Europe wants to pay Tunisia to keep migrants in Africa
This follows a trend of wealthy countries using money to ensure they don't have to deal with migrants.
Migration is a complicated issue for countries around the globe. On the one hand, many wealthy countries actively need population growth to ensure their economy grows yet these same countries suffer anemic natural population growth overall. And then on the other hand, less wealthy countries have too many people for them to be able to support. One would think that this would make for a natural exchange, right? Migrants from less wealthy countries enter wealthy countries and both get what they want and need.
Unfortunately, despite seeming like a natural flow, the politics involved get in the way of any sort of meaningful, long lasting immigration reform solutions. Instead we end up with something like the European Union is doing with Tunisia: paying a third party to keep migrants from be able to move through it to their ultimate destination. And this is something that seems to be a bit of a pattern in recent years.
The European Union - Tunisia deal
Announced just a few days ago, the European Union and Tunisia have agreed to a deal wherein the E.U. will pay a lot of money to get Tunisia to control the amount of migrants that attempt the incredible dangerous trip across the Mediterranean Sea. From Al Jazeera:
In June, von der Leyen offered Tunisia 105 million euros ($115m) to curb undocumented immigration and 150 million euros ($168m) in immediate support, including a long-term loan of 900 million euros ($1.01bn).
While only a fraction of that is going towards migration efforts, it’s really the whole package that ensures Tunisia will play ball. But it’s worth pointing out that the vast majority of migrants traveling from Tunisia to the E.U. are not from Tunisia, but rather other African countries. While specific numbers are hard to come by, migrants are known to come from South Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Mali, and, now, Sudan as well. In the last week alone, 200,000 people were displaced due to the Sudan conflict that persists. And those people are no doubt looking enviably towards the relative safety of Europe as their haven.
But increasingly Europe is becoming more and more hostile to migrants. With right wing governments being voted into power in places such as Italy, there’s been a huge effort to put a stop to migrants traveling from Africa to Europe. Conservatives are often (though not always) the political group most zealously against migration, legal or otherwise. And this swing in the political spectrum means Europe is now willing to pay to have migration into Europe become someone else’s problem entirely.
But while the E.U. is the newest governmental entity employing this method, they’re certainly not the first.
Other notable cross-country migration deals
There are two other notable migration deals that share much in common with the tactics the E.U. is employing and those are:
The U.S. - Mexico (and Panama/Colombia) deal
The U.K. - Rwanda deal
The U.S. - Mexico deal
Probably to the surprise of no one reading this, the United States has had a migration “problem” through its southern border for a number of decades now. In the beginning most of those migrants came from Mexico itself, but today increasingly they’re coming from places such as Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela and even Caribbean countries such as Cuba. The amount of migration has made the news many, many times this year by itself becoming a huge political issue for the current Biden (Democrat) administration.
As such, the U.S. has entered into a deal with Mexico to have the southern country better control and manage migrants that are merely passing through Mexico on their way to the United States (or even Canada). While the exact details of the deal aren’t readily apparent — I’d love it if someone here knows! — you can be sure that Mexico isn’t doing this for free. They’re getting something, probably money, from the U.S. in order for their cooperation in this manner.
The same can be said for Panama and Colombia. Each of these countries has engaged in deals with the U.S. to slow down migrants traveling through the Darien Gap, most of whom would be from Venezuela due to the shocking economic conditions in the South American country.
The U.K. - Rwanda deal
Meanwhile over in the United Kingdom, they’ve structured their own deal wherein migrants who travel to the country illegally will be given a one-way ticket to the African country of Rwanda who will accept the migrant in the U.K.’s stead. But this doesn’t only apply to migrants from Rwanda or other nearby African countries, but rather to any and all migrants. Imagine traveling from Afghanistan, for example, arriving to the U.K. and then being shipped to Rwanda. That would be quite the shock!
While this deal was originally announced in 2022, no migrant has yet been sent to Rwanda from the U.K. due to a series of legal challenges. Still, the government in the U.K. is continually pushing forward with this plan even though it’s been shown that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda from the U.K. could very well be sent back to their home countries to face the same persecution they were trying to escape.
Unfortunately, as economic and climate conditions worsen in countries around the world, migration will likely increase to places that can afford to insulate themselves from it. The European Union can make all the deals in the world, but Tunisia (or any other country they cut a deal with) will only be able to handle so much themselves and then the problem will be Europe’s to deal with once again. You can substitute Europe with the United States and United Kingdom with their respective migrants and the same holds true.