At the outset, I want to say that rich countries like the US and Canada have an obligation to give asylum to legitimate claimants. That is an obligation under international law agreed to by an international convention. Canada and the US are both rich countries and they can afford to establish such a system. In the US under their current system, it takes years for legitimate claimants to have their cases heard. Each country is entitled to have claims adjudicated to ensure that only legitimate claims are accepted. Applicants must be accepted as genuine claimants fleeing persecution. Economic migrants do not have an automatic right to enter the country unless they have legitimate claims based on persecution. The US is not putting enough resources into the system to allow it to work properly efficiently and swiftly enough. They must do that. That is their clear responsibility, even though tax payers will inevitably be less than keen to pay.
During the delays in both countries, the asylum seekers in the country inevitably get attached to the country they inhabit and grow connections to the people there that are difficult to break and often lead to citizens of those countries gaining sympathy for them and then pressing their countries to make exceptions or improve their reception. This makes things more difficult. And the longer they stay waiting for their cases to be adjudicated the worse things get. As a result of this things have got very bad in the US. A good part of the problem is the lack of resources devoted to this. Looking the other way does not solve this problem. Currently in the US many claims take many years to be adjudicated because of a lack of resources.
Canada and the US are part of the problem. They must change their ways and stop shirking their responsibilities. They must not take advantage of delays to discourage claims when they are partly responsible for those delays.
We must remember that those who are comfortable in a country, such as the vast majority of Canadian and Americans, many of whom are themselves immigrants or of whom nearly all are ancestors of immigrants and are prone to exaggerate the difficulties of accepting large numbers of asylum seekers. How many refugees can we really tolerate?
Once one is privileged it is easy to see the privilege as natural and justified but is it? What really gives Americans and Canadians the moral right to say, “No more!” as Trump did when he was president. He basically tried to keep out all immigrants, not just unjustified asylum claimants because that was popular with his base supporters.
Many of the original settlers arrived in this continent from Europe where they often did often did not face persecution, let alone extreme persecution. Yet they thought they could come here whether the inhabitants wanted them or not.
Some countries like Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon are able to take millions of asylum seekers even though they are much smaller and much poorer countries than Canada or the United States.
We must all recognize that since the time of the reforms after the World War the world has changed dramatically. That is in part the consequence of climate change and political change, both of which were significantly, but not solely, caused by western countries. Both are contributing immensely to increased immigration around the world. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, there currently are more than 40 million refugees and asylum seekers around the world. How can the world deal with that many? And we must realize that the climate problems and political problems that have created this deluge of refugees and asylum seekers are not going away any time soon. In fact, things are likely to get worse. Much worse! So what do we do about it?
As Zakaria said,
“We need entirely new laws, standards, courts, so that asylum can be granted, but through some orderly rational process, rather than just leaving it up to officials in countries that are overwhelmed by illegal entrants at their borders. The migrant process is exposing democratic weakness at every level. From an administration that is scared to take on its progressive wing and take bold action, to states like New York and Massachusetts that have right to shelter rules that are utterly unworkable under the face of this onslaught. Unless Democrats seize control of this issue, the politics of this will have the same effect as under other western countries—rocket fuel for the populist right.”
As David Frum said, “if democracies are unable to solve the issue of immigration, autocracies will do it for them.”
Donald Trump’s “big beautiful wall” has not worked even where it was built. But most Americans recognize that he is right when he says the current system is not acceptable. If a wall is not the answer, and I don’t think it is, we must do better. As Zakaria said, Trump was “willing to take extreme measures to end it and they know no such thing about his Democratic opponents.” On the issue of immigration Trump is respected in the US much more than Biden. And According to a recent poll, immigration is the most important issue on the minds of Americans.
Yes, immigration is a wicked problem. Liberals need to understand that open borders are not acceptable to their citizens and won’t be tolerated by them. Conservatives need to understand that their countries need more workers and immigration can help their economies as it helps them fulfill their moral and legal obligations.