Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian makes a strong case for why the United States should withdraw from the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, but I wanted to draw special attention to the differences Krikorian notes between the world of 1968, when the Senate ratified the treaty, and the current reality of a globalized economy in which literally billions of poor people are getting wealthier every day:
Then the Cold War ended. Combined with cheaper air travel and communications, and massive population growth and state dysfunction in the Third World, the result has been an unprecedented migration wave that has turned the Refugee Convention from an “international kiss” (to borrow the derisive nickname for the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact “outlawing” war) to a crowbar used by the post-national Left to pry open the borders of democratic societies contrary to the will of their citizens.
As Krikorian writes earlier in the piece, the Refugee Act of 1980, which incorporated the U.N. refugee convention into law, divides migrants seeking to come into the U.S. into two groups: refugees whom the U.S. government affirmatively seeks out to bring to the U.S., and asylum-seekers who illegally enter the U.S. and then assert asylum as a defense to deportation.
As Krikorian notes, the world of 1970 was a lot poorer than it is today. Transportation was more expensive, and communication was difficult. But today, with a smartphone in every hand, it is much easier for migrants around the world to communicate with relatives and friends in the U.S., have money sent to them, and then arrange travel here.
As a result, where just 2,000 migrants were able to make their way to the U.S. to apply for asylum per year during the 1970s, more than 300,000 migrants traveled to seek asylum in the U.S. in 2019 alone.
The world of the 1970s was not any more chaotic than it is today. What has changed is the ability of the world’s poor to finance and coordinate travel to the U.S. And this ability will only grow.
Unless we change how we process migrants at the southern border, the mass migration crisis will only get worse.
