King Hall Hosts UC Davis Panel on Europe's Migration and Refugee Crisis

On October 13, King Hall hosted a panel discussion on "Europe's Migration and Refugee Crisis" featuring presentations by three UC Davis faculty experts: Law School Dean Kevin R. Johnson, Professor Emeritus of Agriculture and Resource Economics Philip Martin, and Professor and Chair of Economics Giovanni Peri.  Moderated by Madhavi Sunder, King Hall's Associate Dean and Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor, the discussion touched on the causes of the crisis as well as its implications for international law and immigration in the United States. The event drew coverage in the Sacramento Bee.

Professor Martin provided context for the current crisis, noting that the European Union's regulations concerning asylum seekers largely stem from its response to a wave of refugees fleeing violence in the Balkan states during the early 1990s.  Many of those rules, such as the Dublin Regulation, which essentially requires asylum seekers to settle in the country in which they first entered the EU, have proven ineffective in the current crisis, Martin said. Different EU nations have adopted their own policies with regard to the refugees, he explained, with some offering an open door and others doing their best to discourage migrants from entering.

"Migration tends to bring out the best and worst in people," Martin said. "There have been offers of food and clothing, and there have been arson attacks."

Professor Peri said that the EU has been caught by surprise by the current crisis only because it ignored longstanding, largescale refugee problems in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. Many countries in the EU have aging populations that are declining in number and could benefit from an influx of Syrian refugees, many of whom are skilled and well-educated, he said. 

"People are not costs, they are assets," Peri said. "They are the ones who work, and they are the ones who can create economic growth, and refugees are no different."

Dean Johnson said the Syrian refugee crisis was "the latest example of a mass migration that law doesn't effectively deal with." Recent history provides numerous examples of large numbers of people fleeing violence and oppression in Central America and the Caribbean to seek asylum in the United States, where the legal response usually has been interdiction and deportation, he said.

In order to qualify for refugee status, the United Nations requires that migrations be able to demonstrate a fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, Dean Johnson explained. "The UN definition of refugee status is narrow," he said. "It requires individualized determinations.  It is designed to restrict admissions.  It's designed to prevent what most nations fear, which is mass migration."

Sacramento Bee

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