A Bold Proposal to Address Illegal Migration
A Bold Proposal by BigAgendaAfrica to Address Illegal Migration to tackle illegal migration at its source by creating jobs, strong institutions, reliable infrastructure and economic opportunity where people live.
Stop chasing the symptoms. Fix the cause.
People are not risking their lives to get to Europe or America because the air is sweeter.
They come because opportunity is scarce.
Because a young person in Lagos, or Dakar, or Karachi can work hard, get educated, do everything "right" — and still find no ladder to climb.
Immigration, in this light, is rational.
It's rational.
It's what any of us would do if the place we were born offered talent no runway.
Now, the reasons for that scarcity are often historic.
Colonial borders drawn without regard for ancient trade routes or ethnic reality.
Decades of extractive economics that moved raw materials out and left little value-added industry behind.
But dwelling on history doesn't create opportunities.
Understanding it, however, helps us rebalance things. It helps us make better choices. And it helps us stop recreating the same conditions that will, five or six or seven decades from now, produce the same crisis all over again.
For that, the nations with emigrating populations — what I call the cities of darkness — and the nations those migrants make a beeline for — the cities of light — need to work together.
If only to suck the oxygen out of the lungs of the far-right agitators who have turned the immigration crisis into a pretext for their more extreme politics.
And I don't think enough people appreciate its importance.
The rule of law.
Capital is cowardly.
It goes where it's protected, not just where labor is cheap.
A manufacturer won't build a $50 million plant in a country where a court ruling can be bought, where a customs official can hold a shipment hostage for a bribe, or where the rules change with every new administration.
And this is why so much aid and investment evaporates without creating lasting jobs.
Money flows into environments with no institutional floor beneath it.
So fix the floor.
Courts that rule on the law and not on who's paying.
Contracts that actually mean something.
Rules that don't change depending on who is in power.
Do that, and investment begins to follow on its own — without a single subsidy check being written.
And that brings me to BigAgendaAfrica's radical proposal.
Create Internationally Backed Free Trade Enclaves
Locate them in the regions most migrants come from.
And give them what successful economies take for granted:
Independent courts.
Transparent regulation.
World-class schools.
Secure infrastructure.
And the certainty that contracts will be honoured and corruption kept at bay....
....Then invite manufacturers from around the world to build factories there. That's it.
Not another conference.
Not another declaration.
Not another billion-dollar aid programme whose impact we struggle to identify ten years later.
Factories!!
Places where things are made.
Places where young people can look at tomorrow and see something worth staying for.
Spend the Money Differently
Instead of spending billions policing borders, spend those billions creating opportunity where people already live.
A single mile of high-tech border fencing can cost millions of dollars.
And what does it produce?
Nothing.
At best, it relocates the crossing point a few hundred meters down the coastline.
Now imagine putting that same money into reliable electricity.
Vocational schools.
Industrial infrastructure.
Enforceable commercial law.
Factories.
That doesn't merely slow migration at the margin.
It begins to remove the reason for it.
Border policing is a cost center that produces no economic output.
A functioning enclave produces goods.
It produces tax revenue.
It produces skills.
It produces businesses around the businesses.
And eventually, it produces something perhaps even more important:
A reason to stay.
Because when people can earn a decent living, raise their families in safety, and reasonably believe tomorrow will be better than today, they are far less likely to risk everything on a dangerous journey across the Mediterranean.
Which brings me to the central argument I want to leave with you.
The Border Is Not the Beginning
The most effective border policy may not begin at the border.
It may begin with a factory.
A factory that offers a wage a family can live on.
A factory where a supervisor can't demand a bribe to keep you employed.
A factory where your paycheck arrives on time because the institution behind it is stable enough to guarantee that it will.
Because fences and patrol boats treat the migrant as the problem to be contained.
A factory treats that same person as what they actually are: an asset looking for a place to be productive.
And perhaps that's the mistake we've been making.
We've been looking at the desperate young man in the boat and asking: "How do we stop him from arriving?"
Maybe we should be asking: "What would have made him never need to leave?"
Give him the rule of law.
Give him education.
Give him security.
Give him a factory.
Give his talent somewhere to go.
Build enough of those places, and the border stops being the frontline of migration policy.
Eventually, it becomes largely irrelevant to it.
Build the opportunity that makes the journey unnecessary.
Obi Akaraiwe | Don Kenobi
BigAgendaAfrica
No comments:
Post a Comment