing that: “The difficulties faced by high school dropouts are a serious policy concern, but it is safe to conclude that immigration is not a central cause of those difficulties, nor is reducing immigration a well-targeted way to help these low-wage natives.”9 In other words, such native workers face a myriad of problems ranging from a decline in manufacturing jobs and a lack of health insurance to poor schools and insufficient job training; blaming all their problems on immigrants seems like a convenient political scapegoat for larger societal problems. Fiscal impact? Another hot-button issue is the fiscal impact of immigrants, i.e. whether they receive more in government services than they contribute in taxes. Again, the question is not straightforward. In the report already cited, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers writes that the positive fiscal impact of immigration tends to accrue at the federal level, while the negative impact tends to concentrate at the state and local level. The Council concludes that immigrants’ overall fiscal impact (total government spending and tax revenues on all levels) is unlikely to be either significantly positive or negative. The case of North Carolina is again instructive because the state has struggled to provide services to the large number of Hispanics who have recently arrived. According to the University of North Carolina report cited earlier, in 2004, Hispanics paid $756 million in direct and indirect taxes, but providing government services such as healthcare, prisons, and K-12 education cost the state $817 million, i.e. a net cost of $61 million (or about $102 per Hispanic resident). This cost, however, is dwarfed by the $9 billion economic impact they had on the state’s economy. Illegal immigrants in particular face the charge that they take more from the system than they contribute. The Urban Institute, however, argues that: Undocumented immigrants pay the same real estate taxes – whether they own homes or taxes are passed through to rents – and the same sales and other consumption taxes as

46  Immigrants everyone else. The majority of state and local costs of schooling and other services are funded by these taxes. Additionally, the U.S. Social Security Administration has estimated that three quarters of undocumented immigrants pay payroll taxes, and that they contribute $6–7 billion in Social Security funds that they will be unable to claim.10 To summarize the economic impact of immigrants, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers concludes: “Our review of economic research finds immigrants not only help fuel the Nation’s economic growth, but also have an overall positive effect on the income of native-born workers.”11 Despite economists largely agreeing on the positive economic impact of immigrants, debates continue, because there is a telling disconnect between economic reality and perceptions. For example, in a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation of 1,511 US adults and 250 economists, 47 percent of the adults said “too many immigrants” is a “major reason” why the economy is not doing better compared to 1 percent of the economists.12 Perhaps this common misconception is due to people conflating economic and non-economic impacts. At first brush, when considering the impact of immigrants, people think of economic impacts when they really may be thinking more of political and cultural impacts. Such impacts are indeed powerful, and there are plenty of examples of people wanting to limit immigration because of its political and cultural impacts, even if such limits come at the expense of immigrants’ (positive) economic impact. In 1970, for example, nearly half of Swiss voters supported an initiative by a fringe far-right party to dramatically reduce the number of guest workers in the country despite the widely accepted view that this move would significantly harm the Swiss economy. Clearly, concern over non-economic impacts drove these Swiss voters, and such impacts must be taken into consideration when discussing immigration policy.

Political impact Of all the political impacts immigration has had, one of the most powerful has been the rise of anti-immigration politics, especially the rise of far-right parties in Europe over the last two decades. Examples include the Freedom Party in Austria, the National Front in France, the Flemish Block in Belgium, the Progress Party in Norway, and the Danish People’s Party. They are somewhat different in each country because, unlike other political parties, they are not unified by a common ideological history. Rather, they arose largely as homegrown parties that are selfdeclared protectors of their country against outsiders. They also think of themselves as the party most in touch with common people, and therefore have an anti-elite tinge to them, whether against business leaders, politicians, intellectuals, or artists. Their growth has had a polarizing effect, because their political platform raises a fundamental question about democracy: are such parties an integral part of the democratic process because they legitimately represent citizens’ concerns, or are they a threat to democracy by whipping up racism and violence? Such anti-immigration elements have also existed in US politics over the last two decades. Pat Buchanan is an example of a politician who would fit comfortably into a far-right party in Europe with his anti-immigration and anti-elitist message. In the 1996 presidential campaign, he ran for the Republican Party nomination and embraced the populist symbol of himself and his followers as peasants with pitchforks. Similarly, former Congressman Tom Tancredo from Colorado ran for president as a Republican in the 2008 election largely as a single-issue candidate wanting to limit immigration. Whether in the US or in Europe, two specific concerns about immigrants fuel the support for the far-right: public safety and national identity. There is remarkable consistency across

Impact of immigrants  47

Plate 4.2  Web banner of SVP

countries in the arguments these parties use in appealing to voters on these two issues. While the safety issue in the United States commonly ties immigration to terrorism, in Europe it is more often tied to crime. Far-right parties note that in many countries a disproportionate number of people in prisons are foreigners, and such parties try to capitalize on the idea of deporting criminal foreigners. For example, in the run-up to the Swiss national election in 2007, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) ran posters showing white sheep kicking out black sheep (see Plate 4.2) in support of its initiative to deport foreigners who commit a crime. This poster sparked a great deal of controversy over the question of whether it was racist. The SVP insisted that it merely reflects the common idiomatic expression of “the black sheep” and that Switzerland is trying to rid itself of undesirable and troublesome elements. The opposition focused on the sheep being a symbol for non-white people and thought the poster called for Switzerland to rid itself of people of color.13 While the SVP consistently denies being a racist party, it is hard to know whether Swiss voters believe it. On the one hand, for only the fourth time since the founding of modern Switzerland in 1848, a sitting member of the federal executive cabinet (Christoph Blocher of the SVP) was ousted after the 2007 national election. This dramatic turn of events was a repudiation of him personally because he was quite abrasive and had been the most important figure in moving the SVP to its strong anti-foreigner position. On the other hand, this move to a strong anti-foreigner position grew the party from fourth place in the 1999 elections to being the largest in the 2003 election, with 27 percent of the votes, and it remained the most popular party in the 2007 election and even rose to a 29 percent share. It will be interesting to see in the years ahead whether Swiss voters believe that far-right anti-foreigner politics, as epitomized by this poster, have gone too far, or whether such politics will continue to have a major political impact. Another major theme running through the anti-foreigner politics of far-right parties is concern over how foreigners affect national identity. The Danish People’s Party is typical in appealing to such concerns. In its campaign literature, it writes: The Danish People’s Party is in favour of cultural cooperation with other countries, but we are against giving other cultures, building on completely different values and norms than ours, leverage in Denmark. The way of life we have chosen in Denmark is outstanding. It is conditioned by our culture, and in a small country like ours it cannot survive if we permit mass immigration of foreign religions and foreign cultures. A multicultural society

48  Immigrants is a society without coherence and unity, and, consequently, existing multicultural societies over the globe are characterised by a lack of solidarity and often by open conflict, as well. There are no good reasons to assume that Denmark would escape the destiny of other multicultural societies, if we let ourselves under the sway of foreign cultures.14 A crucial political question is whether such far-right parties are racist. This question is important because a democracy cannot tolerate racism, if by racism we mean an ideology that rejects the notion of equality by holding one group superior to others. But what of an ideology that, instead of focusing on inequality and superiority, emphasizes differences between groups and wants to preserve one group? Take, for example, France, which tries hard to preserve what it sees as French culture and identity from American influence. Many people, among them Americans, applauded when the French farmer/activist José Bové dismantled with his bulldozer a McDonald’s franchise to protest Americanization. Now, there seems to be a difference between France holding itself above American culture and France holding itself above Muslim culture, but what exactly is it? This question leads us straight to the issue of cultural impact.

Cultural impact The cultural impact of immigrants is felt in everything from new items in grocery stores to school children not speaking the native language to new religions being practiced down the street. All such changes affect what is commonly thought of as the national culture of a country, although, as we will discuss in later chapters on nationalism and citizenship, culture and identity are largely subjective terms. What it means to be an American depends very much on whom one asks, so the answer varies greatly. There is, therefore, also great variation in the perceived impact immigrants have on culture. Some natives hold the wafting smells of an “ethnic” restaurant to be enriching multi-culturalism while others see it as polluting. One of the best-known critics of multi-culturalism was Samuel Huntington, who was concerned about the cultural impact of recent Hispanic immigrants into the United States, especially those from Mexico. He argued that American culture is overwhelmingly based on the values of the founding settlers, who were white, British, and Protestant. He acknowledged that contributions from immigrant cultures later modified and enriched this Anglo-Protestant culture but argued that the creed of the founding culture remained the bedrock of US identity until the last decades of the twentieth century. He warned that this creed is now being challenged by Hispanics, because they are not assimilating like past immigrants did and that we cannot apply the lesson from past experiences with immigrants to this current situation, which he calle unprecedented. Because of the contentious nature of his argument, let me cite him in his own words at some length. He wrote: Most Americans see the creed as the crucial element of their national identity. The creed, however, was the product of the distinct Anglo-Protestant culture of the founding settlers. Key elements of that culture include the English language; Christianity; religious commitment; English concepts of the rule of law, including the responsibility of rulers and the rights of individuals; and dissenting Protestant values of individualism, the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create a heaven on earth, a “city on a hill.” Historically, millions of immigrants were attracted to the United States because of this culture and the economic opportunities and political

Impact of immigrants  49 liberties it made possible. … In the final decades of the 20th century, however, the United States’ Anglo-Protestant culture and the creed that it produced came under assault by the popularity in intellectual and political circles of the doctrines of multiculturalism and diversity; the rise of group identities based on race, ethnicity, and gender over national identity; the impact of transnational cultural diasporas; the expanding number of immigrants with dual nationalities and dual loyalties; and the growing salience for U.S. intellectual, business, and political elites of cosmopolitan and transnational identities. The United States’ national identity, like that of other nation-states, is challenged by the forces of globalization as well as the needs that globalization produces among people for smaller and more meaningful “blood and belief” identities. In this new era, the single most immediate and most serious challenge to America’s traditional identity comes from the immense and continuing immigration from Latin America, especially from Mexico, and the fertility rates of these immigrants compared to black and white American natives. Americans like to boast of their past success in assimilating millions of immigrants into their society, culture, and politics. But Americans have tended to generalize about immigrants without distinguishing among them and have focused on the economic costs and benefits of immigration, ignoring its social and cultural consequences. As a result, they have overlooked the unique characteristics and problems posed by contemporary Hispanic immigration. The extent and nature of this immigration differ fundamentally from those of previous immigration, and the assimilation successes of the past are unlikely to be duplicated with the contemporary flood of immigrants from Latin America. This reality poses a fundamental question: Will the United States remain a country with a single national language and a core Anglo-Protestant culture? By ignoring this question, Americans acquiesce to their eventual transformation into two peoples with two cultures (Anglo and Hispanic) and two languages (English and Spanish). … A few stable, prosperous democracies – such as Canada and Belgium – fit this pattern [one country with two languages and two cultures]. The differences in culture within these countries, however, do not approximate those between the United States and Mexico, and even in these countries language differences persist. Not many Anglo-Canadians are equally fluent in English and French, and the Canadian government has had to impose penalties to get its top civil servants to achieve dual fluency. Much the same lack of dual competence is true of Walloons and Flemings in Belgium. The transformation of the United States into a country like these would not necessarily be the end of the world; it would, however, be the end of the America we have known for more than three centuries. Americans should not let that change happen unless they are convinced that this new nation would be a better one. Such a transformation would not only revolutionize the United States, but it would also have serious consequences for Hispanics, who will be in the United States but not of it. [Lionel] Sosa ends his book, The Americano Dream, with encouragement for aspiring Hispanic entrepreneurs. “The Americano dream?” he asks. “It exists, it is realistic, and it is there for all of us to share.” Sosa is wrong. There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English.15 Of all the articles I discuss with my students, this is the one that sparks the most intense debate. A common charge against it is that it is tinged with racism and reflects the perspective of an “old white man.” When I suggest we should not assume anything about the author, who

50  Immigrants could be a young African American, the discussion hits a pregnant pause as students consider whether that changes their opinion. (When he wrote this piece, Huntington was in fact an “old white man” who elsewhere informs us that his family has roots in eighteenth-century New England. He died in 2008.) Outside of my classroom Huntington’s work has also sparked great debate.16 One of its best-known critics is Douglas Massey. He argues, among other things, that Huntington has an archaic view of culture as being monolithic and passing unchanged from one generation to the next. Massey quips that Huntington “seems to think that the good settlers of Plymouth Colony would feel right at home in contemporary Boston.” Massey also faults Huntington for exaggerating the difference between immigrants past and present and writes that the scholarly consensus suggests that the similarities between the two groups outweigh their differences. Again, let me cite the argument at length. Massey writes: Huntington’s historical survey of immigrant assimilation is simplistic and out of touch with contemporary social science. He believes that in the past assimilation meant Americanization, pure and simple. Immigrants arrived longing to become Americans, and they advanced socially and economically by adopting English Protestant ways. American society reshaped the immigrants; they did not reshape America. Assimilation “enabled America to expand its population, occupy a continent, and develop its economy with millions of dedicated, energetic, ambitious, and talented people, who become overwhelmingly committed to America’s Anglo-Protestant culture …” (p. 183). Although he cites the recent book by Richard Alba and Victor Nee (2003), he paradoxically glosses over their conclusion, which is implied by its title, Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. The current scientific consensus is that assimilation is a two-way street, with immigrants changing societies even as they assimilate into them. Given the author’s idealized view of past immigrants, their contemporary successors are bound to suffer by comparison. According to Huntington, they possess many bad habits: they circulate instead of settle; they don’t necessarily naturalize and, when they do so, they retain their original citizenship as well; they speak and read in foreign languages; and they participate in politics at places of both origin and destination. Rather than being novel developments of the current age, however, all of these behaviors characterized immigrants during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The fact that return migration, mainly to Europe, ran at a third of the level of immigration to America early in the twentieth century, and reached levels well above 50 percent for most southern and eastern European nationalities (Hatton and Williamson 1998), does not deter him from quoting Oscar Handlin’s sentimental claim about immigrants being on the way toward becoming Americans even before they stepped off the boat (pp. 190–191). … In my view, Huntington’s diatribe on the challenges to America’s national identity represents deeply flawed scholarship. His theories are outdated, his facts often inaccurate, his characterization of current and past assimilation misleading, his conceptualization of culture archaic, and his line of reasoning as polemic and tortured as anything the deconstruction movement has ever produced. Although his contribution to scholarly understanding of immigrant assimilation may be slight, I worry that his contribution to public (mis)understanding of immigration will not be so small. The general public will not read this review or any of the scores of other critical reviews that have already appeared and will follow, and few will be asked to consider how misguided a book Who Are We? really is. But given the publicity surrounding it, I suspect that many readers will remember that a Harvard professor said that Latin American immigrants were a threat to

Impact of immigrants  51 U.S. national identity and that Mexicans, especially, were ruining the country. With this seed planted in the American mind, people will not ask what policies created such a large and disadvantaged population, or why socioeconomic mobility has become so difficult for anyone outside of the top fifth of the income distribution, or why public services of all sorts, but most particularly education, have deteriorated so appallingly. Instead they will ask politicians how they could have let such an undeserving lot of people into the country. The book lays the foundations for a politics of blaming immigration and immigrants.17 I deliberately quote Huntington and Massey at length because the issues they raise are at the very heart of much of the public (if not scholarly) debate about the cultural impact of immigrants. Their cultural impact has always been central to the discussion of immigration. Think of the Irish in Boston in the 1850s, the Chinese on the West Coast in the 1890s, the Jews in New York City in the early 1900s: the newest arrivals are usually not greeted with open arms but instead are received with scorn for how they are changing the existing culture. In Switzerland, likewise, the 1950s and 1960s were marked by hostility toward the cultural impact Italian guest workers were having (“They sing at the train stations” was a common complaint among the Swiss), a concern that is well captured by the 1973 Italian film Bread and Chocolate. As mentioned earlier, in a 1970 popular initiative Switzerland nearly approved kicking them out and this was driven by cultural, not economic, concerns. Over time, as the Italian guest workers were replaced by Spanish, Turkish, and Yugoslavian guest workers, concern over the Italians faded (to be replaced by concern over the newer arrivals). Similarly, Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka in the 1980s caused considerable comment among the Swiss but now are seen as exemplary in contrast to the more recently arrived Kosovo-Albanians. It will be interesting to revisit the Huntington and Massey pieces in 30 years and see how they fare. Of course, admitting immigrants not only has significant impacts on the receiving countries but on the sending countries as well. Such impacts range from exporting unemployment and relieving political pressures to importing new ideas and changing family structures. As we debate who to admit, should the impact our decision has on sending countries come into play, or should we focus narrowly on how such admissions affect us? To help answer this question, let’s consider two of the most-often discussed effects of admission policies on sending countries: remittances and brain drain.

Remittances Remittances are funds sent by migrants from one country to another, usually back to their home country. The total amount of remittances being sent around the world has nearly doubled in recent years, from $170 billion in 2002 to $318 billion in 2007, and this rise has to do not only with the rise in the number of migrants, but also with transaction costs for sending money home falling, wages among migrants rising, and researchers being able to track remittances more accurately. Remittances specifically being sent to poorer countries are hard to gauge. Recent estimates range from $240 billion (World Bank) to $300 billion (UN) per year, which is nearly three times the amount the world as a whole offers in foreign aid. The number is hard to capture because of the nature of the flow: while much of it goes through the formal channels of financial traders, some goes through informal channels such as unauthorized traders, some is carried back home on the body of the migrant, and some moves in the form of goods instead of cash. For many countries, remittances far exceed the combined amount of foreign aid and foreign direct investment they receive. In some poor countries, remittances are also often a significant

52  Immigrants

Plate 4.3  Fan (Niklaus Steiner)

part of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP); the World Bank reports that, for example, in Tajikistan, Moldova, Tonga, and Honduras remittances make up a quarter to a third of GDP. In absolute terms, not surprisingly, India, China, and Mexico are the top recipients of remittances (totaling about $75 billion) because of the huge number of migrants they send abroad. More surprising perhaps is that, after the Philippines (#4), come France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The remittances into these five wealthy countries (totaling over $40 billion) come mostly from other wealthy countries in Europe, and in contrast to poor countries, remittances are not a significant percentage of these receiving countries’ GDP.18 Typically, the vast majority of remittances being sent to poorer countries are spent on necessities such as food, clothing, education, housing and healthcare. Because they are sent directly from one individual to another, they are less prone to being stolen by a middleman or siphoned off by corruption, incompetence, or red tape. Also, because of the often tight personal connection between the sender and receiver, remittances are more predictable than foreign aid and investment, which can vary significantly as a result of policy changes or economic fluctuations. However, remittances are not immune to circumstances beyond the control of the migrant. For example, remittances from the United States to Latin America slowed in 2007 as the US economy weakened and as immigration controls and anti-foreigner sentiment rose. Mexico has been especially affected by this turn of events, because remittances have become the second-largest source of foreign income after oil. Governments in poorer countries have recently taken notice of the value of remittances, and are working to encourage them, especially by making it easier to invest them. Traditionally, remittances have not been much invested, in part because of pressing needs such as food and shelter, but also because weak financial institutions, unpredictable economies, lack of property rights, and corrupt government officials all tend to discourage investment. Experts note other limitations to the impact of remittances. For example, remittances do

Impact of immigrants  53

Plate 4.4  Money (Niklaus Steiner)

not help the world’s most needy, because the poorest of the poor are usually not able to afford to send a family member abroad. Remittances may also lead to dependency among family members in the sending country and discourage them from finding their own work. Remittances may also be used to fuel conflicts and civil wars such as those in Sri Lanka or Northern Ireland by providing rebels with resources. Finally, remittances can help prop up deeply flawed governments that, without such external financial support, may crumble from internal pressure. In assessing the impact of remittances on sending countries, Migration News concludes: Many studies show that remittances reduce poverty and have the potential to speed development. Some governments seem to believe that remittances are the key to development, but they are in fact like many other factors that can affect development. If a country is poised to develop, the discovery of natural resources, FDI [foreign direct investment], or remittances can speed growth. However, if a country is wracked by internal divisions or has poor institutions, these new sources of funds can instead lead to dependence, conflict and corruption.19 Similarly, Kathleen Newland of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington research group, argues that: “Remittances can’t solve structural problems. Remittances can’t compensate for corrupt governments, nepotism, incompetence or communal conflict. People have finally figured out that remittances are important, but they haven’t figured out what to do about it.”20

Brain drain and brain circulation As with remittances, the impact of people leaving their countries is much debated. Perhaps the picture is a bit clearer with regard to unskilled workers leaving, because such workers

54  Immigrants are often under- or unemployed at home, and by leaving, the sending country is essentially exporting its unemployment problem. Also, such workers may be mired in poverty and be frustrated by their lack of prospects, which can lead to political and social unrest. Governments of sending countries are, therefore, often relieved when such people migrate, because this migration acts as a safety valve for built-up tensions. But what about the impact of skilled workers leaving? The traditional view has been that the exodus of skilled workers is harmful to the sending country, and this harm is captured by the common phrase “brain drain.” As the term implies, the notion is that the sending country is harmed by having its well-trained skilled workers migrate to other countries. Under many circumstances, this migration is understandable: the salary in a receiving country is far higher than in the sending country, work conditions are much better, the government is less oppressive and corrupt, and the future of the migrants’ children is brighter. It is therefore not surprising that, according to the Global Commission on International Migration, there are more Malawian doctors practicing in Manchester, England than in the whole country of Malawi, and that only 50 of the 600 doctors trained since independence are still practicing in Zambia.21 Such workers move not only because circumstances at home push them out, but also because the demand for their labor in receiving countries pulls them in. The US, for example, expects a shortage of 1 million nurses by 2010, and importing them seems like the only viable short-term solution.22 And it is easy to import nurses from other countries; in the Philippines a nurse earns about $2,000 per year, while in the United States a nurse earns 20 times more. Furthermore, would-be doctors are finding it more profitable to become nurses in the United States rather than practice medicine at home. Interestingly, this nursing shortfall in the United States is not due to a lack of interest among Americans; according to the National League of Nursing, in 2005, United States nursing schools had to reject almost 150,000 qualified applications in large part because of the lack of professors to train them.23 Looking down the road, the obvious question is: should the United States invest more in training its own nurses or should it continue to import large numbers of nurses from abroad? The negative impact on the sending country seems apparent. Not only are these workers not in the country performing their valuable services, but the investment the country made in their education and training is lost as well. Dr Jaime Galvez Tan, a medical professor at the University of the Philippines and head of the country’s National Institutes of Health, believes the migration of nurses has a corrosive effect on the healthcare system of his country. “I plead for justice. There has to be give and take, not just take, take, take by the United States.”24 It appears, though, that in some cases, there is not a brain drain but rather a brain circulation. Popularized by AnnaLee Saxenian, brain circulation refers to migrants studying or working in another country where they acquire skills that they then use to help develop their home country. She argues that in the global economy of the twenty-first century, skilled migrants are increasingly no longer either in this country or in that country but are maintaining connections to both by moving back and forth and by building personal and professional networks. Drawing upon her research on the work force in Silicon Valley, Saxenian writes: The Silicon Valley experience underscores far-reaching transformations of the relationship between immigration, trade, and economic development in the 21st century. Where once the main economic ties between immigrants and their home countries were remittances sent to families left behind, today more and more skilled U.S. immigrants eventually return home. Those who remain in America often become part of transnational communities that link the United States to the economies of distant regions. These new immigrant entrepreneurs thus foster economic development directly, by creating

Impact of immigrants  55 new jobs and wealth, as well as indirectly, by coordinating the information flows and providing the linguistic and cultural know-how that promote trade and investment with their home countries. Analysts and policymakers must recognize this new reality. In the recent U.S. debate over making more H1-B visas available for highly skilled immigrants, discussion began – and ended – with the extent to which immigrants displace native workers. But these high-tech immigrants affect more than labor supply and wages. They also create new jobs here and new ties abroad. Some of their economic contributions, such as enhanced trade and investment flows, are difficult to quantify, but they must figure into our debates.25 Similarly, Joan Dassin of the Ford Foundation writes: Instead of lamenting the fact that foreign students are returning home rather than staying in the U.S., we should welcome the idea that economic growth in countries such as China and India is stimulating more opportunities for trained scientists and engineers in their home countries. Once they return home, these highly skilled workers contribute to national development, which in turn creates huge potential markets for the U.S. All countries can benefit from healthy “brain circulation” that allows technological innovations to compete in an open global marketplace of ideas. … Educated people should not become a commodity that only wealthy countries can attract and retain. On the contrary, skilled labour migration policies, in both source and destination countries, should encourage highly educated professionals to improve conditions in their home countries and communities. This is the best way to promote more equitable and sustainable global development.26 So in some cases, brain circulation is occurring, and the sending country benefits – Taiwan is often cited as an example of a country that has benefited from the significant number of skilled workers it has sent to the US. But in other cases, it is not (yet) happening – Malawi does not seem to have the capacity to attract back its doctors from Manchester. And in some cases, the brain drain vs. brain circulation debate remains inconclusive because of mixed results. The same conclusion, of course, can be drawn about the impact of remittances: in some cases it is positive, in some negative, and in some mixed. These various possible outcomes are illustrated in Table 4.1, which can help assess our immigration policies. If admitting immigrants affects the sending country positively both in terms of remittances and in terms of brain circulation (scenario 1) then it fits in the top right quadrant, in which case we can feel good about admitting immigrants from this country. We might, however, have qualms if admitting immigrants into our country hurts the sending country both in terms of the impact of remittances and the brain drain (scenario 2). And in between these two poles are seven other possible outcomes we might want to consider. Table 4.1  Impact on sending country Remittances Negative Brain circulation/ drain

Positive

Positive 1

Mixed Negative

Mixed

2

56  Immigrants

Conclusion Or does it matter? Some people may well argue that we need to have an admission policy based on how migration affects our country, regardless of how it affects other countries. This view may, however, be short-sighted, and it may instead be prudent to consider the effect our admission policy has on other countries, because that effect can directly lead to more (or fewer) migrants wanting to come into our country. After all, if our admission policy harms a sending country, then more people from that country will want to leave it, and, given our relative wealth, they may well come to us whether we want them or not. More broadly, an admission policy needs to be seen as an integral part of an overall development policy aimed at improving the situation in sending countries. As noted in the previous chapter, it is doubtful that we can unilaterally control the movement of people simply according to our wishes. Instead, this movement is significantly affected by the situation in the sending country, and if there is a desire to slow the movement of people out of a country then the situation there needs to improve so that people have reasons to stay. How to create such a stable and desirable environment is beyond the scope of this book, but it is worth stressing that as we struggle to deal with migration we need to take a holistic approach to this complex issue.

