THE MIGRATION ISSUE

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017

TRUMP’S
IMMIGRATION
THE POLICY IS
GOING TO PUT
SMUGGLER’S THE U.S. OUT
DILEMMA OF BUSINESS
THE PATHS FROM AFRICA TO EUROPE THE IRANIANS
ARE WROUGHT WITH DANGER AND WHO CAN’T
PLIED BY PROFITEERSWITHOUT WHOM
THOSE FLEEING WAR AND POVERTY GO HOME
WOULDN’T STAND A CHANCE.
MIGRANTS
ARE COMING
TO SAVE US
… AGAIN
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 contents 09|10.2017

Voices

062
LAW REVIEW
Features The Disturbing Paradox
of Presidential Power

026
by BENJAMIN WITTES

Departments This Land Is Their Land

064
POLICY CHECK
Immigration is inevitable. When will the West Trump’s Massive
learn that it promises salvation—not destruction?

005
Miscalculation
by SUKETU MEHTA by LINDA CHAVEZ

034 067
THE THINGS
THEY CARRIED
The Iraqis
Who Fled Mosul PERSONAL NOTE
by CENGIZ YAR Highway Through Hell A Shrinking Island
The human-smuggling route across the Sahara by KIM GHATTAS

008
may have been the deadliest on Earth. Then
Europe made the journey even more treacherous
by trying to shut it down.
PASSPORT by TY M C CORMICK

A Silk Road Marriage

by REID STANDISH
Language Haven
by JESSE CHASELUBITZ
Undocumented
on Patrol
044
A Voice in the Night
How a school administrator in Spain is helping rescue
by KAVITHA SURANA
refugees with little more than fervor and a phone.
A Refugee by GREGORY BEALS 003
Without a River Contributors

050
by RUBY MELLEN
080

014
THE EXCHANGE On the Edge of Afghanistan
The Final Word

ON THE COVER: Adji used to make

Why Do Some A decimated economy, a resurgent Taliban, his living driving migrants across
Countries Get Away and growing tensions with Iran are driving the Sahara to Libya before an
With Taking disenchanted Afghans to seek opportunities EU-funded crackdown on human
Fewer Refugees? abroad. And for many it’s their only option. smuggling made it too risky.
by SUNE ENGEL RASMUSSEN Portrait by Nichole Sobecki.

016APERTURE
They Can’t EDITOR’S NOTE : The next edition of FOREIGN POLICY magazine—
Go Home Again our annual Global Thinkers issue—will be released exclusively at
photographs by HOSSEIN FATEMI FOREIGNPOLICY.COM in December.

Illustration by OWEN FREEMAN FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 1

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 contributors 09|10.2017

AN FP SPECIAL REPORT: In May, FOREIGN POLICY’s Africa editor, Ty McCormick, traveled

with photojournalist Nichole Sobecki to Agadez, Niger, an age-old trading post
and a gateway to the Sahara that has become the epicenter of the modern human-
smuggling trade. Their story, “Highway Through Hell,” shows how European efforts
to halt migration through Niger have only made the journey more perilous for those
who attempt it. “It’s clear from our conversations with smugglers that the EU-funded
crackdown hasn’t stopped the flow of people,” McCormick says. “It’s just pushed it
into remote parts of the desert where there is no water and no margin for error. If you
break down out there, you die. And so will all of your passengers.”
SUKETU MEHTA, ECHOING GREEN, ANDREW QUILTY, BALAZS GARDI

Suketu Mehta is the Becca Heller is the Sune Engel Rasmussen, Andrew Quilty has
New York-based author director and co-founder of born in Denmark, has been been based in Kabul since
TOP: NICHOLE SOBECKI; BOTTOM FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF

of Maximum City: Bombay the International Refugee based in Afghanistan since 2013. His work there has
Lost and Found, which was Assistance Project and a 2014 as a correspondent for garnered several awards,
a finalist for the 2005 visiting lecturer at Yale Law the Guardian. He also writes including the Gold Walkley—
Pulitzer Prize in general School. She has received the for various magazines, such the highest prize in Australian
nonfiction. He has been 2015 Charles Bronfman Prize; as Harper’s and GQ. He has journalism—the Polk Award
awarded the Whiting Award fellowships with the Draper traveled extensively in the for photojournalism, and
and the O. Henry Prize. Richards Kaplan Foundation, war-torn country, including a Pictures of the Year
Mehta, an associate Skadden Fellowship to the far-flung wilderness International award for
professor of journalism Foundation, Echoing Green, of Nimruz, from where he his work commissioned
at New York University, the Gruber Program for Global reported his dispatch for by FP. In 2016, a selection
is currently working on Justice and Women’s Rights; this issue, “On the Edge of of Quilty’s work from
a nonfiction book about and the American Constitution Afghanistan.” He now splits Afghanistan was exhibited
immigrants in contemporary Society’s 2017 David Carliner his time between Islamabad at Visa Pour l’Image, in
New York. Public Interest Award. and Kabul. Perpignan, France.

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 3
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Sh a p in g Pe r sp e c ti ve s o n G l o b a l A f fa i r s
 the things they carried
by CENGIZ YAR

The Iraqis
Who Fled Mosul
STANDING BY THE ROWS OF TENTS that line the dusty plains of northern Iraq, groups Kasim Muhammed Tahir, 58
of men and children cover their faces from the searing sun. Twenty-five miles to Kasim fled Mosul with his family in the
middle of November 2016 after an
the west, their home city of Mosul lies in ruins after a brutal nine-month battle airstrike destroyed their house. The only
between Iraqi forces and Islamic State fighters. The house-to-house fighting and thing he saved was his pet bird, Abboud,
aerial bombardment reduced entire neighborhoods to blackened heaps of rubble. which he has had for more than five years.
“I’d rather die than lose this bird,” he says.
The mass of decaying bodies lying beneath the debris piled along Mosul’s streets Kasim is unhappy living in the camp,
creates an unbearable stench of death that moves back and forth with the breeze. because it’s hot and dusty, but believes
For now, these families have taken refuge outside the city, here at Khazer camp. the bird has it worse, especially now that
he’s no longer able to find proper seeds to
During the nearly endless rounds of fighting that resulted in thousands of feed it. “I have six sons, and I love this bird
civilian casualties, according to unofficial estimates, some 846,000 people were just like one of my sons,” he says with a
displaced from their homes in the city. As families fled, they took with them what playful smile on his lips. “If you asked me
to sell one of my boys, maybe there would
few possessions they could carry. While some managed to leave with livestock or be a chance—but not my bird.”
even cars, many others left with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.
Often, there is little function or utility to these items—a broken watch, a child’s
garment, a handful of worn photographs. They are tokens of the life—and the
people—they left behind.

