Migration to the West: An Overview

Helen Hughes is professor emeritus of the Australian National University and senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney. This article is based on her book, Immigrants, Refugees and Asylum-Seekers: A Global View (Centre for Independent Studies, 2002).

Migration is as old as human history. Individuals and families, clans and whole nations, have moved and been moved. All the continents were washed by waves of migration in prehistoric times and migration is a constant theme of early oral history. It has been a prominent theme since the beginning of written history.

 

The earliest migrations were probably stimulated by climate and other environmental changes, and involved great hardship for the populations of emigration. They often inflicted even greater suffering on the areas of immigration. Where migrants did not integrate into the societies of immigration, but continued to pursue ethnic and religious differences, conflicts continue to this day in every continent. Years of conflict in Northern Ireland, “ethnic cleansing” in the Balkans, the murder of Tutsis in the Great Lakes region of Africa and the long Palestine–Israel conflict, warn that migrations without integration into host-country societies cannot be lightly dismissed.

 

The closing of land bridges between continents ended transcontinental migrations until the development of long-distance sail led to Arab incursions into South-East Asia and Africa. Later, European conquests saw the displacement of native peoples in the Americas, Australasia and Africa. The age of steam began mass migration to these “countries of new settlement”. The mass economic migrations of the nineteenth century helped to build the prosperous industrial societies of the United States, Canada and Australasia, but at the cost of rapidly displacing previous immigrant communities, which still causes discord and heartache. Migration to several western countries is now showing serious warning signs of the non-integration that could lead to conflict in the future.

 

Migrants seek to better their lives. “Push” factors include escaping from economic hardship and religious, ethnic and political persecution. “Pull” factors beckon economic migrants to start life anew, particularly for their children, in countries with economic, social and political opportunities.

 

The pressures to emigrate from transitional and developing countries are very considerable. Migrants from such countries are largely middle-income people. Despite the sluggish pace of development, the numbers of middle-income earners in developing countries are growing. In their home countries, millions of relatively well-educated people can view the Western world on television and the Internet. Consequently, they become aware of the great contrast between the opportunities offered by liberal Western societies and their own dirigiste home countries that deny them economic, social and political opportunities and often subject them to political repression and even to violence.

 

Migration to the West—the movement of some 7.5 million people a year—represents only half of the current global movement of peoples. Migration among developing and transitional countries is as large.

Legal Immigration to the West

Liberal Western democracies have clearly articulated immigration policies designed to meet their national objectives and take migrants’ welfare into account. Long-term immigrants are expected to integrate into the host society to avoid future problems for both the immigrants and the country. Levels of immigration reflect the political views of electorates. Selection processes vary, but are necessarily time-consuming to exclude drug and arms traffickers, other criminals and terrorists. All liberal Western democracies have substantial queues of applicants because the demand for immigration places greatly exceeds availability.

 

West European countries sought large numbers of unskilled workers after the Second World War. In some European countries, newcomers were not readily accepted socially, making it difficult for many immigrants to integrate into local societies. This resulted in sharp distinctions between immigrants and local inhabitants, with the latter becoming unwilling to take unskilled jobs.

 

In Australia and Canada, and partially in the United States, immigrants were often more skilled than local workers, and countries of immigration readily accepted newcomers, facilitating their rapid integration. Following the promotion of egalitarian views, newcomers enjoyed greater cultural openness, but multicultural rhetoric diminished the willingness of some immigrant groups to integrate into host-country societies. Sclerotic labour markets reduced employment opportunities, and the welfare costs of immigration rose as high welfare payments encouraged people not to seek work. Large-scale cheap public housing created ghettos that lacked social infrastructures. Substance abuse and crime became prevalent. Sharp ethnic divisions and perceptions that illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers were swamping legal immigration led to pressures to reduce the number of entrants.

 

Immigrants who fill labour demands today lead to humanitarian immigration for spouses, children, parents and other relations tomorrow. Family reunion and similar programmes thus form an important component of immigration, following primary flows of immigrants. They dilute the skill content of immigration because they have high ratios of children and older people, but they do not make heavy welfare demands because the family members who sponsor such migrants are usually working.