Suggested resources   1 Abraham, Spencer, Lee Hamilton, Doris M. Meissner, Migration Policy Institute, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Immigration and America’s Future: A New Chapter. Report of the Independent Task Force on Immigration and America’s Future. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2006.   2 Barry, Brian, and Robert E. Goodin, eds. Free Movement: Ethical Issues in the Transnational Migration of People and Money. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992.   3 Borjas, George J. “The New Economics of Immigration.” The Atlantic Monthly, November 1996, pp. 72–80.   4 Carens, Joseph H. “The Rights of Irregular Migrants.” Ethics and International Affairs, 22, 2 (2008), pp. 163–86.   5 Cuadros, Paul. A Home on the Field: How One Championship Team Inspires Hope for the Revival of Small Town America. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.   6 DeParle, Jason. “A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves.” New York Times Magazine, April 22, 2007.   7 The Guestworker, directed by Cynthia Hill and Charles D. Thompson, Jr. Durham, NC: Markay Media, 2006.   8 Howley, Kerry. “Guests in the Machine.” Reason, 39 (January 2008), pp. 20–33.   9 Huntington, Samuel P. “The Hispanic Challenge.” Foreign Policy, March/April 2004, pp. 30–45. 10 “Huntington and Hispanics.” Foreign Policy, May/June 2004, pp. 4, 6, 8, 10, 12–13, 84–91. 11 Lowenstein, Roger. “The Immigration Equation.” New York Times Magazine, July 9, 2006. 12 Massey, Douglas S. “Review of Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, by Samuel P. Huntington.” Population Development Review, 30, 3 (September 2004), pp. 543–8.

Section III

Refugees

5 Modern efforts to protect refugees

• • • • • • •

The origin and role of UNHCR Refugee definition and the principle of non-refoulement Refugee protection in the Cold War and beyond Asylum and its controversy Alternatives to asylum Refugee repatriation and resettlement “Others of concern”

Introduction We now turn to refugees, who, as mentioned in the first chapter, hold a special position when we consider who to admit. This position is a privileged one, based on the widely shared view that refugees have a stronger moral claim to admission than immigrants. This chapter explores modern efforts to protect refugees, beginning with the establishment of various international guidelines and organizations after World War II. It also discusses how refugee protection policies are often intertwined with foreign policy goals, which means that we are more generous in helping in some cases than in others. One way of protecting refugees is to grant them asylum, and this policy has been especially controversial in many OECD countries because of the issue of asylum abuse. The chapter also considers other ways to help refugees, such as resettling them in third countries, offering them temporary protection, and giving generous financial support to organizations that protect refugees. Finally, it discusses people who have been forced to flee but who fall outside of the commonly accepted definition of a refugee. In raising all these issues, this chapter seeks to explore the foundation of the well-intentioned goal of “helping refugees” so that the next chapter can then delve more into this goal’s complexities.

The origin and role of UNHCR In the aftermath of the mass murder, destruction, and displacement brought about by World War II, the newly formed United Nations created the International Refugee Organization in 1947 to deal with the over 20 million refugees displaced throughout Europe. At first, the effort focused on enabling refugees to return to their home countries, but as the Cold War set in, attention shifted to resettling refugees who did not want to return to their now-communist homelands in Eastern Europe.1 Another important step toward modern refugee protection was the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which seeks to protect citizens’ rights from being

60  Refugees violated by their governments. The Holocaust was a crucial catalyst for the establishment of this most important international human rights document and for linking it to refugee protection. As one author writes: A feeling of shame broadly affected the victors in the Second World War when they understood what the German government had done to the Jews and others marked out for death by the Third Reich’s racial policies. Staggering out of the death camps, secret attics and farm lofts, those who survived needed precisely the kind of help that refugees require. Indeed, many of them would have been refugees earlier had there been a way out and somewhere to go. There was neither.2 Because of such failure and because of the close connection between human rights and refugee protection, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights explicitly addresses asylum. It states in Article 14 that: “Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” Importantly, though, an early draft of this Article stated that everyone had a right to seek and to be granted asylum, but governments objected to this looser notion because they felt it infringed on their sovereignty, and so the wording was changed to give individuals only the right to seek and to enjoy asylum. In other words, refugees have no legal right to receive asylum, and governments are under no legal obligation to grant asylum. Similarly, Article 13 of the Declaration states that: “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country” but there is no corresponding right to enter another country. In 1951, the United Nations replaced the International Refugee Organization with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which is both a person and an office. It was established by the UN to be a non-political agency whose primary mandate is to protect refugees from persecution. From the beginning, however, it became clear that UNHCR’s action would be politically charged because of the politicized nature of refugee protection. After all, as this chapter will explore, to protect a refugee is to critique explicitly the country from where the refugee has fled. Gil Loescher, the world’s foremost expert on UNHCR, writes that UNHCR was created not only out of altruism but also out of governments’ interests in promoting regional and international stability, which is easily upset by large refugee flows. “UNHCR often walks a tightrope,” he writes, “maintaining a perilous balance between the protection of refugees and the sovereign prerogatives and interests of states. One cannot fully understand UNHCR without placing it within the context of world politics.”3 To date, the most concerted international effort to aid refugees has been UNHCR’s 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. As of 2008, 147 countries were party to the 1951 Convention and/or its 1967 Protocol (Table 5.1).

Refugee definition and the principle of non-refoulement This 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol make two of the most important contributions to refugee protection: the definition of a refugee and the principle of non-refoulement. The original UNHCR definition of a refugee established by the 1951 Convention was limited to European refugees who had fled their countries before January 1, 1951. Over the next two decades, however, as refugee crises emerged in other parts of the world, UNHCR broadened its definition with the 1967 Protocol, removing this geographical limitation.4 It now defines a refugee as any person who

Table 5.1  States party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and/or the 1967 Protocol as of 2008 Afghanistan Albania Algeria Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan

Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic

Bahamas Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi

Fiji Finland France

Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Congo Costa Rica Côte d’Ivoire Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic

Haiti Holy See Honduras Hungary

Democratic Rep. of the Congo Denmark

Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Estonia Ethiopia

Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau

Iceland Iran (Islamic Republic of) Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Kazakhstan Kenya Korea (Republic of) Kyrgyzstan

Latvia Lesotho Liberia Lichtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macedonia (former Yugoslav Republic of) Madagascar Malawi Mali Malta Mauritania Mexico Moldova Monaco Montenegro Morocco Mozambique Namibia Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Norway Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Samoa Sao Tome and Principe Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa Spain Sudan Suriname Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Tajikistan Tanzania (United Republic of) Timor-Leste Togo Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Kingdom United States of America Uruguay Venezuela Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe

62  Refugees owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence … is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it. The next chapter will focus particular attention on the adequacies and limitations of this definition. For now, it is important to note that this definition is widely considered to be the gold standard, and that countries all over the world accept it (or some variation of it) in their own national laws and policies. For example, the United States in defining a refugee borrows heavily from this UNHCR definition, but note that domestic politics also play an important role, especially in (B). The US definition of a refugee is: (A) any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, or (B) in such circumstances as the President after appropriate consultation (as defined in section 207(e) of this Act) may specify, any person who is within the country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, within the country in which such person is habitually residing, and who is persecuted or who has a wellfounded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. The term “refugee” does not include any person who ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. For purposes of determinations under this Act, a person who has been forced to abort a pregnancy or to undergo involuntary sterilization, or who has been persecuted for failure or refusal to undergo such a procedure or for other resistance to a coercive population control program, shall be deemed to have been persecuted on account of political opinion, and a person who has a well founded fear that he or she will be forced to undergo such a procedure or subject to persecution for such failure, refusal, or resistance shall be deemed to have a well founded fear of persecution on account of political opinion. 5 To be precise about the matter of definitions, it’s worth mentioning that the United States makes a distinction between refugees and asylees. Refugees are people outside of the United States who are found to meet its definition and are therefore granted refugee status and admitted into the country through resettlement programs. Asylees are those already in the United States or at ports of entry who meet the definition of “refugee” and are therefore granted asylum. The other crucial international refugee standard is the UNHCR’s principle of non-refoulement. Article 33 of the 1951 Convention states that: No Contracting State shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on

Modern efforts to protect refugees  63 account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. This principle of non-refoulement has been important in protecting refugees from being deported by OECD countries who have in the last two decades drawn up increasingly restrictive policies. While countries have been denying asylum claims at high rates, they have often hesitated to deport failed applicants for fear of running afoul of this principle. As we’ll see later, countries’ unwillingness to grant asylum but their respect for non-refoulement leads to problems. Finally, it is important to note that UNHCR declares that neither the principle of non-refoulement nor the definition need apply if an individual is perceived to be a threat to the host country.6

Refugee protection in the Cold War and beyond Between the formation of UNHCR in 1951 and the collapse of communism in Europe and the Soviet Union four decades later, refugee protection was heavily influenced by the Cold War context. In fact, the very definition of a refugee put forth by UNHCR was considered by the Soviet Union to be too much influenced by the Western powers so it refused to sign the 1951 Convention, preferring its own definition, by which it granted asylum to “foreign citizens persecuted for defending the interests of the working people, or for their scientific activities, or for their struggle for national liberation.”7 Indeed, the Cold War played a major role in how the Western powers treated refugees. Even when their numbers rose significantly after the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968, the West readily accepted 200,000 Hungarians and 80,000 Czechoslovakians.8 Granting asylum to such refugees was to no small degree useful anticommunist propaganda. After all, accepting refugees from a country is an explicit critique of that government’s treatment of its own citizens, and the United States and its Western allies were quick to exploit opportunities to level charges of illegitimacy at communist countries. Refugees fleeing communism in Eastern Europe also benefited greatly from the fact that they tended to be well-educated and culturally relatively similar to Western Europeans, so that their economic and social integration caused no great strains. The integration of refugees from communist countries was not, however, always easy, as with the nearly 500,000 Indochinese who fled Southeast Asia between 1975 and 1980 after the end of the Vietnam War. Even in this case, the West accepted them because of national interests. However, we should remember that “national interests” are subjective and prone to different interpretations. For example, Britain under a Conservative government accepted virtually no refugees who fled Chile in the aftermath of the 1973 military coup led by General Pinochet that overthrew the democratically elected but openly Marxist President Allende. When a Labour government was in power in Britain between 1974 and1979, it accepted 3,000 Chilean refugees in an organized program. Within six months of the Conservative government coming back into power in 1979, this program was shut down again. The US government, under President Reagan, also had a bias in its refugee policy toward Nicaraguans (generous) and El Salvadorans (restrictive) based on his opinion of their governments: Nicaraguan (unfavorable) and El Salvadoran (favorable). Among the clearest examples of Cold War bias in refugee policy is that of the US toward Cubans. In 1966, the US passed the Cuba Adjustment Act, which assumed anyone leaving Cuba was a refugee fleeing the government of Fidel Castro and therefore was automatically eligible for asylum. This policy was severely tested when 125,000 Cubans left Cuba in boats

64  Refugees heading toward Florida in summer 1980. Known as the Mariel Boatlift, this sudden and massive influx of people posed significant logistical challenges to south Florida and to the Coast Guard, who picked up many of them from the high seas. With reference to our earlier discussion of the economic effects of newly arrived migrants, according to one often-cited study the Mariel Boatlift had virtually no effect on depressing wages among workers despite increasing the labor pool by 7 percent in Miami.9 Still today, the United States grants asylum to anyone who flees Cuba and manages to arrive on US soil, although in 1994 an important change was made so that Cubans intercepted by the US Coast Guard on the high seas are now returned to Cuba. As with the Mariel Boatlift, the West’s anti-communist foreign policy has led some people to receive asylum who may not really have faced persecution at home. It has, at the same time, also excluded some who did need protection: people from Haiti seeking asylum in the United States illustrate this exclusion. Repeatedly over the last 20 years, the US has returned not only Haitians intercepted on the high seas but those who managed to reach Florida. Granted, it is difficult to establish how many of these Haitians were genuine refugees facing persecution at home and how many were simply looking for a better life, but it is surely hard to imagine that Cubans heading out on boats are so overwhelmingly more persecuted than Haitians who have suffered dictatorships, chaos, and civil war for decades. Increasingly since the 1970s, important refugee flows were taking place outside of the Cold War context, especially with regard to asylum-seekers reaching the West. By 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and communism began collapsing in Eastern Europe, only a small percentage of asylum-seekers in the West came from communist countries. Rather, asylumseekers from places like Sri Lanka and Turkey were arriving to escape government oppression, Iranians were fleeing the Islamic revolution, and Lebanese were seeking refuge from civil war. In all of these cases, the absence of the communist element made it more difficult for policy makers to stake out a “national interest.” For example, Turkey is an important military ally of Germany because they are both members of NATO, so how should Germany have handled the 350,000 asylum-seekers from Turkey in the 1980s without embarrassing its ally?10 The Iranian case was easier, because the Shah, who was overthrown as the ruler of Iran in the 1979 revolution, had been a staunch ally of the West while the Khomeini regime was openly hostile to it and so could fairly easily be labeled as “bad” by the West. But what about Lebanon, where “good” and “bad” guys were much harder to find? And are the Tamils who have been fighting for independence for over two decades “terrorists,” as the Sri Lankan government claims, or “freedom fighters,” as they claim? Though the end of the Cold War was initially greeted with euphoria, accompanied by the belief that this would bring greater stability to the world, the 1990s in fact brought a dramatic increase in refugee flows. Calamities such as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the breakup of the former Yugoslavia from 1991–5 brought a great deal of attention to the millions of refugees displaced by these two conflicts alone. Less publicized but still dramatic refugee flows were also spawned by civil unrest in countries like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Somalia, Eritrea, Burundi, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Burma. And the ongoing tragedy in Darfur has displaced 2 million people since 2003. To give an overview of the current global refugee situation, Figure 5.1 shows the countries that have produced the most refugees in recent years, while Figure 5.2 shows the countries that have taken in the most refugees. One of the world’s few remaining communist countries is North Korea, which is posing a vexing refugee problem for China, another communist holdout. Escaping North Korea by crossing into South Korea is virtually impossible because of the heavily militarized border

5,000

4,500

4,000

3,500

3,000

2,500

2,000

1,500

1,000

500

0 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Afghanistan

Iraq

Somalia

Sudan

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Burundi

Vietnam

Liberia

Rwanda

Angola

Figure 5.1  Refugee population by country of origin (in thousands) (1992–2007)

Source: UNHCR Statistical Yearbook 2001, pp. 89–90; 2005, pp. 121–2; 2006, Table 4; 2007, Table 2.

4,500

4,000

3,500

3,000

2,500

2,000

1,500

1,000

500

0 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Iran

Pakistan

Germany

Tanzania

United States

Democratic Republic of Congo

Former Yugoslavia /Serbia & Montenegro

Sudan

Guinea

China

Figure 5.2  Refugee population by country of asylum (in thousands) (1992–2007)

Source: UNHCR Statistical Yearbook 2001, pp. 85–7; 2005, pp. 116–19; 2006, Table 3; 2007, Table 1.

66  Refugees between the two archenemies. However, the border between North Korea and China is relatively porous, and North Koreans have been using this route to escape their country. Exact figures for how many North Koreans are in China are hard to come by, but estimates range from 30,000 to 300,000.11 China is unsure how to proceed: it feels some obligation to stand by its communist ally and return these refugees, but it is also under great pressure from the West to keep them or, better yet, pass them along to a third country. The US also faces a potentially awkward situation with regard to refugees fleeing Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003. Do we have an especially strong obligation to let them in? Michael Walzer, who believes that refugees make the most forceful claim to admission, argues that toward some refugees, we may well have obligations of the same sort that we have toward fellow nationals. He writes “This is obviously the case with regard to any group of people whom we have helped turn into refugees. The injury we have done them makes for an affinity between us.” He specifically cites the example of refugees fleeing the Vietnam War.12 We must ask ourselves whether Iraqi refugees now have a special claim to be admitted into the United States, given that millions have fled the country since the US-led war begun in 2003. John Bolton, who held various senior foreign policy positions in the Bush administration, rejects this argument, explaining that: “Our obligation was to give them new institutions and provide security. We have fulfilled that obligation. I don’t think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war.”13 As is evident from Figure 5.3, the Bush administration agreed with him, as the number of Iraqi refugees admitted into our country is dwarfed by the total number of Iraqi refugees. This failure to offer them protection has left other countries overly burdened; in 2006, for example, the neighboring countries of Jordan and Syria together took in 1.2 million, while the United States took in fewer than 20,000.14

Asylum and its controversy To understand the asylum controversy in OECD countries, it is important to understand the formal difference between refugees and asylum-seekers. Refugees have convinced host countries that they meet their definition of a refugee and are therefore eligible for asylum. Asylumseekers are in the process of trying to convince countries that they are refugees. As we’ll see, the terms used in the asylum debates are extremely important and are twisted for political purposes by all sides. And the media are often careless about their word choices so that “refugees,” “migrants,” “asylum-seekers,” and “illegal immigrants” are used interchangeably, which confuses matters even further. The granting of asylum OECD countries all have slightly different processes for determining whether an asylumseeker ought to receive asylum, but the principle is fairly consistent: an asylum-seeker applies for asylum and the case is reviewed by a government official who then decides whether asylum should be granted or not. The official looks especially for inconsistencies in an asylum-seeker’s story that might reveal that it is fabricated or at least exaggerated.15 If asylum is granted, the individual is allowed to remain in the country and is commonly put on the road to citizenship. If asylum is rejected, there is usually an appeals process, but the chances of successfully appealing the decision are small. When a final rejection is made, the asylum-seeker faces deportation. As is so often the case in politics, however, what appears clear on paper is not so simple in practice. In the case of asylum, the influence of the principle of non-refoulement is a good

Modern efforts to protect refugees  67 2,500,000

2,000,000

1,500,000

Total Iraqi refugees in existence Total Iraqi refugees in U.S.

1,000,000

500,000

0

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007*

Figure 5.3  Iraqi refugees in existence vs. Iraqi refugees in United States (2001–2007) Note: The UNHCR Statistical Yearbooks list data for “Refugee population by origin and country of asylum” if the number of refugees was 5,000 or more in at least one year. The 2007 Yearbook doesn’t include data for the “total Iraqi refugees in the U.S.” because that number was under 5,000. Source: UNHCR Statistical Yearbook: 2005, pp. 121–4; 2006, Tables 2 and 5; 2007, Table 5.

example of how a policy can get cloudy. Because of this important international standard, governments are hesitant to deport rejected asylum-seekers back into dangerous situations for fear of violating it. Instead, rejected asylum-seekers are often allowed to remain in the country but without the full status and rights given to those who receive asylum. Such a policy reveals a great inconsistency and is therefore controversial: critics argue that either the government should declare asylum-seekers in danger at home and thus grant asylum or declare the situation at home to be safe and return them. Instead, governments sometimes take the untenable position that asylum-seekers are in too much danger to be sent home but not in enough danger to be granted asylum. In a government’s asylum process, UNHCR plays an advisory role, but it has no direct authority over the decision. It describes its role as follows: Governments establish status determination procedures to decide a person’s legal standing and rights in accordance with their own legal systems. UNHCR may offer advice as part of its mandate to promote refugee law, protect refugees and supervise the implementation of the 1951 Refugee Convention. The agency advocates that governments adopt a rapid, flexible and liberal process, recognizing how difficult it often is to document persecution.16

68  Refugees Controversy over asylum As discussed above, the number of asylum-seekers in the West began to rise sharply in the 1980s. These asylum-seekers were increasingly non-Europeans, and they tended to be less well educated than those who had come previously. These changes began to bring controversy over whether to grant them asylum. On the one hand, Western governments began charging that their asylum policies were being abused by people who were not genuine refugees but were in fact simply seeking a better life, which while understandable is not grounds for asylum. On the other hand, critics charged that governments were increasingly shirking their responsibilities toward the principle of asylum, and that xenophobia was driving this new, restrictive approach to asylum. This controversy has been especially roiling in those countries that do not consider themselves traditional countries of immigration. Unlike the United States, Canada, and Australia, which have long been destinations for foreigners, most European countries have a long tradition of people emigrating not immigrating, do not see themselves (and do not want to be seen) as countries of destination, and therefore have essentially no immigration policy. Precisely because there is no general immigration policy, the asylum process has become a roundabout form of immigration, and some asylum-seekers do indeed misuse it for that purpose. The extent to which it is being used as a form of immigration is central to the controversy over asylum. On the government side, the perspective is generally that the asylum process is heavily abused by those who are not really refugees but rather immigrants, and who, if an immigration policy existed, would come through that process. Because of this perspective, these governments have been rejecting the vast majority of asylum-seekers. On the other side, critics of these increasingly restrictive government policies acknowledge abuse of the asylum process but argue that governments exaggerate the amount of abuse in order to impose policies that negatively affect genuine refugees. Note that I am deliberately using the term “critics” and am avoiding the term “refugee advocates,” because, as we’ll see in greater detail in the next chapter, both sides in fact claim to be “refugee advocates” and argue that their position best helps protect refugees. Government efforts to streamline the asylum process and fight abuse The asylum process can take months or even years, which raises the question of what to do with the asylum-seekers as they await their decisions. One policy has been to allow them to work while they await their decision, with the justification that this policy allows asylumseekers to help support themselves and relieves the government of some of the welfare costs. Critics of this policy, however, charge that such a policy encourages abuse of the asylum process, because it gives asylum-seekers temporary access to the labor market and allows them to earn more money in a few months than in several years at home. In other words, critics argue that a Kurd, for example, comes to Austria to lodge an asylum claim knowing full well that he’ll be rejected because he was not really persecuted at home, but while that decision is being made, he’ll earn money and then be deported with far more than he came with. In response to such criticism, governments have also tried to withhold work permits from asylum-seekers during the process. This policy, however, leaves them with little to do, which in turn fuels charges among citizens that asylum-seekers are lazy, unproductive, and usurping public services. A similar catch-22 arises with regard to housing and public assistance: if the housing of asylum-seekers is too nice and assistance too generous, critics argue that this encourages abuse and fuels resentment among citizens, but if these services are too

Modern efforts to protect refugees  69

Plate 5.1  Kids (Thomas Cluderay)

stingy, other critics argue that they are inhumane and a violation of human rights and dignity. Another difficult issue raised by the long process is the need to integrate the children of asylum-seekers into the educational system, which raises problems of language and cultural barriers. And further disruptions occur if the asylum decision is negative and the child must withdraw from school and be sent home with the family. Because of all these problems, shortening the time it takes to decide an asylum case has been a major goal of governments. To streamline the asylum process and to fight abuse further, governments use safe country and safe third country rules. The idea is that a government declares a certain country to be free of persecution, and anyone applying from that country is rejected out of hand. Britain, for example, declared in its 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act the following countries to be safe: Albania, Jamaica, Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia and Montenegro, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, South Africa, Ukraine, and India.17 Similarly, a government declares a country through which an asylum-seeker came to be a safe third country and deports the asylum-seeker back to that country with the argument that the asylum-seeker could have applied for asylum there. For example, if an Algerian reaches Switzerland by traveling through Italy, the Swiss government may say this Algerian should have applied for asylum in Italy. A final effort to streamline the asylum process in European countries has been to harmonize their asylum policies. Here the idea is that all countries adopt the same standards and share information about asylum-seekers, so that if an asylum-seeker is rejected in one country he will be rejected by all countries. Such harmonization is intended to discourage what is sometimes called “asylum shopping,” whereby an asylum-seeker asks for asylum in one

70  Refugees country after being rejected in another and repeats this process with the hope of eventually getting it somewhere. While these policies may well be sensible in principle, critics charge that in practice, such policies are fraught with pitfalls. Shortening the length of time to make an asylum decision, for example, may mean a rush to judgment and an inability to thoroughly investigate each case. Likewise, declaring a country free from persecution might be done over-zealously by government officials more eager to reduce their case-load than fairly consider an asylumseeker’s claim. Critics argue that at least external parties such as UNHCR, the Red Cross, Amnesty International, or Human Rights Watch should be involved in deciding which countries are safe. The safe third country principle runs the risk of being an obfuscating trail back to danger. It may indeed be reasonable to send a Pakistani asylum-seeker who entered Switzerland through Austria back to Austria to apply for asylum there. But if he did not fly straight from Karachi to Vienna but instead came overland through Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Iran, which of these third countries is safe enough to guarantee a fair asylum process? Another way governments have been trying to discourage asylum abuse is with carrier sanctions, which first arose in Europe and North America in the 1980s. Through these measures, governments punish with fines carriers such as airlines and shipping companies for bringing into a country someone who does not have proper documentation (e.g. without a passport or holding a false visa). The intent is that rather than having to deal with such passengers upon arrival, governments shift the work to employees of the carrier at the point of departure. Many employees and their companies complain that their job is to move people and that immigration issues need to be handled by government officials who are better trained and have the resources to do so.

