{"id":40112,"date":"2017-09-11T03:00:12","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T07:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40112"},"modified":"2017-09-10T09:37:07","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T13:37:07","slug":"smug-canadian-vanity-over-helping-some-refugees-may-harm-a-larger-number-of-more-desperate-refugees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/09\/11\/smug-canadian-vanity-over-helping-some-refugees-may-harm-a-larger-number-of-more-desperate-refugees\/","title":{"rendered":"Smug Canadian vanity over helping (some) refugees may harm a larger number of more desperate refugees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Kay<\/a> in the National Post<\/em>:<\/p>\n

By my anecdotal observation, these accounts are not overblown. At Toronto dinner parties, it\u2019s become common for upscale couples to brag about how well their sponsored refugees are doing. (Houmam has a job! The kids already speak English! Zeinah bakes the most amazing Syrian pastries \u2014 I\u2019m going to serve some for desert!) Syrian refugees aren\u2019t just another group of Canadian newcomers. They\u2019ve become central characters in the creation of our modern national identity as the humane yang to Trump\u2019s beastly yin.<\/p>\n

Given all this, it seems strange to entertain the thought that \u2014 contrary to this core nationalist narrative \u2014 our refugee policy may actually be doing more harm than good. Yet after reading Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World, a newly published book jointly authored by Paul Collier and Alexander Betts, I found that conclusion hard to avoid. When it comes to helping victims of Syria\u2019s civil war, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

What\u2019s worse, the lottery-style nature of the system means that refugees have incentive to take enormous risks. German Chancellor Angela Merkel received lavish praise for admitting more than 1 million Muslim refugees in 2015. But the data cited in Refuge suggest the tantalizing prospect of first-world residency is precisely what motivated so many refugees to endanger their lives by setting out from Turkey in tiny watercraft. We like to believe that generous refugee-admission policies are an antidote to the perils that claimed Alan Kurdi\u2019s life. The exact opposite seems more likely to be true.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the refugees who make it to the West do not comprise a representative cross-section of displaced Syrians \u2014 because those who can afford to pay off human smugglers tend to be the richest and most well-educated members of their society. (Betts and Collier cite the stunning statistic that fully half of all Syrian university graduates now live outside the country\u2019s borders.) This has important policy ramifications, because refugees who remain in the geographical vicinity of their country of origin typically return home once a conflict ends \u2014 whereas those who migrate across oceans usually never come back. Insofar as the sum of humanity\u2019s needs are concerned, where is the need for Syrian doctors, dentists and nurses more acute \u2014 Alberta or Aleppo?<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

But logically sound as it may be, the authors\u2019 argument also flies in the face of our national moral vanity. Scenes of refugees being greeted at the airport by our PM offer a powerful symbol of our humanitarian spirit. Having our PM cut cheques to foreign aid agencies? Less so. While focusing more on supporting Syrian refugees who\u2019ve been displaced to other Middle Eastern countries would allow us to do more good with the same amount of money, we\u2019d also be acting in a less intimate and personal way \u2014 and we\u2019d get fewer of those heartwarming newspaper features about Arab children watching their first Canadian snowstorm.<\/p>\n

And so we have to ask ourselves: In the end, what\u2019s more important \u2014 doing good, or the appearance of doing good? If we\u2019re as pure of heart as we like to imagine, we\u2019ll seek out the policy that saves the most people, full stop. And Refuge<\/em> supplies an outstanding road map for getting us there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Kay in the National Post: By my anecdotal observation, these accounts are not overblown. At Toronto dinner parties, it\u2019s become common for upscale couples to brag about how well their sponsored refugees are doing. (Houmam has a job! The kids already speak English! Zeinah bakes the most amazing Syrian pastries \u2014 I\u2019m going to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,370],"tags":[650,86,47,424,558,694],"class_list":["post-40112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-middle-east","tag-civilwar","tag-criticism","tag-islam","tag-morality","tag-refugees","tag-syria"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aqY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40113,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40112\/revisions\/40113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}