Migration as a Tool for Disaster Recovery

Almost all high-income countries have a systematic way to assist people wanting to escape war or political violence in their homelands—these people are classified as “refugees” and admitted in limited numbers. But high-income countries lack such a mechanism when it comes to helping the victims of natural disasters, even though such disasters often do more damage than violent politics or war. This initiative seeks to identify and foster legal options to utilize the power of migration policy as one component of post-disaster relief efforts in the developing world.

Natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and hurricanes take a heavy toll in the developing world. More than 200,000 people perished when an earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010. Heavy flooding in Pakistan killed more than 2,000 people and directly affected more than 20 million people through destruction of property, livelihood and infrastructure. A 2004 tsunami off the coast of Sumatra caused $10 billion in damage and killed some 230,000 people. In each of these disasters, the United States and the international community focused on delivering humanitarian aid, often at a substantial expense—on average, about $5 billion per year.

An additional way to help would be to allow a limited number of people hit by such disasters seek a better life elsewhere. Expanding international migration for disaster-affected populations is potentially a hugely powerful and very low-cost addition to traditional post-disaster assistance.

Led by Michael Clemens, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, the Migration as a Tool for Disaster Recovery initiative currently focuses on Haiti as a case study to illustrate how the U.S. government could use migration to cost-effectively help a limited number of people. Work on the initiative thus far includes convening two working groups; commissioning a working paper co-authored by Royce Murray and Sarah Williamson, Migration as a Tool for Disaster Recovery: A Case Study on U.S. Policy Options for Post-Earthquake Haiti; preparing a brief highlighting key points from the working paper; and engaging stakeholders to share policy recommendations, such as the adoption of a Haiti Family Reunification Parole Program, which would provide immediate parole to Haitians whose visa petitions to the United States have already been approved.

For more information about CGD's ongoing work on the Migration as a Tool for Disaster Recovery initiative, please contact Teju Velayudhan, research assistant, at tvelayudhan@cgdev.org or Chris Molitoris, policy outreach assistant, at cmolitoris@cgdev.org.