Alternatives to asylum Sometimes, a country is unwilling or unable to offer asylum to refugees. This may occur because the country does not have the will or the resources to accept them on a permanent basis, which is what asylum implies. Countries therefore offer other types of assistance, some of which may raise questions about motives and effectiveness. Temporary protection and repatriation Part of governments’ reluctance to grant asylum generously is the fact that receiving asylum allows refugees to remain permanently in the country and puts them on the road to citizenship. Therefore, governments have introduced temporary protective measures that expire once the situation in the sending country is no longer threatening. UNHCR explains that countries sometimes offer “temporary protection” when they face a sudden mass influx of people. Germany, for example, adopted this policy to deal with the large number of people fleeing the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s because its regular asylum system would have been overwhelmed. In such unusual circumstances, fleeing people are admitted, but without any guarantee of permanent asylum. This type of protection can work to the advantage of both governments and asylum-seekers in specific circumstances, but UNHCR warns that it only complements, and does not substitute for, full, long-term protection as offered by the 1951 Convention.18 Once a government thinks the situation has stabilized in the country of conflict, it will lift temporary protection and seek to repatriate those it had been protecting. Such repatriation

Modern efforts to protect refugees  71 can be voluntary, and many European countries took this approach to the large number of refugees they were protecting during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. This war began in the early 1990s, and by the time the conflict came to an end in 1995 with the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords about 2 million people were displaced within the former Yugoslavia and about 700,000 were elsewhere in Europe, half of them in Germany.19 The Dayton Peace Accords made it a high priority for refugees to be able to return to their homes voluntarily and in circumstances of safety and dignity. Hosting countries were eager to see this happen and wanted to lift the temporary protection they had been offering these refugees. To encourage voluntary repatriation, Germany, for example, offered financial assistance to cover travel costs and an allowance of several hundred dollars per family.20 The major challenge was to return people to places where they would be minorities, and initially there was virtually no success in this effort. After all, the bloodshed in the country had largely revolved around disputes among ethnic groups who remained extremely suspicious of each other, and minorities continued to feel vulnerable. Also, housing was a major problem as the homes of returning refugees were often either destroyed or occupied by others. It was only by the year 2000, which brought changes in political leadership and improvements in the economic and legal systems, that substantial numbers of minorities began returning, especially to Bosnia, which had been particularly hard hit by the conflict. Repatriation has at times also been forced when host countries are more concerned about their own situation than the situation in the country where the refugees came from. For example, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda displaced roughly 3.5 million people, and about 600,000 of them fled to neighboring Tanzania. Because of other conflicts in the region, Tanzania, which was a relatively stable country in this turbulent region, subsequently harbored another 500,000 refugees escaping Burundi and Zaire. By December 1996, Tanzania felt overwhelmed and ordered all Rwandan refugees to return home by December 31. This news shocked the refugees, who did not want to return. Despite the involuntary nature of this repatriation, UNHCR actually provided both financial and logistical support to the Tanzanian government for carrying it out. The Tanzanian government’s decision significantly reflected its own security concerns, because among these refugees were supporters of the old Rwanda government that had been overthrown after the genocide ended in July 1994. The new Rwandan government feared that such refugees were planning to retake power, so it demanded that Tanzania expel them and threatened Tanzania if it didn’t do so. Political scientist Beth Whitaker thinks Tanzania had good reason to take this threat seriously, and in the end its political and security considerations outweighed its protection priorities with respect to the Rwandan refugees.21 In this conflict between Rwanda and Tanzania over refugees there was the added ethical twist that among these refugees were génocidaires who had perpetrated the genocide in Rwanda. Government ministers in Tanzania and UNHCR officials knew they were protecting mass murderers, but had little way of identifying them and separating them out from the other refugees. And even if such identification could have taken place, should Tanzania have handed them over to Rwanda to almost certain death? Or put them on trial in Tanzania and absorb the cost of that whole process? This Tanzanian case of forced repatriation of Rwandan refugees is hardly unique and reflects an increasingly complex global refugee picture in which displaced people are sometimes not innocent victims but perpetrators of violence. In this environment, refugee protection must confront the fact that sometimes the best option is only the least-worst one.

72  Refugees

Plate 5.2  Coat (Andrea Lu)

Financial support A final approach to protecting refugees, best typified by Japan, is essentially not to grant asylum but rather to offer generous financial support to help refugees abroad. Japan, which did not sign the 1951 Convention until 1981, granted asylum to a mere handful of refugees each year for much of the 1980s and 1990s. Instead of protecting refugees in Japan, the government prefers to offer support through financial contributions to international refugee organizations like UNHCR and through the development assistance of its own agencies such as the Japan International Cooperation Agency. While Japan is one of the largest donors to UNHCR, it faces criticism that its contributions should be even higher, given the contributions of much smaller countries like Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark. Critics also charge that Japan is supporting refugee protection through financial contributions rather than asylum as a way of avoiding accepting foreigners into its country. The Japanese approach raises one of the central questions of this book – how best to protect refugees? It is, of course, not an either/or matter of giving financial assistance or granting asylum, and some countries do both generously. However, given a world of limited resources, we do need to compare the costs and benefits of protecting refugees in our own country versus protecting them abroad.

Modern efforts to protect refugees  73

Refugee repatriation and resettlement So far this chapter has largely focused on protecting refugees once they have arrived in a wealthy country and asked for asylum. It is important to realize, however, that many millions of people in need of protection do not have the means to travel long distances to seek asylum in an OECD country. Most of the world’s refugees remain in their region of dislocation, where they are often harbored in massive refugee camps that are squalid and dangerous. There is a broad international consensus, shared by UNHCR, that the best long-term solution for most refugees in such camps is to be able to safely return home (i.e. “voluntary repatriation”). Unfortunately, there are many cases where safe repatriation is not possible, because the individual would soon be harmed upon returning home. In other cases, it might be safe for a refugee to return home, but it is not clear how to gauge this safety ahead of time. If we are to help refugees through repatriation, then we need assurance ahead of time that they will be safe upon return, but who is going to give us this assurance? The home government might not be trustworthy when it assures refugees that they can now return safely. In the crisis in Darfur, for example, we should to be extremely cautious about asking the 200,000 refugees in camps across the border in Chad to return home; they will rightly be wary of the Sudanese government’s claim that the Janjawi militia who have been responsible for much of the genocide are no longer a threat to them. So, whose judgment can we trust? It is tempting to look to UNHCR to make the determination of whether repatriating refugees can be safely accomplished in a given situation. However, as we saw earlier with the Rwandans in Tanzania, UNHCR is not always going to act solely in the interest of the refugees. And in some circumstances, neither returning home nor remaining in the camps is feasible. In such cases, efforts are made to resettle refugees to a third country. Some of these resettlement countries establish annual quotas for how many such refugees they will accept, while others resettle them on a case-by-case basis. UNHCR argues that governments often establish resettlement quotas in response to domestic interest groups who lobby for specific nationalities, and that in general, most resettlement countries prefer educated refugees with strong family and cultural links, an intact family structure, and a high likelihood of rapid integration. 22 UNHCR also reveals how the global war on terror and tightened immigration policies have hindered resettlement programs, especially in the United States.23 As shown in Figure 5.4, the resettlement policy of the United States, which is set annually by the president in consultation with Congress, has indeed been affected by its war on terrorism. While the annual quota had remained steady at 70,000, the number of refugees approved for resettlement dropped considerably in the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The government explains that the historically low level of arrivals occurred primarily because security concerns precluded refugee processing at a number of overseas locations, and new security requirements delayed the travel of already approved refugee applicants.24

“Others of concern” As we’ll discuss in greater detail in the next chapter, an important characteristic of refugee protection is the fact that there are millions of people who have been forced to flee their homes but who do not formally fall within the 1951 UNHCR Convention’s definition of a refugee. Among the two most important groups that fall outside of this definition are those displaced people who have not crossed an international border and those who are not fleeing individualized persecution but, rather, more generalized violence. As Figure 5.5 shows, the number of people who fall outside the formal definition of a refugee or an asylum-seeker is quite significant.

74  Refugees 100,000 90,000 80,000 70,000 60,000 50,000

Authorized admissions

40,000

Actual approvals

30,000 20,000 10,000 0

1998

2000

2002

2004

2006

Figure 5.4  Refugees in the United States: authorized admissions vs. actual approvals 1998–2007 Note: * 2007 estimate by U.S. Department of State. Source: U.S. Department of State. “Proposed Refugee Admissions” for fiscal years 2002–6 and 2008.

People who have been forced to flee but remain within their own countries are called Internally Displaced People (IDPs). Unlike with refugees, UNHCR does not have a specific mandate to help IDPs, nor is there any other international agency established specifically to do so. At best, multiple agencies (for example, the Red Cross, the UN World Food Programme, Doctors without Borders) try to alleviate their suffering. Primary responsibility to assist IDPs rests with the government of the country in which they are, but often governments are unable or unwilling to offer assistance. Even worse, governments sometimes block international agencies from helping; in Sudan, for example, the government is making it difficult for aid to reach the estimated 5.4 million IDPs because of its concern about foreign intervention in how it is handling its internal affairs. Worldwide, there are currently about 25 million IDPs, which is actually twice the number of refugees as defined by UNHCR; Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Sudan, Turkey, and Uganda all have over 1 million IDPs each.25 To address the 1951 Convention’s limitation regarding people fleeing generalized violence, two regional organizations have offered expanded definitions to cover such people. In 1969, the Organization of African Unity expanded the definition of refugee to cover “every person who, owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his country of origin or nationality, is compelled to leave his place of habitual residence in order to seek refuge in another place outside his country of origin or nationality.” Similarly, in response to the civil wars and refugee crisis in Central America, the 1984 Cartagena Declaration broadened the refugee definition to include anyone who has fled their country because of “generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order.”

Modern efforts to protect refugees  75

Figure 5.5  Refugees, asylum-seekers, and total population of concern to UNHCR* (1997–2007) Note: * total population of concern includes not only refugees and asylum-seekers but also internally displaced peoples (IDPs), returned refugees, stateless people, and others of concern. Hence, in the graph, “Total” is larger than the sum of “Refugees” and “Asylum-seekers.” Source: UNHCR Statistical Yearbook 2006, Table 21; 2007, Table 20.

The significance of these broadened definitions is that African and Latin American countries often forgo making individualized determinations and instead protect wholesale large refugee flows. This practice is in sharp contrast to wealthier countries, who, as discussed earlier, insist on looking at each case individually, rarely offering such sweeping protection and then only on a temporary basis. It seems ironic that it is poorer countries that have taken the lead in developing a more generous definition of refugees and expanding their protection (and perception) of refugees in a way that wealthier countries have not done. This discrepancy between what poorer and wealthier countries are doing to host refugees is illustrated in Table 5.2. This chart ranks the top 20 countries by the ratio of how many refugees each one hosts to the country’s per capita GDP. Since none of the OECD countries breaks into the top 20, the second part of the table also shows how the top 10 OECD countries fare in this comparison. The table effectively shows that poorer countries are carrying a much heavier burden than wealthier ones.

Conclusion Most of the world’s displaced people will never be granted asylum or be chosen for resettlement. Instead they remain uprooted in or near the region from which they’ve been dislocated, often languishing for years in camps. Their fate is wrapped up in a nearly overwhelming web of ethnic conflict, corruption, economic mismanagement, environmental degradation, political repression, and cultural suppression. Even if we could grant asylum or resettle all of these people, the refugee issue would not be solved, because the underlying problems will

76  Refugees Table 5.2  Top refugee-hosting countries ranked by ratio of refugees to per capita GDP (2002–2006)   1. Tanzania   2. Pakistan   3. Democratic Republic of the Congo   4. Kenya   5. Zambia   6. Uganda   7. Iran   8. Chad   9. Ethiopia 10. Yemen 11. Sudan 12. Nepal 13. Sierra Leone 14. Congo 15. Guinea

16. Burundi 17. Liberia 18. India 19. Armenia 20. China 25. Germany* 35. United States* 39. United Kingdom* 46. France* 49. Canada* 52. Netherlands* 54. Sweden* 59. Australia* 63. Denmark* 68. Switzerland*

Note: * OECD countries Source: UNHCR Statistical Yearbook 2006, Table 17.

continue to uproot people. The only real long-term solution is to address the root causes creating the conflicts that in turn send people into flight. Given that wealthy countries are increasingly alarmed by dislocated people seeking entry into their countries, one option would be for them to do more to address the root causes of this dislocation. It would be overstating the case to say that granting asylum or resettling refugees is just a band-aid solution, but these measures only address the symptoms and do little to address the causes of dislocation. Despite the relatively small numbers of refugees in wealthy countries, such countries often complain that they are suffering from compassion fatigue, a term that conveys the notion that we have done so much and now need a break. There are also calls for increased burdensharing, another common term that refers to the fact that some countries are doing much more than others to help the situation. While it is true that some wealthy countries do more than others, Table 5.2 shows that the real burden is carried by poor countries, who are illequipped to carry it. They are the ones who disproportionately deal with those left behind and often have neither the resources nor the will to care for them properly. So, for all the complaining heard from wealthy countries and all the headlines in their tabloids (the Express [London] screamed on November 7, 2001: “Refugees Are Flooding into UK ‘Like Ants’”), they are in fact getting off relatively easily. This is not to say that it is simple for wealthy countries to decide how best to help refugees, because setting policy can lead in counterintuitive directions. This complexity is the topic of the next chapter.

6 Problems of protection

• • • • •

Perceived shortcomings of the definition of a “refugee” Expanding the definition What is “persecution”? Universality vs. cultural relativism Parliamentarians debate asylum

Introduction As we saw in the previous chapter, “protecting refugees” is an important part of international politics. UNHCR is the main international organization that works to protect refugees, and it spells out what it expects of countries in its 1951 Convention. This chapter examines these expectations more closely and considers the controversy over whether countries are meeting them. This controversy has been especially heated with regard to the granting of asylum by OECD countries, and so this chapter tends to focus on that aspect of refugee protection. Let’s begin exploring the controversial aspects of asylum by looking again at UNHCR’s widely recognized definition of a “refugee,” which is laid out in Article 1 of the 1951 Convention. It defines a refugee as any person who: owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

Perceived shortcomings of the definition of a “refugee” At first glance, this UNHCR definition appears to be fairly straightforward, and you can perhaps imagine yourself making a determination about whether to grant asylum based on it. Upon closer examination, however, this definition is open to interpretation in several key respects, and this is where the controversy lies. Well-founded fear In order to be granted asylum as a refugee, an individual must demonstrate a “well-founded fear” of being persecuted. However, you’ll notice that the definition does not explain what

78  Refugees exactly constitutes such fear. Given that fear is an emotion and hard to measure, there is an inherent problem in determining whether someone’s fear of persecution is great enough to warrant asylum. It is also important to note that no proof of persecution is actually needed for asylum to be granted. After all, proof could be fraudulent; for example, scars that an asylum-seeker attributes to torture could have been self-inflicted. Therefore, it is sufficient for an asylumseeker to demonstrate credibly that he or she has a well-founded fear of persecution. But of course the demonstration of well-founded fear can also be fraudulent: an asylum-seeker could be a good liar who can spin a compelling story and produce tears as well. Government officials whose job it is to make asylum decisions are therefore often quite challenged in trying to determine whether an asylum-seeker has a well-founded fear of persecution, and this challenge is well demonstrated in the documentary film Well-Founded Fear.1 Individualized fear In general, a person seeking asylum must also demonstrate an individualized fear of persecution. In other words, the person must have feared that he or she specifically faced persecution, as opposed to being part of a larger group being persecuted. It is therefore in principle not enough to argue that your minority group is being persecuted in another part of the country and that you are worried you may be next. The problem with this individualized principle is that such persecution can spread rapidly, and by the time you yourself have a well-founded fear of persecution it may be too late. As discussed in the previous chapter, important exceptions to this general principle of individualized fear have been made in situations like former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, where large numbers of civilians fled ethnic cleansing. In such cases, governments tend to acknowledge a threat to an entire group and not insist on examining each case individually. In part, governments forgo this demonstration of individualized fear out of sheer necessity, because it is simply not practical to review carefully 5,000 or 50,000 cases that suddenly appear in your country. As discussed in the previous chapter, such mass groups tend to receive temporary protection, not permanent asylum. Persecution by non-government actors The international community widely recognizes the essential importance of individuals enjoying the protection of their government. It further recognizes that when a government fails to protect individuals, or, even worse, when the government actually persecutes individuals, then the international community must step in to offer protection. Asylum is meant to protect individuals from abuse by their government, and classic cases include journalists tortured for criticizing the president, or religious leaders jailed for setting up an underground place of worship. But what if the persecution is committed by non-government forces? In Colombia, for example, a long-running civil war pits the government against left-wing guerrillas who have committed atrocities against civilians. Does the international community have an obligation to grant asylum to individuals fleeing such guerrilla-sponsored persecution, or does the responsibility to protect them rest with the Colombian government? The Colombian case becomes even more complicated when we also consider the persecution that has been committed by right-wing paramilitary groups who are fighting the left-wing guerrillas and who have various ties to elements within the government. Ideally, of course, the Colombian government would

Problems of protection  79 protect its citizens from persecution by both groups. But what if the government is unable to protect civilians from attacks from the left and unwilling to protect them from attacks from the right? This inability or unwillingness of the government to protect individuals is hardly unique to Colombia and is in fact quite common in civil wars raging across the globe. And then there are extreme examples like Somalia that simply have no government to speak of, in which case the question of whether the government can or should offer protection is moot. While some countries argue that civilians who fear persecution by non-state groups such as militias and rebels should not be given formal refugee status, UNHCR’s position is that it is not the origin of the persecution that should be decisive in determining refugee status, but rather whether a person deserves international protection because it is not available in the country of origin.2

Expanding the definition It is important to consider not only what is included in the 1951 refugee definition but also what is not included. In looking at UNHCR’s definition, a common complaint is that it is too narrow and therefore leaves out many people who also face persecution and deserve protection. Among the most commonly mentioned elements that should be written into the definition is gender, in order to address gender-based persecution, which most commonly targets women and girls. Advocates for this position argue that asylum should be granted to women who refuse to adhere to social rules such as dress codes or arranged marriages, or who fear practices such as forced sterilization and abortions, domestic violence, forced prostitution, and female genital cutting. In fact, there has been movement since the 1990s to consider gender-based persecution as grounds for asylum, with Canada leading the way in 1993. In the United States, the first case was that of Fauziya Kasinga, who fled Togo because she feared female genital cutting3 and was granted asylum in 1996. Today, a number of other countries have joined Canada and the United States in officially recognizing that genital cutting constitutes a form of persecution and that it can therefore be a basis for receiving asylum. Some people also argue that homosexuals face persecution in numerous countries around the world and that therefore sexual orientation should also be grounds for asylum and be included in the refugee definition. For example, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, which supports the asylum claims of individuals who fear persecution because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV/AIDS status, writes that homosexuals face various forms of persecution including incarceration, torture, death, denial of freedom of association, and the revocation of parental rights.4 UNHCR also advocates that “persons facing attack, inhumane treatment, or serious discrimination because of their homosexuality, and whose governments are unable or unwilling to protect them, should be recognized as refugees.”5 Stretching the refugee definition further, what about people who are displaced by a dramatic change in their environment? Now, it is perhaps too much to ask of us to feel a sense of obligation to grant asylum to a victim of a natural disaster; after all, neither our government nor their government can control rainfall and therefore can’t be held responsible for a subsequent drought that kills farmers’ crops and forces them to flee their land. But what if a government is connected to the deterioration of the environment? Take, as an example, Brazil turning a blind eye to illegal gold mining or logging in a remote area of the Amazon rain forest that forces an indigenous people like the Yanomami to change or abandon their traditional way of life. Another scenario to consider is if a US company causes

80  Refugees an environmental crisis in another country. For example, in 1984 a chemical factory owned by the US company Union Carbide exploded in Bhopal, India and killed thousands of people and injured many more – does the United States have an obligation to admit people who are unwilling or unable to live in the area contaminated by a US company? Government policy can of course also be directly responsible for a dramatic change in the environment, as is the case with the Three Gorges Dam project in China. Finished in 2009 at a cost of about $25 billion, this project is the world’s largest dam and has already displaced 1 million people. The Chinese government hopes that this project will both control flooding, which in 1998 killed 2,000 people and left 14 million homeless, and also create a cleaner source of power than comparable coal-burning plants. The government also promises to find new and better homes for these displaced people. Opponents of the project say these promises are not being met, and that economically, socially, and environmentally, the displaced are worse-off. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that indeed a misguided Chinese government project has forced farmers off their land and has not properly compensated them – should this action be considered a form of persecution that constitutes an obligation on the United States to accept such farmers as refugees? Or are the Chinese farmers displaced by the dam simply going to have to adjust to the new economic circumstances brought about by a certain government policy and are thus not entitled to an elevated sense of obligation on our part? After all, governments are constantly launching or abandoning policies that affect the well-being of citizens either positively or negatively, but such action is not usually considered grounds for asylum. If, for example, the US government chose to cut farm subsidies, many farmers would be forced to look for other work, but it is highly unlikely that such farmers would receive asylum in another country (except perhaps by a fierce opponent like North Korea, Iran, Cuba, or Venezuela looking to embarrass the US). The above examples raise the issue of economic hardship, which is one of the central problems in the current asylum process. As discussed in the previous chapter, asylum is sometimes sought by people who claim to be persecuted but in fact are fleeing economic hardships. Governments decry such practices as abuses of the system, vow to crack down on them, and feel no obligation to accept such cases. Critics argue that the issue is not always so clear-cut, because politics and economics are often so intertwined that it is hard to see where the political ends and the economic begins: a worker may be unemployed for years because he or she has been blacklisted by the government for being a labor activist. Furthermore, critics argue that the politics in one country may be partially responsible for economic hardships elsewhere: for example, European import tariffs on wheat harm African farmers, and the US government subsidizes a company that allows it to exploit workers in Asia. Finally, critics ask what the moral difference is between an individual suffering from hunger or from a police baton, because the end result may be the same: misery and possible death. Of course even the harshest critic of a country’s asylum policy must concede that it cannot possibly expand the definition of a refugee to such a point that it accepts all poor people from around the world. After all, the World Bank estimates that over 1 billion people live in “extreme poverty” defined as living on $1.00 per day (and almost 3 billion people live on under $2.00 a day). The challenge we face as a society is to decide whether and how far we are willing to open the door for such people.

What is persecution? Much of the discussion so far has hinged on the fact that, perhaps surprisingly, “persecution” is not specifically defined in the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, nor in the

Problems of protection  81 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention or the 1984 Cartagena Declaration. One attempt to define the term has been made by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which declares that “‘Persecution’ means the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law by reason of the identity of the group or collectivity.”6 UNHCR, however, states: There is no universally accepted definition of “persecution,” and various attempts to formulate such a definition have met with little success. From Article 33 of the 1951 Convention, it may be inferred that a threat to life or freedom on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group is always persecution. Other serious violations of human rights – for the same reasons – would also constitute persecution.7 The reason for this lack of a universally accepted definition is perhaps that governments do not want to be boxed in by one specific definition and instead want flexibility in applying the term. This absence leaves us pondering the fundamental question of just what kind of action an individual must have suffered (or feared to suffer) in order to be considered a refugee. Saudi Arabia denying women the right to drive may not strike us as a policy that is severe enough to warrant being declared persecution, although we may consider it a form of discrimination. But what about Saudi Arabia denying women the right to vote? Surely being tortured because of your political beliefs is a form of persecution, but how about being fired from your job for expressing such beliefs? There appears to be a continuum from discrimination to persecution, and our challenge is to decide where to draw the line, which is of course a matter of interpretation.

Plate 6.1  Protection (Eva Canoutas)

82  Refugees

Universality vs. cultural relativism The question of interpreting persecution permeates the debate over refugees and asylum, exposing the fissure between universality and cultural relativism, which also shapes the larger debate over human rights in general. These are two terms that different people use in different ways, and we do not have the space here to explore this diversity fully. For our purposes, the historian Bonny Ibhawoh nicely summarizes this debate (the italics are mine): At the core of the debate is whether modern human rights conceptions are of universal character and applicability, or whether they are culturally relative – that is, dependent on socio-cultural contexts. In relation to refugee rights, the debate has focused on concerns that international refugee laws and national refugee policies in some Western countries are informed by cultural chauvinism and a lack of sensitivity towards non-Western cultures. This raises significant questions about the definition of persecution and protection as they relate to rights of refugees.8 The cultural relativist position asserts that Western conceptions of human rights are not necessarily applicable elsewhere and may in fact be contrary to non-Western societies because they are derived from and rest upon different values: the West tends to emphasize the political and civil rights of individuals, whereas non-Western societies tend to place greater emphasis on the individual’s duties to the community and on economic and social rights. Ibhawoh writes that the universalists respond by charging that in asserting such views, elites and leaders in non-Western societies use the cultural relativist arguments as convenient tools for repressing opposition and for stoking anti-Western sentiments. Universalists also charge that such leaders paint a picture of an idyllic communitarian society in order to “perpetuate patriarchy and the dominance of ruling groups as well as rationalize state violations of human rights.”9 A good example of this clash over values and perspectives is the case of female genital cutting (FGC). You’ll recall that women have been granted asylum in the West because they do not want to undergo this procedure, which involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, most commonly by excision of the clitoris and the labia minora. Typically it is performed on girls aged between 4 and 12, and the procedure is most common in Africa, but also occurs in Asia and the Middle East and increasingly in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the US, primarily among immigrants. The World Health Organization estimates that today there are between 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide who have undergone the procedure. FGC is usually carried out by a traditional practitioners or lay persons (often an older woman from the community), who use a variety of instruments, such as a scalpel or a piece of glass, to conduct the procedure without anesthesia. Among the more affluent in society FGC may be performed in a healthcare facility by qualified health personnel. The World Health Organization opposes the procedure because of its various immediate and long-term health complications, and Amnesty International is concerned about its effects on human rights. Such critics tend to use the term “female genital mutilation” while defenders of the procedure, who prefer the term “female circumcision,” defend it on a number of grounds, including sexual, cultural, traditional, religious, hygienic, and aesthetic. There is a heated debate over whether this procedure should be condemned as universally wrong or whether it should be respected as having cultural value in certain societies. Central to this debate over universality and cultural relativism is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted on December 10, 1948 by the United Nations, which intended it

Problems of protection  83 to be “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” This Declaration sets out 30 Articles and urges the universal and effective recognition and observance of them. Some of these are not the subject of much controversy, such as Article 5 (“No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”) and Article 6 (“Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law”). Others, however, more squarely fit into the universal and cultural relativist debate. Let’s look at, for example, Articles 16 and 21: Article 16: (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. Article 21: (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures. To what extent do you think the values expressed in these two Articles are universal and to what extent are they dependent upon cultural contexts? This question is at the heart of numerous issues we have raised with regard to refugees and asylum. For example, to what extend should gender-based customs be understood and valued in a cultural context and to what extend are they forms of persecution? Take the example of “female genital mutilation” (as critics call it) or “female circumcision” (as supporters call it): is this a community’s practice that Westerners can’t understand and therefore have no right to condemn, or is it a violation of a girl’s rights and therefore a form of persecution if performed against her will? Is denying Saudi Arabian women the right to drive an acceptable cultural practice, a tolerable form of discrimination, or condemnable persecution? And if one country finds a practice in another country to be unacceptable, what is the best course of action: granting asylum to anyone fleeing that practice or trying to change the practice? In the case of female genital cutting, not only has the United States granted asylum to women fleeing this procedure, but also since 1998 numerous states have instituted criminal sanctions against the practice, including California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. And a federal law criminalizing the practice on a person under 18 was passed in 1996, a law which specifically exempts cultural beliefs or practices as a defense for conducting FGC.10 Of course, seeking to stop the practice in our own country is quite different from seeking to stop it in another – should we try to do both? Ibhawoh helpfully reminds us that we do not face only the stark choice between universality and cultural relativism: Globalization and the universalization of human rights need not necessarily preclude attempts to temper the modern content of “universal” rights with the specific cultural experiences of various societies. In the refugee field, this calls for international and national refugee laws and policies founded on the basic universal human rights standards,

84  Refugees but also informed by some level of cultural sensitivity. The present challenge is how to achieve this delicate balance.11

Parliamentarians debate asylum All the problems we have raised in this chapter are not just interesting to discuss in a classroom setting but are in fact at the heart of real debates taking place among politicians and policy makers as they consider the best way to help refugees. I have done research on how politicians argue about asylum and would like to share some of the results with you. Many people who write about asylum assume that asylum policies are the result of a tug-ofwar between, on the one hand, international norms and morality “loosening” asylum and, on the other, national interests “tightening” it. While such a tug-of-war image seems intuitively sound, I decided to explore it further through a research project.12 Specifically, I explored the arguments made by German, British, and Swiss parliamentarians when drawing up asylum legislation. As a source of analysis, parliamentary debates offer the most accessible and clear articulation of politicians’ arguments within a formal political institution. Members of parliament use this forum to argue their positions, to shape the political discourse, and to impress the public. The public, in turn, evaluates these arguments and reacts to them in the next election. Parliamentary debates, then, play an important role in the open exchange of ideas between representatives and the public, and this exchange is fundamental to democracies. My research covers the period from the late 1970s, when asylum was just beginning to cause political ripples, to the mid-1990s, when it had become one of the dominant issues in Europe. Germany, Britain, and Switzerland offer a wide variation in European asylum policies: Germany’s policy has been among the most generous, Britain’s has been among the most restrictive, and Switzerland’s has been in-between. Given this variation in the asylum policies of these three countries, their parliamentary debates capture a whole range of arguments that nicely demonstrate the complexity of asylum. Three findings from my research project are worth highlighting: the limits of moral arguments, international norms cutting both ways, and the subjective nature of national interests. The limits of moral arguments While there was broad consensus among parliamentarians that a moral obligation exists to help refugees, this moral command faced several limitations to its effectiveness. The first limitation is that the moral principle of “helping refugees” is rather abstract, and it’s far from clear how best to implement it. We have seen this difficulty throughout this chapter, and parliamentarians discovered it as well as finding that they could not agree on what the moral obligation to help refugees demanded of them.13 It is precisely this difficulty that a supporter of tighter conditions for granting asylum addressed: “It is praiseworthy when citizens orient their lives around high ethical and moral standards and help refugees according to Christian principles. The Christian command to ‘love thy neighbor’ is especially applicable for refugees who face such a difficult and bitter lot. But the Gospel according to Matthew is unfortunately no recipe for practical politics.”14 While not a single parliamentarian in any of these debates rejected the abstract moral principle of helping refugees, they strongly disagreed about how best to put this moral principle into action. Given the moral obligation to accept refugees, does that mean all refugees must be accepted? Most observers would probably answer “no,” because the numbers would simply be overwhelming, especially if we begin to expand the definition of a refugee.

