In an article published by the Associated Press on Tuesday, it was announced that the United States is again slashing the number of refugees it will accept. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claims that the country is still committed to providing a safe haven for refugees fleeing dangerous areas of the world.
“This year’s refugee crisis reflects the substantial increase in the number of individuals seeking asylum in our country, leading to a massive backlog of outstanding asylum cases and greater public expense,” Pompeo said. “The daunting operational reality of addressing over 800,000 individuals in pending asylum cases demands renewed focus and prioritization.”
People are dying, Secretary Pompeo. The world is in the (arguably) worst refugee crisis since World War II. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Refugee Agency, by the end of 2017, 68.5 million individuals were “forcibly displaced” worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence or human rights violations. This was a 2.9 million person increase over the previous year’s numbers, keeping the number at a record high. These 68.5 million individuals include 25.4 million refugees (the highest ever seen according to the UNHCR), 40 million internally displaced people, and 3.1 million asylum seekers. This means that approximately 1 in every 110 people in the world is either an asylum-seeker, internally displaced, or a refugee.
In sociology and anthropology, an ingroup is a specific social group that a person psychologically identifies with, and an outgroup is the opposite (a social group with which a person does not identify with). Many individuals seem to apply a specific set of moral rules to people depending on their membership or subscription to a certain ingroup or an outgroup. This discrimination may be a result of evolution due to group survival. In a study conducted by three professors at McGill University, it was found that their hypotheses predict a close relation between population saturation and ethnocentric dominance. It has also been argued that nationalism and patriotism are forms of this ingroup/outgroup boundary, and that ingroup criteria is often enforced and more present in conservative ideologies. By putting stress on refugees as a outgroup that doesn’t adhere to the ingroup criteria of being a United States citizen, conservatives are able to convince voters that refugees are dangerous economic drains that are only coming into the country to cause harm.
The idea that refugees exist only as an economic drain on their host communities is, unfortunately, a fairly common one. If you want to get into the nitty gritty of it all, the idea that refugees are an economic burden is a myth, and the evidence we have actual states the opposite. Yes, in the immediate term, it will cost taxpayers money to feed and shelter those who have been displaced and are seeking refuge in a safe place, but looking at the medium and long-term, the evidence we have suggests that refugees generally end up contributing disproportionately to economic growth within their host countries.
But the debate over the refugee crisis should not be centered around economic concerns. Morality, justice and culture (rightfully) dominate the discussion. Whether or not you want to let refugees into this country shouldn’t be a matter of politics, but a matter of your morality. As human beings, I am under the firm belief that we have a duty to help one another when in need, who are you to determine who deserves to live or die?