Migration and borders

Ralph Peters:

WE Americans see our illegal-immigration crisis in isolation, as if we alone face failing borders. But we're in good shape compared with migrant-flooded countries around the world.

It's a global phenomenon - a new age of mass population transfers that bedevils rich, stable countries and overwhelms the infrastructure of weaker states. And there's no end in sight.

For us, it means focusing seriously (at long last) on securing our borders and facing up to our economy's needs. For struggling states, the scale and speed of population movements mean scarcity, explosive crime, terrorism and anti-immigrant riots that climax in murder.

Just this month: In South Africa, pogroms butchered refugees from Zimbabwe and economic migrants from Mozambique. In India, Muslim fanatics among a mass of Bangladeshi immigrants (to whom even India appears wealthy) set off a string of bombs in Jaipur.

Central Asians fear a demographic takeover by Chinese moving westward; European states struggle to absorb unskilled African illegals and Muslim immigrants out to exploit welfare benefits (while avoiding social integration). The United States confronts the prickly question of what it means to be a nation of immigrants in the 21st century.

Within states, the rural poor swell monster-cities such as Lagos, Sao Paulo and Mumbai. Fleeing such cities, desperate people overload wooden boats, walk across deserts or stow away in aircraft cargo - headed for other continents that offer a glimmer of hope.

On the plus side, the new mobility means a brilliant Indian software engineer in Silicon Valley or a drop-dead-gorgeous Polish barista in a London Starbucks. But, all too often, it means Salvadoran gangbangers in Virginia, no-prospect Muslim kids simmering in Paris or deadly economic competition in Johannesburg.

Why is this happening now? First, it isn't really new. This is only the latest great global migration - the last one occurred over a half-dozen centuries, beginning as the Roman Empire faded. Back then, entire tribes moved, driven from their grazing grounds on the steppes or searching for richer worlds to conquer.

Today's migration is more chaotic and individualized, but swifter. Instead of moving on horseback and fighting hostile tribes, today's migrants fly or ride over-crowded buses, and do battle only with immigration officials or border police. But the world is on the move again.

The immediate reason for these explosive population transfers is simply that we've been stunningly successful at improving nutrition and reducing disease in poverty-stricken countries. Nature no longer takes its natural toll - but few developing states can absorb the results of reduced mortality.

With our hard-learned humane values, Western states have been slow to recognize global migrations as an accelerating challenge - and not a temporary phenomenon bound to wither away. Demographic pressures are only going to increase.

The bottom line? Europe is already on a disastrous course with its won't-assimilate Muslim immigrants - not toward "Eurabia," but toward another period of population expulsions.

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If you study history you study migration patterns. Sometimes they are more peaceful than others. During the early migration to America, the English were looking to get rid of troublemakers and adventurers. the migration from England to Australia involved their on variation of the Mariel boat lift. Prisons and jails were emptied and prostitutes were picked up and placed on the outbound boats. In more recent years the migration out of the UK has seen a brain drain as more affluent risk takers leave to see their place taken by Pakistani and Indian immigrants of sometimes indifferent loyalties.

In both cases, the reasons are mainly economic as are most of the migrations in Africa. The main difference is Africa is the incompetence of governance has made it a necessity instead of a choice. Intelligent affluent people leave the UK because they don't like the socialism and the high taxes and they are replaced by less affluent who benefit from socialism and high taxes on people who produce more. In Africa you have people like Mugabe who destroy wealth and create crippling poverty with their socialist dreams and murderous policies and anyone with good sense wants out. South Africa managed to encourage that migration from Zimbabwe, by being tolerant of Mugabe's excesses. It has reaped a world wind.