Joyce Fegan: Welcome, little girl. And let's roll out the red carpet for refugees

Proposing economic reasons not to welcome refugees is merely racism and xenophobia dressed up as bogus economics

Sat, 28 Aug, 2021 - 10:00

WHEN people think about refugees coming to their country, they may fear that already limited resources will have to be divided among even more people.

This scarcity thinking closes our borders to those in need. This scarcity thinking shuts down our minds to solutions. And this scarcity thinking locks other human beings into their dire straits.

This ill-informed, fear-based thinking is a myth. The pie is not finite.

The truth about welcoming refugees to your country was captured in a now-viral photo taken at the Melsbroek airfield in Belgium on Wednesday.

This is what happens when you protect refugees...

Welcome to Belgium, little girl !

Wonderful @Reuters picture via @POLITICOEurope pic.twitter.com/v1127frvf9
— Guy Verhofstadt (@guyverhofstadt) August 26, 2021

An Afghan girl, dressed in yellow, hair caught in the wind, skips along the tarmac, so filled with joy that neither of her feet touch the ground. Ahead of her are her family, walking into safety. Imagine her potential, the life in front of her, the things she will go on to achieve.

She is the opposite of our burden.

“This is what happens when you protect refugees. Welcome to Belgium, little girl,” wrote former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, MEP.

You know those scenes of homecoming beamed to us on RTÉ news from Cork and Dublin airport at Christmas, especially around the time of the recession? Imagine if we greeted — with that level of warmth, welcome, and positive anticipation — the 250 Afghan people we have promised to resettle.

Evacuees from Kabul disembarking from an Air Belgium chartered plane at Melsbroek military airport in Belgium this week. Picture: Olivier Matthys/AP

This week, US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, along with 70 other members of the US Congress, called on the Biden administration to increase the cap on refugees to 200,000. Under former US president Donald Trump, the cap stood at 15,000 annually. Under George W Bush it was 70,000 a year. Under Barack Obama it was 85,000. And with Ronald Reagan it was 231,700.

US migration policy aside, the congresswoman made a point that relates not to numbers or strategy, but to our thinking about refugees.

“To those questioning if it really is our responsibility to provide refuge for those fleeing conflict, persecution, or dire living conditions, yes, it is,” said Ms Ocasio-Cortez. “In fact, it is not only our responsibility, but it is our greatest strength.”

It is a strength, yes, but it’s also loaded with opportunity.

Welcoming refugees is a win-win situation and when we look at it like that we can free ourselves up to do everything to make sure our country and government play their part in rolling out the red carpet.

We don’t need to change our migration policy: We need to change our mindset.

“Some people say they would like to welcome refugees, but that we cannot afford it,” said Hippolyte d’Albis, an economist at the Paris School of Economics, last year.

He was highlighting scarcity thinking.

Just supposing it were just about money...

In the US, a study from the University of Notre Dame found that, between 1990 and 2014, each refugee resettled cost the government $15,000. Their needs included housing, healthcare, and language learning.

But this is only half the story. The study found that within eight years of their arrival, adult refugees begin paying more in taxes than they receive in benefits.

And if you’re only in it for the money, it gets better. By the time adult refugees have lived in the US for 20 years, they will have paid an average of $21,000 more in taxes than the benefits they received at their arrival. Who’s benefiting now? And where exactly is the burden?

You might say, ‘Well, that’s great, they’re benefiting the economy, but they’re taking my job.’

Research from the World Bank dispels that scarcity myth, too. A 2015 working paper from the bank found that Syrian refugees to Turkey generated more formal non-agricultural jobs and helped to increase average wages for Turkish workers.

The win-win situation of welcoming refugees has quite the ripple effect.

Refugees are extremely entrepreneurial, creating jobs for others. So, instead of saying: ‘They’re taking my jobs’, the truth is that they create jobs.

In the US, 13% of refugees are entrepreneurs, compared to just 9% of the native-born population, according to the 2015 New American Economy report. This study used the five-year American Community Survey (ACS) to provide a picture of the 3.4m refugees who arrived in the US since 1975.

Hippolyte d’Albis, who called out people’s scarcity thinking for believing they could not ‘afford’ refugees, frames it differently.

He said that welcoming refugees “has not been a cost, and that if you do not welcome immigrants, the economy might be worse off”.

So where will the initial money come from?

Professor Mariana Mazzucato, an economist at University College London, spoke to The Irish Times last year.

Money is not scarce, as society has been led to believe, she said. Instead, it’s a technology, a lubricant to be used.

“Money is a social technology and not an inherently scarce resource, as the public has been led to believe,” Prof Mazzucato said.

The wealth of our nations comes from our ability to activate our resources to solve our problems and improve the way we use them through innovation and more mutualistic relationships between the public and private sector.

“Money is a crucial instrument to mobilise our common potential,” Prof Mazzucato added.

She cited the example of former US president Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s, which revitalised the US economy following the Great Depression.

“He did not wait to find the money,” Ms Mazzucato said.

The core point of macroeconomics is that spending equals income — and, indeed, creates the income. Instead of asking where the money is going to come from, we should ask: Where are the physical and intellectual resources going to come from?

The argument not to welcome refugees on economic grounds holds no weight. It’s just racism and xenophobia dressed up as bogus economics. And these people are far more than economic actors or refugees: They are human beings with flesh and bones and families and lives and hobbies and friends, just like you and me.

Any one of us could one day need to flee

As terrorist attacks killed and injured dozens in Kabul this week, a day after that little girl skipped into Belgium, the fragility of all of our humanity was laid bare, not just the refugees’ fragility.

Refugees from Belgium who had fled after the German invasion in August, arriving by ship in the Port of Cork in September, 1914. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive

Any one of us could need refuge because of circumstances beyond our control. Afghan refugees are people; their circumstances are that they are fleeing. Let’s not define people by their circumstances. When we do, we see burden and scarcity where there is none.

Welcoming new people to our country is a win-win. We receive new intellect, new experience, new perspective, new skills, new cultures, new entrepreneurship, new language, and those coming in, hopefully, get a safe place to rebuild their life.

That the social and economic process of resettling and integration is complex is undeniable, but complexity is not a reason to close doors.

With facts on our side, humanity as our ideology, and pragmatism as our politics, let’s roll out the red carpet to people seeking refuge.

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