Poverty should be included in the grounds for asylum. Most of the poverty in developing countries is politically motivated anyway. We can discuss who by if you like.
I could do a Post doctoral thesis on that with minimal sweat, if any. I am demanding a review of all current conventional thinking on the asylum institution. As you can clearly poverty is killing as many people as EJK, Boko Haram and Al Shabaab in Kenya and Nigeria alone. It is about facing the reality.
Besides if the idea is to repopulate those Ghost towns in Italy and US (among other places in the West) able bodied, law abiding people are best suited for that. Not that those able bodied with criminal records have no parallels in History: I mean as Termie reminds us, most Australians are descendants of some of the most violent criminals that this world has ever hosted! They had to chose between the hangman's noose and life in as a migrant in Australia.
Look at it from a different perspective: The West owes Africa. While they migrated on migrant ships to America, the blacks came on slave ships. 15 million Africans per European country (on average) appears a reasonable quarter. The Western would be welcome to equally make use of the African quarters and move some of their citizens who need the "Summer" African climate. It will not be for free. The UN Body would be more like a bourse only we shall exchange people
Omollo:
I have no "fundamental" problem with any of these ideas; I just wonder how they would work. In fact, I note that the Italian Prime Minister has in fact just tossed out the idea of some such camps in parts of Africa. I would have the same questions. Specifically, the initial ideas would involve something like working with the UN to determine "genuine refugees". That sort of language generally excludes, for example, the Nigerians that you mentioned---simple economic refugees.
Europe has certainly exploited Africa for a long, long time; so one may argue that Africans have every right to go there and get back some of it. I have no issues with such a view. Nor do I have any issues with the idea that both Africans and the Westerners would be better off if, say, vigorous Africans were to populate ghost towns in Italy, down-and-out parts of Northern England, the Detroits of the USA, and so forth. Even the "World Human Bourse" and poverty as grounds for asylum can be imagined.
My "problem" is this: I don't see any of that happening. I don't see any Western country---and hardly any other country---opening its borders to all comers solely on the basis that they are "able bodied, law abiding people". What's more, I don't see that changing solely on the basis that racism is to be condemned, there are "historical debts" of exploitation, and so forth. That being so, I prefer to focus on other approaches, even while appreciating all the good points made in other respects.
Regarding poverty: Here is something you wrote a few "postings" ago:
The large number of Nigerians among the migrants is enough to support that point. Nigeria is not poor. It is a highly unequal society.
(1) Folks like Pundit might say that Africans cannot be expected to fix this and that while they have so many problems, but who, then, is supposed to fix the problem of such inequities?
(Pundit is, of course, a "special case": Elsewhere on Nipate, he has stated that Africa is doing just fine---look at economic growth rates and other indicators---and, oddly enough, that most Africans suffer from self-inflicted wounds that they must fix for themselves without relying on governments, that fixing a place like Kenya just requires simple Mutua-like ideas, dot dot dot. First-Class Confusion.)
(2) If one is to be objective, then one ought to look at it from both sides. Should a European country allow any number of fleeing Nigerians as long as they are "able bodied, law abiding people"? One may argue "YES", on any number of grounds. But the hard, human fact is that people are going to say, "Nigeria is not poor; you folks just need to stop fucking up".
So, even as we imagine the most "progressive" solutions, we are living in the here-and-now, and imagination does not make the cold shower of reality any warmer.
15 million Africans per European country (on average) appears a reasonable quarter. The Western would be welcome to equally make use of the African quarters and move some of their citizens who need the "Summer" African climate.
An excellent idea. When do you suppose we would see the start of this?
