A migration pact to disaster

For the past two years, U.N. bureaucrats have worked diligently, if quietly, on something called the "Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration." What has now become clear from its publication, and even more by analysis from Gatestone Institute's formidable Judith Bergman , is that, given the source, the "Compact" is little more than unalloyed leftist propaganda. Migration, we are told in no uncertain terms, is "a source of prosperity, innovation and sustainable development in our globalized world," while the secretary general of the U.N., Antonio Guterres, chimes in that it is "a positive global phenomenon." No mention is made of the fact that uncontrolled migration of the kind permitted by Germany in 2015-2016 has proven to be a disaster, as even Chancellor Merkel and those supporting her admit. Similarly, after many years of unlimited immigration, Jewish synagogues and private businesses in France now have to be guarded by the military, and 63% of German Turks voted for Islamist dictator Erdoğan in his efforts to destroy the last vestiges of democracy in Turkey. Nor was any mention made of the reality that decades of illegal immigration in the U.S. have resulted in a disastrous California illiteracy rate of 23% (33% in Los Angeles County). Instead, there is much "progressive" pabulum regarding the need to "empower full inclusion and social cohesion"; establish in migrants' destination countries "open and accessible information points" in "a language the migrant understands"; and, last but not least, a new category of "climate refugees."

"Full inclusion and social cohesion" evidently include mutual respect of all migrant cultures, without mentioning that some of these cultures include child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), or the fact that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) officially endorses sharia law and discrimination against women and non-Muslims. What the reader is also never told is that all migration to date is from poor third-world places to the well off Western countries with established welfare systems and that, with very few exceptions, the migrants are, at best, economic refugees who haven't been persecuted either politically or religiously. Moreover, the absorption capacity of these countries is finite before their welfare systems break down under the onslaught of the vast numbers of migrants this pact seemingly wants to encourage. Open borders and the welfare system are not compatible, Milton Friedman once said. Try as it might, the U.N. cannot change that. Perhaps the greatest disservice the United Nations has done with this ill conceived "compact" is to purposefully erase the difference between legal and illegal immigration. This is no coincidence, despite protestations in the text that this agreement is "voluntary" and "non-binding" to U.N. members. Even a cursory reading of the 23 objectives listed in the compact make it clear beyond much doubt that the real goal of this mandate is to create a new "human right" to migration. By arguing that "refugees and migrants are entitled to the same universal human rights," the compact directly eliminates the crucial difference between refugees who flee persecution and are therefore entitled to political asylum and economic migrants. This essentially invalidates the noble Western principle of providing protection to those persecuted for their political or religious beliefs, which undergirds the Geneva Convention on Refugees. Americans should be proud that President Trump was the first to make clear the disastrous consequences of this pact and pull the United States out. In the meantime, virtually all of Eastern Europe and many others have also pulled out. Thanks to Trump, when the leftist U.N. cabal assembles to celebrate its victory in Morocco next month, that victory will be pyrrhic at best. Alex Alexiev is chairman of the Center for Balkan and Black Sea Studies (cbbss.org). He can be reached at alexievalex4@gmail.com.