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 5
 the things they carried
Omar Muhammed Islah Seri, 23
Omar and his pregnant wife, Aizhar, left
their home in Mosul on March 22. They
walked for four hours in the dark before
reaching the safety of Iraqi forces-
controlled territory. Omar says they were
shot at by Islamic State fighters and
remembers watching at least two other
families get hit when they fled. But staying
put wasn’t an option: Aizhar was about
to give birth, and there weren’t doctors
to deliver the baby in Islamic State-held
territory. The only item he was able to
take was a ring that his mother had given
him. “My mother died, and I keep this as a
memory,” he says. Omar couldn’t wear the
ring in public under the Islamic State, but
now he wears it proudly on his right hand.
Aizhar salvaged something else: clothing
for the baby they were expecting. Pulling a
bundle from a bag, Omar lays out a small
collection of infant clothes on the floor of
their tent, next to his 3-month-old son.
“We’ll always save these for him,” Omar
says. “They were gifts from our relatives
before he was born.”
6 SEPT | OCT 2017
Israh Abid, 41
In a one-room tent, Israh is raising her
four sons and daughter by herself. When
the family fled the fighting in Mosul in
October 2016, the only thing she took was
her Quran. “I didn’t want to live without
reading and without my religion,” Israh
says. She has been reading the Quran
since she was 14 years old and keeps
the one she saved wrapped in a blue
plastic bag in the tent. Israh talked about
the difficult conditions at the camp—the
stifling heat and, she says, “There’s no
life.” Divorced from her husband years
before the rise of the caliphate, she has
taken care of their five children on her own
ever since, though it has been hard for
her. “These kids are innocent,” she says.
“What is their fault?”
Ammar Shakir Hamied, 43
Ammar fled Mosul on July 3. A day earlier,
he was trying to find food for his family
with his friend when they were shot at by
a sniper. The friend was hit, so Ammar
carried him on his back and took shelter
in a building. But shortly after the building
was hit by an airstrike. His friend died, and
Ammar remained stuck under the rubble for
more than 24 hours before being rescued.
The only thing he brought with him was a
watch his wife gave him before they were
married. “It’s a memory,” he says. “I brought
it because of her.” He keeps the watch in his
tent but doesn’t wear it because it’s broken.
When Ammar remarks on the weight he lost
during the siege of Mosul, he smiles. At least
here he can be outside and play games in
peace. “I’m happy to be able to live again.”
Wisam Munif, 24
Wisam, above left, fled western Mosul
after Iraqi forces reached his neighborhood
on March 6 and forced out the Islamic
State fighters controlling it. “These photos
were all I could take quickly. All my other
things were left behind,” he says. One
photo shows Wisam sitting on the ground,
with an arm around the shoulders of his
brother Inmar, who is also living in the
camp. In another photo, Wisam and his
male relatives stand together in a field in
a small village on the outskirts of Mosul.
The image was taken on a cell phone
and printed in secret by a friend during
Islamic State rule. “The Islamic State
would punish us with lashes for having
this picture,” he says, making a whipping
motion with his hand.

Khatab Muhammed Saeed, 15

In November 2016, Khatab left Mosul with
his mother, father, and younger brother.
The only thing he brought with him was
a cell phone he had kept hidden from the
Islamic State fighters who ruled over his
Mosul neighborhood for three years. “If
the Islamic State found out we had a SIM
card or a mobile phone, we would have
been executed for sure,” he says, sitting
in the family’s tent at Khazer camp on
the outskirts of Mosul. The family had
broken the phone’s SIM card out of fear
of punishment by Islamic State fighters
and kept the phone stashed away under
Khatab’s mattress in his room. “We
brought the phone [with us] to call our
relatives—to find out who is dead or alive
and [if alive] where they are going.”