Problems of protection  85 Therefore, some kind of upper limit must be set, but any discussion of such a limit was noticeably absent in these debates, perhaps because it is difficult to quantify morality. Would this upper limit be relative to your country’s population, or area size, or economic well-being, or to refugees already accepted? The second limitation of moral arguments is that both sides claim to be acting morally with regard to asylum. Those arguing for tighter asylum laws claimed that such laws would help weed out fraudulent asylum claims. As mentioned earlier, everyone agrees that the asylum process is abused, but there is wide disagreement about the extent of such abuse. For example, with a skeptical eye toward many asylum-seekers whom he suspected of abusing the process, one parliamentarian who favored tightening asylum laws said “It is the most natural thing in the world for a genuine refugee to go to the nearest safe place and not travel three quarters of the way around the world.”15 From the opposite side, a parliamentarian who wanted to make it easier for asylum to be granted said, “Those of us who have been concerned with refugees will admit that some of them are rascals, but the overwhelming majority of those who seek political asylum here are genuine.”16 The important thing to note is that many supporters of tighter asylum laws argued that such laws were in fact moral because they helped “real” refugees by weeding out asylum abuse committed by “undeserving” ones. For example, one supporter of more restrictive asylum laws argued, “Our main concern must be for the genuine asylum-seeker who has real fears and nowhere else to turn. Unfortunately, in recent years our system for dealing with applications from those seeking asylum in the United Kingdom has become totally discredited by the number of people abusing the system. The [tighter] Bill will go a long way toward controlling a potentially dangerous situation and restoring confidence in the system.”17 Such apparent moral concern for refugees was widely denounced by opponents of tighter asylum laws as hypocritical, cold-hearted, racist, and immoral. One opponent of such legislation charged: “For all the perfumed phrases about humanitarianism, it is the whiff of racism which lingers around the [tighter] Bill.”18 Not too surprisingly, such accusations were greatly resented by many supporters of tighter asylum laws, who complained that opponents should not act as if they possessed a monopoly on morality. This back-and-forth raises the crucial question of how best to fight asylum abuse, whose existence virtually everyone acknowledges. The third limitation, one that was often raised by proponents of tighter asylum laws, is the moral obligation parliamentarians have not only toward refugees but also toward their own citizens. One supporter of tighter laws stressed that the “overwhelming majority of people” supported tightening asylum19 and another argued that it was important to listen to citizens: “A balance has to be struck between humanitarian acceptance of some people seeking asylum and the pressure of public opinion, which we are supposed to represent, to limit the number of people whom we accept.”20 Clearly, moral obligations toward citizens can be at odds with moral obligations toward refugees, and it is not always clear how best to balance the two. The fourth limitation stems from some supporters of tighter asylum laws suggesting that it is unclear whether granting asylum to refugees is even the best and most moral way to help them. They argued that it may be better to help refugees in their own region rather than granting them asylum in Europe. For example, one parliamentarian asked rhetorically: “Is it inhumane to argue that we do not solve the problems in their country by accepting people here and so it is better to offer financial and other assistance to build up the economic infrastructure there?”21 Aware that such an argument would meet skepticism, another parliamentarian said: “You may claim that this suggestion is a sign of a guilty conscience, but it is my firm conviction that we can better help refugees and economic migrants from faraway

86  Refugees countries by supporting them in their own culture instead of trying to accept them at any cost in our culture, which to them is strange and unfortunately sometimes also hostile.”22 So, while all parliamentarians acknowledged an abstract moral responsibility toward refugees, there was considerable disagreement about how best to implement this. International norms cut both ways While international norms can certainly pull for less restrictive asylum laws, the parliamentary asylum debates I studied tell a far richer and more complex story. The two most important international norms are the definition of a refugee and the principle of non-refoulement, and it is crucial to note that none of the tighter asylum laws I studied proposed changing either of these two international norms. In fact, many supporters of the tighter laws stressed that the tighter laws not only conformed to international norms, but that the norms in fact enabled them to tighten asylum laws. In essence, such parliamentarians argued that international norms were good, and that these tighter laws conformed to international norms and therefore they, too, were good. However, some supporters of tighter asylum laws, especially those on the far right, wanted to tighten laws even further and complained that international norms constrained them from doing so. Such supporters of tighter asylum laws argued that international norms were bad and that parliamentarians should ignore them and make asylum laws more restrictive as they pleased. And if not rejecting international norms outright, some supporters of tighter asylum laws at least saw norms as annoyingly constraining. It was precisely this constraining role of international norms that some opponents of tighter asylum also stressed but for exactly the opposite reason. They argued that these tighter asylum laws had to be rejected because they violated the letter (or at least certainly the spirit) of international norms. These opponents argued that international norms were good and that the tighter asylum laws violated these norms and therefore should be rejected. Finally, other opponents of tighter asylum laws conceded that such laws conformed to international norms and complained that the norms enabled the tightening of conditions for granting asylum. Their argument, in short, was that international norms were bad, and that parliamentarians should ignore them and reject tighter asylum laws for other reasons, including morality and national interests. From this complex role that international norms played in these asylum debates, we can derive a 2 × 2 table (Table 6.1).

Table 6.1  The multifarious roles of international norms in asylum debates Attitude toward international norms

Attitude toward asylum

Positive

Negative

Tighter

Rely on international norms to enable the tightening of asylum

Complain that international norms constrain the tightening of asylum

Looser

Rely on international norms to constrain the tightening of asylum

Complain that international norms enable the tightening of asylum

Problems of protection  87 The subjective nature of national interests When relying on national interests to bolster their positions, parliamentarians on both sides appealed mainly to the need for internal harmony and effective governance, but they differed sharply in their interpretations of how to further these interests. Supporters of tighter asylum consistently made the following argument: tighter legislation is needed to fight asylum abuse, which is increasingly irritating citizens, who demand such legislation. One supporter of tighter asylum rhetorically asked the government minister in charge of tightening asylum laws: “Is my Right Honorable Friend aware that the vast majority of people in this country are thankful for the steps that he is taking to deal with bogus immigration? Is he further aware that the attitude that we have heard from the Opposition is quite untypical of the vast majority of all classes of people living in this country?”23 In other debates, supporters of tighter laws argued that by fighting abuse such laws would provide the necessary foundation for tolerance and harmony between citizens and foreigners. Similarly, other supporters pointed out that the vast majority of citizens supported tightening asylum laws and warned that a failure to pass such laws would have dramatic consequences, because the people’s trust in politics would be severely damaged. In other words, supporters of tighter asylum laws argued that such legislation would effectively fight abuse, combat racism, and carry out the will of the people. Opponents of tighter asylum laws tended simply to reverse this main argument of the supporters: tighter legislation was ineffective in fighting abuse, it fueled racism, and it violated democratic principles. In one debate, for example, a parliamentarian warned of “the oppressive madness of the nationalists” and said that it was a shame that such a proposal was even being discussed, because it was negotiated in the back-rooms among politicians pandering to the lowest populist sentiment.24 Similarly, in another debate, someone argued that “The Bill is about having a shoddy little debate in which racism can be stirred up in hope of winning a few votes,”25 and in a third debate, a parliamentarian complained that the government was scapegoating foreigners for deep societal problems.26 With regard to national interests, then, both sides consistently stressed that asylum legislation had to satisfy the political interest of being effective, anti-racist, and democratic. That legislation should be effective, anti-racist, and democratic is, of course, a rather bland and unrevealing assertion about national interests. The controversy is not what the national interests are, but how to achieve them. Supporters of tighter asylum laws argued that such laws would effectively fight the abuse that had come to irritate citizens who demanded action. Opponents argued that such laws were ineffective ways to fight the abuse, and that they merely pandered to xenophobic pressures from citizens and thus violated democratic principles. These contradictory arguments raise nagging questions. Can tighter asylum laws effectively fight abuse or do the problems lie elsewhere? Do tighter asylum laws reassure citizens and reduce their racism, or do they cater to the existing racism and justify it? Is it in the national interest for parliamentarians to follow the will of the people or to lead it? These are difficult questions, and they illustrate the fact that national interests are not objective truths but, rather, subjective claims that are contestable and that can pull asylum policies in opposite directions.

Conclusion As these parliamentary debates make clear, there is a widely felt obligation to “help refugees,” but it is not clear how best to do so. Much of this chapter has focused on richer countries helping refugees by granting them asylum. Such help, of course, benefits only those who

88  Refugees are able to make the often long, dangerous, and expensive journey to ask for asylum. As the previous chapter pointed out, the vast majority of the world’s refugees are not able to make such a journey, so granting them asylum is not even an option. How then do we help those who are not at our door? Ultimately, the best way to help refugees is to stop them from becoming refugees in the first place. We need to address the root causes of refugee flows by working toward greater political, economic, cultural, and social justice so that people no longer must flee persecution or conflict. This approach is a massive, complex, and long-term proposition that unfortunately offers little solace to the refugee who needs help right now, and it challenges us to balance our efforts between long-term solutions and short-term assistance.

Suggested resources 1

Gibney, Matthew J. The Ethics and Politics of Asylum: Liberal Democracy and the Response to Refugees. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 2 Ibhawoh, Bonny. “Defining Persecution and Protection: The Cultural Relativism Debate and the Rights of Refugees.” In Problems of Protection: The UNHCR, Refugees, and Human Rights, ed. Niklaus Steiner, Mark Gibney, and Gil Loescher. New York: Routledge, 2003, pp. 61–78. 3 Journey of Hope. Directed by Xavier Koller. HBO Home Video, 1990. 4 Kenney, David Ngaruri, and Philip G. Schrag. Asylum Denied: A Refugee’s Struggle for Safety in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 5 Loescher, Gil. The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 6 Pipher, Mary Bray. The Middle of Everywhere: The World’s Refugees Come to Our Town. New York: Harcourt, 2002. 7 Porter, Bernard. The Refugee Question in Mid-Victorian Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. 8 U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. World Refugee Survey. Washington, DC: U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, annual. 9 Weapons of the Spirit. Directed by Pierre Sauvage. Los Angeles, CA: Chambon Foundation, 1989. 10 Websites of Amnesty International (www.amnesty.org), Human Rights Watch (www. hrw.org), Migration Policy Institute (www.migrationpolicy.org), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (www.unhcr.org), and US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (www.refugees.org). 11 Well-Founded Fear. Produced and directed by Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson. New York: The Epidavros Project, 2000. 12 Zolberg, Aristide, Astri Suhrke, and Sergio Aguayo. Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Section IV

Citizenship

7 Citizenship and the rise of nationalism

• • • • •

Nationalism and nation-states The rise of nation-states, sovereignty, and democracy Legal and identity citizenship Minority rights and citizenship Dealing with diversity

Introduction The third major question posed by this book is how should citizens of a country treat migrants once they have been admitted. Specifically, how do we make them part of us? Or is that even one of our goals? These questions are especially important in modern democracies, which want the people to rule, although that raises the question of who “the people” are. What does it mean to be a citizen of a country? These questions link the issue of citizenship with nationalism.

Nationalism and nation-states Nationalism is a term that is used in many different ways and for many different purposes. Some people use it in a positive sense and others in a negative one. Some stress its political dimensions, such as struggles over power, while others its cultural ones, such as expressing identities. Nationalism can therefore be linked to issues as diverse as tax policies and religion, and it is found within democracies and dictatorships and is relevant to individuals as well as entire populations. For the purposes of our discussion of citizenship, it is useful to think of nationalism as the principle that the nation and the state should be congruent, thereby creating a nation-state. Nation-state is probably a term you’ve heard many times, and you may use it interchangeably with “country,” but the term is richer than that, and it is best understood by breaking it down into its two parts – the state and the nation. The state The state is the set of institutions that governs a given territory and its people by regulating their political, economic, and social interactions. This set of institutions includes things as diverse as the police and military, the judicial and educational systems, the parliament and the executive branch, as well as tax collectors, firefighters, and diplomats. What all these public institutions have in common is that they maintain order within a society through the

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Plate 7.1  Identity (Chris Straka)

enforcement of laws and norms. One of the most famous conceptions of the state comes from the early twentieth-century German sociologist Max Weber, who wrote that the state has the monopoly on the legitimate use of force to impose order within a given territory. To understand his conception, it may be helpful to note that other institutions also impose order through force – think of the Mafia imposing order in a neighborhood – but such private use of force is not legitimate and is punishable by the state. It is only the state that has the right to use force to impose order in society. The nation The concept of nation, which is the other half of the nation-state, is more difficult to grasp, because there is far less consensus about what exactly it is. Let me offer one conception of nation that I find particularly helpful to the topic of international migration, while acknowledging that there are other scholars who would offer alternative definitions. A nation is a community that controls (or seeks to control) its own state, thereby forming a relationship between the members of the community and the institutions that control them. Members of this community feel connected to each other for any number of reasons. Common examples include language, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, geographic proximity, common history, shared moral values. It is important to note that just sharing such characteristics does not necessarily make for a connection that bonds a community together. The Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland both speak English, and yet many of them feel strongly that they are not one community. Nor do Muslims in Iraq currently feel an overriding religious loyalty to each other. In this conception, nations are in many ways like ethnic groups, except for the crucial

Citizenship and the rise of nationalism  93 difference that nations seek their own state while ethnic groups are content to live under the existing state. For example, in the United States many ethnic groups feel a sense of community and celebrate this bond with parades, cultural festivals, neighborhood associations, and holidays, but they are content living under the current set of institutions that are keeping order. Think of New York’s Chinatown or Chicago’s Ukrainian Village: they have no intention of separating themselves from the United States. One group in the US that does have considerable autonomy from the state are Native Americans, who have their own set of institutions on their reservations including police force, schools, and judicial systems, and are, not coincidentally, often called nations, such as the Navajo and Sioux Nations. Forging a nation Nations are often keen to stress the deep, historical, inherent bonds that tie individuals together as a group as a result of certain innate characteristics. Scholars of nationalism, however, tend to argue that nations are not objective, natural, and ancient communities, but are, rather, recent developments that are constantly changing because of shifting circumstances and attitudes. While factors like language, religion, technology, and territorial proximity can, of course, create a bond among people (and thereby also separate one group of people from another), many scholars argue that the primary characteristic that forms a nation’s identity is its attitude. The scholar Benedict Anderson famously wrote that a nation is “an imagined community,” because while even in the smallest nation the members will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, they all have in their minds the image of being a community.1 An American college student, for example, usually feels a stronger bond with a fellow American who is a farmer than with a fellow college student from Canada, even though the students’ day-to-day life experiences have more in common. Because the bonds that hold together a nation are more subjective than objective, they are dynamic and subject to change. A nation’s history is written and rewritten, its heroes rise and fall, and its legends and traditions are invented and reinvented, all in an ongoing effort to conform to changing views about how the nation sees itself and how it wants to differentiate itself from others. Most Americans know Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 painting George Washington Crossing the Delaware, but what is less known is that the painting has numerous inaccuracies, including Washington’s untenable stance in such a small boat in rough water, the clear view even though the crossing took place at night, and the display of the American flag, which did not even exist at the time. In defense of the painter, Leutze’s intention was less factual representation than political motivation. He was German and painted it in his country in the aftermath of the failed revolutions of 1848, when he sought to rally his defeated democratic compatriots with an uplifting painting of successful earlier revolutionaries.2 This is but one example of how historical events are reinterpreted in light of current events. A book that explores the constant reinterpretation of the American national identity in a humorous way is I Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode or Not.3 The title is a quotation attributed to President Warren Harding, who made this remark when he learned that Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride during the American Revolution did not take place in the way that tradition has mythologized it. In fact, not much attention was paid to Paul Revere until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” almost a hundred years after the supposed event, when the country was caught up in the strife of the Civil War and Longfellow believed it needed to feel unified.

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Plate 7.2  Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Loyalty to the state A national identity not only bonds a nation together, but it also builds and maintains the nation’s loyalty to the state. The state is, therefore, heavily invested in the process of building and maintaining a national identity and is involved in activities as diverse as declaring national holidays, responding to natural disasters, providing free public education, and maintaining good roads. All of these not only serve the purpose of making us feel connected to one another as a community, but they also foster loyalty to the state because of the value we attribute to these state-directed activities. Such loyalty is crucial for stability in the nation-state, because when a nation’s loyalty to the state begins to slip or was never properly established, nationalist conflicts and civil wars often follow. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of current as well as historical examples: Tamils in Sri Lanka, Kurds in Turkey, Basques in Spain, and Chechens in Russia are just a few of the many current examples of nations that are not loyal to their states. They do not perceive the state to represent their interests and therefore are fighting for the creation of their own state. Similarly, the American Civil War was essentially a nationalist conflict in which southerners (the Confederacy) wanted to form their own state because they no longer felt that the federal government in Washington DC was fairly representing their interests. Like most nationalist movements, the Confederacy failed because the state fought to keep the existing nation-state from breaking apart. Historically, there is a great reluctance on behalf of states to let nations secede, and the many bloody nationalist wars show that most states choose to fight bitterly to maintain their borders. Nationalism, then, can usefully be understood as the principle that the nation should have its own state, i.e. the nation and the state should be congruent, thereby forming a nation-state.

Citizenship and the rise of nationalism  95 This congruency can take shape in different ways. A nation can break away from an existing nation-state and create a new one, as occurred when Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Or a nation can join another nation-state, such as occurred through the Vietnam War, when the Vietnamese nation overthrew the state of South Vietnam, which they viewed as a puppet of the United States, and then joined North Vietnam. Finally, nations can take over the state when they feel that the state does not represent their interests; Fidel Castro in Cuba claims that his revolution in 1959 wrested control of the state away from a dictator and handed it over to the Cuban people. As stressed above, nationalism is open to interpretations, and people have widely different views of these events in Croatian, Vietnamese, and Cuban history.

The rise of nation-states, sovereignty, and democracy This effort to seek a relationship between the nation and the state is, despite nationalism’s historical trappings, a relatively recent phenomenon. The origin of the nation-state system is usually dated to the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which ended the Thirty Years War in Europe. This treaty settled the important question of who determines the religion in a given territory. Previously, there had been overlapping and competing claims to this right by various rulers, including popes, kings, dukes, bishops, and princes, who all claimed control over a given piece of land. The Treaty of Westphalia, through the principle of cuius regio, eius religio (“Whose rule, his religion,” in Latin), gave that power to the local ruler. The importance of this treaty to the modern world is that it introduced the notion of sovereignty, which, at least in principle, gives the state control over a given territory and freedom from external influences over that territory. Sovereignty is one of the central pillars of the modern nation-state system and is well illustrated by glancing at a world atlas. Close to 200 clearly distinct nation-states are represented on an atlas, covering every bit of land, with no overlap. And in the rare cases where the border is not clear, as in Pakistan/India, Eritrea/ Ethiopia, or Palestine/Israel, there is conflict precisely because they are fighting over sovereignty – who has the right to control a particular piece of land and its people. Today, it is hard to conceive of a world before clearly defined borders as portrayed on any atlas, but we do not have to go back far in history to see that such a division of the world is a recent phenomenon. It arose in particular circumstances in Europe and was then imposed on the rest of the world by colonialization in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Even in Europe, it was well over a century after the Treaty of Westphalia before the emergence of what we can meaningfully speak of as nation-states. While states were beginning to lay claims on specific territories, these states did not yet have a relationship with nations, but rather their relationships were with individual rulers. It is therefore more useful to think of them as “person-states,” as best seen in the absolute monarchs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Louis XIV of France, who allegedly declared “L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the state”). Such rulers believed themselves to have sovereign control over the state and not to be beholden to the people, who were thought of as subjects rather than citizens. The relationship between the ruler, the people, and the state changed dramatically with the American and French Revolutions. In fighting against kings who they believed were not representing their interests, both the American and French revolutionaries made it clear that they wanted “the people” to rule by controlling the state. This desire comes through quite clearly in the American Declaration of Independence (1776), in the Preamble to the US Constitution (1787), and in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), all of which emphasize the role of the people.

96  Citizenship Declaration of Independence When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Preamble to the US Constitution We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and duties; in order that the acts of the legislative power, as well as those of the executive power, may be compared at any moment with the objects and purposes of all political institutions and may thus be more respected, and, lastly, in order that the grievances of the citizens, based hereafter upon simple and incontestable principles, shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution and redound to the happiness of all. These documents all express the essence of a democracy, a term derived from the Greek words demos meaning “people” and kratos meaning “rule.” While letting “the people” rule sounds like a relatively simple concept, it actually raises a lot of complicated questions, because it forces us to define “the people.” Who are we going to include in the demos that is ruling? And when we decide who to include, we are also deciding who to exclude; who do we not want to be part of the people and why? These questions are at the very heart of the linked issues of how we, as citizens of a democracy, treat migrants among us and to whom we decide to grant citizenship.

Legal and identity citizenship Like nationalism, citizenship is a term that has no single agreed-upon definition; it means many different things to many different people. This complexity is one reason why there is

Citizenship and the rise of nationalism  97 so much controversy surrounding how citizens treat migrants in their midst. As we explore this controversy, let me again issue the disclaimer that there are other scholars who would offer different definitions of citizenship. What I offer is what I have found useful in my own research and teaching. Citizenship spells out the relationship between the individual and the state with regard to rights and duties. The state grants citizens certain rights, and in return citizens carry out certain duties. Many discussions of citizenship begin with the classic view represented by British sociologist T. H. Marshall in 1949.4 Marshall set up three types of rights that the individual gained from the state over time. First came civil rights in the eighteenth century, which gave individuals rights such as the freedom to practice a religion, express thoughts, own property, and enjoy equality before the law. These rights are familiar to all of us because they are enshrined in the US Constitution, in the Declaration of Independence, and in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The nineteenth century then gave citizens additional political rights, such as the right to vote and to participate in politics by serving in governing bodies that make laws. Finally, the twentieth century gave citizens social rights to certain economic and social welfare standards, such as public education, healthcare, pensions, and unemployment insurance. This expansion of rights over time has in turn expanded the definition of who is a citizen. The right to vote in the US, for example, was first restricted to white land-owning men and subsequently over the decades opened up to other groups. In order for a modern democracy to uphold its citizens’ rights, the state must create institutions that monitor and support these rights, and these institutions must function according to clear and fair laws. These state institutions must also ensure that citizens carry out their duties by offering incentives for compliance and punishment for non-compliance. These rights and duties are largely encased in a legal framework, and we can therefore think of them as offering legal citizenship. In this form of citizenship, it is rather clear who is and who is not a citizen, and the next chapter will deal with how one gains such legal citizenship in a country. There is growing awareness, however, that providing rights and duties through formal institutions and legal citizenship is not enough to ensure the well-being of a democracy. Many scholars argue that citizens must also possess a sense of affinity and belonging toward their fellow citizens and toward the state. This form of citizenship we can call identity citizenship. It is crucial to note that there is not always a perfect overlap between legal and identity citizenship. For example, we can imagine someone enjoying the legal status of being an American citizen (i.e. she can vote) but who does not feel American because she spent time abroad or because she rejects the values she sees Americans embracing. The reverse is also true: there are foreigners in America who do not enjoy legal citizenship but who, for whatever reasons, feel American because of their sense of affinity for and belonging to America. One author has offered the following list of qualities and attitudes that the citizens of a healthy democracy need to possess:5 • • • • •

a collective sense of identity, and how they view potentially competing forms of national, regional, ethnic, or religious identities; an ability to tolerate and work together with others who are different from themselves; a desire to participate in the political process in order to promote the public good and hold political authorities accountable; a willingness to show self-restraint and exercise personal responsibility in their economic demands, and in personal choices that affect their health and the environment; a sense of justice and commitment to a fair distribution of resources.

