“Hungary Pulls Out of U.N. Global Migration Agreement” (nytimes):
Hungary pulled out of a United Nations global agreement on migration on Wednesday, citing security concerns, just days after the accord was reached.
Hungary joined the United States as one of two United Nations members that are not committing to the agreement, the first of its kind to lay out international standards for countries to address migration.
As with “Germans shutting down immigration because they are tired of getting wealthier and enjoying lower crime rates?”, Hungary apparently doesn’t want to get richer and safer via immigration.
As a proud Econ 101 veteran (plus some graduate courses too!), I like market-based solutions to perceived problems. “If countries won’t take refugees for moral reasons, let’s give them financial incentives” is by a couple of law school professors, but it has an economics angle and sort of proposes a market.
What if we depended less on potential host nations’ humanitarian impulses, and instead created a system that appealed to their economic self-interest? What if nations’ perceived self-interest could be better aligned with the humanitarian needs of refugees?
We begin with three basic propositions: Countries that create refugees can and should pay a price for it, countries that take them in can and should be paid for it, and refugees can and should have a say in where they go. Those three principles suggest a possible solution: We would allow refugees to assert a financial claim against the governments that have persecuted them, and also—if they wish—to trade that claim (a kind of “refugee debt”) to a host nation, thereby lessening the economic resistance and giving them some control over their own fates.
Oddly, these guys assume that the price for a refugee should be negative rather than positive. Politicians tell us that even the lowest-skilled immigrants make existing citizens of a country way better off. Yet here these guys say that “countries that take them in can and should be paid for it”. Why should countries get paid to do something that is guaranteed to enrich them?
Readers: What do you know about this grand new U.N. solution and why Hungary and the U.S. are staying out?
“Countries that create refugees can and should pay a price for it”
Won’t happen. Those countries already are corrupt, they will not pay a penny no matter how much you pressure them economically or financially. The evidence is all around us in the Middle East, Africa and South America.
“countries that take them in can and should be paid for it”
Won’t happen. They will keep asking for more and more or the population will rise up against the government. The evidence is all around us, Turkey, Italy and even Germany.
“refugees can and should have a say in where they go”
Won’t happen. Refugees want to move to a “paradise country” (because that’s the image stuck in their head) but as soon as they are in the “paradise country” they do not want to change the way of their lives. The evidence is all around us, all major cities have concentrated neighborhood in which those refugees move to.
Financial incentives already influence refugee migration. “Non-profit” private aid agencies receive government funds for all the refugees they provide services for. These private agencies recruit and advise foreigners into successfully applying for refugee status. The private agencies then pay their executives six-figure salaries, recruit more refugees, lobby government officials and plant sympathetic stories in the press to keep the money flowing.
An unchaste public teat feeds civic corruption.
“Politicians tell us that even the lowest-skilled immigrants make existing citizens of a country way better off.”
The post’s headline reads “refugees”.
“Countries that create refugees can and should pay a price for it”
My recommended solution is that every year or two, the normalized (to original population) refugee contribution be calculated, and the country with the highest per capita outflow of illegal immigrants be recolonized, and the former elites humiliated.
If we don’t have the stomach for the cruel measures needed to colonize a country, outsource it to the Russians or the Chinese.
So rich countries get absolved from their carbon sins by paying a carbon-credit penance (administrated by the UN) to poor countries, then poor countries pay rich countries a tariff (also administrated by the UN) to export their refugees. Sounds like a pretty good deal for UN administrators.
Not only the US and Hungary, but also Czech Republic.
What is interesting that in the Czech republic this is one issue that all the Czech politicians agree on.
“Czech PM says accepting more migrants is “road to hell” for Europe.”
http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/czech-pm-says-accepting-more-migrants-is-road-to-hell-for-europe
If we allow more immigrants into this country–refugees or not–there is a better chance they will vote for Resistance in the next presidential election. Wait, what? what citizenship laws? No human being is illegal! They will vote to protect our democracy from Putin! And they pay taxes too! yet another something that most Americans won’t do.
The cynical game progressives play. And no, I won’t blame immigrants for gaming our laws. Their loyalty is to their family, exactly as with Michael Cohen.