Increasing migration a problem for policymakers worldwide

Migration issues are becoming more complicated due to global phenomena involving disparity, inequality and a lack of meaningful, results-driven solutions. Forced displacement is not new, nor is the migration trend of “south moving north” — not only in the Western Hemisphere but also the Eastern too. What is new is a circulatory system of different migration bringing, for example, Kyrgyz migrants to the US border with Mexico. This type of phenomenon raises questions about what today’s policymakers are supposed to do in the transnational arena. Disjointed and separate agendas cloud answers to the migrant issue.
Illegal immigration is taxing governments around the world. For example, the maritime migration route between West Africa and the Canary Islands — a passage so dangerous it was avoided for years — is back in use: some 30,000 people have attempted the crossing so far in 2023. In Europe, countries like Germany, once friendly to asylum seekers, are slashing benefits and hastening deportations.
Meanwhile, in Latin America, a million people may traverse the Darien Gap in 2023. The Darien Gap is part of the isthmus that links Colombia to Panama, making it a key passage for South American migrants aiming to reach the US. That is more than four times as many as attempted to pass through it in the 2010s.
Moreover, also in Latin America, border crossings continue to increase from Venezuela. Illicit migrant flows have worsened as Venezuelans — as many as one in four of them — have sought refugee status by going north, only to be caught up in illegal networks. Next door, Colombia has the highest number of forcibly displaced persons in the world, with more than 6.9 million people uprooted from their homes due to decades of internal armed conflict.
To be sure, global migration rates have grown since migrants that were stuck finally moved out of their countries of temporary residence. Hundreds of thousands of migrants from around the globe were stuck in host countries. But policy changes after the COVID-19 pandemic led to more people moving to their final migration destination or end point with family or, worse, in criminal conditions. When they began to move, the migration management architecture was changed.
Migration management policymakers try to create an orderly process for entry, or for mitigation and prevention measures. The evolving migration management architecture includes new policies, instruments and institutions in individual countries. Governments’ approaches are uneven and are often primarily focused on short-term needs because of budgetary issues or simply a lack of imagination.

Countries like Germany, once friendly to asylum seekers, are slashing benefits and hastening deportations.

Dr. Theodore Karasik

There are efforts ongoing to bridge regional migration problems into a new hemispheric architecture. Research shows that five mobility agreements have developed over the past few years in different subregions within the Americas. Several new forums for managing migration have also taken root and 21 countries in the hemisphere signed on to the 2022 Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, a landmark pact establishing high-level lines of action across the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
Last week’s Global Refugee Forum, held in Geneva, Switzerland, set an example of tallying the damage of migration and seeking new solutions to growing problems. Currently, there are at least 114 million displaced people in the world, of which 36 million are refugees. Many migrants are from conflict-affected areas like Sudan, key parts of the Sahel and Ukraine, including millions who are refugees, as well as protracted crises such as the Rohingya, the Syria situation, Afghanistan and others. They all need to be addressed.
Significantly, Gaza now has to be calculated into the migration issue and thus it dominated the Global Refugee Forum’s agenda. Unfortunately, Palestinian refugees do not fall under the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ mandate. They are under the care and protection of UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and thus the current Gaza crisis is left out of the discussion. This UN structural problem is of interest to observers because of the gap in talking about Gaza during such a critical and complex time for emergency responders. Consequently, Jordanian King Abdullah, during his keynote speech in Geneva, pointed out the international community’s responsibilities in this matter.
Overall, global migration is growing, challenging policymakers and stakeholders to come up with solutions. We are now seeing how migration is becoming worse and political and social events are compounding the world’s inability to find adequate solutions. Projections by the UN do not anticipate the economic and demographic forces that shape migration flows. Politics and economics are the main drivers of migration in its various forms — illicit, transnational, internal or refugee. This list of migration types provides an illustration of the complexity of the problem and raises the question: What type of migration is most important to treat first? That point poses a dilemma for policymakers and stakeholders because of their falling budgets.

• Dr. Theodore Karasik is a senior adviser to Gulf State Analytics in Washington. X: @KarasikTheodore