Temporary Immigrants

Until the middle of the twentieth century, while communications and transport remained slow and costly, most migrants expected to leave their home countries permanently. Today, the proportion of temporary migrants is rising, but the distinction between permanent and temporary migrants has become blurred. Not all long-term immigrants stay. Some return to their country of origin and some acquire two homes and move between them. Some temporary workers extend their stay several times and periodic special arrangements enable some to become permanent settlers. But short-term immigration arrangements make temporary workers less able and willing to integrate into host-society cultures.

 

Data on temporary workers are partial and weak. In 1999, of the 1.1 million immigrants to Australia, France, the United Kingdom and the United States, perhaps six hundred thousand were temporary workers.¹ There are two main categories. One consists of skilled workers, professionals and entrepreneurs. They move for short-term engagements within the West. The origins of the second, unskilled group lie in the seasonal agricultural and tourist workers who came every year from lower-income south European to higher-income north European countries, and from Mexico to the United States. To avoid the problems created by permanent unskilled migration in France and the United Kingdom, other European countries contracted unskilled and low-skilled workers for months and even years. Contracts could be renewed, sometimes several times. The source-countries were extended beyond Europe, with Turkey becoming important for Germany and Sweden. Japan has contracted workers from South Korea and China, often classifying them as students to avoid domestic political difficulties.

 

Young people, part tourists, part workers, have become a new source of temporary migration. Young Europeans have, for example, become the mainstays of fruit-picking in Australia, while young Australians work in the pubs of central London. Some stay or return as long-term migrants.

 

Deciding how many and which immigrants should be admitted is a question of vigorous current debate. In the countries of “new settlement”—Canada, the United States and Australasia—as well as in some European countries (and some developing countries), strong arguments are now being made for increasing immigration to counter low birth rates and ageing. The debate is not only about numbers, but also about the selection criteria that can determine skills and about the proportion of immigrants who should be allowed entry on humanitarian grounds.

 

The integration of immigrants into host societies is seen as being of great importance, with consequent attention to post-immigration considerations such as the need to learn host-country languages and the positive aspects of integration versus the negative effects of multiculturalism. Labour-market flexibility, leading to relatively low unemployment levels, is a critical issue. Conducted objectively and rationally, these debates are essential to the democratic resolution of immigration issues in liberal Western societies. It is not surprising that differences of opinion remain widespread, except on the damage done to the support for immigration by illegal immigration, people-smuggling and “forum-shopping” by asylum-seekers. (“Forum-shopping” is the practice by which potential asylum-seekers, often aided in their search by people-smuggling syndicates, look for countries most likely to allow them entry.)

Illegal Immigration

Illegal immigration has a long history, notably in the United States. Pressures for such immigration increased worldwide in the 1990s, reflecting rising numbers of middle-income earners in developing countries. The total annual flow of illegal migrants to liberal Western democracies was estimated at four million in the late 1990s, as compared to some three million legal immigrants.² Not all illegal immigrants seek permanent residency. Some return to their home countries, though some migrate several times.

 

The United States has the highest—seven million to nine million in 2000—stock of illegal immigrants,³ reflecting past open attitudes to immigration of low-paid workers from Mexico and other Latin American countries, and the relative ease of crossing the Mexican border. This border has been appreciably tightened, but Latin American inflows remain high. During the last three years, some 600,000 emigrants have left Colombia, 500,000 have left Ecuador, 150,000 have left Venezuela, and 400,000 have left Uruguay. About one million Central Americans have emigrated north since the 1980s.⁴ The television screens are full of Argentineans queuing to obtain visas to emigrate. The United States is also a high recipient of illegal immigration from China.

 

An overwhelming majority of US voters opposes illegal immigration, but strong special interests, mainly agribusiness, want it to continue so as to keep down rural wages. Perhaps the most promising aspect of the debate is a growing interest in shifting from illegal to legal immigration—despite some costs in raising wages—as this would undermine people-smuggling syndicates and improve the integration of immigrants into US society, following on earlier immigration lines.