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Plate 7.3  Proud (Mumukshu Patel)

If citizens are not willing to adopt at least some of these qualities and attitudes, it is a struggle to build an effective democratic system. This was one of the hard lessons learned in Iraq, which by 2005 had established the institutional and legal trappings of a democracy – establishing political parties, setting up a parliament, signing a constitution, and electing a president and a prime minister – but it was one in which conflict and instability continued because such institutions and legal frameworks were not sufficient foundations for building a stable democracy. The crucial missing component was a critical mass of Iraqi citizens who possessed the attributes described above. Instead, many individuals felt more affinity with their ethnic group, family clans, and/or religious leaders than with the Iraqi state or their fellow Iraqis.

Minority rights and citizenship Most observers would agree that it is reasonable to expect citizens in a healthy democracy to have some if not all of the traits listed above. However, there is much less agreement about how citizens attain these qualities and what role the state should play in promoting them. This question is especially controversial in today’s democratic societies that have significant immigrant populations. Immigration of course brings together a diversity of groups with different identities, affinities, and senses of belonging. Inevitably, in an environment with such diversity, some groups are more dominant than others, and often one group will constitute the majority or at least the plurality. The challenge of every democracy is to bring about a sense of unity and loyalty among its citizens, while at the same time exercising respect for minorities. Striking this balance is difficult, because on the one hand there are critics of minority rights who argue that if one respects such rights, then one inevitably treats some citizens differently

Citizenship and the rise of nationalism  99 from others, which, in their eyes, is a violation of democratic principles that require all citizens to be treated equally. Furthermore, such critics claim that promoting minority rights and identities leads to fragmentation within society along group lines, thereby harming national unity and the common good. Instead, they support efforts to forge a common national identity. On the other hand, advocates for minority rights argue that not only is it a fundamental human right to express an identity, but not showing minorities respect leads to their frustration and disaffection, which in turn can lead to instability. Furthermore, this position argues that any kind of overarching national identity is inevitably based on the identity of the existing dominant group, and conforming to such an identity requires minorities to give up or at least dilute their own identities. The ongoing controversy in Europe about Muslim girls and women wearing headscarves and veils in public places demonstrates the difference between legal and identity citizenship. At the heart of the matter is what Europeans conceive as being their identity and what they demand of others in terms of embracing this identity. My research assistant, Matthew Garza, has written the following description of the headscarf controversy in Europe. As an aside, it’s interesting to wonder why this controversy has not been significant in the United States. The headscarf controversy in Europe In the past few years there has been a flurry of political activity in Western European countries related to various forms of Islamic dress. In 2004, France banned the wearing of the hijab (headscarf) in all state schools. A number of German states, including Bavaria, have passed similar legislation preventing school teachers from wearing the hijab at work, legislation which does not address Jewish or Christian symbols. The authorities in a Belgian town prohibit the wearing of the burqa or niqab, both of which cover the face, and the Netherlands is debating a near-identical measure. In Britain, both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House of Commons have publicly condemned the wearing of the niqab. Before addressing popular arguments against the presence of Islamic dress in the public sphere, it is important to highlight the size of the Muslim populations in Western Europe. France is home to the largest Muslim population, both in relative and absolute terms. Five million Muslims, nearly 10 percent of the population, live in the country (this number is a rough estimate, given that the state does not keep statistics on religion). Three million live in Germany and 1.6 million in Britain, 3.6 and 2.8 percent of the population, respectively. Elsewhere, Muslims account for 5.8 percent of the population of the Netherlands, 4 percent of Belgium’s, and 1.4 percent of Italy’s.6 The number of Muslims in Europe who actually wear some form of covering is considerably lower. Of the 1 million Muslims in the Netherlands, only 50 to 100 wear the burqa.7 And of the 1.8 million French Muslim schoolgirls, fewer than 2,000 wear the scarf.8 Thus, the presence of Islamic dress in these societies is not nearly as prominent as the heated discussion over banning it leads us to believe. Arguments in favor of legal intervention tend to follow four main lines of reasoning, which sometimes overlap and reinforce each other.9 The first argument deals with maintaining secular values in society, an idea which has particular resonance in France. According to Henri Astier, a reporter for the BBC, “[France] has always recognized individuals, rather than groups: a French citizen owes allegiance to the nation, and has no officially sanctioned ethnic or religious identity.” The very presence of religious symbols

100  Citizenship is thought to undermine this tradition. It is not surprising, then, that the measure passed by 494 votes to 36 in the lower house of the French parliament and is supported by 70 percent of the French population.10 The second argument addresses issues of assimilation. Tony Blair, the British prime minister at the time, identified the niqab as “a mark of separation.” Echoing this sentiment, a British Conservative accused Muslims of engaging in a process of “voluntary apartheid.”11 In some ways this is hypocritical, given the presence of the Sikh turban, Jewish yarmulke, and the nun’s wimple, although only the niqab completely obscures the face. In addition, this argument often assumes a political agenda expressed in the veil. One French official argued that the ban was not a suppression of religion, but rather “a political answer to what is a political problem.”12 Similarly, a Belgian senator said, “[We] are very anxious that the conflicts of the world are not brought into the classrooms.”13 In this way, the veil is equated with intolerant or radical versions of Islam. The third argument deals with issues of women’s empowerment, specifically the idea that the veil is a sign of oppression forced upon women generally and young girls in particular. One prominent German feminist suggested that the very presence of the veil empowers Islamic fundamentalists.14 Officials rarely mention this point first, but support for Muslim women always features prominently in a support of a ban. The Belgian senator mentioned above also said, “Therefore while some allege that we are taking away their individual freedoms, in some cases we will actually be restoring it. We want individuals to be integrated, and we want Muslim women to be viewed and treated as equals.”15 Finally, some argue that a veil which obscures the face makes classroom learning difficult for children who cannot respond to lip movement and facial expressions.16 The most convincing counter-argument is that a ban will only reinforce social isolation and further stigmatize the role of Muslims in Western Europe. Some families have chosen to remove their daughters from public school rather than comply with the law. Perhaps more damaging, though, is the nature of the debate itself. Discussions of the veil are often a vehicle to vent public opinion on all matters deemed Islamic (e.g. Sharia law, terrorism, etc.). This popular discourse highlights the distrust of the growing Muslim presence in the region. In one opinion poll, 57 percent of Britons said Muslims had not done enough to integrate.17 It does seem pressing to address issues of Muslim assimilation in Western Europe. Recent riots in Britain and France suggest that there are issues of segregation, disillusionment, and anger that need to be addressed. Whether the Islamic veil is the most appropriate vehicle to do so is another matter. Matthew Garza, UNC Sophomore It is important that as we discuss minorities in a society, we are aware of the diversity that often exists among minority groups. In the United States, for example, minorities were created under profoundly different circumstances: Native Americans were made minorities by immigrants, Mormons chose to isolate themselves by migrating to another part of the country, and African Americans did not choose to be here in the first place. While all are unified by being minorities, they came to this status through completely different historical processes, and they therefore have different concerns that require different policies to address them. While affirmative action may be sought by Hispanics who wish to be better integrated into society, it is not sought by the Amish, who deliberately separate themselves from society. And while we seem comfortable outlawing polygamy even though it violates the religious beliefs of some Mormons, we are not outlawing headscarves in public schools, which would violate the religious beliefs of some Muslims.

Citizenship and the rise of nationalism  101 The diversity in America is demonstrated by considering the number and origin of people who have recently become US citizens. Table 7.1 (overleaf) lists how many people acquired US citizenship in 2006 and the countries from which they came.18 As we’ll discover in the next chapter, creating legal citizens out of such a diverse group is challenging enough, but it is even more challenging to develop a way for them to embrace the attributes and attitudes discussed earlier, especially the sense of a national identity. After all, what does it take to be an American?

Dealing with diversity The issue of how states should deal with diversity and respect minority rights arose relatively recently and is largely limited to democracies. In other contexts, states do not show much concern for such matters and may instead seek to deal with diversity and minorities through force. The most forceful way a state can deal with diversity is to eliminate it by eliminating minorities. History is, tragically, scattered with many examples of genocide and mass expulsion carried out to eliminate diversity: Rwanda, Darfur, the Holocaust, former Yugoslavia. Even democracies have been prone to such excesses – consider the past treatment of Native Americans by the US. Another violent approach to attempting to deal with diversity is to forcibly separate groups within a country (e.g., apartheid in South Africa) or to separate groups into different countries (e.g., the partition of India and Pakistan). Note, though, that attempting to separate groups can also occur peacefully in a democratic setting; Canada, for example, nearly split apart in 1995 when 49.4 percent of voters in Quebec voted to separate from Canada as a way of dealing with the diversity between its majority French- and minority English-speakers. Another way that states attempt to deal with diversity is through assimilation. By assimilation, I mean the attempt to eliminate (or at least significantly reduce) the differences between a minority and the majority in favor of a single national identity. Milder forms of assimilation include state policies such as officially celebrating only the holidays and customs of the majority, declaring the language of the majority to be the official one, and making no attempt to recognize the minority language in public education, public spaces, or public documents. More forceful forms of assimilation include banning the use of minority languages not only in official business but also within the household, banning the wearing of clothing associated with minorities, or banning their religious practices. While such assimilative measures strike some as harsh, defenders justify them as an example of “the end justifies the means,” where the end goal is the creation of a common, unifying, national identity that they claim promotes democracy and stability. Turkey, for example, has banned the veil in public buildings since 1920, when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of modern Turkey, instituted wide-ranging secularization in this traditionally Muslim country. More recently, the Turkish military, which sees itself as the guardian of democracy and secularism, seized power in 1980, suspended the constitution, abolished the parliament, and banned political parties, all in the name of national unity and stability. Instead of trying to eliminate diversity, today’s democracies are much more likely to attempt to manage it. In so doing, they must strike a balance between ensuring that all citizens have a shared sense of national identity and loyalty to the nation-state while also respecting the rights of minorities. In the context of the United States, affirmative action policies and programs have been among the more controversial attempts to manage diversity. These programs give preference to minority candidates in hiring and educational admissions decisions. Supporters of affirmative action argue that this policy is justified in order to correct past discrimination

Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Angola Anguilla Antigua-Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bolivia BosniaHerzegovina Botswana Brazil British Virgin Islands Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burma Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad

14 18

54 13 3,488 51 1,486 71 4,778 771 9,607 1,126 18

9,686 17 7,028

2,018 3,964 825 247 106 35 520 2,695 1,605 44 1,240 359 997 574 81 6,683 1,006 1,769 355 918 64 72 1,630

Chile China, People’s Republic Colombia Congo, Democratic Republic Congo, Republic Costa Rica Côte d’Ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Czechoslovakia (former) Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Grenada Guadeloupe Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau

1,549

22,165 8,321 4,271 13,430 653 156 5,397 1,163 532 2,449 D 16 23 286 628 4,556 4,760 1,291 781 36 6,551 194 14

614 199 18 741

229 369 1,402 491 1,623 21,481 140 122

35,387 15,698

Table 7.1  US citizenship by country of origin (2006) 7,434 Guyana Haiti 15,979 Honduras 4,949 Hong Kong 4,263 Hungary 955 Iceland 70 India 47,542 1,287 Indonesia Iran 11,363 3,614 Iraq 1,754 Ireland Israel 2,905 2,769 Italy Jamaica 18,953 2,192 Japan Jordan 2,634 Kazakhstan 872 Kenya 1,636 17,668 Korea 903 Kuwait Kyrgyzstan 246 4,114 Laos Latvia 347 Lebanon 3,393 Liberia 2,193 Libya 142 Lithuania 964 Luxembourg 9 Macau 163 Macedonia 837 36 Madagascar Malawi 67 Malaysia 1,264 Mali 118 Malta 86 Marshall Islands 14 Martinique 16 106 Mauritania Mauritius 65 Mexico 83,979 Micronesia, Federated States 41

988 Moldova Mongolia 60 Montserrat 96 Morocco 3,643 Mozambique 62 Namibia 17 575 Nepal Netherlands 1,008 Netherlands Antilles 33 New Zealand 440 9,283 Nicaragua Niger 46 Nigeria 8,652 145 Norway 23 Oman Pakistan 10,411 Palau 36 Panama 1,930 12 Papua New Guinea Paraguay 285 10,063 Peru Philippines 40,500 Poland 10,230 Portugal 2,638 Qatar 59 Romania 5,484 Russia 9,412 Rwanda 178 Saint Kitts-Nevis 483 623 Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 624 Samoa 201 Saudi Arabia 511 Senegal 503 Serbia and 5,555 Montenegro Seychelles 22 Sierra Leone 1,683 Singapore 347 Slovak Republic 479 Slovenia 61

41 All other countries Unknown 880 Total 702,589

4,242 Somalia South Africa 2,225 Soviet Union 3,831 (former) Spain 1,465 Sri Lanka 1,023 2,587 Sudan Suriname 222 10 Swaziland 984 Sweden Switzerland 539 Syria 2,395 Taiwan 8,819 147 Tajikistan Tanzania 490 Thailand 4,583 536 Togo Tonga 235 Trinidad and 6,612 Tobago Tunisia 315 Turkey 2,742 75 Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands 30 Uganda 477 Ukraine 10,184 United Arab Emirates 277 United Kingdom 9,104 United States 57 Uruguay 579 Uzbekistan 1,821 Venezuela 4,476 Vietnam 29,917 Yemen 989 Zambia 239 Zimbabwe 322

Citizenship and the rise of nationalism  103

Plate 7.4  Style (Linda Quiquivix)

suffered by minorities, while critics argue that these policies are undemocratic because they promote unequal treatment of citizens. We as a society must weigh when and under what circumstances we should treat individuals as part of a minority and when we should treat them as citizens of the nation-state. There is no objective, clear-cut answer to this question, and the answers are not mutually exclusive or necessarily at odds. Migration brings to the forefront the challenges democracies face in allowing migrants to maintain and express their identities without these identities overpowering a larger shared identity that is important for maintaining national unity and stability. Rather than seeing this issue as an either/or proposition, it is probably more useful to see migrants expressing their identities as a matter of degree. It is surely an exaggeration to claim that every expression of Mexican identity among immigrants in the US harms American democracy: displaying a Mexican flag in Los Angeles, for instance, is not a threat. At what point, though, does the expression of one’s identity and pride in one’s home country begin to harm the host country? Some people in Europe think that Muslims wearing the headscarf in their midst have crossed the line. We will again pick up this issue in the book’s concluding chapter.

Conclusion Finally, consider those people who have no citizenship at all. In the modern world composed of nation-states, a terrible fate to befall an individual is to become stateless and therefore have no citizenship. The Refugees International report Lives on Hold: The Human Cost of Statelessness estimates that 11 million people worldwide have no citizenship or effective nationality. The report calls them “international orphans” who have fallen through the cracks of the United Nations protection system, and it concludes with recommendations on what the

104  Citizenship UN, individual states, and donor governments must do to alleviate the plight of these people. The report’s Executive Summary captures well the plight of these migrants: Every person has the right to a nationality. Yet statelessness continues to be a fundamental cause of discrimination, exploitation, and forced displacement in all regions of the world. Statelessness is a highly complex legal and often political issue with a disproportionate impact on women, children, and ethnically mixed families. It has serious humanitarian implications for those it affects, including no legal protection or the right to participate in political process, poor employment prospects and poverty, little opportunity to own property, travel restrictions, social exclusion, sexual and physical violence, and inadequate access to healthcare and education. States have the sovereign right to determine the procedures and conditions for acquisition and termination of citizenship, but statelessness and disputed nationality can only be addressed by the very governments that regularly breach protection and citizenship norms. To date, only 57 states have become party to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and even fewer states, just 29, are party to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. The exact number of individuals affected by statelessness is not known. Refugees International believes the low end estimate to be over 11 million. They are found among individuals from the former Soviet bloc, some of Thailand’s ethnic groups, the Bhutanese in Nepal, Muslim minorities in Burma and Sri Lanka, Palestinians, Europe’s Roma, the Bidoon in Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates, specific cases in the Horn of Africa, ethnic minorities such as the Batwa “Pygmy” and Banyarwanda of the Great Lakes Region of Africa, Bihari and Rohingya in Bangladesh, Kurdish populations, numbers of Arab Shiites, some Meskhetian Turks, and Zimbabweans of Indian descent or with links to Malawi and Mozambique. The 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons identifies a stateless person as someone who does not have the legal bond of nationality with any state. Unlike refugees and internally displaced people, stateless individuals generally do not benefit from the protection and assistance of governments, aid agencies, and the United Nations, despite its mandate over stateless persons. They are essentially international orphans. At present, only two staff people at the headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are employed to focus on this large and growing population.19 As democracies, we must of course work to ensure that we do not marginalize international migrants among us to anything like the extent described above. One way to do so is to make those we have admitted into our country part of the demos. The next chapter will deal at length with the process of naturalization, which seeks to make them part of us.

8 Naturalization

• • • •

Born into citizenship Citizenship through naturalization Comparing naturalization processes in different countries Going through the naturalization process

Introduction As we have been discovering, international migration forces a democracy to give serious thought not only to whom it should admit but also who should receive its citizenship. The issuance of citizenship is important because it brings with it a host of rights, duties, benefits, obligations, burdens, and privileges between individuals and states. This chapter explores the most common ways that individuals receive citizenship.

Born into citizenship The vast majority of the world’s people acquire citizenship as a result of the circumstances into which they were born. Quite literally, as a baby emerges from the womb, it receives citizenship on the basis either of being born in a certain country or being a descendant of a citizen of a certain country. The first way is known as jus soli (often called “citizenship by birth”) and is a territorial conception that grants citizenship based on where you are born: if you are born in a country then you are granted citizenship of that country. The second way, called jus sanguinis, conceives of citizenship as being granted by descent (hence it is often called “citizenship by blood”): if you are ethnically of a country then you are a citizen of that country. Jus sanguinis One of the best examples of jus sanguinis is Israel’s Law of Return. This law grants any Jew from anywhere in the world the right to immigrate to Israel and to immediately and automatically receive Israeli citizenship. This law defines a “Jew” as any person who was born of a Jewish mother or converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion. Neither one’s knowledge of Israel, one’s command of Hebrew, nor one’s religious or secular leanings matter in being given citizenship by Israel.1 This generous conception of belonging led to an especially large wave of Jews migrating to Israel after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Between 1990 and 1994, over 600,000 Jews immigrated to Israel2 so that by the mid-1990s about a third of the Israeli population was foreign-born.3

106  Citizenship

Plate 8.1  Singaporean? (Niklaus Steiner)

Another interesting jus sanguinis case is Germany. As discussed earlier in this book, Germany imported a large number of foreign workers in the 1950s and 1960s but always insisted that these were not immigrants but rather guest workers who would eventually go home. That did not in fact happen, and instead these workers settled and had children and, by the early 1990s, grandchildren. However, because Germany followed jus sanguinis and not jus soli, these children of guest workers born in Germany did not become German citizens because they were not of German descent. So, despite the fact that many of them were German for all practical purposes – they spoke perfect German, they were fully educated in German schools, they were surrounded by German friends, perhaps they did not even speak the language of their “home country” or ever visit it – they did not possess the Germanness needed to be considered citizens. The predicament of these second- and third-generation immigrants came to a head when communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and hundreds of thousands of Aussiedler came to Germany to claim citizenship. These Aussiedler were descendants of Germans who had moved to Eastern Europe and Russia over the past few centuries, and when communism ended in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they sought a better life by immigrating to Germany. Because of jus sanguinis they received German citizenship even if they could not speak a word of German, had never visited Germany, had no relatives there, or really knew little about life in modern Germany. Their acceptance left many immigrants protesting, because they claimed to be at least as “German” as these Aussiedler and asked why they, too, couldn’t receive citizenship. That question, on the one hand, was easy to answer: because Germany followed jus sanguinis and not jus soli. On the other hand, though, it was a difficult question because it raised the issue of what exactly constitutes Germanness. Apparently it is more than being able to speak the language, being educated by its school system, holding its values and cultures, or being surrounded by “German” friends and colleagues: it must be in you. But what exactly is “it,” and does waving a birth certificate from a great-great-great-grandfather really prove you have it? The question of defining Germanness is especially sensitive because of how such past efforts – from Richard Wagner’s 1878 essay “What is German?” to the Nazis’ 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws – fit into its dark recent history. To accommodate children born in Germany to immigrants, the conception of being German was loosened somewhat by the 1999 Nationality Law. Under this new law, children

Naturalization  107 born after December 31, 1999 to foreign parents in Germany get German citizenship if, at the time of the child’s birth, one of the parents had been a legal resident in Germany for at least eight years and if at least one parent had an unlimited residence permit (unbefristete Aufenthaltserlaubnis) or a residence entitlement (Aufenthaltsberechtigung). Jus soli Jus soli is in many ways a much simpler conception of citizenship because it relies on where you were born: if you are born in a country then you are a citizen of that country. This is the policy followed in the US, and because it is so straightforward, it may make for a more open and tolerant conception of who is American. Imagine a teacher in the US asking for a show of hands of all students in the class who are American citizens; my guess is that everyone’s answer will readily be accepted, regardless of background, circumstance, or physical characteristics. Such acceptance of who is a citizen is not the case in Switzerland, which holds a more jus sanguinis conception. Anecdotally, I have a Swiss friend who was adopted as an infant from South Korea and grew up Swiss in every possible way and is a Swiss citizen, but who still has a hard time convincing some Swiss people that she is one of them. Because the US practices jus soli, virtually any baby born in the United States (including Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands) automatically becomes a citizen; among the few exceptions are the children of foreign diplomats. Because of such easy access to citizenship, the United States (and other jus soli countries) has not had the secondgeneration immigrant problem that many jus sanguinis countries have had for the simple reason that there are no second-generation immigrants in the US – they are all US citizens. This is not to say that jus soli is without controversy. Granting citizenship simply by being born into a country strikes some people as too easy and open to exploitation. One common

Plate 8.2  American? (Niklaus Steiner)

108  Citizenship charge against this conception of citizenship is that it enables pregnant foreigners to travel into a jus soli country in order to give birth. The child, having citizenship, can then bring in the parents and other family members, albeit usually not until adult age. Another complaint is that it rewards the unlawful behavior of foreigners who enter a country illegally and then have a child who is fully legal. I saw this jus soli principle in action when a Swiss friend and his Swiss wife moved to the US for a job opportunity for a few years. While the couple lived in Chicago, they had their first child, who received US citizenship. A second child was also born in Chicago, but within a few months the family decided to move back to Switzerland with no intention of coming back to the US. They have since had a third child, born in Switzerland, so now this family of five living in the small town of Steffisburg Switzerland has two children with American citizenship. Some people may argue that this is a case of wasted citizenship, because these two girls may well never make use of it and so should not have received it in the first place. However, denying these girls citizenship would violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which, when ratified in 1868, for the first time formalized US citizenship. Interestingly, this amendment had nothing to do with immigration; instead, it addressed freed slaves and others of African descent, who, through the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scot Decision, had lost the opportunity to become citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment assured their citizenship by declaring: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Changing the principle of jus soli in the United States would, therefore, require a change to the Constitution. A mix of both There is a common misconception that jus sanguinis and jus soli are in opposition to each other. In fact, most democracies use a mix of the two in allocating citizenship. Also, while jus soli may seem more modern, it actually derives from European feudalism, in which individuals were the subjects of the manor upon which they were born. France was one of the first states to introduce jus sanguinis, but it came not from an ethnic conception of being French but rather from a revolutionary one. France accepted as citizens those who adhered to the values and spirit of the French Revolution, which embraced liberty, democracy, and equality – that’s what it meant to be French. Today, France is a good example of mixing the two principles: second-generation immigrants (i.e. those born in France to immigrants) have the right to naturalize when they reach 18, and this naturalization process is more or less automatic, while third-generation immigrants are given citizenship at birth. In a nod to jus sanguinis, children born abroad to US citizens also become US citizens, although there are some parameters. If you are born abroad to two US citizens and at least one of them lived in the US at some point, then you almost certainly become a citizen. If only one parent is a US citizen, then you will still usually become a citizen as long as that parent was a citizen at the time of your birth, had lived for at least five years in the US before you were born,

Naturalization  109 and at least two of these five years were after that parent’s fourteenth birthday. These conditions, by the way, relate back to the example of my Swiss friends mentioned above – the US citizenship of those two girls will not simply pass on indefinitely to subsequent generations. Let me stress that I raise these parameters not because I think they are particularly interesting in and of themselves, but because they demonstrate nicely the way that policies are not preordained, immutable, or often even terribly logical. Instead, they are the result of historical circumstances, cultural norms, and political deliberations. In the example above, policy makers chose the fourteenth birthday but they equally well could also have chosen the twelfth, eighteenth, or others. As citizens in a democracy, we should take part in deliberations about our citizenship, because what we demand of others to become one of us says a great deal about how we see ourselves and how we want to be seen by others.

