A Self-Interested Approach to Migration Crises (Foreign Affairs)

From the article: Nations frequently help migrants fleeing crisis. They help out of generosity—generosity that quickly wears thin. What would they do if they acted instead from stark self-interest? Consider András Gróf, a refugee who arrived illegally in Austria after crossing the Hungarian border with a smuggler and then running through a swampy field under cover of darkness. He came without his family, without a college degree, without assets beyond 20 dollars. Back home, he had watched soldiers arrive, first to rape his mother, later to conscript young men like him. So András fled for the same reason that so many others leave the Middle East and Africa; whether or not there was an imminent threat to his life, the future in his country looked hellish.

András didn’t arrive in Austria in 2015. He fled Hungary with 200,000 other refugees in 1956. But the global response to that earlier wave of (many non-Christian, mostly unskilled) refugees pouring into Western Europe shows a way forward for the international community today.

Read full article here.