Just look at the statistics. More than 86% of refugees live in the developing world, and the vast majority of them live in the first country they reach. Almost all of the refugees in Turkey, which has the world’s largest refugee population, have crossed the border from neighbouring Syria or Iraq. Lebanon hosts more refugees per capita and per square kilometre than any other; its 1.2 million Syrian refugees also came from next door. The Somalis at the world’s largest refugee camp in Kenya came from the next country along. The three million Afghans in Pakistan crossed just one border too.
So the problem is not that too few refugees are staying in neighbouring countries. It’s that too many are forced to do so. Since the west has refused to resettle meaningful numbers of refugees from the Middle East, or from Pakistan or east Africa, those refugees have been forced to choose between a life of limbo – in places where they do not have access to education, healthcare or work rights – or irregular migration to the west. And in 2015, a significant minority chose the latter, leading to what we have termed the European refugee crisis. [...]
Finally, there’s the implicit suggestion that investment in developing countries should be pursued at the expense of resettlement programmes. Development is indeed essential in the general sense, and in the long term it may reduce migration. But migration researchers have shown it is no silver bullet. As specialists such as Hein de Haas have explained: “Emigration initially goes up with levels of development, and only goes down once countries move into high development categories. It indicates that if poor countries become wealthier, emigration will increase.”
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