The wrong approach

Countries have responsibility to provide jobs for their citizens. They do not have responsibility to provide jobs for all the people in the world. That is a responsibility that each country has for its citizens. Another responsibility that a country has for its citizens is to lift everyone from poverty level. Again, it does not have to do it for all the people in the world. When people come in  illegaly from all over the world, countries lose control, can’t implement policies and fulfill their obligations to their citizens.

Greece had a real unemployment rate of over 30%. So high unemployment rates are very unusual in the world. There are found in war zones and undeveloped countries. Syria and Senegal have unemployment rates of almost 50%. Greece is a relatively advanced country and  at peacetiem. It is member of not only much advertised EU but Eurozone as well. It is a case for EU’s and current globalization’s failure.

Greece’s over 30% unemployment would have dropped to single digits, if illegal immigrants were either deported of prevented from getting jobs. Now, most immigrants do have low paying jobs. Still these low level jobs would have sustained many citizens and help them weather the crisis. It is an extreme example but similar situations happen in other countries to a lesser extent. Illegal immigrants are working while the country’s citizens are unemployed.

Let’s assume that you work at a company downtown. There are tens or hundreds of other companies around. Now imagine that anybody from any other company could come into your company and start working. They could stay as long as they wanted. After a few hours or a few days they could go to another company. You could do the same think. You could go to any company downtown, work there for a while and then go to another one, without asking anybody, without telling anybody. Would not that be great? It would definitely be! It would also be a big mess, a major disaster from an organizational point of view.

This example was given to make an analogy with counties. Some people claim national, cultural religious heritage. Let’s forget all these and see the situation from an organizational point of view only. A country is a big organizational unit. Having people coming in from all over the world, as they please, is a major organizational disaster.

Illegal immigrants work illegally. There are no taxes or social security and medical withholdings in illegal work. This means that the rest will have to pay more for the same level of services provided by all government levels. Legal immigrants work legally and taxes, social security and medical withholdings are paid.

Most illegal immigrants are nice people that have been through a lot of difficulties. Hard times start from the time they leave home and never end. There is a higher percentage of delinquency compared to local population but that may be attributed to their circumstances and not their nature. Among nice people, some criminals enter the country. In legal immigration, a country will choose who to bring in and obviously these will not be criminals.

Immigrants die in truck refrigerators and children drown near Aegean shores because of illegal immigration. If illegal immigration stops, people will stop dying. If immigrants know that they have absolutely no chance to make home illegally a foreign land, illegal immigration will stop. Illegal immigration is killing immigrants. There are three options; a) open borders b) allow illegal immigration c) have a legal immigration system and restrict illegal immigration.

Open borders is “out of the question” for several decades.  World’s population is 7,5 billion and approximately 1 billion live in economically advanced countries. Opening the borders will create an influx of 6,5 billion people. This is what will happen if an “open borders” policy is implemented. The policy can be official or unofficial which means that although not official in practical terms it will approximately be the same situation. Residents from less developed countries will flood in developed countries. Locals will lose their jobs and salaries will fall considerably. A few will benefit from this decline in wage levels.

The movement will only stop when the difference in the standard of living between the countries of origin and the countries of destination is so small that the migration is not worth it. No one will leave his homeland to be a little better off in a foreign land. They will do it only to be much better off. Aren’t we supposed to help fellow human beings in poor countries escape poverty? Most people would answer YES. We should have a humanist approach. Immigrants are people but so are locals who lose their jobs and their life gets disrupted.

Bringing in immigrants illegaly from all over the world is the wrong approach. There are 6,5 billion people in the developing and less developed countries. How many of them can come in the advanced countries; What about the rest?There are two issues around immigration and these should be dealt separately. One is filling job vacancies and the other is assisting fellow human beings in poor countries. First, we should to make a distinction between immigrants and refugees because the second require special handling.