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 7

A Silk Road Marriage
Are cross-cultural couples the key
to integrating a region?
by REID STANDISH
ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN As the sun sets over
the city’s snowcapped mountains, Yerbo-
lat and May Ospanov settle into the gray
sofa. May slides her hands over Yerbolat’s,
which lie clasped on his knee. Then, with
a precision honed through countless rec-
itations, they take turns listing the dozens
of places they’ve lived together around the
world before settling in Almaty, Kazakh-
stan’s largest city.
Happily married for nearly 20 years, the
couple never expected to serve as a bridge
for a cultural chasm. Their two home-
lands—China and Kazakhstan—share some
1,100 miles of border and an increasingly
vital political relationship. Yet on the ground
in Kazakhstan, distrust of Beijing’s designs
on its Central Asian neighbor is rising.
Today, a small but growing number of
Kazakh-Chinese couples may be helping to
counter that tension: Their intimate under-
standing of each other’s worlds is chipping
away at old prejudices and, arguably, fur-
thering the transactional bilateral ambi-
tions of their nations.
Yerbolat met May during a business trip
8 SEPT | OCT 2017
passport
TOP: A wedding figurine of Qiudi Zhang and
Askar Akhyltayev sits on a dresser at their
home in Almaty, Kazakhstan. ABOVE: The
couple at a park in Almaty in May.
to Hong Kong in 1994. The Soviet Union had
collapsed three years earlier, and he was
tasked with stocking a private department
store from scratch in a newly independent
Kazakhstan. May, a distributor in charge
of selling excess stock for Chinese garment
factories, traveled across her country with
Yerbolat, touring plants and helping him
fill orders to send across the western bor-
der. Three years later, they were married
and living in Almaty.
“Not many Chinese women would have
moved to Kazakhstan in 1997,” says May,
turning to her husband with an audacious
grin. “I think we are a little bit different. He
is an unconventional Kazakh, and I am a
very unconventional Chinese.”
Indeed, their affinity transcends an
age-old current of Sinophobia that has
resurfaced in Kazakhstan over the past
two decades, as the pace of trade between
the countries has accelerated into a high-
profile dynamic shaped by state-owned
giants. China has become the top foreign
investor in Central Asia, with Kazakhstan
welcoming Beijing’s Belt and Road Initia-
tive—a multibillion-dollar infrastructure
project, inspired by the old Silk Road, that
has formed the backbone of Chinese Presi-
dent Xi Jinping’s foreign policy since 2013.
At the same time, a growing and vocal seg-
ment of Kazakhstan’s population of 18 mil-
lion has grown wary of Beijing’s ambitions
in Eurasia: They fear that Chinese citizens
Photographs by EDDA SCHLAGER
are buying up farmland and seeking to control oil, gas,
and other valuable natural resources in the country.
Such suspicions are amplified across social media
and messaging platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp,
and VKontakte—and, at times, have incited public pro-
tests. A proposal to lease a large area of land to China
was dropped after demonstrations in 2010, and govern-
ment plans to change the land code in the spring of 2016
sparked the largest episode of dissent in Kazakhstan
since the dissolution of the Soviet Union 25 years ear-
lier. The protests became a catchall to voice grievances
against anything, including corruption and poor road
conditions. Eventually Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakh-
stan’s autocratic president, bowed to the demonstrators
by delaying the implementation of the new law while
the country’s security services cracked down on lin-
gering unrest. But mixed Kazakh-Chinese marriages
and attendant questions of loyalty and land ownership
have provided a talking point for nationalists, as rumors
of a slow-motion Chinese colonization of Kazakhstan
spread online and through tabloids. Official statistics
on the exact number of mixed couples have been scarce,
which has allowed lofty estimates to circulate. Online,
many nationalists have called for Kazakh women to be
stripped of their citizenship should they marry a Chi-
nese national.
May says she hasn’t had too many unpleasant con-
frontations in Kazakhstan, but she “can often feel some
strange eyes” following her when out on the street. Yer-
bolat notes that anti-Chinese anxieties run deep among
Kazakhs, even if they remain unfounded. He blames a
“fear of a big country neighboring from ancient times.
It’s somewhere on the DNA level.” He also believes that
the Chinese have become a convenient scapegoat amid
an economic slowdown and currency devaluations that
eliminated the savings of many average Kazakhs. Pri-
vately, some Kazakh officials admit that Sinophobia
has become an outlet for popular frustrations. But, in
public, the government downplays the discord. “[The]
people of Kazakhstan are educated enough to under-
stand how essential China is to the health of the global
economy,” Kairat Abdrakhmanov, Kazakhstan’s foreign
minister, told FOREIGN POLICY.
Askar Akhyltayev and Qiudi Zhang, a Kazakh-Chinese
couple in their 20s who met while studying at the Uni-
versity of Washington in Seattle, understand how fun-
damental that economic vigor will be to the prosperity
of their union. “My parents used to be concerned about
the lack of opportunity here, but there is more happen-
ing,” says Qiudi, a native of the Chinese city of Shen-
zhen. Couples like Askar and Qiudi are helping spur two
economies and bind two nations that will surely grow
more interdependent in the coming decades, as China Yerbolat and
pours billions of dollars into Kazakhstan’s economy. May Ospanov at
their home in
That forward-leaning spirit is apparent for Benny Almaty in May.
Ng and Zhanar Akhmetova, who have thrived since
moving to Almaty less than a year ago. Benny, born in
Singapore, teaches business at a local college and con-
sults for Kazakh companies. Zhanar, pregnant with their
third child, runs a tour company for Asian clientele.
The couple met in 2009 on the now-defunct social net-
working website Friendster. Their romance faced early
opposition from some of Zhanar’s relatives, who were
against her marrying a non-Kazakh, but her family has
come to appreciate Benny’s vibrant and jovial person-
ality—and also their financial success as a couple. “My
mother-in-law still teases me that I need to give her
sheep and horses,” says Benny, referring to the bride
price in a traditional Kazakh wedding.
Even in their short time spent in Kazakhstan, Benny
and Zhanar say they have seen the country change.
Kazakhstan is becoming more international—and the
couple want their children to benefit from this cosmo-
politanism. Their kids all have Kazakh first names and
Chinese last names; they speak English with their par-
ents, learn Russian and Chinese privately, and com-
municate in Kazakh with their caretaker.
“The idea,” says Benny, summing up an ethos that
may soon become more prevalent in Kazakhstan, “was
to have a very international family.”—Reid Standish
is an associate editor at FOREIGN POLICY. He reported
this story while on a fellowship with the International
Reporting Project.
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 9