 

Canada, a country of immigration, also had an ambivalent attitude to illegal immigrants in the past. Since 1999, all aspects of immigration and immigration controls have been tightened. Many illegal immigrants used to choose Canada as a point of initial entry to the United States because document checks were so cursory that even poor forgeries passed. Since 11 September 2001, however, Canada has tightened border controls. Restrictionism is growing, but sentiment in favour of further immigration also remains strong.

 

European land borders and entry points have become much more stringently controlled since the late 1990s, notably in Germany, Sweden and Denmark, with strong public support. Illegal immigrants are turned back at borders, some are detained and deportations have increased. The most liberal countries have taken the toughest stances because they became targets for illegal immigration.

 

Anglophone countries, notably the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, have more serious problems in controlling illegal immigration than does continental Europe because they do not have the identity cards that can be used to check and expel illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration is also impairing international relations. The location of Sangatte, a Red Cross camp for migrants at the French entrance to the Channel Tunnel to the United Kingdom, saw such numbers of illegal immigrants board freight trains that night runs had to be discontinued. Consequently, large freight companies returned to trucking, undercutting the profitability of the tunnel railway. The United Kingdom has recently stepped up detention of asylum-seekers subject to expulsion orders.

 

Most countries have not policed student visa-holders, either to ensure that foreign students study as well as work, or to ensure that they do not overstay their permitted time. In Japan, for example, student visas are accepted as proxy permissions for unskilled temporary immigrants. European countries are strengthening identity-card checks to reduce overstaying.

 

Distance, bolstered by strict visa procedures, long protected Australia and New Zealand against illegal immigration. Because immigration has been an enduring political issue in Australia and New Zealand, with trade unions concerned to ensure that prevailing high levels of local remuneration and good working conditions were not undermined by uncontrolled immigration, these two countries have controlled immigration throughout their existence as modern states.

 

Australia introduced a preventive detention system outside main ports of entry for immigrants arriving by sea without appropriate entry documents. Sending these arrivals to offshore camps in the Pacific at the end of 2001 has stopped the flow of illegal immigrants. Australia also strictly controls overstayers, so that they number only about sixty thousand in total. Most of those who do overstay depart in due course because of the stringency of visa policing. As a result of their country’s strict policies, Australians are still well disposed towards immigrants. Australia has the highest foreign-born population (24 per cent) among Western countries (compared to 3 per cent in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, 5 per cent in Sweden and 6 per cent in France), but has escaped the social disruption that mars European societies.

 

Policing the employment of illegal immigrants by fining their employers is widespread in continental Europe and has also been increased in the United States. Such measures, however, shift the onus of illegality from the immigrants to home-country citizens, and are thus widely resented and often poorly enforced, with many judges being reluctant to impose fines severe enough to be a deterrent.

People-Smuggling

Today’s high levels of illegal entry and asylum-seeking would not be possible without criminal syndicates that have moved from drug and arms trafficking to include people-smuggling among their activities. With increasing flows of illegal migrants, crime syndicates began to engage in moving people until people-smuggling was estimated to be worth $7 billion–$12 billion annually in 1997.⁵

 

The tightening of border security obliged people-smugglers to adopt more sophisticated methods, making the syndicates’ roles more profitable. Forged documents and travel networks became vital, notably for trails that go from East Asia to the United States via Latin America, or from the Middle East to Australia via Malaysia and Indonesia. Large-scale criminal enterprises also engage in trafficking drugs and arms, debt collection, enforcement and money laundering. Their smuggling routes can provide a highway for terrorists.

 

The criminal syndicates’ operations are not targeted at rescuing refugees from repressive regimes; in fact, the syndicates often have drug deals with such regimes. Political and religious refugees bribe local officials to obtain exit papers, but rely on local dissident groups to organise routes to transit countries. Criminal syndicates latch on to illegal immigrants in these countries. They provide them with forged papers, advise them where appropriate to destroy such legal documents as birth certificates and school reports that indicate their true nationality, portray them as asylum-seekers if possible, and coach them on how to present themselves in a favourable light in transit and host countries.

