Few problems trouble wealthy democracies today as much as uncontrolled migration. Public concerns about incoming migrants drove the British vote in favor of leaving the European Union and facilitated the ascent of former U.S. President Donald Trump. Today, a rise in migrant arrivals at the U.S.-Mexican border is creating political turmoil for U.S. President Joe Biden. Whether they are fleeing persecution, driven away by natural disasters, or searching for economic opportunities, migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees all find themselves unwelcome in the global North.
Rather than confront the domestic roots of growing public anxiety about migration, liberal democratic countries have externalized the problem. Increasingly, they rely on countries in the global South to host migrants and refugees or otherwise prevent them from journeying onward to wealthy nations. Although this strategy may be politically attractive, conditioning development aid and outsourcing asylum to try to reduce irregular migration is not viable in the long run. Migrants and refugees end up stuck in countries ill-equipped to integrate them—and with no immediate incentive to improve their lot. And so the drive to seek a better life elsewhere remains. In the end, the only way wealthy states can “solve” the problem is to make regular avenues of migration more accessible.