Language Haven
For young newcomers,
the first step to becoming
American is learning English.
by JESSE CHASE-LUBITZ
BALTIMORE On June 29, 1987, Jermin Laviera attended
her first English-language lesson still wearing her wed-
ding dress. Though she had just arrived in Baltimore
from Venezuela eight days earlier, acquiring the ability
to communicate in her new home was so important that
she went straight from her nuptials to class. Laviera still
has a photograph of her 28-year-old self in the white pat-
terned gown, a look of exhilaration in her brown eyes as
she proudly holds her most valued treasure from that
day. “Not a ring,” she says with a smile. “It was a book.”
Thirty years later, Laviera manages a desk in the lobby
of the Esperanza Center in the Fells Point neighborhood
of Baltimore—the place where she took her first English
class. She has long since retired her student status and
now works in the center’s client services department.
Cutout snowflakes float suspended from the classrooms’
ceilings, board games sit atop desks, and a “Stop Profil-
ing Muslims” poster hangs on the wall. Up to 60 middle
and high school-aged immigrants and refugees come
here to learn the language of their adopted country.
Formerly known as the Hispanic Apostolate, the
center started offering English-language classes to
Cuban immigrants in 1963 and has since expanded—
now supplying legal, medical, and other services.
And though for many years Esperanza offered only
adult ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages)
courses, in 2015 it launched a youth program in
response to the surge the year before in unaccompa-
nied minors crossing the southern U.S. border.
“[These kids were] totally flooding the public school
system that was not prepared for that many ELLs
[English-language learners],” says Brianna Melgar, the
center’s youth ESOL program coordinator.
Title III of the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed
by former President Barack Obama in 2015, requires
all public schools in the United States to provide lan-
guage assistance to students who need it. However,
each state has the flexibility to execute that require-
ment as it deems fit. “ESL [English as a Second Lan-
guage] courses vary considerably from state to state,”
says Victoria Palmer, a public affairs specialist at the
Administration for Children & Families.
Public school ESOL classes are funded at the federal,
state, and local levels—which means the programs are
10 SEPT | OCT 2017
passport
vulnerable to cuts in federal ESOL and immigrant edu- Anthony, the winner
cation funds. These are disbursed to states according of last year’s best
attendance award
to immigrant population numbers. Since January, the at the Esperanza
Donald Trump administration has slashed the U.S. ref- Center, reads a
ugee intake from a proposed 110,000 to 50,000 in 2017. Sidekicks comic at
the end of a summer
With fewer refugees, some wonder what will happen to program day in
the money allocated to teaching them English. Over the August.
next decade, the administration also plans to reduce the
number of legal immigrants by half.
But the Esperanza Center operates outside of that
capricious system: Funding from private donors and
the Catholic Charities network shields its ESOL program
from policy shifts, and decision-makers work on-site,
accessible to students and aware of their needs.
Esperanza’s flexibility allows it to provide English-lan-
guage classes for students who couldn’t otherwise access
them. Young immigrants might be working for pay when
they first arrive or have parents who are afraid to enroll
them in school for fear of deportation. Many arrive in
the summer and must wait months to enter a classroom.
Odai, a 14-year-old Syrian boy who wears an “NY”-em-
bossed hat as we speak in a small office at the Esperanza
Center, found himself in that position when, after a four-
year stay in Jordan, he came to Baltimore during the
summer of 2016. “When we come, the school has not
started. So we just sat in home because I don’t know the
places or the stuff [to do]. I don’t know English,” he says.
JESSE CHASELUBITZ
For immigrant students, English-language skills
unlock the gates to America’s meritocracy. “To be unable
to communicate in the language around you beyond the
level of counting and buying things at the supermarket
 is to experience life linguistically as a 2-year-
old,” says John McWhorter, an associate pro-
fessor of English and comparative literature
at Columbia University. “It’s lonely, embar-
rassing, and even dangerous—you’re living
as, quite literally, an alien.”
And while the federal government pro-
vides resources to adult ELLs—like an
interactive map of all the adult educa-
tion resources and contacts by state and a
national professional learning community
and database—children are directed to the
public school system for their language learn-
ing and educational needs. “By and large, we
don’t, as a country, have programs directed at
the K-12 level,” says Michael Fix, a senior fel-
low at the Migration Policy Institute. And pri-
vate programs like the ones offered to kids at
Esperanza are rare in the United States. There
are two other programs similar to Esperanza
in Baltimore, one of which only runs in the
spring during soccer season.
Luis, a 16-year-old Mexican boy who came
to the United States in 2016, explains the dif-
ference between his school, Baltimore’s Pat-
terson High School, and Esperanza. “You just
don’t learn,” he says. “There are a lot more
students.… You can’t make friends, [with]
how they fight and everything.”
Currently, Esperanza’s ESOL program
is overenrolled: Out of the almost 300 ref-
ugees between the ages of 5 and 17 reset-
tled in the city of Baltimore alone last year,
Esperanza can host a mere 60 and receives
regular requests to open centers elsewhere
in Maryland.
It has been 30 years since that June day
when Laviera wedded both Esperanza and
her husband. The center can’t reach every
kid who needs it, but Laviera’s experience
shows that it can make a lasting impact on
the students it does help.
I ask six students—from Senegal, Syria,
Honduras, Mexico, and El Salvador—what
they want to be when they grow up. “I will be
a doctor,” “I will be a software engineer,” “I
will be a lawyer,” they reply with conviction.
When I ask Merary why she wants to be a law-
yer, the 11-year-old Honduran girl replies,
KAVITHA SURANA
“Because I like to help people from other
countries. Like the ones that are here.”—Jesse
Chase-Lubitz is an intern at FOREIGN POLICY.
Undocumented
on Patrol
Police in Texas work with
immigrant communities
to combat crime.
by KAVITHA SURANA
FORT WORTH, TEXAS Jaime Carrillo emerges
from his faded pink house wearing blue
jeans and a black cowboy hat. After a long
day at work laying cement for city streets,
he is ready for a second shift—this time as a
volunteer for the Fort Worth Police Depart-
ment. He straps a walkie-talkie to his collar,
slaps a “Citizens on Patrol” sticker on the
side of his blue Nissan Sentra, and settles
in the driver’s seat.
“Tigre, Tigre,” Carrillo calls into the
radio, addressing his partner. His own code
name is “Meneaito,” the title of a popular
Jaime
Carrillo
salsa song. “I like to dance,” he explains in
Spanish, shimmying his shoulders.
As he weaves his way around the roughly
four miles of his regular patrol route through
Polytechnic Heights—a low-income, largely
immigrant neighborhood of Fort Worth
known as “Poly” by locals—Carrillo, 40,
never stops scanning his surroundings. He
checks on the paleteros (popsicle sellers) who
have been robbed repeatedly, the unsuper-
vised children playing in the street, and the
people loitering by the dismal-looking car
wash. When he sees something amiss—front
yards with mounds of trash (a violation of
city code) or possible drug houses (identified
by the suspicious number of cars parked out
front, night after night)—he uses the radio
to call his boss at the police department.
“We are doing what the police do,” Car-
rillo says. “We check to see that everything
is tranquilo.”
In 1991, after a decade of explosive crime
rates that gave Fort Worth the ominous
nickname “Murder Worth,” the city’s police
force launched a department overhaul,
which included community policing ini-
tiatives like the Citizens on Patrol program
that Carrillo joined seven years ago. It now
boasts more than 730 volunteers, who each
spend five to 14 hours a week monitor-
ing their neighborhoods, and is credited
with lowering the city’s rate of homicides,
assaults, and auto thefts, as well as helping
police keep gang activity in check.
For Carrillo, this volunteer job is a call-
ing. If he could have become a police offi-
cer, he says, “I would have been one.”
A big obstacle has kept him from achiev-
ing that dream: Carrillo is not a U.S. citizen.
Originally from Zacatecas, Mexico, Carrillo
crossed the U.S.-Mexico border when he was
19. And though he has lived in Fort Worth for
more than 20 years, has car insurance, steady
job opportunities, and two American-born
children, he has never been able to obtain a
driver’s license or a Social Security number.
An estimated 1.6 million undocumented
immigrants call Texas home, and many
of them, like Carrillo, were drawn to fill
low-skilled jobs in the state’s booming
economy. Most have eked out industri-
ous existences for years in full view of the
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 11

