What is to be done?

The political scientist Eric Kaufmann argues for a controversial alternative in his recently published book, Whiteshift, a researched inquiry into how migration and demographic change are affecting politics and culture in Western societies.

Rather than settling refugees in Western countries to live alongside citizens, who will tolerate a population far smaller than the total number of people in danger, he favors building permanent, closed refugee camps on Western soil that accommodate anyone who wants to come. Refugees would have the right to move to another refugee camp or to return to their home country, but would not have the right to enter the host country. Governments would draw a bright line distinguishing refugees from migrants.

Some critics liken permanent camps to putting refugees in prison, and find the notion of segregating refugees in such places to be morally noxious. Others point to the dismal conditions in many camps past and present, and doubt that future camps would be any better. Even Ireland’s comparatively generous Direct Provision program, in which refugees are semi-segregated in relatively high-quality housing, may immiserate residents by trapping them in limbo rather than letting them begin a new life in a new community, as Masha Gessen illustrates in a perhaps overcritical dispatch in The New Yorker.

Still, the status quo is so horrific that Kaufmann’s alternative merits a hearing.

The core of the problem as Kaufmann sees it:

Paradoxically, pressure to widen the rights of asylum seekers inside Europe makes it harder to fulfill the mission of getting people to safety. Why? Because if countries believe admitting refugees is the first step to granting permanent settlement, they will be more reluctant to allow them in. Claimants in the West have their cases judged increasingly harshly due to domestic political pressure to limit the number accepted for settlement. Those whose cases fail and cannot escape lack the option to remain safely in a high-quality facility. It’s estimated that thousands of genuine refugees are returned to countries where they risk being persecuted or killed.

Kaufmann proposes to eliminate that disincentive to provide refuge.

“Western publics are more likely to accept the financial burden of housing refugees on a long-term basis than accepting them as permanent settlers because they care more about the cultural impact of refugee settlement than the economic costs,” he argues. Absent cultural fears, burden-sharing among rich nations will be easier, he writes, as “countries will not be asked to alter their ethnic composition against their inhabitants’ wishes—only to contribute funds and build facilities.”

In fact, he claims, his approach would allow the world “to absorb any number of refugees without discriminating on the basis of wealth, fitness to travel and risk appetite,” as effectively happens now. “Nobody dies in transit or gets attacked or enslaved en route.” And Western governments would have less need for gatekeeping bureaucrats. “This will offer refuge, but not settlement,” he notes, “so only those genuinely fearing for their lives will remain. There would be no need to engage in the impossible task of sorting genuine refugees from economic migrants.”