Causes of mass migration

Germany has reported recently that it spent 23 billion euros last year to integrate one million refugees, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as to address the root causes of mass migration of people forced to leave their homeland to flee from oppression and threats to their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel is directly responsible for this generous humanitarian effort, which has put her at odds and loggerheads with even her own partners in her coalition government, as she fought tooth and nail against criticism about spending so much on welcoming so many migrants and helping them resettle in her country.

Faced with criticism about admitting so many foreigners, Germany has since curtailed such generous expenditures on welcoming and rehabilitating many migrants by contributing 7 billion euros to programmes aimed at encouraging migrants to stay put in their own countries, something that amounted to a 16 per cent increase over similar funding in 2017.

What stands out most about Germany’s policy on migrants is its parallel policy to deal with the root causes of the migration of peoples from their countries of origin to the European Union in particular. While this dimension of the issue is known and well-documented by many existing research papers and studies, it does no harm to dig even deeper into the issue.

Promoting the rehabilitation of peoples in their own countries by lending economic and social support for their steadfastness is perhaps the most vital missing link in the campaign to deal with mass migration of peoples across the globe.

As long as the grass looks greener on the other side of the globe, people will continue to seek refuge outside their own homeland in search for liberty and better standard of living. At the end of the day, it is the lack of respect for human rights, oppression and extrajudicial killings that drive most people out of their homeland.

How can Germany and like-minded nations in the world address this side of the equation should be uppermost in the minds of the leaders of the EU countries. So far, this much escaped their direct and undivided attention and perusal. And until nations do so, there can be no end to the mass migration of peoples to Europe and beyond.

After all is said and done, in the end it is the promotion of genuine democracy worldwide that could stop the migration of peoples to foreign lands or seeking political asylum. World leaders should put a premium on this goal as the one and only solution to the plight of refugees, and address the multitude of hardships faced by nations that open their borders to them.