government, sending their children to
school and working for restaurants, gas
stations, and construction companies.
When a police car drives by, Carrillo
waves. “Maybe I know him, or maybe he
knows me,” he says.
Police are aware that Carrillo, like
many Citizens on Patrol participants, is
not a citizen. But Fort Worth’s approach
to law enforcement treats the city’s undoc-
umented community as an asset—not a
target. The police force’s general orders
explicitly forbid officers from asking people
about their immigration status for minor
infractions. “If you’ve been stopped for
traffic violations or for loitering somewhere
by a police officer, it’s not going to escalate
to getting your documents,” says Officer
Daniel Segura, the Hispanic community
liaison for the police department.
Critics of this approach argue that not
strictly enforcing immigration laws creates
a government-protected class of rule break-
ers, and ultimately acts as a magnet, draw-
ing increasing waves of migrants who feel
no need to respect U.S. immigration laws.
“We should not be encouraging this behav-
ior,” says Ira Mehlman, the media director
of the Federation for American Immigra-
tion Reform, a think tank encouraging the
U.S. government to clamp down on immi-
gration. “There’s nothing that says illegal
aliens shouldn’t worry that there might be
some consequences for violating our laws.”
But representatives of the Fort Worth
Police Department argue that they are fol-
lowing commonsense tactics employed by
many other large, diverse cities, like Dallas
and Houston. It keeps police focused on
responding to criminal activity and ensures
that all residents feel safe to report crimes.
Volunteers are “our eyes and ears,” Segura
explains. “If you are a person [who] is work-
ing hard and taking care of your commu-
nity and involved in our city, then we don’t
care about your legal status.” Years ago, he
was also living illegally in Fort Worth. But
thanks to President Ronald Reagan’s 1986
immigration reform bill that allowed nearly
2.7 million people to legalize their status,
Segura became a citizen and eventually a
police officer.
12 SEPT | OCT 2017
passport
In the current political climate, there is
little hope for a similar reprieve for the esti-
mated 11.3 million people living illegally in
the United States. President Donald Trump
has promised to implement a deportation
force, build a wall on the southern border,
and cut legal immigration in half. If any-
thing, Texas is leading the crackdown. In
September, a new state law goes into effect:
Senate Bill 4, which will allow police offi-
cers to ask anyone they’ve detained for
their documents—for any reason. It could
potentially upend Fort Worth’s policing
strategy of working closely with immigrant
communities to combat crime. “Who are
they going to trust?” Segura asks.
The mood in Poly has darkened in recent
months. Shoppers at a local market say
they’ve made plans for their children to live
with relatives if they are deported. Some
tell stories of neighbors who, emboldened
since the election of Trump, repeatedly call
the police on them, apparently hoping they
will be rounded up.
But Carrillo isn’t too concerned that his
work for the department will be affected—
yet. And he doesn’t like to dwell on the pos-
sibility of being sent back to Mexico. He
listened to Trump’s notorious speech call-
ing Mexicans “rapists” and heard Texas
Gov. Greg Abbott’s promises to “bring
the hammer down” on sanctuary cities.
But to Carrillo, Fort Worth is home, and
the police officers he works with have
assured him that they respect and value
his contribution.
Three years ago, Carrillo won the first-
place award for his work with the Citizens
on Patrol program—an honor that included
a special ceremony. “I said, ‘Golly! Me?’”
He beams, relishing the memory of hearing
his name called. It was a surprise to be recog-
nized in such a setting, with the mayor and
police chief in attendance. “I felt very”—he
searches for the word, finally settling on
English—“happy.”
As dusk falls, he heads home for the eve-
ning. “I would like to become more than
this. To be a police officer,” he says wist-
fully. “I wish they would make laws to allow
that. Ojalá.” God willing.—Kavitha Surana
is a fellow for FOREIGN POLICY.
A Refugee
Without
a River
One woman’s journey to
resettlement is still on hold.
by RUBY MELLEN
AMMAN, JORDANTagreed Daftar’s thick black
hair falls past her shoulders, stark against
her bright floral blouse. She is fidgety in
the crisply lit conference room at the CARE
relief agency’s east Amman center, where
refugees come for counseling, therapy
workshops, and financial assistance.
It’s a controlled setting, in which jour-
nalists on trips organized by CARE are
taken on tours and given the chance
to interview some of the refugees they
assist with a provided translator, central
air to ward off the searing heat, and bot-
tled water.
In many ways, Daftar’s story departs
from the refugee narrative that has become
so familiar—women fleeing Syrian Presi-
dent Bashar al-Assad’s barrel bombs with
toddlers in tow or being forced into sexual
slavery by the Islamic State.
Originally from Baghdad, she is not
Muslim and has never been married or
had children. She comes from a family
of practicing Mandeans—members of
a religion that dates back to at least the
third century. Its practitioners revere
John the Baptist and hew to their own
conception of events described in Jewish,
Christian, and Muslim scriptures, along
with many distinct beliefs. In the chaos
that followed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq
in 2003, Mandeans, like other minority
groups, faced increasing persecution,
prompting tens of thousands of them to
flee the country.
At 51, Daftar is the survivor of two sep-
arate kidnappings. The first occurred in
2007, when masked men grabbed her from
her car, raped her, and returned her to her
family three days later, after they paid a
$5,000 ransom.
 “I was feeling very depressed and emotionally bro-
ken,” she says.
With the help of her brother, she moved first to
Syria, before eventually returning to Iraq in 2009.
But in 2015 she was kidnapped again, and again her
family—known to be non-Muslim and wealthy—was
extorted for her release. The assailants, she says, were
Shiite militants known to target non-Muslim women
who do not cover their heads, and she believes one of
the men involved was a neighbor.
“They told [my family and me] that we were infi-
dels and that our loyalty was to America,” she says.
After the second attack, Daftar’s family fled Iraq to
Jordan and applied for asylum in October 2015. Amman,
however, was not an ideal place to end up. Baptism in
rivers is essential to the Mandean religion; the nearest
one, the Jordan River, is a two-hour drive away, and
Daftar doesn’t own a car. Also, she adds, there aren’t
any Mandean priests or temples in the city.
There are other reasons life here has been difficult:
As an asylum-seeker registered with the U.N. refugee
agency, UNHCR, Daftar cannot work and so subsists on funding, refugees like Daftar have slipped through Tagreed Daftar,
a handout of 80 Jordanian dinars a month—an insuffi- the cracks. a Mandean
refugee awaiting
cient sum that often leaves only enough for bread after “Iraqi refugees are already forgotten,” says Joost resettlement in
housing expenses. And though she has been enrolled Hiltermann, the Middle East and North Africa program Jordan, fled Iraq with
in the U.N. resettlement program since last year, she director for the International Crisis Group. “Today, her family in 2015.
still has to undergo multiple interviews before even it’s Syrian refugees,” he adds. “It’s the flavor of
being considered for resettlement. the year.”
She has called UNHCR multiple times, but, she says, Later that afternoon, Daftar invites me (and two
“They just say, ‘Wait and we’ll call you.’” NGO employees) to her apartment, just a 10-min-
Jordan currently hosts more than 730,000 ute drive from the CARE center in Amman’s Hashmi
registered refugees, some 660,000 of whom are al-Shamali neighborhood. We walk into the living
Syrian, who get the bulk of the attention over those room that houses Daftar, her brother, two sisters, and
from Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, and Iraq, among other nephew. The apartment is furnished but decorated
places. Last year, the country launched a program to with an air of impermanence. Matching floral brown
give work permits to some Syrians and has taken steps couches form a semblance of a living room, but the
to provide Syrian children with free public education. floor remains uncarpeted. The furniture, she says,
But non-Syrian refugees cannot work legally, and their was given to them by neighbors who recently reset-
children have an even harder time getting access to tled in Europe. Her 6-year-old nephew plays a Miami
education. Vice video game on a tablet given to them by another
Aid workers in the region are aware of this tendency family that was resettled.
to prioritize Syrians as well. “So much of the interna- After almost two years in Amman, watching other
tional world is focused on Syrians,” says one inter- families move on to life beyond Jordan is something
national NGO employee working in Amman. “A lot Daftar seems to have begrudgingly accepted. Earlier,
of large-scale NGOs don’t program for non-Syrian as we were about to leave the center for her apartment,
refugees.” I asked her where she would like to live. The air-
To be sure, the Syrian refugee community is no small conditioner hummed in the silence that followed.
burden on the Jordanian economy. The World Bank She said she didn’t care where she would be resettled,
estimates that the influx of Syrians has cost Jordan just so long as there was a river nearby.—Ruby Mellen
RUBY MELLEN

