Migration Matters

1 - Mediterranean

Tens of thousands of migrants from across Africa attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea each year, in a bid to make it to Europe. That flow turned into a full-fledged flood between 2014 and 2016 at the height of the Syrian war when millions sought refuge from the brutal conflict. More than 9,000 migrants died trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2015 and 2016. The washed-up body of Alan Kurdi, a 3-year-old Syrian, in the summer of 2015 shocked the world, and the number of migrant deaths has gone down significantly since 2017. But that’s more the result of stricter — and on occasions controversial — policies of the European Union and its member states than because crossing the sea has become any safer.

2 - Myanmar

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have fled deadly crackdowns by Myanmar forces on the ethnic and religious minority, fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh and in smaller numbers to India, Malaysia and other Southeast Asian numbers. They’ve crossed rivers, forests, electric fences and risked it all — just to survive. The United Nations has called the targeted attacks on them a genocide, and the International Court of Justice is investigating criminal charges against the Myanmar government.

3 - Northern Triangle

Sitting just south of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras have some of the highest levels of violence in the world. So it’s little surprise that the region is also a major driver of migration to Costa Rica to its south and to Mexico and the U.S. to the north. Trekking hundreds of miles, caravans of Central American migrants have in recent years found themselves blocked at a tightened U.S.-Mexico border. But they’ve also been victims of horrific abuses in nations where they hoped to find refuge: whether it’s children kept in cages in the U.S. or Mexico betraying its promise to welcome them in return for a deal with the Trump administration in Washington.

4 - Venezuela

Crippling economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. have destroyed the oil-rich nation’s economy. Political strife and authoritarian leadership under President Nicholas Maduro have shredded the country’s social fabric. Food and medicine are in short supply. Millions of Venezuelans have fled this horrific storm. Vulnerable, some have been picked up by Colombia’s criminal gangs. Others have tried to remake their lives in other South American nations.

1 - Closing Borders

Even before the pandemic, more and more nations were turning their backs on some of the world’s most vulnerable refugees. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. systematically cut the number of asylum-seekers it admitted each year. But others took the cue from the world’s most powerful nation and followed suit. The international law on refugees bars nations from sending refugees back to countries where their lives might be in danger. But the European Union is skirting its obligations through a series of bilateral agreements with countries such as Turkey and Libya aimed at ensuring refugees don’t reach European shores in the first place. India is citing national security concerns to send Rohingya refugees back.

2 - Reverse Migration

For decades, Polish migrants moved to Germany for a better life, drawn by the dream of making it big in Europe’s largest economy. Now the tables are turning. Poland, which survived the 2008-09 financial crisis relatively unscathed, was projected to witness the smallest 2020 dip in GDP of any European nation. And the ripples of its economic success story are being felt beyond its borders. In parts of eastern Germany that feel neglected by Berlin, schools are now teaching Polish as a second language as German parents prepare their children to move to Poland for their economic future.

3 - New African Route

Central American refugees aren’t the only ones queuing up to enter the United States. Record numbers of African migrants are also seeking asylum in the U.S. as Europe tightens its borders. But they’re entering the Americas via an unlikely gateway: Ecuador, nearly 3,400 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border. The small South American nation that’s home to some of the world’s most diverse flora and fauna is now facing an unprecedented inflow of people from Africa, who are using the nation’s lenient visa norms to enter the region before beginning their long trudge north.

4 - Doctors Beyond Borders

Chile’s isolated, southernmost region of Magallanes, bordered by Antarctic waters and ringed by rugged mountains, has for years struggled to attract the country's doctors. To get there, you must take a three-day ferry, fly a plane or drive through part of Argentina. Now Venezuelan doctors fleeing their troubled nation are making Magallanes their home, offering a medical lifeline to the region as they rebuild their lives far from home.

1 - Migrant Mantra for Success

In many ways, China’s stunning economic success in the past 40 years is unmatched in history. Today, it has a GDP that’s catching up with America’s; trade ties and a booming market that are indispensable to the world; and more recently, a culture of innovation that’s driving cutting-edge technology that the West wants to follow. But there’s one key area where China isn’t close to America, a unique advantage that positions the U.S. as the nation best-suited to continue to lead the global economy: it’s status as an unrivaled magnet for immigrants. From its birth until now, migration has made America the home for many of the world’s brightest minds, kept its workforce younger than other developed nations and fueled the innovation that’s behind Silicon Valley’s success. Don’t believe me? Here are the hard facts. Globally, migrants make up just 3.4 percent of the world’s population, but they contribute 10 percent to the GDP.

2 - Remittance Economies

Could there be a link between oil prices and Indian weddings? You bet. The oil-rich Middle East is home to several million Indian migrants, many of them from the southern state of Kerala, where two-thirds of families depend on remittances from the Gulf. So when oil prices crash, as they did in 2020 and before that in 2015 and 2016, that hits not just the economies that sell crude, but those that depend on jobs there to build homes or fund weddings. But it’s not just oil or Kerala or the Gulf. While India, China, Mexico, the Philippines and Egypt receive the most money in remittances, their large economies can absorb minor shocks. That’s not so for smaller economies that depend disproportionately on money sent home by migrants — like Tonga, where remittances constitute 42 percent of the GDP, the most for any nation.

3 - Japan Opens Up

For decades, Japan was the only major developed economy to actively discourage immigration, ostensibly to protect its unique culture. But with an ageing society and a stagnating economy, in 2020 Tokyo finally decided to open up. It issued a record 345,000 new work visas for immigrants to move to Japan by 2024, in a bid to revive its workforce. It took time, but Japan’s come around to the wisdom that says it’s good to inject fresh blood if you want to stay on top of your game.

1 - Mahatma Gandhi

He led history’s most successful nonviolent struggle for freedom and inspired Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. But Gandhi wasn’t political until his time in South Africa, where the young lawyer saw firsthand the cruelty of racial discrimination. When he was removed from a train at Pietermaritzburg station because he was in a whites-only compartment, it was a pivotal moment in his political awakening.

2 - Albert Einstein

He was the greatest physicist of the 20th century, his name synonymous in the modern world with brilliance. But in early 1930s Germany, the Nobel laureate’s principal identification was the religion of his birth: Judaism. A Nazi organization’s magazine published his photo on its cover, with the title: “Not Yet Hanged.” Convinced his family’s safety was under threat, Einstein emigrated to the U.S., accepting a position at Princeton, which quickly became the new holy ground for the world’s brightest physicists.

3 - Martina Navratilova

She’s one of the greatest tennis players of all time. But she made her first international splash at the age of 18, before going on to win 59 Grand Slam titles. She lost the 1975 U.S. Open women’s singles semifinal to Chris Evert but grabbed the headlines the next day by announcing her defection from socialist Czechoslovakia to America. “I wanted my freedom,” she famously said, becoming an emblem of the socialist bloc’s rot and its inability to retain some of its finest talent.

4 - Karl Marx

The German writer, philosopher and economist was expelled by his nation, France and Belgium, and eventually settled in London. It was in England that Marx and Friedrich Engels would craft the Communist Manifesto, and where Marx would refine his economic theories that remain the most powerful critiques of capitalism. Marx is buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery, a pilgrimage site for Marxists the world over.

Quiz Time!!

Take our quiz and see what you've learned about migration!

Which Latin American nation has emerged as the new gateway for African migrants hoping to make it to the U.S.?

Which country depends the most on remittances from migrants?

How much do migrants contribute to the world’s GDP?

Which iconic 20th century leader was ejected from a train in South Africa because he wasn’t white?

Answers:

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