The Syrian refugee crisis has clearly displayed the difficulties of Western societies to accept culturally and religiously different peoples in the wake of regional civil war.
This is in contrast to previous refugee crisis solutions that were fully embraced and enforced successfully (elaborated below). Namely, the decision on whether to accept Syrian refugees has hinged on the perceived immediate detrimental effects to the economy and a not-so-subtle concern about ‘hidden terrorism.’ This is not only a more brutal side to globalization, but is also using terrorism to power a new xenophobia, turning refugees into something akin to human capital estimates.
The Iranian Example
Historically, perhaps the most telling refugee immigration was the Iranian one, lasting decades in the long shadow of the Ayatollah revolution. At a time when the United States’ population was diametrically opposed to the Iranian government, America still kept its borders to Iranian migrants and refugees largely open. Importantly, due to the Shah’s close relationship with Washington, Iranian familiarity with English, and Western education, there was relatively little transitional difficulty for the Iranian population. Iranian immigration largely continued unabated, with nearly 15 percent of Iranians with a tertiary education leaving for the US by 1990. Additionally, the IMF reported that more than half of the over 420,000 Iranians living in the US with higher education degrees were physicians or engineers. Thus, even as the political and societal opposition to Iran was at a heightened state, the US clearly recognized the economic value of Iranian refugees and did not fear there were ‘secret Ayatollah plants’ trying to get in.
The Iranian migration is in stark contrast to American (and Western in general) reaction to Syrian refugees, many of which have little firm knowledge of English, are poorly educated, and are perceived to observe very different cultural customs and religions. While the US abruptly went from allies to enemies with the new Ayatollah regime, public opinion about Iranians had not changed to reflect the changing political situation. Numbers affirm this: as refugees and migrants from Iran continually increased throughout the 1980s, they were mostly accepted into the US, found success in the wake of fleeing their home state, and are the most highly educated among all refugee groups in the US.
The Yugoslav Example
As a result of the civil war in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, a third of its entire population now lives outside of its borders. Germany alone contains approximately 240,000 Bosnian refugees. At the time of the mass migration of Bosnian refugees, the rhetoric was almost identical to what is expressed about Syrians today. In 1996, the Economist noted that “most countries are simply slamming their doors in the interest of looking after their own.” In addition, Germany took the brunt of Bosnian refugees and criticized the UN Convention on refugees and overall EU policy as incoherent. Despite this German chastising, most European countries simply ignored or refused Yugoslav refugees, as the crisis was far from their borders and they were not involved in the war. The Bosnian crisis is echoed nearly two decades later as Syria fits many of the same attributes, including the same ‘problematic’ religion as Bosnians.
Kosovo was similar to the Bosnian crisis, but had very different timelines and outcomes. As NATO controversially got involved in the Kosovo crisis in 1999, there came a deep moral obligation to assist in the refugee problem. This largely stemmed from the fact that NATO air strikes helped displace over 1.5 million people, with 800,000 of them being refugees. Thus, NATO created its own very painful dilemma, being seen as both liberators in war and yet also forcing the Kosovo population from their homes. Therefore, largely because the Western world was directly involved in the unrest, it felt obliged and responsible to help those forced to flee. It also seemed important to repair the diplomatic public relations image of NATO.
A very stark difference is evident in the NATO assistance to Kosovo vs. Bosnia: refugees were centered around nearby countries, not in far-off developed Western states, as the conflict ended relatively swiftly. This may be why there is such reluctance and slow reaction from NATO countries for Syria today: the conflict is most certainly not going to be short-lived and refugees cannot be housed safely in the most immediate nearby countries, thus demanding greater participation from far-off ones.
The Haiti Example
Similar to Syria, Haiti was experiencing an unstable government and tumultuous political climate from the 1980s through the 1990s. During the massive influx of 100,000 Mariel Cuban refugees in 1980 (who had special protections), some 1000 Haitians also arrived each month. In 1981, President Reagan changed the policy on “excludable aliens” and as a result Haitians were subject to incarceration and exclusion proceedings. Additionally, the Republic of Haiti and the United States formally agreed that the US would interdict on the Haiti “boat people” and Haiti would do no harm to them when they were returned. During the next ten years over 350 vessels and 21,000 Haitians were intercepted, with only six admitted to the US. Damnably, the same policy that allowed Cubans to stay and become citizens never applied to Haitians. Perhaps more tellingly, after the Cold War ended in 1994, the policy toward Cubans was also reversed and Cubans were then treated like the “Haitian boat people.” Thus, while the Cubans and Haitians were nearly identical in mode of transportation and time of arrival, their treatment did not become identical until the Cold War was decisively over, insinuating that the deeply divided politics between Cuba and the US decided refugee and migration treatment, not the actual crisis situation on the ground in-country. This could be most disturbing when looking at Syria: without an explicit and highly defined Cold War proxy development (though some might say that is happening now with Russian air strikes against DAESH in Syria), it seems that many Western countries will not find Syrian refugee populations important enough to make sacrifices.
As parts of the developed world have made additional pledges to take in more refugees, much of the world is refusing to do so. Predominantly, this has been dominated in the media by Hungary’s closure of its borders and Japan’s echoing of European history when it declared it would take care of its own people before caring for others. However, while xenophobia plays a large role, these decisions can only occur in a country that has no moral, economic or political benefit for accepting refugees. In the United States, accepting Iranians meant allowing the best of Iran into its borders (who were also diametrically opposed to the anti-American revolutionary regime). Cubans were welcomed in face of the anti-American Civil War as deserters of dictatorship and a prong against the Soviet Union. This element does not exist yet in Syria and thus, apparently, Syrian refugees are simply out of luck.
The goal of Western countries should be to eliminate these various cultural and political prerequisites for accepting refugees. While the Refugee Convention of 1951 is easily navigated around, public opinion and strong leadership can enforce humanitarian ideals in the face of xenophobic realizations, as has been shown by Germany in 1995 and again two decades later. Refugees being judged ‘worthy or unworthy’ according to their long-term human capital to the hosting nation is viciously cruel and ruthless, even if economically rational. The Syrian refugee crisis presents a soft power opportunity that is distressingly rare. Western countries must stop turning to isolationism and their policy concerns must not continually and conveniently turn inward. Hungarian barbed wire and American Islamophobia does not represent the Western ideals of democracy and human freedom. Rather, they are antithetical and regressive. There is nothing wrong with the free market per se, accept when it is forcibly used in the Syrian crisis to create a ‘refugee capitalism’ that should be the shame of Western leaders and will no doubt become a huge destabilizing regional problem, especially across the Greater Caspian region.