An update on immigration. President Biden visited the border for the first time in his presidency this week, and announced the expansion of Title 42.
While the border becomes the focus of national media attention yet again, we put together a reading list of immigration interviews we find helpful.
First – some key points from an interview with Daniel Naujoks.
People have been moving forever – and that will continue.
Migration is, first and foremost, an adaptation strategy.
People want to migrate because they see more income generating possibilities, they see better access to infrastructure, to education, to health services. And often, migration leads to better outcomes for migrants.
The United States’ inability to deal with it is political.
85% of the world's refugees today are in developing countries. All of the U.S. and Canada, all of Europe, all of Australia and New Zealand, jointly host 15% of the world's refugees.
Our current system, which is the idea of migration governance, or migration management, which is used a lot by certain players, is based on a false assumption that it can be managed easily.
Even if we manage some parts of it, the overall flux of people is not managed. It's not a hydraulic system where you just open and close the tap. Most of our policies are not geared towards that.
Looking at regular migration, a lot of people focus on the wall and on irregular border crossings. The majority of irregular migrants in most parts of the world come as tourists or with other valid visas. And we do want to allow people to come in with various kinds of visas. You don't want to fix people all the time, you want to have business travelers, you want to have tourists, you want to allow people to cross borders for medical reasons.
The porosity of borders is natural. We can't live in today's so called globalized world, without porous borders. East Germany was a closed system, it didn't pay off. North Korea may be one of those other examples, where they have kind of non-porous borders or very low degree of porosity. Most other economies, most other countries, need open borders.
New coverage of the issue is also old coverage of the issue. Here’s Vanity Fair this week:
And here’s UPI in 2007:
And PBS in 2014 and 2016:
Here’s how the political narrative on immigration (within the Republican party especially) has shifted. President Bush on immigration a few months before 9/11.
“Immigration is not a problem to be solved. It is a sign of a confident and successful nation. And people who seek to make America their home should be met in that spirit by representatives of our Government. New Arrivals should be greeted not with suspicion and resentment but with openness and courtesy.”
Meanwhile, policy between presidents has stagnated. So much and so little has changed.
Below are some of our interviews on immigration and migration to revisit.