Europe must be cruel to be kind on migration

The moral distinction between the tyranny of politicians and the tyranny of poverty is so flimsy as to be negligible.

Until recently, the sheer scale of illegal migration to Europe has made it difficult to analyse the causes. But Mediterranean crossings in ramshackle craft have begun to fall; the latest wave of refugees from the Syrian civil war has subsided; and what pollsters call the “salience” of immigration to British voters has lowered. So when better than now to step back and take another look at a problem that has been poisoning British, European and American politics since before the start of this century, and has driven an upsurge in populism across the Continent - and probably contributed to Brexit too?

Before the next bloodbath abroad, then, before the next wave of desperate migrants, before the next new channel opens (like the channel opening through Morocco now) we should tackle the root of the issue.

We must look again at the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and (the real culprit) its extension worldwide in the 1967 protocol. These provisions are at the heart of the West’s problem with illegal immigration.

The seeking of political asylum has slowly but inextricably tangled itself into economic migration. The tangle lies not least in the minds of would-be migrants themselves, but also in the West’s own moral imagination. The generosity of the convention’s wording is to blame.

In the context of 1951, the generosity is explicable. European nations exhausted after the Second World War gathered in Geneva to discuss a clear, pressing but limited problem. War had displaced whole blocs of humanity; boundaries had changed, ethnic and other groups had been expelled or left stranded, and entirely identifiable ethnic, cultural or religious groups had ended up in places where they could not safely stay. The problem was acute but not open-ended: the moving of a number of chess pieces on a board, finite and feasible.

The convention’s definition of entitlement to asylum is therefore (to our globalist eyes today) almost breathtakingly loose because, when it was framed, everyone knew who they were talking about. Forgive a rather dense quote, but it’s important to read it, as asylum tribunals must: “A person who owing to a 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 . . .”.

The 1967 protocol extended this definition, originally applicable only to movement between European countries, to the whole world. That, not the initial convention, was the catastrophe. What were they thinking? Well, they were thinking before (though only just before) the age of mass global travel and mass global communications to which billions would have access. It did not occur to the signatories that half the population of Eritrea might want to come to Europe, that they might discover their rights to do so, and then be able to access a network of traffickers to organise the journey. Nobody imagined that (as our Supreme Court ruled eight years ago) being gay in a country that persecuted gays would come under the definition.

Given the mediaevalism, the chaos, the religious bigotry and the political despotism of large swathes of our globe, the number who could make a plausible claim to qualify under the convention is large.

But the number who might wish to escape not state oppression but oppression of a sometimes crueller kind is far larger. Abject poverty oppresses too. Destitution crushes too, kills too, extinguishes human rights and human hopes as brutally as any despot’s diktat or mullah’s creed. Why should a columnist who faces persecution if he criticises his government be entitled to asylum here, while a father trying to help his children escape grinding poverty, illiteracy and disease have no case?

The moral distinction between the tyranny of politicians and the tyranny of poverty is so flimsy as to be negligible. It is often possible to stay out of trouble politically by keeping quiet, but it won’t put food on the table of a hungry family.

Unsurprisingly, many of the tyrannies and anarchies from which people might want to escape are also places of economic distress. I doubt that an Eritrean, a Syrian or a Yemeni on a leaking craft in a Mediterranean storm is giving much thought to whether he is an economic migrant or a political refugee. He yearns simply for a better life. I doubt whether most of my fellow citizens, when they talk of “refugees”, have in mind any clear distinction between the political and the economic kind. The words have lost their meaning to us because the realities do not obey these linguistic confines. Only the treaty-makers, the politicians, the lawyers and the tribunal judges can navigate this language.

There is a sure-fire way to resolve the confusion. To the convention’s list of miseries, add the misery of poverty. But there’s a reason we don’t. Because, then, billions more in the poorest countries would be entitled to settlement in the richer ones. And immigration on this scale would smash western democracy because it would never gain the consent of the governed.

The last step in this argument is cruel, but no crueller than logic. Rights to asylum cannot expand to embrace poverty, so they must contract, to leave poverty so far outside the concept of asylum that few will embark on a boat from Morocco with any faith in their chances before a tribunal, which at present are tempting. This would not remedy the moral oddity of rejecting those who flee poverty while accepting those who flee persecution; but it would untangle the two.

Already Italy turns boats back. Hungary opts out, Austria chafes and Bavarian voters start whistling far-right tunes. Can you imagine Britain tolerating for even a few weeks the numbers that other EU countries have accepted for years?

Disregard for the convention will grow de facto. To resist amending it de jure eats into respect for law and could finally destroy the whole convention. Think Trump.

Britain will not lead down the path I propose, but when others do, we should be ready to follow.

- The Times