 

The criminal syndicates’ success in passing off immigrants as asylum-seekers exploits compassion in Western democracies to skip refugee and immigration queues. Not all the half‑million migrants who become asylum-seekers use people-smugglers, but they are a rising proportion of the illegal migration volume handled by the criminal syndicates.

 

In communist countries (China, Vietnam and Cuba) the criminal syndicates make arrangements with bureaucrats who issue passports and thus control the volume of emigrant flows. The price of passage for a Fujian illegal immigrant ranges from $30,000 to $47,000, sometimes payable only on arrival. New York is the main destination for Fujian immigrants, but there are many others, including Australia.⁶ They work for years to pay off their debt, often in sub-standard conditions, but as they earn more than they would have had they remained in China, the trade continues.

 

The people-smuggling syndicates expose migrants to shocking transit conditions in containers on the back of trucks and on freight trains and in “rust buckets” in the Mediterranean or off the coast of Australia. Children, including unaccompanied minors, are included to elicit sympathy. Hundreds, if not thousands of migrants, including children, have died in transit. News of boat-sinkings is suppressed. Many migrants have died on the United States–Mexico border. The syndicates embroil the migrants in law-breaking in transit countries, such as Indonesia and Mexico, as well as in host countries. Where migrants have funded their payments by loans, the criminal syndicates’ enforcers ensure that they repay their debt. Syndicate leaders have almost entirely escaped punishment, although Mexico has recently arrested relatively high-level bosses as a result of pressure from the United States.

 

Syndicate leaders live in luxury in money-laundering centres such as Monaco, or in transit countries, where they mix with the rich and famous on whose assistance they rely. The families of employees who are caught and jailed receive pittances at best. Far from being benign “social workers” facilitating passage for the disadvantaged, people-smuggling syndicates are criminal organisations that make large profits by extorting money from would-be migrants.

Refugees and Displaced People

Refugees have fled persecution since time immemorial. The modern concept of refugee persecution dates from the emergence of liberal societies when freedom of speech and of religious and political belief became enshrined in the rule of law. International recognition was given to refugees when Fridtjof Nansen was appointed as the first High Commissioner for Refugees by the League of Nations in 1921. The extermination of Armenians in Turkey in 1914–19 was still a vivid memory when fascist and communist upheavals in eastern Europe began spilling refugees into western Europe. In July 1938, an Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees organised a conference at Evian in France to save Jews from Hitler. Some forty countries attended. Unemployment was still high after the 1930s depression and anti-Semitism was widespread. The conference refused to save German Jews, the largest persecuted group of the time, paving the way for Kristallnacht in November of that year and the Holocaust thereafter. Only a few political and Jewish refugees with knowledge, funds and determination were able to escape.

 

In the aftermath of the Second World War, there emerged, mainly in Germany and Austria, large numbers of forcibly moved people—slave labourers, Ukrainians, members of Soviet minorities that had fought for Germany, and people displaced by the redrawing of maps. Several million displaced persons thus came to be identified as refugees. The United States took the lead in establishing the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency and the United Nations Refugee Emergency Fund to facilitate repatriation and resettlement of displaced persons in countries of immediate asylum and elsewhere. International involvement was revived in 1951 when the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established. The 1951 Refugee Convention (expanded in 1967) identified refugees as individuals who had a well-founded fear of persecution and could not be returned to their home countries for fear of placing their lives in jeopardy. The UNHCR’s primary mandate was to protect refugees and improve national policies towards them.

 

From the 1950s, refugees in the West came to be seen mainly as those escaping communist oppression. The Soviet invasion of Hungary turned a trickle into a stream, providing the UNHCR’s first major challenge. Many, including some communist party members, took the opportunity to leave a society they resented.

 

The UNHCR became involved with the plight of Algerians seeking refuge from France’s brutal colonial war in the 1960s, expanding operationally to organise support for people fleeing to neighbouring Tunisia and Morocco. It was not structured for such a role and it was swamped. Ten million people were displaced in 1971 in Bangladesh. The end of fighting in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos led to the next wave of displaced persons. Latin America’s repressive regimes prompted refugee and economic emigration from the 1960s to the 1980s. Civil war in Colombia and repression in Cuba and Haiti remain sources of refugees and displaced people. Regimes that target religious minorities and people wishing to exercise democratic rights create refugees and displaced persons in Iraq and Iran. The Taliban in Afghanistan drove more than three million people to starve on the country’s borders.