Citizenship through naturalization Most of the people in the world have their citizenship because of the circumstances of their birth; they were born into it and had no control over the matter. Some people, however, actively choose to gain the citizenship of a country later in life through a process called naturalization. There is a wide range in the requirements that states set for becoming a naturalized citizen. In some cases, the threshold is quite low, while in others the process is quite arduous. One common expectation of foreigners who want to become citizens is that they adapt to the culture of the host society by following the old adage “When in Rome do as the Romans.” The problem with this expectation is that in modern, diverse democracies it is far from clear what it means to be Roman (or American, or Swiss, or French …). The naturalization process in the United States To explore what it takes to become a citizen in a new country, let’s begin with a reasonably familiar case: the naturalization requirements of the United States. What follows is not intended to help you navigate the legal aspects and detailed procedures of the American naturalization process. Instead, it focuses on what Americans expect of others in order for them to become American citizens. It is important to note that these expectations change over time. For example, the first naturalization statute dates to 1790, and it limited naturalization to “any alien, being a free white person.” This right was later extended to people of African descent through the Fourteenth Amendment but to no others. Chinese, for example, were not given the right to naturalize until 1943, and race-based naturalization was not completely eliminated until 1952. America’s current self-image is reflected in the US Citizenship and Immigration Services’ A Guide to Naturalization.4 On the very first page, for example, is an opening statement that both welcomes immigrants while at the same time emphasizing the seriousness and responsibility of becoming a citizen (Plate 8.3). The standard process for becoming a naturalized US citizen is to be over 18 years old and to have lived in the US with Permanent Residency Status (Green Card) for at least five years without having left the country for more than six months at a time. (As we discussed in an earlier chapter, the most common way to receive Permanent Residency Status is to be sponsored by a family member or an employer.) Over 90 percent of all naturalized US citizens fall into these categories. Other avenues to citizenship include marrying an American citizen and serving in the US military, which in 2007 had about 30,000 non-citizens on active duty and 11,000 in the reserves.5

110  Citizenship Another requirement for citizenship is to be of “good moral character.” According to A Guide to Naturalization, the following are examples of things that might demonstrate a lack of good moral character: • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Any crime against a person with intent to harm. Any crime against property or the Government that involves “fraud” or evil intent. Two or more crimes for which the aggregate sentence was five years or more. Violating any controlled substance law of the United States, any State, or any foreign country. Habitual drunkenness or drunk driving. Illegal gambling. Prostitution. Polygamy (marriage to more than one person at the same time). Lying to gain immigration benefits. Failing to pay court-ordered child support or alimony payments. Confinement in jail, prison, or similar institution for which the total confinement was 180 days or more during the past five years (or three years if you are applying based on your marriage to a United States citizen). Failing to complete any probation, parole, or suspended sentence before you apply for naturalization. Terrorist acts. Persecution of anyone because of race, religion, national origin, political opinion, or social group.

Someone wishing to become a naturalized US citizen must also demonstrate an ability to read, write, and speak basic English and possess basic knowledge of US history and politics. These capacities are tested through an English test and a civics test that are administered during an interview with a government official. A Guide to Naturalization offers the following sample questions to help applicants prepare for the civics test. As you go through these questions, consider whether it matters how well native-born citizens would perform in this test.   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9 10 11 12 13 14

How many stripes are there on our flag? 13 How many states are there in the Union (the United States) 50 Can the constitution be changed? Yes What country did we fight during the Revolutionary War? Great Britain Who becomes President if the President dies? The Vice President What are the three branches of our government? Executive, Judicial, and Legislative Who elects Congress? The citizens of the United States How many voting members are in the House of Representatives? 435 For how long do we elect each member of the House of Representatives? Two years Who is the head of the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government? The President For how long is the President elected? Four years What are the duties of the Supreme Court? To interpret and explain the laws What is the Bill of Rights? The first ten amendments to the Constitution Name some countries that were our enemies during World War II. Germany, Italy, and Japan 15 What are some of the requirements to be eligible to become President? A candidate for President must:

Naturalization  111

Welcome

1

E Pluribus Unum - Out of Many, One -Motto inscripted on the Great Seal of the United States Welcome

We are very pleased that you want to become a U.S. citizen. The United States is a nation of immigrants. Throughout our history, immigrants have come here seeking a better way of life and have strengthened our Nation in the process. For more than 200 years, the United States has remained strong because of our citizens and the common civic values we share. Deciding to become a U.S. citizen is one of the most important decisions in a person’s life. If you decide to apply for naturalization, you will be showing your permanent commitment to the United States. You will also be showing your loyalty to its Constitution and its people.

What Is Naturalization?

Naturalization is commonly referred to as the manner in which a person not born in the United States voluntarily becomes a U.S. citizen.

What Is This Guide for?

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) created this Guide to provide better and more consistent information to people interested in naturalization. It is written mainly for people 18 years or older who want to become citizens. Please take the time to review this information to make sure that you are eligible to apply for naturalization. You can find more information at www.uscis.gov or by calling Customer Service at 1-800-375-5283 or 1-800-767-1833 (for hearing impaired).

When you are naturalized, you agree to accept all of the responsibilities of being a citizen. You agree to support the United States, its Constitution, and its laws. In return, you are rewarded with all the rights and privileges that are part of citizenship. We welcome your interest and hope you will read on to learn more about naturalization.

A Guide to Naturalization

Plate 8.3  Welcome

1

112  Citizenship

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

• be a native-born, not naturalized, citizen, • be at least 35 years old, and • have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years. Who nominates judges for the Supreme Court? The President What is the head executive of a city government called? The Mayor What holiday was celebrated for the first time by American colonists? Thanksgiving What is the national anthem of the United States? The Star-Spangled Banner What is the highest court in the United States? The Supreme Court What is the name of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America? The Mayflower What is the introduction to the Constitution called? The Preamble Name one right or freedom guaranteed by the first amendment. The rights of freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, of assembly, and to petition the Government Who is Commander-in-Chief of the United States military? The President Where does freedom of speech come from? The Bill of Rights What is the most important right granted to United States citizens? The right to vote

The final step in the US naturalization process is taking the Oath of Allegiance in a formal ceremony. Immediately upon taking this oath one becomes a citizen. The Oath of Allegiance I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God. Table 8.1  The Australian and Canadian oaths of allegiance compared Australian pledge From this time forward, under God, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, Whose democratic beliefs I share, Whose rights and liberties I respect, And whose laws I will uphold and obey. (italicized text is optional)

Canadian pledge I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada and fulfill my duties as a Canadian citizen.

Source: Government of Australia, Department of Immigration and Citizenship. “Pledge of Commitment of Australia” (www.citizenship.gov.au/resources/ceremonies/citizenship/pledge.htm) and Government of Canada, Citizenship and Immigration Canada. “The Citizenship Ceremony” (www.cic.gc.ca/english/citizenship/citceremony.asp#oath).

Naturalization  113

Comparing naturalization processes in different countries The United States, Canada, and Australia are widely considered the three traditional countries of immigration, and so they have similar requirements for naturalization. They all require permanent residents to have lived in the country for several years before being able to apply for naturalization, and they require applicants to pass civics and language tests. All three require an oath of allegiance (Table 8.1), although only the US demands exclusive loyalty and a renouncement of all previous loyalties to other countries. And only the US and Australia explicitly demand applicants to be of good moral standing. All three countries also practice jus sanguinis but insist that significant connections exist between the individual born abroad and the home country, so that citizenship does not pass along indefinitely within a family. A noteworthy difference between the United States and Australia is that the US insists that those wishing to naturalize must renounce their prior citizenship but allows its own citizens to naturalize in another country while keeping US citizenship. Australia, by contrast, insists on the exact opposite: its citizens lose Australian citizenship when naturalizing elsewhere, but foreigners can receive Australian citizenship while keeping their prior citizenship. Apart from having similar naturalization expectations, all three countries also offer permanent residents nearly the same rights as citizens. Permanent residents enjoy the right to work, equality before the law, the right to free mobility both within the country and internationally, the right to own land, and the right to access education and health services, although in 1996 the US Congress cut the rights of permanent residents to some welfare services such as food stamps. The most important difference between citizens and non-citizens is the right to vote and hold certain high public offices. Given all of the legal, social, and economic benefits they already enjoy, permanent residents may not feel a strong incentive to become citizens. Should we citizens care if permanent residents don’t choose to naturalize? And if we do care, what should we do to encourage naturalization? On the one hand, perhaps we should make the differences greater between citizens and non-citizens by curbing the rights of non-citizens, thus providing an incentive to become citizens. In the US, for example, the 1990s saw a strong climb in the number of naturalizations, due in part to the welfare reforms that expanded the differences between the rights and benefits of citizens and non-citizens. On the other hand, perhaps we should lessen the differences even further, so that we are perceived as a generous and non-discriminatory society, which may make being a citizen more attractive. Australia took various steps in the 1970s to encourage more foreign nationals to naturalize by streamlining the process, lowering the fees associated with it, and making the process more culturally sensitive. Exactly these contrasting approaches played out in a Canadian legal case, which the testimony of the political philosopher Peter Schuck took the first position and Joseph Carens took the second.6 We will explore the rights of non-citizens further in this book’s Conclusion. South Africa is an interesting case, because, while it has a large number of immigrants entering the country, its citizenship and naturalization laws relate more to ridding itself of remnants of apartheid, its version of segregating whites from non-whites that lasted from the late 1940s to the early 1990s. One pillar of apartheid was the white government’s creation of five black homelands within South Africa, seen by the government as independent countries but rejected by the rest of the world as such. Blacks were granted citizenship in these homelands with the idea that over time they would lose their South African citizenship, so that South Africa would rid itself of black citizens and therefore of its duties to them.

114  Citizenship At the same time, the white government introduced laws making it very easy for white immigrants to receive South African citizenship, in part to be able to recruit these new citizens into the military, which increasingly needed enlargement to maintain the apartheid system. These two examples – ridding the country of black citizens and building up the military with white citizens – demonstrate just how citizenship laws are crafted to meet specific aims of governments and societies. Not too surprisingly, the first post-apartheid legislation dealing with citizenship eliminated both of these elements. This new law, passed in 1995, was a mix of jus soli and jus sanguinis. It gave citizenship to anyone born in the country to a South African citizen or to a permanent resident, but not to those born to temporary or illegal residents. Children born outside of the country to at least one citizen receive citizenship, and South Africa does not require a connection between these citizens born abroad and the country. In other words, South African citizens outside of the country can pass along their citizenship for generations. And to become a naturalized South African citizen, one must meet requirements similar to those in the US, Canada, and Australia. These include being of good and sound character, being able to communicate satisfactorily in any one of the official languages, and having adequate knowledge of the duties and responsibilities of a South African citizen. The Oath of Allegiance is quite short: I (insert name), do hereby solemnly declare that I will be loyal to the Republic of South Africa, promote all that will advance it and oppose all that may harm it, uphold and respect its Constitution and commit myself to the furtherance of the ideals and principles contained therein.7 Mexico is a noteworthy case because it sends a significant number of citizens abroad, but it also receives large numbers of immigrants from Central and South America across its southern border. Being both a major sending and receiving country affects its conception of what it means to be Mexican. In 1997, Mexico changed its naturalization law so that children born in Mexico to immigrant parents and children born abroad to Mexican parents both become citizens. Also, Mexicans living in the US who acquire US citizenship were now allowed to keep their Mexican citizenship. Previously, they would have lost it, and this loss was a strong disincentive for them to become naturalized US citizens. The Mexican government, however, shows less concern for immigrants to Mexico who want to become naturalized Mexican citizens: it requires them to renounce their previous citizenship and it may strip them of their Mexican citizenship if they live outside of Mexico for more than five years.8 Finally, Japan has allowed very few foreigners into its territory, either as immigrants or as refugees, so the question of naturalization is not as pressing as in other countries. By far the largest group of foreigners in Japan are the Koreans, who have been there since Japan colonized Korea in the first half of the twentieth century. Unlike France and Britain, who maintained ties with their former colonial subjects after their colonies collapsed, the Japanese made a clear break between themselves and the Koreans living in Japan when colonial rule ended in 1945, and the rights of Koreans in Japan have been slow to develop. Rare among wealthier democracies, Japan also holds out against the current trend of accepting dual citizenship and still insists on single citizenship. Getting Japanese citizenship through naturalization is cumbersome and requires applicants to submit extensive supporting documents such as references from the police, the tax office, neighbors, work colleagues, or supervisors. A traffic ticket may be reason enough to have naturalization postponed or denied, because it speaks against one’s good moral conduct. Not

Naturalization  115 1,200,000

1,000,000

South America

800,000

North and Central America Africa

600,000

Asia

400,000

Europe 200,000

20 07

20 05

20 03

20 01

19 99

19 97

19 95

19 93

19 91

0

Figure 8.1  Persons naturalized by top regions of birth: fiscal years 1991–2007

only is it cumbersome for the applicant to collect and submit all the required documents, it is also quite expensive and that makes for another important disincentive.

Going through the naturalization process All this is interesting to me not only on an intellectual level, but on a personal one as well because I am a naturalized US citizen. I was in graduate school in Chicago when I decided to apply for US citizenship. I remember going for my interview and having a friendly chat with the officer before the interview actually began. He then told me it was time for the interview and it would start with the writing test. He asked me to write “The cat sat on the mat.” I chuckled and asked “You’re joking, right?” He wasn’t. So I wrote the sentence and passed the test. I also had to demonstrate my ability to read English by reading aloud to him a similarly simple text. Then it was on to the civics test. I answered correctly a handful of questions, such as when and where the Declaration of Independence was signed and what the three branches of government are. Finally, he asked me what the Constitution is, and I answered that it is the document that spells out how our government functions. He replied that that was not the correct answer, because that is what the Constitution does but not what it is. I was a bit puzzled but tried again by explaining that it spells out things like the Bill of Rights and the separation of power. Again, he informed me that that is what the Constitution does but not what it is. By this point I was getting slightly embarrassed, because I was, after all, pursuing a PhD in political science. After a few more feeble attempts, I threw in the towel and had to confess I didn’t know the answer. He told me “It’s the supreme law of the land.” I passed anyway and formally received citizenship at the swearing-in ceremony a few months later. The ceremony was quite moving because it was obvious that for many of the hundred or so people in the room this was one of the most significant moments of their

116  Citizenship

Plate 8.4  American too? (Niklaus Steiner)

lives. Sitting there in that room looking around at my new fellow Americans, I became intrigued by the whole issue of naturalization. It made me wonder what it should take to become an American and what exactly a naturalization test should try to gauge. Given the differences in the levels of education among applicants, the reading and writing tests can be either rather silly (for applicants in PhD programs) or a major barrier (for applicants illiterate in their own language). Should the goal of the English test be to assess how well you will fare in everyday life in America? If so, then such extremely basic English may not be sufficient, because it will not get you very far in trying to pay your phone bill or getting a driver’s license. So perhaps the English test should be harder. It is, however, quite possible to live in an immigrant enclave in a city like Miami, Los Angles, or Chicago without speaking a word of English, because you are surrounded by community members who can help you navigate everyday life. On the civics side, if naturalized citizens are to participate productively in the democratic process, then it probably is important for them to know things like the fact that Congress is made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives. But perhaps they should really also know about the political, economic, and cultural impact the US has had on the rest of the world, so that they ought to know about the Marshall Plan, Henry Ford, and Ella Fitzgerald. Or is the goal of such a test to gauge whether the applicant will become a well-functioning and productive member of society, in which case they need to know about things like pop culture (what is YouTube?), current events (how many troops are currently stationed in Iraq?), and personal finances (what is the interest rate on your credit card?). Britain introduced a new test in 2005 along these lines. Known as the “Life in the UK” test, it focuses on contemporary life, culture, and politics. A government minister explained at its launch that: “This is not a test of someone’s ability to be British or a test of their Britishness. It is a test of their preparedness to become citizens, in keeping with the language requirement as well. It is about looking forward, rather than an assessment of their ability to understand history.”9 Maybe there should be different kinds of tests for different kinds of applicants. After all, is it really fair to give the same test to applicants with radically different educational and

Naturalization  117 professional backgrounds? Differentiated tests, however, run all kinds of risks of being used in a discriminatory manner, as was the case under the Jim Crow laws in the American South, when tests to vote were used to disenfranchise African Americans. The naturalization process does actually make allowances for some differences. For example, if you are over 50 and have been a Permanent Resident for at least 20 years, you do not have to take the English test and you can take the civics test in the language of your choice. This also applies if you are over 65, except that you take a simpler version of the civics test in your language of choice. In both cases, though, if you choose to take the test in a language other than English, you must provide the interpreter. The process also grants exemption from the English or civics test if you have a severe physical or developmental disability or a mental impairment, but this exemption will not be granted if your disability was caused by illegal drug use. Finally, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) state that: “If you qualify for a medical exception from the English and civics requirement, you must still be able to take the Oath of Allegiance to the United States. If you cannot communicate an understanding of the meaning of the Oath because of a physical or mental disability, USCIS may excuse you from this requirement.”10 Perhaps a test is not even needed. Instead, we could automatically grant citizenship after a set amount of time, with the justification that if someone has been among us for so long then that is proof enough that this person wants to be a part of us and is ready to do so. That suggestion, of course, raises the question of the length of time needed to pass before we feel comfortable that the person has demonstrated a serious commitment to being part of us – 5 or 10 or 20 years? In addition, we could insist that the individual perform a certain amount of public service, like working in a soup kitchen or tending to the elderly. In 2008 USCIS introduced a new test meant to be more meaningful and emphasizing concepts rather than straight facts. It states on its website (www.uscis.gov/newtest) that: “The revised test, with an emphasis on the fundamental concepts of American democracy and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, will help encourage citizenship applicants to learn and identify with the basic values we all share as Americans.” I encourage you to explore the sample questions for the reading, writing, and civics sections posted on this website and consider whether you think they do a good job of screening for “good” Americans.

Conclusion Citizenship, as we’ve been discussing it in this chapter, is mainly a legal concept that brings with it a piece of paper and an array of rights and duties. It does not automatically bring with it an identity, which, as we discussed in the last chapter, is also a crucial part of belonging to a country. Traditionally, certainly in the US, the dominant way to forge this identity was through assimilation, with its well-known image of the “melting pot.” As this image implies, the process sought to take the diversity of people coming to the US and make them into a more or less single mass of Americans. It was a one-sided process, by which the individual was expected to adapt to the majority (or at least the dominant) population. The latter half of the twentieth century saw this assimilationist approach fall out of favor and be replaced by pluralism. With this new approach came corresponding images of a “mosaic” or a “salad bowl.” Pluralism seeks to allow newcomers to keep their identities, both because these identities have value in themselves and because a collection of individual identities adds to the flavor and character of a society. In keeping with the food analogy, the argument is that the salad as a whole tastes better when the carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, and croutons remain distinct – imagine the unpleasantness of a salad put through a blender to

118  Citizenship make it more homogenous. Australia and Canada have also taken the pluralistic approach to dealing with immigrant communities, while France maintains a largely assimilationist attitude.11 The headscarf controversy discussed in the previous chapter epitomizes the challenge of maintaining an assimilationist attitude in a society that is, as a result of migration, increasingly diverse. In the twenty-first century, international migration will force us to rethink how we deal with admitting foreigners and how we treat them once they are in. Globalization has brought us a more complex world, and our traditional approaches to the issues at hand are perhaps no longer adequate. The final chapter deals with the road ahead.

Suggested resources   1 Anderson, Benedict R. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.   2 Calavita, Kitty. “Law, Citizenship, and the Construction of (Some) Immigrant ‘Others’.” Law & Social Inquiry, 30, 2 (Spring 2005), pp. 401–20.   3 Fadiman, Anne, Diane McKenzie, and Susan H. Keesee. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. New York: Noonday Press, 1998.   4 Finnegan, William. “New in Town: The Somalis of Lewiston.” The New Yorker, December 11, 2006, pp. 46–58.   5 Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983.   6 Hobsbawm, E. J. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, 2nd edn. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.   7 Horowitz, Donald L. Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 2nd edn. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000.   8 Klusmeyer, Douglas. “Introduction.” In T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer, eds., Citizenship Today: Global Perspectives and Practices. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001, pp. 1–14.   9 Kymlicka, Will, and Wayne Norman. “Citizenship in Culturally Diverse Societies: Issues, Contexts, Concepts.” In Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman, eds,. Citizenship in Diverse Societies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, 1–41. 10 Parekh, Bhikhu. “Minority Practices and Principles of Toleration.” International Migration Review, 30, 1 (1996), pp. 251–84. 11 Schuck, Peter H. “The Reevaluation of American Citizenship.” In Peter Schuck, Citizens, Strangers, and In-Betweens: Essays on Immigration and Citizenship. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998, pp. 176–206. 12 Shenkman, Richard. I Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode or Not. New York: HarperPerennial, 1991.

Section V

Conclusion

9 Beyond conventional approaches to migration and citizenship

• • • • • • •

Summary of the complexity Demographic shifts Alignment of labor supply and demand Danger of marginalization Rights of non-citizens Open immigration opportunities Needed: a holistic approach

Summary of the complexity This book has deliberately provided more questions than answers. It has done so not only to challenge readers to consider critically these questions, but also because they reflect the realities of migration and citizenship in the early twenty-first century. Today, we have more questions than answers because we are not adequately prepared to face the complex issues at hand. This inadequacy is due to the fact that we are trying to address twenty-first-century problems with a twentieth-century mindset. We still believe too firmly that the world is neatly divided into nation-states, all of whom enjoy sovereignty and control over their borders. We also cling too much to the view that there are citizens and foreigners, that people are either in or out, that there is us and there is them. While there’s still considerable merit to this conventional paradigm, it has definite limitations, as shown by the many difficult questions raised in this book. By adjusting our thinking and at least considering unconventional approaches to migration and citizenship, we will be better equipped to address the pressing issues we face. After summarizing the complexity of migration and citizenship, this chapter highlights five specific areas that we need to consider approaching in new ways as we set policies in the years ahead. Democracies do not control migration to the extent that they seek or claim. Politicians who are keen to “control the border” must realize that their powers to do so are limited by at least two factors. First, democracies’ ideological commitments limit the resources they are willing to allocate to controlling migration. Second, migrants themselves have considerable ability to move across borders. So, while the power of democracies to control the movement of people is still significant, we return to the juxtaposition that opened this book: there is in the early twenty-first century a monumental struggle between the ability of migrants to seek admission into democracies and the ability of democracies to control this admission. It should also be clear by now that “migrants” is a broad and messy term. It covers everything from executives flying between headquarters in London and outposts in Singapore and Mexico City while living in Berlin and New York, to students studying abroad in Ghana and

122  Conclusion American retirees living across the border in Baja California, as well citizens, residents, aliens, denizens, refugees, tourists, illegals, asylum-seekers, environmental migrants, and guest workers. In our traditional thinking on this subject, democracies have tended to try to categorize all of these people neatly into separate boxes and deal with them in distinct ways. We have for example tried to cherry-pick “refugees” or “high-skilled workers” while rejecting “illegal immigrants” or “bogus asylum-seekers,” but we finally need to recognize and deal with the intertwined nature of international migration. The guest workers who became immigrants in Europe are prime examples of how our attempts at categorization and isolation have failed. Similarly, we cling to too neat an image of what it means to be a citizen or a non-citizen when in fact the picture has become increasingly murky. Of course, holding a passport gives some indication of who is a citizen, but if by citizenship we mean belonging, then that requires a broader conception of the term. The remarkable globalization of sports over the last 20 years highlights the multiple meanings of being a citizen. To play for a national soccer team, for example, a player must hold the citizenship (i.e. passport) of that country. In the 2006 World Cup, of the five strikers who played for the German team, two were born in Poland, one was born in Switzerland, one in Ghana (becoming the first black player on the German national team), and only the fifth was born in Germany, the son of a Ghanaian father and a German mother. This diversity led to neo-Nazis complaining that there were not enough real Germans on the team; far-right French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen had similar concerns about the French national team that went on to win the 1998 World Cup. Such complaints raise the question of what makes for a national player: in order for a player from one country to play for another country, should anything more (or less) be required than a passport issued at the request of the national sports federation? That both states and migrants control the movement of people and that both migration and citizenship are untidy concepts is of great relevance and urgency to democracies, because they very likely face an increase in migration in the decades ahead. As Stephen Castles and Mark Miller write: There are several reasons to expect what we term the age of migration to endure: growing inequalities in wealth between the North and the South are likely to impel increasing numbers of people to move in search of better living standards; political, ecological and demographic pressures may force many people to seek refuge outside their own countries; increasing political or ethnic conflict in a number of regions could lead to future mass flights; and the creation of new free trade areas will cause movements of labour, whether or not this is intended by the governments concerned. States around the world will increasingly be affected by international migration, either as receiving societies, lands of emigration, or both.1 As we look ahead in this age of migration, there are five areas that need particular attention and reconsideration if we hope to manage the situation better than we have done in the past: • • • • •

demographic shifts alignment of labor supply and demand danger of marginalization rights of non-citizens open immigration opportunities.

Beyond conventional approaches to migration and citizenship  123

Demographic shifts A striking feature of virtually every wealthy democracy is their declining fertility rate (i.e. the number of births per woman). Japan and Italy have some of the lowest fertility rates at 1.3, well below the 2.1 rate needed for a population to replace itself. The US is an exception to this trend, with a fertility rate just at the replacement rate, and nearly a quarter of the births in the US in 2006 were among Hispanics, whose fertility rates are about 40 percent higher than the US overall.2 Declining fertility rates among wealthy democracies have far-reaching implications for such issues as labor markets, healthcare provision for the elderly, and tax revenues to keep social programs solvent. To address the impending labor shortage caused by demographic shifts that will bring fewer young people into the job market, countries are trying approaches such as increasing the retirement age of workers so that they stay in the work force longer, bringing more women out of the household and into the work force, and reducing the need for workers through increased mechanization. For example, technology firms are beginning to sell various devices such as cameras, sensors, computer software, and monitors to assist elderly people to stay in their homes longer without having to rely on in-home caregivers. Instead, they can be monitored remotely by equipment that detects falls or changes in normal living patterns.3 Of course, countries can choose to address their labor needs by bringing in more workers from abroad. Ironically, Japan, which faces one of the sharpest population declines, is also the democracy least willing to bring in more immigrants. The United Nations Population Division has estimated that in order to maintain its current population, Japan will need to admit over 500,000 immigrants per year for 50 years, a highly unlikely scenario.4 Instead, Japan is choosing to do what it did when faced with labor shortages in the 1980s. At the time, it invested heavily in developing robots, so that by the early 1990s, Japan was far ahead of the US and Europe, both of which instead tended to fill labor shortages with migrant workers. Because of its extremely restrictive migration policy, Japan is still at the forefront of robotic technology, including technology to deal with its large aging population. It sells, for example, human washing machines that bath the elderly without assistance, “robot suits,” which are mechanized pants to help the elderly move about, and “Wakamaru,” a 3-foot-high speaking robot equipped with cameras to monitor the elderly remotely. Looking ahead, Japan expects sales of domestic robots to rise to $40 billion per year by 2025, up from $4 billion in 2004. It’s worth noting the political element within this trend: Japan’s nursing unions successfully blocked a plan to introduce more nurses from Thailand and the Philippines to help care for the elderly.5 While impressive, robots have their limitations. In agriculture, for example, many fruits and vegetables are too delicate to pick by machine and so manual labor is needed. Much construction work must also be done by hand, although Japan was able to develop robots that could do some basic construction work such as assemble steel girders, smooth concrete slabs, and paint walls.6 Robots of course don’t pay taxes and therefore do not help address the solvency problem of struggling social welfare systems. Japan’s advancement in robotics supports the argument of some scholars that the availability of cheap foreign labor keeps us from creating innovations in our outdated forms of production, discourages mechanization, and neglects our education and training systems. Indeed, there is evidence that the availability of cheap labor is reversing the historical trend of machines replacing workers in order to cut costs; suddenly workers are replacing machines for the same purpose. Philip Martin found that in the 1980s and 1990s, as the US received a large influx of cheap agricultural workers, the farming industry’s investment in labor-saving technology dropped almost by half. Similarly, until the late 1990s, significant amounts of

124  Conclusion money had been invested in voice-recognition software to handle phone orders, but then call centers in India staffed with people turned out to be much cheaper.7 Aging populations and declining fertility rates are directly related to migration policies. Not only do we need workers to take care of the elderly, but we also need workers to fill jobs left vacant by fewer young people entering the job market. A mix of developing technology, exporting work, and importing migrants will need to be crafted in order to align the supply and demand of labor.