more than $2.5 billion a year, about a quarter of the is a fellow at FOREIGN POLICY. This reporting was
government’s annual revenues. But with short atten- supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
tion spans and the constant need to capture crucial and made possible by CARE.

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 13
 the exchange
Why Do Some
Countries Get Away
With Taking Fewer
Refugees?
With the signing of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of
Refugees, the world put in place for the first time a system for
defining refugees, setting out their rights, and granting them
asylum. But in the face of the most dire refugee crisis since World
War II, even wealthy countries with the means and ability to support
those fleeing conflict are increasingly trying to close their doors.
Here, YUN SUN, a China expert at the Stimson Center in Washington,
and MARTIN SCHAIN, a professor emeritus of politics at New York
University, discuss why an international system designed to help
the world’s most vulnerable continues to fall short.
YUN SUN: The issue of refugees is very controversial
in China. The overwhelming majority of the Chinese
public seems to believe that China should not accept
foreign refugees. Many Chinese nationals would say,
“We had a one-child policy for the development of our
country, so we’re certainly not making the space for
refugees.” And reports about criminal activities and
the turbulence that refugees are said to have created
in Europe also alarm the Chinese. Apparently, they
believe refugees from the Middle East are nothing
but trouble. China is also a developing country and
so, almost subconsciously, does not believe it has the
inherent responsibility.
The Chinese official justification for inaction
is that the refugee crisis was created by internal
political turmoil in countries such as Libya, Syria,
and Afghanistan. China did not create those troubles.
Western countries sponsored the campaigns to
overthrow dictators that eventually led to civil wars
and refugee crises. So politically, China argues, to solve
the refugee crisis, we need to restore order in these
countries. China’s position is that it is making financial
contributions through UNHCR [the U.N. refugee
agency] and through bilateral arrangements, such
as one with the Syrian government for humanitarian
aid, or to make more resources available for refugee
settlement in other countries.
14 SEPT | OCT 2017
interview by KAVITHA SURANA
MARTIN SCHAIN: In the past, the United
States did seem to acknowledge that it had
a special responsibility to take in more ref-
ugees than other Western countries. What’s
different about the debate now is that it has
been so public and controversial. Basically,
President Donald Trump has looked at ref-
ugees as just another group of immigrants
who are far more dangerous to American
security than other immigrants may be.
And this really changes the conversation.
Because these are no longer people in need
but are framed as people who have chosen
to put themselves forward as refugees in
order to get into our country.
YS: The fundamental difference between
the United States and China is that the
United States is an immigrant country and
China is not. Chinese society contains eth-
nic diversity but not a large population
of integrated international immigrants.
The most recent refugees to come to China
are not seeking to stay. They’re seeking to
transit—and the United States and Canada
are two of the most popular destinations
for refugees.
Chinese foreign policy is highly reactive.
Unless there is a major problem, the
government does not take the initiative.
But if millions of refugees cross the
border in the event of internal collapse
or a conflict scenario in North Korea, it
will be an unprecedented refugee crisis,
and the Chinese government will have
to have a comprehensive policy. The
Chinese government has been doing the
contingency planning, but those details are
not revealed to the outside world. SUN: BROOKINGS INSTITUTION; SCHAIN: LA PIETRA DIALOGUES
MS: The distance between China and West-
ern countries on the refugee issue is shrink-
ing. Internationally, there’s no will to deal
with refugees because the politics in indus-
trialized countries is working against them.
We can see this in the Trump administra-
tion’s policy proposals, and the president’s
tweets, and in Western Europe, where
the Germans were regarded as exceed-
ingly brave for having considered the

