The war in Ukraine was supposed to create a refugee shockwave as collateral damage, but it didn’t. Meanwhile, Joe Biden praises Poland for his reception, but at home he renews Donald Trump’s restrictive measures
Vladimir Putin’s refugee bomb did not work: refugees from Ukraine did not have a destabilizing effect in Europe. The famines that were to attack Europe from the southern hemisphere did not materialize either.
Perhaps the topic of immigration will lose some of its explosiveness in the next US presidential election campaign? In fact, while praising Poland for hosting Ukrainian refugees, Joe Biden is renewing Donald Trump’s restrictive measures at his home. Biden’s wager is to demonstrate that immigration can be controlled, regulated and kept in accordance with the law. Furthermore, the decline in migration flows to the United States in recent years has coincided with a significant improvement in workers’ wages, including in favor of ethnic minorities such as African Americans.
Putin wanted an encore and more votes for sovereigns in 2015
Let’s start with the migrants that Putin had to hurl at us to destabilize us. One of the scenarios explicitly conjured up by Russian geopoliticians in 2022 was this: the war in Ukraine would have created a shockwave of refugees as collateral damage with destabilizing effects on European governments, similar to 2015’s mass arrivals from Syria and Afghanistan.
The sudden influx of millions of Ukrainian refugees should provoke negative reactions and throw national-populist parties, which are also pro-Putin, into the balance. The same is true of the side effects in the southern hemisphere: the war in Ukraine, by creating food shortages and hyperinflation, was intended to generate famine, new mass misery and another migratory shockwave from Africa to Europe, also with destabilizing political and social effects on democracies. None of that happened. Now we can add the demographic bombshell to the list of many doomsday prophecies that the facts have openly contradicted. There
Welcoming Poland: two million Ukrainians
The migratory pressure from the south of the world has not increased significantly in 2022. As for the Ukrainian refugees: yes, they existed, but without provoking reactions of rejection. The emblematic case is Poland because it is the country that has hosted the most guests.
In 2022, almost ten million refugees crossed the border between Ukraine and Poland, a very high number considering that Poland has only 38 million inhabitants. Because data on border crossings between the two countries includes multiple transits, and many of these refugees returned home as quickly as possible. At the end of 2022 there were … only two million Ukrainian refugees in Poland. This is a first explanation for why Putin’s population bomb did not have the hoped-for political effect.
Host countries like Poland perceive immigration from Ukraine as a temporary emergency, because that is largely the case. Ukrainians are fleeing Putin’s bombs and missiles but want to return to their country and rebuild it as soon as possible. As for those left behind, even the two million Ukrainians still in Poland did not provoke any negative reactions. The factor of cultural affinity weighs in here. Compared to Syrians or Afghans, Ukrainians integrate and are accepted more easily. Not that there wasn’t a lack of problems: World War II left horrific memories of the atrocities committed by Ukrainian troops on Polish soil. But today’s Ukrainians appear culturally homogeneous, Europeans willing to accept the rules and values of the host country. Integration between similar ones is easier, it’s normal for it to be like that. Migrants from Islamic countries, on the other hand, were often the bearers of irreconcilable value systems – just think of the role of women – or openly hostile to Western ideologies. Putin’s calculations didn’t work out, even though the conservative government in Warsaw is anything but pro-immigrant.
Biden at home: Semi-closed borders?
Biden praised the capacity of the Poles (pictured: in Warsaw with President Andrzej Duda). But that earned him some controversy at home. The left of the Democratic Party accuses him of applauding the Poles but closing the borders. For example, I’m referring to a letter signed by four Democratic Party senators (Bob Menendez and Cory Booker of New Jersey, Alex Padilla of California, Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico) challenging Biden’s recent immigration decisions. In fact, these show continuity with Donald Trump’s policies.
Aside from building the wall with Mexico, a mostly symbolic operation (and begun a quarter-century earlier by Democratic President Bill Clinton), Trump’s most effective measure to curb illegal immigration was the Standard Title 42. It was a decree deporting people who illegally crossed the border into the United States through a very direct process. To win the appeals and overcome objections to unconstitutionality, Title 42 was motivated by the pandemic: it was about preventing the entry of Covid carriers and this curtailed the legal objections by relying on government authority in health emergencies.
Now that the pandemic was over, Title 42 could not continue. Biden replaced it with essentially the same legislation: It allows expulsion, with a fast-track process, for those who cross the border illegally without having first applied for asylum. It’s an attempt to stem the boom in illegal entry that took place in 2022, which Republicans say was fueled by the Democratic Party’s lax messages on immigration. According to the Border Patrol, there were two million illegal border crossings last year.
Biden wants to defend himself against the accusation that he wreaked havoc on the borders and contributed to a renewed invasion of undocumented aliens, with all the problems that entailed. With the procedures already in place, that is, with the normal rules of asylum law in effect prior to Title 42, many illegal immigrants, once they reached United States territory, became lost and untraceable while awaiting the decision of the competent courts maintained the procedures and controls of their cases. If the asylum requirements were not met, there were rarely deportations because the people concerned had disappeared.
Legal immigration continues
Meanwhile, Biden is attempting to reactivate regular migration flows. In 2022, his government issued 7.3 million visas, ranging from temporary work permits to permanent green cards. Legal immigration back to pre-Trump levels. Biden’s challenge is to show that migration flows can be managed: to balance the needs of the labor market with those of legality, order and citizens’ sense of security.
There is tremendous pressure from the corporate world to increase visa facilitation. With the labor market near full employment, unemployment fell to 3.4% of the labor force, its lowest level in 53 years. Entrepreneurs complain about the difficulty of filling vacancies: there are two job offers for every unemployed person. Because the competition between employers for workers is having a positive effect: the highest wage increases in forty years, concentrated primarily on the lowest segments, i.e. workers in the tourist hotel industry, restaurant waiters, delivery boys, bricklayers in the construction industry.
The entire working class, both traditional and new, benefits from reduced immigration. These jobs, rewarded with the highest pay increases, are heavily represented by ethnic minorities such as blacks and Latinos. Two constituencies that have seen a drop in votes for the Republican Party in recent years and that Biden hopes to recover from.
Feb 26, 2023 (Modified Feb 26, 2023 | 4:15 p.m.)
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