 

In proportion to population, the greatest displacements of people are in the Great Lakes region of southern Africa. Civil and interstate wars have also torn apart Angola, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan. Robert Mugabe’s regime killed some twelve thousand members of the Ndebele tribe in Zimbabwe and drove thousands more into neighbouring countries. Compared with the Asian and African tragedies, the European creation of displaced persons by Slobodan Milosovic’s dictatorship in the former Yugoslavia was relatively limited. The NATO intervention in Kosovo, moreover, enabled a high proportion of Kosovars to return to their homeland. It is to be hoped that the intervention in Afghanistan by the United States and its allies will have a similar effect.

 

The total number of displaced persons is estimated at thirty-five million to forty million. They are mostly ill educated, disoriented and living in shockingly deprived conditions. They are subsistence farmers, craftsmen and petty traders. They want to return to a decent life in their own countries, in familiar environments where they should have the opportunity to build their societies. Their future lies in resettlement in their own country as repressive regimes are defeated and overthrown.

 

The UNHCR and Western democracies find asylum for fifty thousand refugees (as defined by the 1951 Convention) every year. Their settlement essentially falls to the liberal Western governments. Refugees are selected by the UNHCR for countries that have agreed to receive an annual quota, but many apply on their own initiative as soon as they leave their repressive home states. Some apply after arrival in a host country on a tourist or student visa. Liberal Western democracies thus have refugee-processing queues.

 

Fewer than 12 per cent of asylum-seekers between 1990 and 1999 were refugees under the definition of the 1951 Convention. Refugees in the main have had to leave their countries because they attracted the attention of domestic security forces by actively opposing repressive regimes or by working for democratic reforms and equal rights for minorities. Their numbers are very small compared to total migration. Refugees have not created the illegal immigration and forum-shopping problems that are leading to harsh border controls. The plight of refugees, particularly from African countries, is real. Internationally determined refugee quotas need to be filled promptly and, if necessary, expanded. Many refugees want to return to their own countries as soon as changes of government permit, in order to help rebuild their societies.

Asylum-Seekers

Asylum-seekers are mainly economic and social emigrants thwarted by limited western immigration places. Criminal syndicates focus on migrants with the financial resources to bypass immigration restrictions. They are not less deserving of compassion than other emigrants because they have some money. Sometimes a family or a clan will fund an asylum-seeker in the hope that he (women are rarely chosen for this migration route) will be able to become established in a country of asylum and then bring out other family members under family reunion arrangements. These migrants may be trying to escape from countries with repressive regimes. They are often members of religious and ethnic minorities created by past unintegrated immigrations, such as Kurds from Turkey, Iraq and Iran, Tamils from Sri Lanka, Chinese from Vietnam, and many African minorities.

 

Failure to integrate immigrants makes discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities rife. Minorities who protest against such discrimination bring out latent bigotry and racism in mainstream societies. This has led to street fighting in such liberal Western democracies as the United Kingdom, Germany and France.

 

Many minorities wish to leave their home countries for one they believe does not discriminate on ethnic or religious grounds. Some become asylum-seekers. Unfortunately, this does not always mean that they are prepared to integrate into the society of the host country. New conflicts have thus arisen in such democracies as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France, where asylum-seekers have sought to perpetuate customs such as arranged marriages with brides from their country of origin that run counter to liberal traditions and female equality in host countries.

 

Asylum-seekers are privileged if successful in their claims. They are able to work legally and often have access to social security and even housing. Their numbers rose globally from some 250,000 in 1983 to a peak of 850,000 in 1992, but fell to 500,000 in 2000 as Western countries found that large inflows crowded out their legal immigration programmes, produced high welfare costs and aroused political opposition to immigration. Arrival and detention centres have been created, notably to hold unsuccessful asylum-seekers prior to deportation. In the United States and some other countries, prisons are used to detain asylum-seekers pending the determination of their status. Many asylum-seekers have been returned to their home or transit countries. Europe and North America tightened asylum criteria in the 1990s, so that the total number of those granted asylum has declined.

