Migration Policies Around the World: What is Changing?
2020 was a year of global health, economic, and climate backlashes. Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, global economic growth was projected to decline by 3.5 percent in 2020, with the impact felt most severely by women, children, and migrants. Despite these setbacks, changes in migration policies around the world in 2020 may reduce the rate of discrimination and xenophobia targeted towards foreigners. Specifically, progress is seen in the European Union (EU) refugee relocation mechanism and expanded pathways to legal immigration in the U.S. and Colombia.
Since 2015, over two million refugees and people in refugee-like situations have arrived in Europe, fueling populist-nationalist movements and Euroscepticism. The inefficient and unfair EU migration management system at the time only exacerbated the xenophobia. Much of this discontent stemmed from the Dublin Regulation, the EU law stipulating that asylum-seekers can submit a claim only in their first country of arrival. The countries neighboring the EU’s external borders—Spain, Italy, and Greece—bore the brunt of massive influxes while their migration centers remained underfunded, overcrowded, and neglected by domestic politics. EU citizens felt “invaded” and not “protected” as the authorities and agencies did not have the mechanisms to deal with the large flows, giving rise to criticism and anti-immigration backlash.
With the impact of the pandemic and shrinking economic opportunities, it would be reasonable to think popular xenophobic narratives would endure multiplier effect. The past year certainly cast light on the limitations of existing funding for migration infrastructure: the absence of safe and hygienic living conditions for asylum seekers on the Greek islands under prolonged quarantine measures led to the burning of Moria refugee camp on Lesvos in September 2020; in the cold winter of Eastern Europe, refugees had to survive through freezing temperatures.
In September 2020, however, the European Commission proposed a new Pact on Migration and Asylum, laying out improved and faster procedures to process asylum requests in order to rebuild trust between the EU member states. The new pact has demonstrated that better management of external borders, stronger foresight, and crisis preparedness coupled with a solidarity mechanism can be key for the long-term betterment of European societies and economies. Despite high expectations for the new pact, it is reasonable to say that the EU is intensifying efforts to establish an effective, humanitarian, and safe European migration policy.
One of the pillars of the new proposed pact is a commitment to improving fair-sharing and solidarity among members when admitting refugees and migrants. In principle, the EU upholds the voluntary contribution allocation system, meaning that countries are free to decide whether they want to take in a certain number of migrants as they cross EU borders and ask for asylum. Under the proposed guidelines, however, in times of stress or when countries notify they are operating over capacity, a more stringent mechanism would kick in, requiring a state to take primary responsibility for returning individuals or to provide operational and monetary support, regardless of the state’s own willingness.
By establishing clearer mechanisms, public frustration towards the dysfunctional EU migration system may decrease over time; xenophobia may weaken. A According to EU surveys in 2018 and 2019, immigration is at the heart of citizens' concerns, and more than half recognize the importance of the EU in tackling the issue. With clear rules at the EU level, efforts may be redirected towards full socio-economic integration of this vulnerable category, while decreasing the stigma of migration.
In the Americas, similar positive trends are documented. With the swearing in of United States President Joe Biden, a new immigration plan is expected to overhaul the standing U.S. immigration system. The new legislation is expected to create a pathway to citizenship for 11 million of undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States. It is expected that Biden immigaration reform would shorten the process to legal status for agriculture workers and for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, as well as deploy a new border patrol enforcement mechanism and shorten family reunification procedures. This citizenship bill has set high expectations: many think it would be the most sweeping since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Besides ensuring legal pathways to residency and work in the United States, the Biden administration aims to destroy the long-standing stigmatization around migrants and to embrace diversity. The Biden immigration agenda focuses on mechanisms that yield to full integration in the society while stressing the idea that increased economic output due to higher human capital and labor acquisition will be beneficial for the entire country.
Another country particularly challenged by migration flows, yet with promising new migration policies in place, is Colombia. Since 2015, Colombia has received 1.7 million Venezuelans escaping from the economic, social, and political collapse of their neighboring home country. On a comparative perspective, the Colombian response to the Venezuelan refugee crisis has been the most generous within Latin America. Colombia’s efforts to regularize the status of its Venezuelan migrants and integrate them in the society is laudable. Nonetheless, major gaps in education, social protection, and labor market inclusion persist, together with social stigmatization. Xenophobia and rising hate against foreigners have been alarming factors that, together with resource constraints and limited state capacity to manage migration, has led to the characterization of the Venezuelan situation in Colombia as a “ticking bomb.”
On February 8, 2021, Colombian President Iván Duque Márquez announced that the government will be granting a “Special Permit” to all Venezuelans who entered the country before January 31, 2021, allowing them to stay legally and work for 10 years. Implementation will be challenging, but the prospects for integration are more positive than ever. This new policy comes after years of documented stigmatization of Venezuelans in the Colombian society and their exclusion from formal healthcare, economy, and social welfare policies for undocumented arrivals. Additionally, the majority of undocumented Venezuelan migrants live outside the agenda of the central government. These reforms can help track trends within the migrant population to better shape Colombian migration policies. Most importantly, Colombia can benefit from a population that is believed to be moderately educated and young, testament that it is economically advantageous to integrate them into the formal healthcare, social, and economic systems rather than to isolate them.
Immigration policies at the global level have generally become less restrictive since the end of World War II, although current political rhetoric may suggest otherwise. The positive impact of immigration on productivity in recipient economies is a key empirical finding of studies on immigration that should spur efforts towards foreigners’ socio-economic inclusion. The estimated positive macroeconomic effects of immigration in advanced and emerging economies are large. In all three cases, the European Union, Colombia, and the United States, the key reasons for those supporting migration are to leverage diversity, human capital, and labor to increase economic output and the production of value in goods and services. In the case of the EU, specifically, immigration mitigates the negative effects of its aging population where the active labor force is shrinking with respect to the erlderly. Needless to say, in addition to economics, there are humanitarian reasons migrants and refugee populations should be welcomed, not pushed away.
The last years saw a crescendo in refugee rights violations, discrimination, and authoritarianism that channeled into hostile attitudes and policies towards migration. Now things are looking different, and there is a realistically more inclusive future ahead.