What’s Driving the Influx of Migrants and Refugees to the West?

[Geee]

National Review:

Tuscany — Northern and central Italy are not on the southern Mediterranean. But somehow thousands of refugees from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are everywhere here — as is true of much of the European Union. Some sleep on park benches. Many peddle knock-off electronic goods and counterfeit watches. Angry Italians shoo away refugee beggars from tour groups.

 

The Greek islands near the coast of Turkey are likewise flooded this summer with dispossessed refugees from countries such as Afghanistan and Syria. Apparently a bankrupt Greek government lacks the resources to patrol its vast coastline. Some beleaguered Greeks assume that thousands of boat people and homeless refugees will eventually leave their makeshift camps and head northward to the wealthier homelands of Greece’s Northern European creditors.

A similar rush has overwhelmed America’s southern border. In the last two years, tens of thousands of Central American and Mexican citizens have sensed that the Obama administration has suspended border enforcement. Illegal entry into the United States won’t result in punishment, but instead in an array of social services unimaginable in Latin America.

So, what explains this constant rush of the world’s poor families into the West? And why aren’t China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba, for example, flooded with illegal entrants?

The human exodus to Western countries is not always explained by a lack of natural wealth elsewhere. Iraq and Venezuela, for example, are awash in oil. Mexico has lots of oil, minerals, and fertile soil.

Wars may have driven scores of Afghans, North Africans, and Syrians from their homelands to the West, but most of Latin America is at relative peace.