Alignment of labor supply and demand Despite attempts to meet our labor needs by such means as increasing the retirement age of workers, bringing more women into the work force, and increasing mechanization, we will still need to rely on foreigner workers. Traditionally we have brought such workers to us, but we have often done so in a highly regulated and inefficient system that invites abuse by all involved. A new, bolder approach would be to start treating labor more like we treat goods and services in a globalizing world by moving toward freer movement of workers. For example, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which ensures the free movement of goods but did not even have the free movement of labor on the table, should at least consider following the example of the European Union (EU), where more than two dozen countries now allow free movement of people between them. Of course the fear is that by loosening its borders a country becomes overwhelmed by migrants, but there is at least some evidence to suggest that this mass movement is not inevitable. Britain, for example, opened its border to the eight East European countries that joined the EU in 2004 and to Romania and Bulgaria, who joined in 2007. While there was indeed a sharp rise of migrants who came from these countries to Britain (over 1 million within a few years into a country of 60 million), about half of them left again within this same period.8 At least this one example supports the views of scholars who argue that migrants, when allowed, tend to follow circular migration patterns. This suggestion of free (or at least freer) movement of Mexicans is surely unacceptable to most Americans, but 50 years ago such movement of Italians was also inconceivable to most Germans. Instead of simply dismissing the idea, such unconventional thinking needs to be given serious thought. It may be a bad idea, but we cannot know that until we’ve actually considered it thoroughly and perhaps even experimented with it. Sooner or later (and probably later rather than sooner) we will move toward freer movement, and so we ought to be bold enough to start planning for it now. Such movement will inevitably bring some conflicts, so we may also need a body to help resolve disputes. To resolve trade disputes, we established the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, so let’s complement it by establishing the World Migration Organization, which would have the authority that existing organizations such as the International Labor Organization (ILO) or the International Organization for Migration (IOM) lack. Or, if we don’t want to bring workers here, we can send work there. This practice has been in the news a great deal in recent years, because we are at the point where a vast array of work can be outsourced to workers in other countries. While socks and software have been outsourced for a while, increasingly we are sending to workers abroad such diverse tasks as filing our tax returns, reading our X-rays, and taking our order at the drive-through. An increasing number of American farmers are exasperated with the hassle of dealing with illegal immigration, so instead of trying to get workers from Mexico to their farms, they are taking their farms to Mexico. “I’m as American red-blood as it gets,” says Steve Scaroni, “but I’m tired of fighting the fight on immigration,” so now he employs 500 Mexicans on his farm near the Mexican city

Beyond conventional approaches to migration and citizenship  125 of Celaya.9 In addition to benefiting from cheaper labor, American farmers face fewer environmental regulations in Mexico. Larry Cox, another American farmer, notes that in the US he needed special permits to clear his fields with fire, but in Mexico, few concerns are raised about air quality. “In Mexico they said, ‘Permits? What? You just throw a match’,” he said.10 Similarly, in order to avoid bringing in too many nurses from Thailand and the Philippines, some Japanese politicians are floating the idea of exporting elderly people by setting up retirement communities there. And India, which has lured a great deal of software work from elsewhere, is now beginning to outsource this work to other countries. Increasingly, work can be taken from anywhere in the world and be done elsewhere.11 We are clearly thinking outside the box when it comes to taking our work to workers elsewhere, but we are remarkably unwilling also to think creatively about bringing workers from elsewhere to our work. Both approaches cause controversy. As more and more work gets done elsewhere, Princeton economist Alan Binder estimates that between 30 and 40 million US jobs will be outsourced in the next 10 to 20 years.12 Aligning the supply and demand of labor is controversial whether we take our work to workers overseas or bring workers from overseas to our work.

Danger of marginalization Much of the controversy over migrants in democracies today emerges when we keep them at the margins of society. The rioting in the suburbs of Paris in fall 2005 is but one of the most visible symbols of migrants’ frustration and discontent when they feel marginalized. Such marginalization stems to a significant extent from a traditional view of citizenship and belonging that is captured in the preamble of the 1930 Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws which states that “[I]t is in the general interest of the international community to secure that all its members should recognise that every person should have a nationality and should have one nationality only.”13 This traditional view holds that a person’s country of citizenship, country of loyalty, and country of residence are congruent. However, in this new era of transnationalism that is seeing goods, services, and people moving more freely, migrants are increasingly connected to multiple places and so need and want more than one sense of belonging. It is therefore important that migrants have the opportunity to hold more than one citizenship. And indeed, countries have begun in recent years to adjust to this new reality, so that today about 90 countries allow dual citizenship.14 Not only does this trend benefit the migrants, but arguably also the receiving countries by strengthening political functionality. As early as 1985, Tomas Hammar argued for dual citizenship as a way to better integrate migrants, especially the guest workers of Europe. He wrote that “representative government cannot properly function without the political participation of a large active segment of its constituents represented by permanent immigrants without citizenship.”15 There has been a dramatic rise in the naturalization process which turns migrants into US citizens in recent years: more than 1.4 million applications were submitted between October 2006 and October 2007 alone.16 Officials attribute this rise to applicants wanting to beat a rise in the application fee from $400 to $675, successful naturalization drives around the country, greater acceptance of dual citizenship in sending countries, and migrants feeling insecure, marginalized, and angry in the current political climate and wanting a voice. Dual citizenship (and by logical extension, multi-citizenship) brings with it concerns about loyalty, especially among traditionalists, who assume that the longer a migrant is in a new country, the more that person should identify with it and the less with the home country. This view tends to conceive of citizenship largely as an either/or proposition. As we saw earlier,

126  Conclusion Samuel Huntington, for example, feared that Mexican migrants living in the United States are not doing enough to become American and their loyalty remains too much with Mexico. Another prominent American scholar, Robert Putnam, also sees challenges from the increased diversity that migrants bring to a host country, but he is more optimistic. In his research on the United States, he found that in the short term such greater diversity reduces social solidarity and social capital among members of society, manifested in such ways as drops in voting, charitable giving, and volunteering in community projects. In the long term, however, diversity is likely to bring economic and cultural benefits as people overcome the challenges of diversity by creating a new sense of who they are. This is possible, Putnam argues, because diversity and identity are social constructions that can be deconstructed and reconstructed, and societies are constantly erasing one line and drawing a new line to define their identities.17 This redrawing of identities is the crucial step traditionalists like Huntington are unwilling to take, which brings us back to the naturalization process discussed earlier. The traditional approach leans toward expecting migrants to become like us, while the transnational approach stresses that “us” is always changing as a result of new expectations of both citizens and migrants. One of the central questions we face in light of the inevitable increase in migration and diversity in the twenty-first century is which of these two approaches ultimately creates a healthier, more inclusive society that fully integrates all citizens and leaves none feeling marginalized and discontent.

Rights of non-citizens And then there are migrants who are not interested in acquiring the citizenship of the receiving country. What rights should we extend to non-citizen permanent residents living among us? Perhaps surprisingly, non-citizens in democracies have so many rights already that some authors write of entering an era of post-nationalism, when the very concept of citizenship is losing value.18 Whether this is true, it is striking that the list of benefits for becoming a US citizen is rather short, as seen in the US government’s Guide to Naturalization (Plate 9.1).19 The most important right withheld from non-citizens in the US is the right to vote. It is commonly assumed that citizenship and voting are synonymous, which is why it is inconceivable for many people to give non-citizens the right to vote. For various reasons, we should reconsider the link between citizenship and voting, and let’s do so by looking at the US. First, this link is not as strong as it might at first appear, because many citizens have been denied the right to vote (women and blacks) and continue to be denied the right to vote (those under 18 and in some states some felons). Second, the idea of non-citizen voting is not unprecedented, as non-citizens had the right to vote in at least 22 states and territories for the first 150 years of the country’s history.20 Third, non-citizens already participate in our society in many citizen-like ways, and therefore hold what Hammar calls “denizenship.”21 For example, they pay taxes, attend public schools, and are counted in the census for congressional representation and redistricting. They also serve in the military (about 30,000 non-citizens are currently enlisted), and they were drafted by the military when drafting still existed. And non-citizens must of course obey all the laws passed by the government, which gets to one of the core principles of a democracy: the legitimacy of the government rests on the consent of the governed. If we are concerned, as we should be, about the marginalization of migrants, then giving them a voice in government may be a significant step toward fostering their integration and sense of belonging. With the increase in the freer movement of people, especially in the European context, there has been an increase in the number of countries granting voting rights to non-citizens. Today over 40 countries worldwide grant such rights.22 Most of these countries restrict voting to local levels, but a few grant full voting rights: Britain gives full voting rights to Irish and Commonwealth

Beyond conventional approaches to migration and citizenship  127

What Are the Benefits and Responsibilities of Citizenship? Benefits

The Constitution and laws of the United States give many rights to both citizens and non-citizens living in the United States. However, some rights are only for citizens, such as: • Voting. Only U.S. citizens can vote in Federal elections. Most States also restrict the right to vote, in most elections, to U.S. citizens. • Bringing family members to the United States. Citizens generally get priority when petitioning to bring family members permanently to this country. • Obtaining citizenship for children born abroad. In most cases, a child born abroad to a U.S. citizen is automatically a U.S. citizen. • Traveling with a U.S. passport. A U.S. passport allows you to get assistance from the U.S. government when overseas. • Becoming eligible for Federal jobs. Most jobs with government agencies require U.S. citizenship. • Becoming an elected official. Many elected offices in this country require U.S. citizenship. • Showing your patriotism. In addition, becoming a U.S. citizen is a way to demonstrate your commitment to your new country. The above list does not include all the benefits of citizenship, only some of the more important ones.

A Guide to Naturalization

Plate 9.1  Benefits

Responsibilities

To become a U.S. citizen you must take the Oath of Allegiance. The Oath includes several promises you make when you become a U.S. citizen, including promises to:

2

• Give up all prior allegiance to any other nation or sovereignty; • Swear allegiance to the United States; • Support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States; and • Serve the country when required. U.S. citizens have many responsibilities other than the ones mentioned in the Oath. Citizens have a responsibility to participate in the political process by registering and voting in elections. Serving on a jury is another responsibility of citizenship. Finally, America becomes stronger when all of its citizens respect the different opinions, cultures, ethnic groups, and religions found in this country. Tolerance for differences is also a responsibility of citizenship. When you decide to become a U.S. citizen, you should be willing to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship. We hope you will honor and respect the freedoms and opportunities citizenship gives you. At the same time, we hope you become an active member of your community. It is by participating in your community that you truly become an American.

3

128  Conclusion citizens, and New Zealand grants it to all non-citizens after only a year of residence. In the US, a few municipalities such as Takoma Park MD also allow non-citizens to vote. Two of the main objections to non-citizens voting are that the naturalization process is open to those non-citizens who want to vote, and that non-citizens’ loyalty is questionable and they might vote in ways that harm the country. In an editorial, the New York Times wrote in 2004: This page believes that it is in the nation’s best interest to encourage people who live here permanently to become citizens and throw in their lot with the interests of the United States. Extending the most important benefits of citizenship to those who still hold their first allegiance to another country seems counterproductive.23 It is significant that this editorial writes that the idea only seems counterproductive, but does not claim it (much less prove it) to be so. The question of migrants’ loyalty, whether posed by the New York Times or by Samuel Huntington, should not simply be assumed but be answered by empirical evidence. Would giving non-citizens the right to vote undermine the host country by allowing them to express their disloyalty, or would it foster greater loyalty by serving as an integrator and therefore benefit the country? To explore this question, perhaps we should begin by granting voting rights at the local level (for school board, mayor, town council, water authority, etc.). If we don’t like the results, we abandon the idea. If we do see benefits, then we should consider expanding it to higher levels. Perhaps, as we face increased migration and questions of integration and loyalty, we should consider belonging to a country as having as much to do with residency as it does with formal legal citizenship. A non-citizen who has lived in the US for 30 years may have a better claim to voting for the mayor than a US citizen who has lived abroad for 30 years. Rainer Bauböck conceives of non-citizen voting rights in terms of “territorial inclusion,” so that no one who is subject to the law should be excluded from its creation. This reconception would require “disconnecting electoral rights from formal citizenship status.”24 Of course, many citizens will object to this idea and will ask “Well, if we give non-citizens the right to vote, which is the most important difference between citizens and non-citizens, then what is the point of citizenship?” Good question. And the task of answering it lies not with those who question its value but rather with those who emphasize it.

Open immigration opportunities Clearly there is abuse of the asylum process whereby it is used by migrants who are not really persecuted at home but are rather simply seeking a better life. Remarkably, this has been a controversial issue in Europe since the 1980s and yet we are making little progress in solving it. Again, it is time to consider a bolder approach. Countries that are suffering from asylum abuse should, if they haven’t already done so, introduce immigration opportunities, and these could take any of the forms discussed in this book. Giving migrants an opportunity to enter through such a channel would surely divert many from trying to get in through false asylum claims. By cutting down on the number of people seeking asylum, governments could then focus more time and resources on the asylum caseloads they are carrying, and these cases would then get a much fairer and more thorough hearing. By making the asylum process fairer and having all sides agree that it is fair, everyone would be more likely to be able to accept the decisions made and thereby reduce the controversy. Opening immigration opportunities would not only address the significant problems in the current asylum process, but it would also serve the goal of better aligning the supply and demand

Beyond conventional approaches to migration and citizenship  129 of labor and addressing demographic shifts. Furthermore, it would reduce illegal migration and bring much of it in from the margins of society. The twentieth century was marked by only a handful of countries recognizing themselves as countries of immigration. Let’s hope that in the twenty-first century more countries are willing to be honest about the fact that they too attract immigrants, declare themselves to be countries of immigration, and behave accordingly.

Needed: a holistic approach The issue of asylum abuse epitomizes the complexity of international migration, and it reveals just how naïve our approach to managing it can be. We keep insisting on dealing with it in a very narrow way when instead we need to see asylum and its abuse as part of a much larger migration picture. It is a picture that recognizes that most people do not readily leave behind their homes and their families, and when they do so it is because of an intertwined array of opportunities that pull them and threats that push them. Migrants control some elements of their movement, while other elements are far beyond their control. Ultimately, we must recognize that migration is a function of the interconnectedness of the world today. Whether the production of biofuels in Iowa leads to food scarcities in Indonesia, or French weapons end up in the hands of rebels in Burundi, or Slumdog Millionaire is a box office hit in Brazil, receiving migrants is a direct consequence of our (good and bad) behavior in this interconnected world. In the long term, a reduction in international migration will only occur when better policies in both sending and receiving countries create environments in which people are able to stay and to which migrants are able to return in dignity and prosperity. Until we reach this stage, we must do as Max Frisch advised decades ago and treat migrants as humans – not as labor in good times and scapegoats in bad. Such a migration policy allows democracies to live up to their ideals.

Notes

Chapter 1   1 Global Commission on International Migration. Migration in an Interconnected World: New Directions for Action. Geneva, Switzerland: GCIM, 2005, p. 84.   2 The 30 member countries of the OECD are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, S Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States.   3 Matthew Brunwasser, “Romania, a Poor Land, Imports Poorer Workers.” New York Times, April 11, 2007. Online at www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/business/worldbusiness/11factory.html.   4 GCIM, Migration in an Interconnected World, p. 83   5 “Global Employment Trends Brief.” The International Labor Office (ILO), January 2007.   6 “Global: Population, Remittances, HLD.” Migration News, 13, 2 (April 2007). Online at http:// migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=3291_0_5_0.   7 Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic Books, p. 33.   8 Ibid.   9 Ibid., p. 62. 10  Ibid. 11 Joseph Carens, “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders.” The Review of Politics, 49, 2 (Spring 1987), pp. 251–72, p. 251. 12 Ibid., p. 252. 13 Ibid., p. 267. 14 Ibid., p. 269 15 Ibid., p. 270. 16 For more on these two examples, see for example Weapons of the Spirit, written, produced, and directed by Pierre Sauvage. Los Angeles, CA: Chambon Foundation, 1989, and Bernard Porter, The Refugee Question in Mid-Victorian Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Chapter 2   1 “EU ‘Blue Card’ Seeks to Attract Highly Skilled Immigrants.” International Herald Tribune, October 24, 2007, p. 1.   2 “Foreign Talent: Keeping Hearts and Minds Open.” The Straits Times (Singapore), September 2, 2006.   3 “Visa Rules Slammed.” The Age (Melbourne), June 19, 2007, p. 1.   4 “Companies Looking to Foreigners.” Nikkei Weekly, June 5, 2006.   5 “The World Is Our Oyster.” The Economist. October 7, 2006. Online at www.economist.com/ surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_SJGTJVD.   6 Ibid.   7 “Visa Rules Slammed.”   8 “Capturing Talent.” The Economist, August 16, 2007. Online at www.economist.com/business/ displaystory.cfm?story_id=9645045.   9 Citizenship and Immigration Canada. “The Immigration System.” Online at www.cic.gc.ca/ EnGLIsh/department/imm-system.asp.

Notes  131 10 Citizenship and Immigration Canada. “Skilled Workers and Professionals: Who Can Apply – Six Selection Factors.” Online at www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/apply-factors.asp. 11 “Canada’s Policy on Immigration Brings Backlog.” New York Times, June 27, 2007. 12 US Citizenship and Immigration Services. “Helpful Hints for Filing a FY 2009 H-1B Cap Case.” Online at www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnex toid=c3e8ea468d6c7110VgnVCM1000004718190aRCRD&vgnextchannel=91919c7755cb9010V gnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD. Another 20,000 H-1Bs are issued to foreign students holding US graduate degrees, and there is no cap for some universities, government research institutions, and non-profit organizations. The actual number of H-1B visas issued is therefore around 100,000. 13 “Bill Gates: U.S. Senate Committee Hearing on Strengthening American Competitiveness.” March 7, 2007. Microsoft transcript, online at www.microsoft.com/Presspass/exec/billg/speeches/2007/03– 07Senate.mspx. 14 Robert W. Fairlie, “Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity.” Kansas City, MO: Kauffman Foundation, 2007, p. 1. 15 Vivek Wadhwa, AnnaLee Saxenian, Ben Rissing, and Gary Gereffi, “America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Part I.” Duke Science, Technology & Innovation Paper, no. 23 (January 4, 2007). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=990152. 16 “Bill Gates: U.S. Senate Committee Hearing.” 17 Richard Monastersky, “In Congressional Testimony, Researchers Dispute Notion that America Lacks Scientists and Engineers.” Chronicle of Higher Education, November 7, 2007. Online at www.chronicle.com/daily/2007/11/623n.htm. 18 “H-1B, Labor, Trade.” Migration News, 13, 3 (July 2007). Online at http://migration.ucdavis.edu/ mn/more.php?id=3297_0_2_0. 19 “Indian Companies Seek Loosening of US Skilled Worker Visa Rules.” The Australian (Australia), May 22, 2007, p. 9. 20 Consulate of the United States, Matamoros, Mexico. “Non-Immigrant Visas.” Online at http://matamoros.usconsulate.gov/matamoros/tourist_business.html. 21 US Department of Labor: Employment and Training Administration, “H-2A Certificate for Temporary or Seasonal Agricultural Work.” 22 With regard to using prisoners as farm labor, Rohrabacher suggests that “Instead of providing prisoners with gyms and TVs, we should use this population in physically demanding farm labor and pay them for it. A well-structured prisoner work program could secure a third of a prisoner worker’s paycheck to cover some of the costs of incarceration. Another third could provide restitution for victims. And the final third could be placed in a savings account, to be given to the prisoners upon release, a nest egg to start a new life, which is far better than our current system,” in “Time for an Immigration-Enforcement Bill.” Washington Times, December 14, 2005. 23 “Michigan Officials Seek to Attract Hispanic Farm Workers.” Associated Press, February 16, 2007. 24 Human Rights Watch, “Asian Migrant Workers Abandoned to Abuse.” December 17, 2007. Online at www.hrw.org/english/docs/2007/12/17/afghan17559.htm. 25 Kerry Howley, “Guests in the Machine.” Reason, 39 (January 2008), p. 31. 26 Cindy Hahamovitch, “Creating Perfect Immigrants: Guestworkers of the World in Historical Perspective.” Labor History, 44, 1 (2003), pp. 69–94, p. 93. 27 Citizenship and Immigration Canada. “Investors.” Online at www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/investors/index.asp. 28 “Immigration Through Investment.” US Citizenship Immigration Services, (www.USCIS.gov). 29 US Department of State. “Diversity Lottery.” Online at http://travel.state.gov/visa/immigrants/ types/types_1317.html?css=print. 30 Ibid. 31 The 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, states in Article 16 that: “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State,” and Article 12 states: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence”. These sentiments are also found in the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 32 Hiroshi Motomura, “The Family and Immigration.” American Journal of Comparative Law, 43 (1995), pp. 511–12.

132  Notes 33 Bill Ong Hing, “Promoting Family Values and Immigration.” Testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, May 8, 2007. 34 Geoff Maslen, “China: Chinese Students to Dominate World Market.” University World News, November 4, 2007. Online at www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story= 20071101150549773. 35 “Global Education Digest 2004.” UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Montreal, 20, p. 34. 36 See for example Times Higher Education Supplement, “World University Ranking,” 2008. Online at www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/hybrid.asp?typeCode=243&pubCode=1; or Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s “Academic Ranking of World Universities.” Online at www.arwu.org/. 37 Wei Du, “Foreign Student Enrollment Rebounds in US,” msnbc.com, August 24, 2007. Online at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20393318/page/2/. 38 “The Race Is On.” Newsweek (International Edition), August 20, 2007. 39 “Worldwide Competition for International Students Heats Up.” Chronicle of Higher Education, November 16, 2007. Online at http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i12/12a03401.htm. 40 Elizabeth Quill, “Graduate Schools Again Admit More International Students, But Total Still Lags from 2003.” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 28, 2007. Online at http://chronicle.com/ daily/2007/08/2007082802n.htm. Chapter 3   1 Kerry Hall and Franco Ordonez, “Poultry Workers’ Pain Stirs Congress.” Charlotte Observer, published in Raleigh News and Observer, February 17, 2008, p. 12a.   2 Marla Dickerson, “U.S. Less Alluring to Illegal Migrants.” Los Angeles Times, December 26, 2007, p. 1a.   3 Gwynne Dyer, “Building a World of Walls.” Raleigh News and Observer, February 8, 2007.   4 “Death in the Desert.” The Economist, August 25, 2007, p. 37.   5 Douglas Massey, “Backfire at the Border: Why Enforcement without Legalization Cannot Stop Illegal Immigration.” Trade Policy Analysis, no. 29 (June 13, 2005) [Cato Institute]. Online at www. freetrade.org/pubs/pas/tpa-029es.html.   6 Dickerson, “U.S. Less Alluring.”   7 Tamar Jacoby, “Immigration Nation.” Foreign Affairs, 85, 6 (November–December, 2006), pp. 50–65, p. 60.   8 “Guard the Borders – And Face Facts, Too.” Washington Post, March 30, 2006.   9 “H-1B Labor Trade.” Migration News, 13, 3 (July 2007). Online at http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/ more.php?id=3297_0_2_0. 10 Mike M. Ahlers, “ICE: Tab to Remove Illegal Residents Would Approach $100 Billion.” cnn.com, September 12, 2007. Online at www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/12/deportation.cost/index.html. See also Rajev Goyle and David A. Jaeger, Deporting the Undocumented: A Cost Assessment. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, July 26, 2005. 11 Randolph Capps and Michael E. Fix, “Myths and Reality.” Washington, DC: Urban Institute, November 1, 2005. Online at www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=900898. 12 Hiroshi Motomura, “We Asked for Workers, But Families Came: Time, Law, and the Family in Immigration and Citizenship.” Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law, 14, 1 (Fall 2006), p. 111. 13 Rachel Rosenbloom, “Senseless Deportations.” Washington Post, March 25, 2007. 14 Dickerson, “U.S. Less Alluring.” 15 Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, “Advert Aims to Deter African Immigrants.” Berne: Swissinfo. ch, November 30, 2007. Online at www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swissinfo.html?siteSect=882&sid= 8478858. 16 Ibid. 17 Laura Parker, “Monday Court Tests Await Cities’ Laws on Immigrants.” USA Today, October 9, 2006, p. 3A. 18 “Mexico: Remittances, NAFTA, Taxes.” Migration News, 13, 4 (October 16, 2007). Online at http:// migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=3321_0_2_0. 19 Darryl Fears, “$41 Billion Cost Projected to Remove Illegal Entrants.” Washington Post, July 26, 2005, p. A11. 20 Peter Brownell, “The Declining Enforcement of Employer Sanctions.” Washington, DC: Migration Information Source, September 2005. Online at www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display. cfm?id=332. 21 Roberto Suro, “Boom in Fake Identity Cards for Aliens.” New York Times, February 19, 1992.

