Refugees: Goodbye to the Good Old Days

The era of relative simplicity in refugee affairs has ended. Legal challenges, economic difficulties in the industrialized democracies, and the inability of some countries of first asylum to allow refugees to remain in their territories have contributed to a sense of crisis. This has come about because of confusion between refugees and economic migrants and a perception that greater numbers of people are on the move, in more uncontrollable ways, than ever before. Finally, economic and employment problems, which are themselves cyclical, lead to protectionist measures that can become fixed in law. To keep our commitments to genuine refugees and the system of protection and assistance that has evolved over 60 years of international cooperation, two things are needed. The first is to maintain the integrity of the definition of a refugee as it exists in international treaty and U.S. statute. The tendency to wish to extend those privileges to all unfortunate people is understandable, but will surely erode the special status reserved to victims of persecution. The second is to design joint resettlement and development projects that can benefit a broader class of displaced persons. This will relieve population pressures on first-asylum countries; avoid eligibility determinations that sometimes result in stark life-and-death choices; and, by helping development, also contribute to ameliorating some of the root causes of forced migration.