I'm told there was a refugee crisis in Europe in 2015. I say I'm told, because I haven't found any evidence, and I'm relatively familiar with empirical evidence on the impacts of immigration. However, because most of my research previously has dealt with U.S. data, I've been told the situation is different here. There have been good studies on the refugee crisis in Europe. So, I did some digging of my own. Why ask other people when I can find out myself?
Before I get into evidence of a refugee crisis, or rather lack thereof, let me be more specific about what I'm talking about. I'm specifically talking about the refugee crisis in 2015 that resulted from the war in Syria. During this crisis, 1.3 million individuals came into Europe to seek asylum. Let's start with that number. The population of the EU was 506.9 million in 2014. So, we're talking about a 0.0026% increase in the population (I rounded up) due to the refugee ''crisis''. To put that into perspective, the population grew in the EU by 0.14% in 2014 (53 times as great as the numbers involved in the refugee ''crisis''), 0.13% in 2013, and 0.26% in 2007 (100 times as great as the numbers involved in the refugee crisis). If Syrian refugees increasing the population by 1.3 million is a crisis for Europe, 2007 was apocalyptic. It doesn't take a lot of numeracy to calculate this, by the way. It's also interesting to note in 2022, over 7 million Ukrainian refugees have been recorded across Europe. But, I don't hear as much in popular media about the ''Refugee Crisis of 2022'', though Wikipedia does have a page on it, and this page includes a discussion of differences in average rhetoric from politicians and pundits discussing refugees flows in 2015 vs. 2022.
Ok, so the actual population increase we saw during the Syrian migration throughout 2015 doesn't constitute a crisis. Indeed, if you click the link I provided above looking at population increases in Europe, you'll see negative numbers for the late 90's and early 00's. It even looks like Europe needed this crisis, at least if politicians and voters want to keep those nice pensions coming. But, these are people who are different than the average EU citizen. First, these people are browner. Though European voters and politicians often claim to be color blind when it comes to race, even going to far as to not collect data on race and ethnicity, it's telling that the Syrian refugees were part of a ''crisis'' in popular media while the Ukrainian refugees were not, despite over 7 times the number of Ukrainian refugees relative to Syrian refugees. But, a bunch of brown people doesn't constitute a crisis, unless we really aren't color blind and are really, really racist. If this is a crisis, it has to be because of some other attribute the average Syrian refugee has compared to the average EU citizen (or even the average, say, Ukrainian refugee).
Is it crime? Do refugees commit more crime? Data can be hard to come by, but it's there. For example, data in Turkey show Syrians in Turkey are less likely to commit crime than natives. That shouldn't surprise you, either. We see consistently lower crime rates for immigrants compared to natives in the U.S. too, and immigrant children assimilate into higher crimes and become more ''American''. Despite people telling me the U.S. and Europe are fundamentally different, I generally see the same universal truths from both. One of those truths is that immigrants, even refugees, are not crime prone. In fact, the only crime that does go up during these ''crises'' is human smuggling, and we could put an end to that by opening our borders.
What about culture? Are these immigrants somehow ruining our culture? That data is also difficult to come by, particularly depending on how you define culture. But let's look at some concrete statistics, because being overly worried about abstract notions of culture is a totalitarian sentiment anyway - read this short article to see why. However, even though you don't have a right to your culture, people do have a right to their own bodies and property. So, to the extent that refugees reject those rights and do not respect modern principles like personal liberty, we could feasibly talk about concrete ways immigrants negatively impact culture. One common proposed negative impact on culture that is commonly claimed is that these primarily Muslim refugees import with them dangerous concepts like a disrespect for women's rights and female genital mutilation. Does the data back up these worries? When looking at FGM (female genital mutilation), we see a clear lack of data - mostly because this practice is so rare in European countries. However, we do see some estimates. As an example, there were 65,790 women and girls who were estimated victims of FGM in Great Britain in 2007 out of a population of 61.32 million. That's a rate of 0.001%. And while it's true the vast majority of women who have suffered FGM in Europe are from Middle Eastern or North African countries, at least some portion of these women suffered the practice in their home countries. These estimates are not of women who were victims of FGM in Europe, but throughout their lifetime, and when FGM does occur, it often occurs in early childhood. That sounds like a crisis, but not because of the refugees and not in Europe.
I'll look at one last claim concerning why Syrian refugees in Europe during 2015 constituted a crisis. These people are not able to find work, and they put the welfare system in jeopardy. This is a particularly salient point in Europe, where welfare systems are held sacrosanct. Ok, fine. There are two answers to this claim. The first revolves around actually considering the various alternatives for these refugees. When I hear Europe can't take in refugees because of public finance, I say, ''Just don't give them welfare.'' I'm met with indignation. ''How can we do that? Wouldn't that set up a caste-like system of Haves and Have-nots?'' Compared to what? A system of global apartheid that denies individuals the right to move out of dangerous war zones and crippling economic circumstances, even if they're able to provide themselves a home and a job? I think if we gave refugees the option of coming to Europe and getting no welfare and staying in their country of origin, they would come to Europe with no welfare gladly. Besides, they can get welfare. Recent estimates of the fiscal lifetime cost of receiving immigrants have used Swedish data and data on refugees from the 2015 ''crisis''. These estimates indicated if Europe took in every single refugee from Asia and Africa, the average fiscal cost would be 0.6 percent of GDP per capita. That's not a crisis. That's a mild recession. And that fiscal impact does not at all consider the fact that the productivity of these refugees skyrockets when they leave their countries of origins and come to Europe. It is very likely even with refugees the fiscal costs of immigration are dwarfed by the economic gains in productivity. Even with refugees, and even if we provide them welfare, we still wouldn't be naïve to expect long-term gains in productivity and GDP per capita.
So, after looking at the evidence myself, I'm unconvinced by the rhetoric. Nothing I have seen convinces me refugees coming into Europe represent a ''crisis''. If anything, what we are seeing isn't a great crisis; it's a great godsend, a resolution, a miracle. It represents a manifestation of the single greatest anti-poverty program the World has witnessed - immigration. It represents women leaving cultures where their genitals are cut off into cultures where that practice is met with derision. So, the next time someone asks me, ''Don't you know about the refugee crisis?'', my response will be a categorical, ''No.'' And that, ''No'' will be emphatic and indignant. Because I have heard of it. Indeed, for something that I know isn't a crisis, I've heard way too much about the refugee crisis.
Comentários