YUN SUN
admission of almost a million refugees—
even though Germany has a population
of 82 million. The Germans could do it
because they had a strong government.
Certainly the British are not going to do
it. The French are reluctant. The Amer-
icans under the current administration
won’t even consider it. Which way are the
political winds blowing? They’re just blow-
ing in the wrong direction.
YS: Attitudes in the West may be worsen-
ing, but China basically just says “no” to
international refugees. Officially, China
has more than 300,000 refugees in the
country, but those are almost all ethnic
Chinese refugees who resettled during the
1979 Sino-Vietnamese War and are now de
facto integrated in the population. In 2015,
China only recognized 154 refugees and
641 asylum-seekers, according to UNHCR.
MS: The United States, on the other hand,
has annually resettled around 60,000 ref-
ugees at the recommendation of UNHCR.
Currently, this is about 2 percent of the 3.2
million or so refugees awaiting decisions
for asylum. It’s a very small percentage
of the 21 million under U.N. protection.
Yet the United States has accepted more
people from UNHCR lists than any other
country. And it also accepts people who
apply for asylum after entering the country.
YS: That surprises me—the United States
has a much more comprehensive sys-
tem. The Chinese policy is rather simple.
The handful of international refugees in China come
legally on visas and then seek refugee status. So they
have to legally already be there before they can apply
for refugee status through the UNHCR office, or they
are categorized as economic migrants. This is why
North Korean defectors seeking refugee status in China
are almost always repatriated back to North Korea:
China argues that these people are there illegally, and
therefore their status is a non-starter.
MS: All refugees coming into the United States after
World War II came in under special refugee legisla-
tion—passed specifically for “war brides,” for example,
or those fleeing communist countries in Eastern Europe
or those admitted under the Cuban Adjustment Act in
1966. A turning point came in 1979, when the United
States, Canada, Australia, and France led a Geneva con-
ference on refugees as large numbers of people were
leaving Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos, fleeing Amer-
ica’s communist enemies and dying at sea.
This narrative may sound familiar. It wasn’t the
Mediterranean Sea in this case. It was the aftermath
of the Vietnam War, and so we accepted almost half
of the 2.5 million refugees who had been our allies or
been displaced by our intervention.
What made that crisis different from what’s happening
now is that it was managed by international agreement.
We’ve had no such special conference convened with
regard to the Syrian refugee problem. Europe is now MARTIN SCHAIN
dealing with it. It is seen as not a U.S. problem.
YS: This issue is exceedingly difficult. When the 1951
refugee convention and its 1967 protocol were first
conceived of and signed, I don’t think the world, or
UNHCR for that matter, was expecting a refugee cri-
sis of the scale that we are seeing today.
MS: I agree. But there’s a certain irony to this. In many
Western countries, such as Germany, the populations
are actually shrinking. And many of the refugees who
are coming in have considerable skills and can make
contributions to the economies and societies of Europe.
These are difficult questions, but they’re not questions
of entry. They’re questions of integration and identity.
And the problem with the politics of identity is that it’s
not entirely rational. Q
Kavitha Surana is a fellow at FOREIGN POLICY. This
conversation has been condensed and edited for
publication.
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 15
aperture
photographs by HOSSEIN FATEMI
They Can’t
Go Home Again
Iranians living in America
reflect on their complicated
relationship with their
native country.

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 17

WHEN PHOTOGRAPHER HOSSEIN FATEMI first set out to doc-
ument the Iranian-American immigrant community,
not all of his subjects were happy about it.
Some 400,000 Iranians currently live in the United
States, making up a diverse group with different reli-
gions and varied politics. “The monarchists in Los Ange-
les who I photographed, they didn’t trust me because
I was born after the [1979] revolution,” Fatemi says
through a translator. Others wanted to know who had
already agreed to be photographed before saying yes.
Little by little, however, he made inroads. His goal is
now to collect 100 portraits of Iranians living in exile
around the United States.
Fatemi made a deliberate choice when selecting his
subjects. All of the people he photographed have in
one way or another found themselves on the wrong
side of the regime and are unwilling or unable to return
to Iran safely. He himself is one of those immigrants:
He was in the United States in 2013 when his agency
published images he’d taken in Iran over the course
of more than a decade depicting a side of his country
that the rest of the world rarely saw—women smok-
18 SEPT | OCT 2017
aperture
ing, young people at concerts. He received threatening
emails and decided not to return to Iran.
He has since settled in Chicago but has found
building a new life in the United States challenging,
in everything from navigating American immigra-
tion bureaucracy to maintaining a connection with his
homeland. “I wanted to meet the people who were in the
same sort of predicament as myself. I wanted to see how
their lives have evolved, what kind of life they’re living,
and what kind of experience they’re having,” he says.
His subjects—men and women, Jews, Muslims,
and members of the Bahai faith—all took him into
their homes, he says, and tried to give him guidance
on life in America. They did their best to convey that
he could continue to take pride in his culture in the
United States while trying to integrate. But they left
him with no illusions.
“They pretty much all told me that the first 10 years
are going to be the hardest years and that you just
have to persevere,” he says. “USA stands for ‘You Start
Again.’ For everything.”—Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer and
Jesse Chase-Lubitz
Kaveh Adel was born in Ahvaz, Iran,
and raised in Tehran. At the height of the
Iran-Iraq War in 1986, when Adel was
13 years old, his mother’s political
activities forced them to flee to the United
States. Now he works as a dentist and
cartoonist in Illinois. When he was young
and living in Iran, he wanted to write
and draw cartoons but avoided doing
so out of fear. Currently, he is working
on an autobiographical graphic novel. “I
see youth [in Iran] making the change
slowly, but through their own process—
not a bloody revolution or coup d’état or
bombing from another country,” he says.
Nima Taradji was born in Iran in 1963.
His family moved to France in the mid-
1970s, before the Iranian revolution, and
he immigrated to the United States in
1980. “You’re an aggregate product of the
places you’ve lived and the cultures that
affect you,” he says. After working as a
commercial photographer in Los Angeles,
he moved to Chicago in 1995 to attend
law school. After graduation, he opened a
law firm and worked as a trial lawyer until
2015, when he retired and resumed his
photography. “I don’t know if I can return
[to Iran],” he says. “It’s a risk that I’m not
willing to take.”
Golnaz Kamali was born in Shiraz, Iran.
In 1978, when she was 14 years old, her
family left Iran, fleeing persecution for
their Bahai faith. After living in India for
three years, the seven-member family
moved to the United States. Kamali earned
her doctor of pharmacy degree from the
University of New Mexico, specializing in
nuclear pharmacy. She currently lives in
Orange County, California, where she is an
active member of the Bahai community.
“I can practice my religion freely in this
country,” she says. “I appreciate my
freedom here. That’s the biggest thing.”
She is too scared to return to Iran.
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 19
aperture
Mojgan Mozaffari is an Iranian-born artist
living in Orange County. Before moving to
the United States, she exhibited her work in
Tehran. She eventually left Iran and became
a U.S. citizen in 2008. Her most recent
exhibition, Blue Rhythm—a mix of film
installations, paintings, and talks—explores
divorce law and the way mothers are treated
in Islamic courts in Iran, where, according to
Islamic law, divorced women lose custody of
their children when they turn 7. She stopped
returning to Iran in 2008. “I have a lot of
memories over there, but I can’t say if it
feels like home,” she says. “The U.S. is my
new home, and I love it. But the part of my
life I can’t deny is in Iran.”