 

Asylum-seekers cannot be blamed for their aspirations. Because there is considerable compassion for migrants from repressive countries, if their first attempt fails asylum-seekers have recourse to legal appeals which, with the help of host-country advocates and sympathetic judges, are often successful. Rules that refugees and asylum-seekers should apply for settlement in the first transit country they arrive in are well known and understood. But attempting to enter a country without appropriate visa documents undermines the law that guarantees the prosperity of the very countries to which asylum-seekers wish to emigrate.

 

The granting of settlement rights to asylum-seekers on humanitarian grounds has been seized upon by people-smuggling syndicates so that they can profit from forum-shopping by migrants. The smugglers advise their clients as to the soft spots in immigration regulations. Some migrants whose entry claims have been rejected behave antisocially when they face deportation. But they have been cheated by the crime syndicates, not by the countries of immigration. Such behaviour breeds strong anti-immigration sentiment among host-country voters. A high success rate for asylum pleas encourages more claimants. People-smugglers advertise successful asylum claims in their areas of recruitment. Fortunately, reports of tough policies that deny asylum to ineligible claimants also travel fast. Australia’s refusal to allow any asylum-seekers to land since the Tampa incident in the summer of 2001, when a ship carrying hundreds of asylum claimants was turned away from Australian territory, appears to have moved the country so low down on forum-shopping lists that it has not had to deal with a boatload of illegal migrants for more than a year.

Conclusion

The 7.5 million legal and illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers now entering liberal Western democracies annually are creating severe social and political strains, nationally and internationally. About ten million people are willing to move from developing countries now, and their number would rise to one hundred million if immigration to the West were free.

 

It is clear that migration to liberal Western democracies cannot solve the problems of transitional and developing countries. Western markets are already open (bar trade in agricultural products, clothing and textiles), but most of the advantage of this openness has been taken by only a few, very successful, East Asian economies. Most developing countries, while paying lip service to open markets, have directly and indirectly barricaded themselves with protectionist measures. Industrial countries should certainly complete the opening of their markets, but the additional trade created will be small beside the unused opportunities that already exist.

 

In the last half-century, some $250 billion of aid has done more to keep corrupt and incompetent regimes in power than to help development. It is to be hoped that increased access to communications will persuade the citizens of developing countries that immense opportunities beckon if they, too, build liberal institutions and if their governments follow liberal policies.

 

Liberal Western democracies are transparently trying to establish levels of immigration flows that will not exceed the absorptive capacity of their societies. Avoiding the past disasters of unintegrated migrations that have led to centuries of violence and conflict in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and, above all, Africa, is crucial to dealing with increasing immigration. But even then liberal Western democracies would not be able to accommodate more than a small proportion of potential immigrants. The pressures on borders will thus remain, so that border controls and/or internal policing will have to continue if illegal immigrants are not to flood in.

 

The principal policy challenge lies in transforming illegal into legal immigration to end the cruel exploitation by people-smuggling syndicates of unfortunate migrants, and especially of their children. So long as illegal immigration is successful, there will be a demand for the services of the criminal syndicates. To the extent that Western countries are ambivalent about illegal immigration, criminal syndicates will continue to foster forum-shopping to find soft immigration pathways.

 

 

Endnotes

1. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Trends in International Migration: Continuous Reporting System on Migration, 2001 (Paris: OECD, 2002), p. 284.

 

2. International Organisation for Migration, CIS Migration Report (Geneva: Technical Co-operation Centre for Europe and Central Asia, 1997).

 

3. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Trends in International Migration: Annual Report 2001 (Paris: OECD, 2001), p. 262.

 

4. “Time Travellers: A Survey of the Gulf”, Economist, 23 March 2002, p. 7.

 

5. See Gil Loescher, The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 321.

 

6. See Zai Liang and Ye Wenzhen, “From Fujian to New York: Understanding the New Chinese Immigration”, in Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives, ed. David Kyle and Rey Koslowski (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 187–215.