Notes  133 22 Federation for American Immigration Reform, “Employer Sanctions.” Washington, DC: FAIR, March 2005. Online at www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=iic_immigrationissuecentersff8e. 23 “Dreaming of the Other Side of the Wire.” The Economist, March 12, 2005, p. 27. 24 “Turkey, Spain, Italy.” Migration News, 13, 4 (October 2007). Online at http://migration.ucdavis. edu/mn/more.php?id=3326_0_4_0. 25 Pia M. Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny, “Do Amnesty Programs Reduce Undocumented Immigration? Evidence from IRCA.” Demography, 40, 3 (August 2003), pp. 437–50. 26 Nathan Thornburgh, “Immigration: The Case for Amnesty.” Time, June 7, 2007, p. 42. Online at www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1630168–2,00.html. 27 Ibid. 28 Jacoby, “Immigration Nation,” p. 61. Chapter 4   1 Council of Economic Advisers, “Immigration’s Economic Impact.” Washington, DC: Executive Office of the President: Council of Economic Advisers, June 20, 2007, p. 1.   2 “America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs.” Master of Engineering Management Program, Duke University; School of Information, U.C. Berkeley, January 4, 2007, p. 5.   3 John D. Kasarda and James H. Johnson, Jr., “The Economic Impact of the Hispanic Population on the State of North Carolina.” Chapel Hill, NC: Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, UNC-Chapel Hill, January 2006.   4 “Worker Visas Intensify Debate on Immigration.” Washington Post, May 25, 2007, p. A1.   5 Nirmala Kannankutty, “Unemployment Rate of U.S. Scientists and Engineers Drops to Record Low 2.5 in 2006.” Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation, April 2008, p. 1. Online at www.nsf.gov/ statistics/infbrief/nsf08305/.   6 Roger Lowenstein, “The Immigration Equation.” New York Times, July 9, 2006, pp. 6–7.   7 Kasarda and Johnson, “Economic Impact,” p. 34.   8 “Myths and Migration.” The Economist, April 6, 2006.   9 Council of Economic Advisers, “Immigration’s Economic Impact,” p. 4. 10 Randolph Capps and Michael E. Fix, “Myths and Reality.” Washington, DC: Urban Institute, November 1, 2005. Online at www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=900898. 11 Council of Economic Advisers, “Immigration’s Economic Impact,” p. 1. 12 “Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy.” A Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University joint survey. Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation, October 1996, p. 10 13 The Portuguese far-right party Partido Nacional Renovador has adopted a strikingly similar image of a white sheep kicking out black sheep for the banner on its website at www.pnr.pt/portal/ (accessed 10/8/08). 14 Cited in Jens Rydgren, “Explaining the Emergence of Radical Right-wing Populist Parties: The Case of Denmark.” West European Politics, 27, 3 (May 2004), pp. 474–502, p. 484. 15 Samuel P. Huntington, “The Hispanic Challenge.” Foreign Policy, March/April 2004, 30–45. 16 See, for example, “Huntington and Hispanics.” Foreign Policy, May/June 2004, pp. 4, 6, 8, 10, 12–13, 84–91. 17 Douglas Massey, “Review of Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, by Samuel P. Huntington.” Population Development Review, 30, 3 (September 2004), pp. 543–8. 18 World Bank, “Migration and Development Brief 3: Remittance Trends 2007.” Washington, DC: World Bank, November 29, 2007. 19 “Global Remittances, Wealth.” Migration News, 13, 1 (January 2007). Online at http://migration. ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=3265_0_5_0. 20 Jason DeParle, “A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves.” New York Times Magazine, April 22, 2007, p. 57. 21 Global Commission on International Migration, Migration in an Interconnected World: New Directions for Action. Geneva: GCIM, 2005, p. 24. 22 “H-1B, Labor, Trade.”Migration News, 13, 3, July 2007. Online at http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/ more.php?id=3297_0_2_0. 23 “U.S. Plan to Lure Nurses May Hurt Poor Nations.” New York Times, May 24, 2006, p. 1. 24 Ibid. 25 AnnaLee Saxenian, “Brain Circulation: How High-Skill Immigration Makes Everyone Better Off.”

134  Notes The Brookings Review, 20, 1 (Winter 2002), p. 31. Online at www.brookings.edu/articles/2002/ winter_immigration_saxenian.aspx. 26 Joan Dassin, “Healthy ‘Brain Circulation’ Promotes More Equitable Global Development.” Financial Times, February 2, 2006, p. 12. Chapter 5   1 The first international effort to protect refugees was made by the League of Nations, which was established after World War I. This war and the connected collapses of the Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires displaced 1.5 million people, and the League’s effort to help these people was headed up by the Norwegian statesman Fridtjof Nansen. He was appointed High Commissioner for Refugees and set about dealing with such issues as developing identity and travel documents for refugees to enable them to return home or to settle in another country, protecting them from expulsion and opening access to employment.   2 Leon Gordenker, Refugees in International Politics. London: Croom Helm, 1987, p. 210.   3 Gil Loescher, “UNHCR at Fifty: Refugee Protection and World Politics.” In Problems of Protection: The UNHCR, Refugees, and Human Rights, ed. Niklaus Steiner, Mark Gibney, and Gil Loescher. New York: Routledge, 2003, pp. 3–18, p. 4.   4 It is worth noting that at this same time, there were also millions of people outside of Europe who had been forced to flee. For example, mass movements were caused by the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan and the creation of Israel in 1948.   5 Sect. 101(a)(42) of The United States Immigration and Nationality Act. Online at www.uscis.gov/ portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=091a96981298d010 VgnVCM10000048f3d6a1RCRD&vgnextchannel=3a82ef4c766fd010VgnVCM1000000ecd190a RCRD.   6 Article 1 of the 1951 Convention, which spells out the definition, also declares that: “The provisions of this Convention shall not apply to any person with respect to whom there are serious reasons for considering that: (a) he has committed a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity, as defined in the international instruments drawn up to make provision in respect of such crimes; (b) he has committed a serious non-political crime outside the country of refuge prior to his admission to that country as a refugee; (c) he has been guilty of acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” Similarly, the principle of non-refoulement may not be claimed by a refugee “whom there are reasonable grounds for regarding as a danger to the security of the country in which he is, or who, having been convicted by a final judgment of a particularly serious crime, constitutes a danger to the community of that country.”   7 Article 129 of the 1936 Constitution of the USSR. Online at www.departments.bucknell.edu/ russian/const/36cons04.html.   8 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, The State of the World’s Refugees: The Challenge of Protection. New York: Penguin Books, 1993, p. 36.   9 David Card, “The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 43, 2 (1990), pp. 245–57. 10 Vera Eccarius-Kelly, “Political Movements and Leverage Points: Kurdish Activism in the European Diaspora.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 22, 1 (2002), pp. 91–119. 11 Human Rights Watch. “North Korea: Human Rights Concerns for the 61st Session of the U.N. Commission.” Online at http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/04/04/nkorea10410_txt.htm. 12 Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books, 1983, p49. 13 Nir Rosen, “The Flight from Iraq.” New York Times Magazine, May 13, 2007. 14 UNHCR Statistical Yearbook 2007: Trends in Displacement, Protection and Solutions. Geneva: UNHCR, 2008, Table 5. 15 An excellent insight into US policy is offered by the documentary Well-Founded Fear, produced and directed Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson. New York: The Epidavros Project, 2000. 16 The UN Refugee Agency, Regional Office: Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific, “Frequently Asked Questions.” Online at www.unhcr.org.au/faqs.shtml. 17 The Information Center about Asylum and Refugees in the UK, “Definitions and Abbreviations.” Online at www.icar.org.uk/?lid=5981. 18 UNHCR, “Protecting Refugees: Questions and Answers.” Online at www.unhcr.org.ua/main. php?part_id=4&article_id=82&view=full.

Notes  135 19 Sadako N. Ogata, The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crisis of the 1990s. New York: Norton, 2005, pp. 106–7. 20 German Federal Ministry of the Interior, “Repatriation of Refugees.” Online at www.en.bmi. bund.de/cln_012/nn_211020/Internet/Content/Themen/EuropaInternationales/DatenundFakten/ Rueckkehr__von__Fluechtlingen__Id__94775__en.html. 21 Beth Whitaker, “Changing Priorities in Refugee Protection: The Rwandan Repatriation from Tanzania.” In Problems of Protection, pp. 141–54. 22 UNHCR, “Protecting Refugees.” 23 Ibid. 24 US Department of State, “Fact Sheet: U.S. Government to Expedite Refugee Processing Since September 11th, 2001.” Washington, DC: US Department of State, July 18, 2003. Online at www. state.gov/g/prm/rls/fs/2003/23356.htm. 25 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, “Global Statistics.” Geneva: IDMC, December 2007. Online at www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004CE90B/(httpPages)/22FB1D4E2B196DA A802570BB005E787C?OpenDocument&count=1000. Chapter 6   1 Well-Founded Fear, produced and directed Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson. New York: The Epidavros Project, 2000.   2 UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, Regional Office for Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine. “The 1951 Refugee Convention: Question and Answer.” Online at www.unhcr.org.ua/main. php?article_id=8&view=full.   3 Female genital cutting is a procedure involving the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, most commonly by excision of the clitoris and the labia minora. Most of the girls and women who undergo this procedure live in 28 African countries, although some live in Asia and the Middle East and increasingly also in Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA, primarily among immigrants. This procedure is quite controversial, as will be discussed later in this chapter.   4 The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. “The Asylum Documentation Program.” Online at www.iglhrc.org/files/iglhrc/ADP%20Country%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf.   5 USA for UNHCR, “Who Is a Refugee?” Online at www.usaforunhcr.org/usaforunhcr/dynamic. cfm?ID=165.   6 The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 7(2)(g), 1998.   7 UNHCR, Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status under the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. HCR/IP/4/Eng/REV.1. Geneva: UNHCR, 1979; re-edited, Geneva, January 1992.   8 Bonny Ibhawoh, “Defining Persecution and Protection: The Cultural Relativism Debate and the Rights of Refugees.” In Problems of Protection: The UNHCR, Refugees, and Human Rights, ed. Niklaus Steiner, Mark Gibney, and Gil Loescher. New York: Routledge, 2003, pp. 61–78, p. 61.   9 Ibid., pp. 65–6. 10 US Department of Health and Human Services. “Female Genital Cutting.” Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, February 2005. Online at www.womenshealth.gov/faq/ fgc.htm#11. 11 Ibhawoh, “Defining Persecution,” p. 75. 12 Niklaus Steiner, Arguing about Asylum: The Complexity of Refugee Debates in Europe. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. 13 That is not to say that this distance between the abstract and the practical cannot be overcome. After all, Judeo-Christian morality was the foundation for the French village of Le Chambon harboring thousands of Jews during World War II, while liberal morality guided Britain’s unmatched asylum policy in the nineteenth century. 14 Steiner, Arguing about Asylum, p. 95. 15 Ibid., p. 109. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., p. 140. 18 Ibid., p. 142. 19 Ibid., p. 140. 20 Ibid.

136  Notes 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., p. 111. 24 Ibid., p. 89. 25 Ibid., p. 113. 26 Ibid., p. 49. Chapter 7   1 Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.   2 “George Washington Crossing the Delaware.” Narrated by Ina Jaffe. Present at the Creation: Exploring Icons of American Culture throughout 2002. Morning Edition. NPR. WUNC-FM, 12 February, 2002.   3 Richard Shenkman, I Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode or Not. New York, NY: HarperPerennial, 1991.   4 “Citizenship and Social Class.” In T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, and Other Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1949.   5 Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman, eds., Citizenship in Diverse Societies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 6.   6 “Muslim in Europe: Country Guide.” BBC News, December 23, 2005. Online at http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/hi/europe/4385768.stm#uk.   7 Gregory Crouch, “Dutch Consider Ban on Burqas in Public.” New York Times, November 18, 2006. Online at www.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/world/europe/18dutch.html.   8 Amir Taheri, “Viewpoints: Europe and the Headscarf.” BBC News, February 10, 2004. Online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3459963.stm#Amir.   9 “No Burqa Bans: Europe and Islam.” The Economist, 381, 8505 (November 25, 2006), p. 15. Online at www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-155023177.html. 10 Caroline Wyatt, “French Headscarf Ban Opens Rifts.” BBC News, February 11, 2004. Online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3478895.stm. 11 Alan Cowell, “For Multiculturalist Britain, Uncomfortable New Clothes.” New York Times, October 22, 2006. Online at www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/weekinreview/22cowell.html. 12 Wyatt, “French Headscarf Ban.” 13 Alain Destexhe, “Viewpoints: Europe and the Headscarf.” BBC News, February 10, 2004. Online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3459963.stm#Alain. 14 Alice Schwarzer, “Viewpoints: Europe and the Headscarf.” BBC News, February 10, 2004. Online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3459963.stm#Alice. 15 Destexhe, “Europe and the Headscarf.” 16 “No Burqa Bans,” p. 15. 17 Cowell, “For Multiculturalist Britain.” 18 US Department of Homeland Security. 2006 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. Washington, DC: US Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, 2007. 19 M. Lynch, “Lives on Hold: Executive Summary.” Washington, DC: Refugees International, February 2005. Online at www.refugeesinternational.org/section/publications/stateless_execsum/. Chapter 8   1 Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Law of Return 5710–1950.” Online at www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/ MFAArchive/1950_1959/Law%20of%20Return%205710-1950.   2 Jewish Virtual Library. “Immigration by Region: Immigrants and Potential Immigrants by Period of Immigration and Last Continent of Residence.” Online at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/ Immigration/Immigration_by_region.html.   3 Ayelet Shachar, “Citizenship and Membership in the Israeli Polity.” In From Migrants to Citizens: Membership in a Changing World, ed. T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000, pp. 386–433.   4 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “A Guide to Naturalization.” Online at www.uscis.gov/ files/article/M-476.pdf.   5 “The Green-Card Brigade.” The Economist, 3 February, 2007, p. 34.

Notes  137   6 Donald Galloway, “The Dilemmas of Canadian Citizenship Law.” In From Migrants to Citizens, pp. 82–118, p. 111.   7 Jonathan Klaaren, “Post-Apartheid Citizenship in South Africa.” In From Migrants to Citizens, pp. 221–52, p. 244.   8 Douglas Klusmeyer, “Introduction.” In From Migrants to Citizens, pp. 1–24, p. 6; and Rainer Bauböck, “Introduction: Part Three: Dual and Supranational Citizenship.” In From Migrants to Citizens, pp. 305–11, p. 305.   9 “New UK Citizenship Testing Starts.” BBC News, November 1, 2005. Online at http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4391710.stm. 10 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “A Guide to Naturalization,” p. 27. 11 Stephen Castles and Gianni Zappalá, “Citizenship and Immigration in Australia.’ In From Migrants to Citizens, pp. 32–81, p. 76. Chapter 9   1 Stephen Castles and Mark Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, 3rd edn. New York: Guilford Press, 2003, p. 4.   2 Mike Stobbe, “US Births at 45-Year High.” Raleigh News and Observer, January 16, 2008.   3 “Global: Remittances, Aging, Aid.” Migration News, 13, 4 (October 2007). Online at http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=3335_0_5_0.   4 Peter Stalker, The No-Nonsense Guide to International Migration. Oxford: New Internationalist Publications, 2001, p. 43.   5 James Brooke, “Japan Seeks Robotic Help in Caring for the Aged.” New York Times, March 5, 2004. Online at www.nytimes.com/2004/03/05/international/asia/05JAPA.html?ex=1393822800&en=eb 854fe2a4e6c9bd&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND.   6 “Why They Call Japan ‘Robot Paradise’.” Business Week, August 20, 1990, p. 93.   7 Doug Saunders, “Why You Don’t Have a Robot Maid.” Globe and Mail (Toronto), February 11, 2006, p. F3.   8 “The Great East European Tide: A Million Arrivals since 2004 but Half Have Gone Home Again, says Think-Tank.” Daily Mail (London), May 1, 2008, p. 10.   9 Julia Preston, “Short on Labor, Farmers in U.S Shift to Mexico.” New York Times, September 5, 2007. Online at www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/us/05export.html. 10 “U.S. Farmers Short on Migrant Workers Move to Mexico.” Reuters, February 12, 2008. 11 Anand Giridharadas, “Outsourcing Comes Full Circle as India Starts to Export Jobs.” New York Times, September 25, 2007, p. A1. 12 “H-1B, Education, Trade.” Migration News, 13, 2 (April 2007). Online at http://migration.ucdavis. edu/mn/more.php?id=3274_0_2_0. 13 T. Alexander Aleinikoff, “Between Principles and Politics: U.S. Citizenship Policy.” In From Migrants to Citizens: Membership in a Changing World, ed. T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000, pp. 119–74, p. 137. 14 “I’m a Lumberjack, and You’re Not.” The Economist, August 5, 2006, p. 36. 15 Tomas Hammar, “Dual Citizenship and Political Integration.” International Migration Review, 19, 3 (Autumn 1985), pp. 438–50, p. 438. 16 Susan Ferriss, “Lining up for Citizenship: Applications Soar Amid Talk of Immigrants and How New Citizens May Affect Elections.” Sacramento Bee, January 15, 2008, p. A3. Online at www. sacbee.com/111/story/634409.html. 17 Robert D. Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century.” The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture. Scandinavian Political Studies, 30, 2 (June 2007), pp. 137–74. 18 Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994; and David Jacobson, Rights across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. 19 US Citizenship and Immigration Services, “A Guide to Naturalization” (M-476 [rev. 02/08]), p. 3. Online at www.uscis.gov/files/article/M-476.pdf. 20 Ron Hayduk, Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States. London: Routledge, 2006, p. 16. 21 Tomas Hammar, Democracy and the Nation-State: Aliens, Denizens, and Citizens in a World of International Migration. Aldershot: Avebury, 1990.

138  Notes 22 Hayduk, Democracy for All, p. 193. 23 “A Citizen’s Right.” New York Times, April 19, 2004. Online at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C06EFDF113BF93AA25757C0A9629C8B63&scp=1&sq=A+Citizen%27s+ Right&st=nyt. 24 Rainer Bauböck, “Expansive Citizenship – Voting beyond Territory and Membership.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 38, 4 (October 2005), pp. 683–7, p. 686.

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Index

287(g) Program 37 9/11 27, 31, 37 affirmative action 100 amnesties 39–41 Amnesty International 70, 82 Anderson, Benedict 93 anti-immigrant 9, 32, 34, 40, 46, 47, 52 apartheid 101, 114 assimilation 41, 48, 49, 50, 100, 101, 117, 118 asylee 62 asylum 59, 60, 63, 64, 66–70, 84, 87 asylum-seekers 64, 66–70, 75, 78, 85 Aussiedler 107 Australia 14, 68, 76, 82, 113, 114, 118 Bauböck, Rainer 127 Berlin Wall 31, 32, 33, 64 Bill Gates 16 Binder, Alan 125 Blumenthal, Peggy 27 Bologna Process 27 border control 31–3 Borjas, George 25, 45 Bracero Program 19–20 brain drain and brain circulation 53–5 Brazil 69, 79, 102 Britain 63, 69, 84, 99, 100,115, 116, 124, 126 Brownell, Peter 38, 39 Buchanan, Pat 46 burden sharing 76 Cameroon 36 Canada 79, 82, 93, 101, 113, 114, 118 Card, David 45 Carens, Joseph 6, 7, 8, 32, 114 carrier sanctions 70 Cartagena Declaration 74, 81

Castles, Stephen 122 China 3, 4, 14, 23, 25, 27, 31, 52, 55, 64, 66, 80 circular migration 33, 50, 124 Civil Rights Act of 1964 38 Cold War 59, 63, 64 Colombia 74, 78, 79 community 6–8, 37, 54–5, 82–3, 92–4, 116, 118, 126, 127 compassion fatigue 76 Cornelius, Wayne 31, 33 Cuba 63, 64, 95 Danish People’s Party 47 Darfur 6, 64, 73, 101 Dayton Peace Accords 71 democracy 4–9, 20–3, 32–4, 46–9, 84–7, 91–116, 121–6 Democratic Republic of Congo 74 Denmark 47, 48, 72 deportation 21, 31, 33–5 diversity 49, 98, 100–4, 118, 122, 126 Diversity Lottery 23–4 dual citizenship 115, 125 employer sanctions 38–9 environmental refugees 79–80 essential immigrants 29 European Union (EU) 13, 14, 124 family-based immigration 17, 24–6, 108, 109, 113, 127 far-right parties 46–8 Federation for American Immigration Reform 31, 35, 39 female genital cutting 79, 82–3 fertility rates 49, 123 fiscal impact 43, 44–6 foreign students and scholars 26–9, 55

148  Index Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution 108–9 Frisch, Max 20, 26, 34, 128 gender-based persecution 79, 83 genocide 64, 71, 73, 101 Germany 52, 64, 70, 71, 84, 99, 107–8, 122 Greece 19, 39 Green Card 109, 110 guest workers 19–23, 46, 51, 107, 122, 125 Gulf States 20, 21, 22 H-1B visa 16–17, 19, 28, 44 H-2A/H-2B visa 17, 19 Hahamovitch, Cindy 23 Haiti 64 Hammar, Tomas 125, 126 headscarf controversy 98–100, 104, 118 high and low skilled immigrants 13–23, 25, 26, 29, 43–5, 53–5, 122 Holocaust 60, 101 homosexuality 25, 79 Human Rights Watch 21, 70 human trafficking 6 Huntington, Samuel 48–51, 126, 127 Ibhawoh, Bonny 82, 83 illegal and undocumented immigrants 30, 36, 38, 45, 46 Immigration Act of 1965 25 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) 38 India 14, 23, 31, 52, 55, 69, 80, 95, 101, 124, 125 internal migration 5–6 internally displaced people (IDPs) 6, 74, 105 International Labor Organization (ILO) 124 international norms 86 International Organization for Migration (IOM) 36, 124 International Refugee Organization 59 investor visa 23 Iran 64, 70 Iraq 66, 67, 74, 92, 98 Israel 31, 43, 95, 106 Italy 19, 39, 69, 99, 110, 123 Jacoby, Tamar 33, 42 Japan 14, 22, 72, 115, 123, 125 jus sanguinis and jus soli 106–9, 113, 114 Korea (North and/or South) 22, 31, 64, 66, 107, 114 Lavin, Frank 27

LePen, Jean-Marie 122 liberalism 4, 7, 8, 22 Loescher, Gil 60 Lowell, Lindsey 16 loyalty 92, 94, 98, 101, 111, 112 Malawi 54, 55, 104 Malaysia 21, 31 marginalization of migrants 21, 22, 31, 41, 104, 125–9 Mariel Boatlift 64 Marshall, T. H. 97 Martin, Philip 123 Massey, Doug 33, 50–1 Mehlman, Ira 31, 35 Mexico 19, 23, 31, 34, 38, 48, 49, 52, 114, 124, 125, 126 Migration News 53 Migration Policy Institute 53 Miller, Mark 122 morality 5, 6–9, 31, 32, 34, 59, 80, 84–6, 110, 113, 114 Motomura, Hiroshi 24, 34 national identity 4, 46–51, 91–103 national interests 63, 64, 87 native workers 17, 18, 19, 25, 30, 31, 43, 44–5, 46, 55 naturalization test 110, 113, 115–7 Netherlands 72, 99 New Zealand 128 Newland, Kathleen 53 Niger 36 Nigeria 36 non-refoulement 60, 62–3, 66, 86 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 124 Norway 46, 72 Oaths of Allegiance 112–4, 117, 127 Operation Gatekeeper 31 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 4, 9, 59, 63, 66, 68, 73, 75, 77 Organization of African Unity 74, 81 Passel, Jeff 33 Permanent Residency Status (“Green Card”) 24 109 persecution 5, 9, 38, 59–88, 110, 128 Philippines 21, 52, 54, 123, 125 pluralism 117–18

Index  149 Plyler vs Dow 36 point system 14–16 President’s Council of Economic Advisers 43- 6 Proposition 187 36, 40 Proposition 200, 36 Putnam, Robert 126 Quebec 101 Rand Corporation 38 refugee definitions 60–2, 73, 74, 79–84 remittances 51–5 repatriation 70–1, 73 robots 123 Rohrabacher, Dana 18 Romania 4, 70, 124 Rwanda 64, 71, 73, 101 safe country and safe third country 69–70 Salzman, Harold 16 Saudi Arabia 81, 83, 104 Saxenian, AnnaLee 54–5 Schuck, Peter 113 sending country 33, 36, 51–6, 70, 114, 125, 129 Senegal 36 sexual orientation 25, 79 sexual violence 21, 104 Silicon Valley 16, 54 Singapore 14, 20–2, 28, 43, 106 Somalia 64, 79 South Africa 25, 69, 101, 113–4 sovereignty 60, 95, 112, 121, 127 Soviet Union 43, 63, 104, 105, 106 Spain 19, 25, 36, 39, 52, 94 Sri Lanka 51, 53, 64, 94, 104 statelessness 103–4 Striffler, Steve 18

Sudan 73, 74 Sweden 72 Swiss People’s Party (SVP) 47 Switzerland 20, 36, 47, 51, 69, 70, 84, 107, 108, 122 Takoma Park, MD 128 Tancredo, Tom 34, 38, 46 Tanzania 71, 73 Teitelbaum, Michael 16 temporary protection 70–1, 78 temporary visas 16–23 terrorism 47, 73, 100 Thailand 31, 104, 123, 125 Turkey 51, 64, 70, 74, 94, 101 Uganda 74 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 59–74, 77, 79, 81, 104 United States 16–19, 23–9, 30–41, 43–6, 48–51, 54–5, 62, 63–4, 107–13, 115–17 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 59, 60, 82, 83 Urban Institute 16, 34, 38, 45 voting rights 81, 83, 97, 112, 113, 117, 126–8 Walzer, Michael 6–7, 66 Weber, Max 92 Whitaker, Beth 71 Will, George 33 World Health Organization 82 World Trade Organization 124 Yugoslavia , 51, 64, 70, 71, 95, 101 Zambia 54