Ahmad Batebi was born in Iran in 1977.

He was arrested and sentenced to death
after a photograph of him holding up a
shirt covered with the blood of a fellow
student during the 1999 student protests,
which were followed by a government
crackdown, appeared on the cover of the
Economist. The court’s decision was met
with widespread international protest, and
the sentence was commuted to 15 years
in prison. In 2008, Batebi, shown playing
with his son Benjamin, managed to
escape to the United States, where he was
granted asylum. “For [nearly] 10 years
of my life, I visited my family through a
prison window,” he says. “Now I visit them
through a computer screen.”

Elham Yaghoubian has been described

as Iran’s first female Jewish novelist. She
wrote her first book at the age of 16 and
was one of the founders of Marze Por
Gohar, a nationalist movement banned
in Iran. Yaghoubian moved to the United
States after participating in the 1999
student protests. After nearly 17 years of
living as an Iranian-American, she says,
“I’m Iranian, and I feel Iranian.” Today,
she lives in Los Angeles and manages a
language service company.

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 21
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landscape, to accommodate more
international players that want to
be located in a pro-business des-
tination, that offers competitive
advantages through unique mate-
rials, like bauxite and minerals; low
operational costs; and a strategic
location.
Creating a global logistics hub
Holness intends to make Jamaica
the Americas’ premier logistics
node and “the center of the Carib-
bean.” And the country is well
placed to achieve this – it is just
outside the Panama Canal, is the
third largest English-speaking
country in the west, has good tele-
coms infrastructure, and excellent
sea and air connections.
To build this global logis-
tics hub, and the economy in
general, the government is focus-
ing on public-private partnerships
(PPPs). As Michael L. Henry,
Minister of Transport and Mining,
says, “the PPP structure is the driv-
ing force of the country’s economic
development.” Jamaica is becom-
ing a leader in innovative PPPs
and has risen rapidly to fourth in
the PPP program index for Latin
America. A good example of a
new groundbreaking partnership
is its 51% ownership of bauxite
and alumina company Noranda
Bauxite. The other 49% is owned
by New Day Aluminum (Jamaica).
Dell notes that, “with regards to
Jamaica is emerging as a place of choice to live, work
and do business.”
Prime Minister Andrew Holness
the bauxite sector in particular, the
partnership between government
and mining companies is a good
model for companies worldwide,
across all sector stakeholders.”
Henry adds that this PPP has
“transformed our approach as to
how we can enhance our country’s
exports and revenues,” and he is
optimistic about future PPPs with
international businesses.
Specifically, the government is
“very eager to strengthen our trade
and cooperation with the US,” says
Holness, and it is already Jamai-
ca’s biggest source of trade and
remittances. “The two countries
have long enjoyed good relations.
We have good links and a good
framework to continue building on
IMAGE: Shutterstock - Atomazul
the relationships between the two
countries,” says Dell. As a result,
explains Holness, “we are trying to
make our investment environment
more consistent with what Ameri-
can investors expect.”
In terms of sectors to invest
in, the Prime Minister highlights
tourism, infrastructure and energy.
“There are significant new oppor-
tunities with energy and it is a good
example of how the US-Jamaica
relationship could be strength-
ened,” he says. Traditionally reliant
on oil, Jamaica is looking to move
into renewables. As well as helping
the environment, it would mean
industries like mining would be
less affected by oil price changes.
Dell confirms that his company
is already assessing options. “In
terms of energy, there are sustain-
able and green solutions. It is the
most significant opportunity. Very
little of the energy currently being
produced for our sector is renew-
able. New Day is in talks with
various potential partners about
diversifying our energy mix in this
area,” he says.
The continuing reforms and
innovative initiatives are gaining
international recognition, with the
country coming out of the global
financial crisis as a success story
and model for recovery. “Jamaica
is emerging as a place of choice to
live, work and do business,” asserts
Holness.

Noranda puts new life
into bauxite mining
A new, game-changing public-private partnership, shows how
Jamaica’s mining industry is getting back on track through a
more collaborative and creative focus, and partnership
Jamaica’s bauxite industry is back in
business, with new player Noranda
Bauxite/New Day Aluminum (Jamai-
ca) aggressively developing new cus-
tomers and markets, as it sets a new
path for a 50-plus-year-old bauxite
company and Jamaica’s only bauxite
exporter. The bauxite and alumina
industry was a fraction of its former
self, mainly due to reduced global
demand and pricing since 2009. Clo-
sure loomed for Noranda Bauxite, a
mining operation in St. Ann’s Parish
capable of producing up to 5.2 million
metric tons of bauxite ore per year. At
similar risk was the 1.2 million met-
ric tons per annum Noranda Alumi-
na refinery in Gramercy, Louisiana,
USA, consumer of half of the mine’s
production capacity. Up stepped
New Day Aluminum, an affiliate of
DADA Holdings, which purchased
the Noranda bauxite and alumina
operations in late 2016, avoiding the
closure of the facilities and initiating a
new path forward.
DADA Holdings is no stranger to
aluminum, with principals and indus-
try veterans David D’Addario, Monte
Schaefer, Thomas Robb and Robert
Noranda is aggressively looking for new markets, as it
has excess capacity and wants to ramp up its production.
Ericson having led the development
of the world’s third largest producer
of aluminum can stock for the bev-
erage and food industries. Their cre-
ative and entrepreneurial approach is
also becoming evident in their newest
venture.
In a groundbreaking public-pri-
vate partnership (PPP), the Jamaican
government and New Day Alumi-
num’s relationship extends beyond
Jamaica’s borders, as the government
will receive 17.33% of the combined
profits of the Jamaican bauxite op-
eration and the US alumina facility.
The company is extremely excited
about prospects in Jamaica and the
government’s approach to the part-
nership, and is working hard to de-
JAMAICA THE NEW ECONOMIC RECOVERY MODEL
Delroy Dell
VP and General Manager, Noranda Bauxite/New
Day Aluminum (Jamaica)
risk the business and position it for
growth. The government sees it as
a pioneering PPP and a great model
for future innovative partnerships.
Jamaica gains more than just profits,
as it has saved over 800 jobs and one
of the country’s largest earners of for-
eign exchange, which pumps about
$80 million into the economy every
year, via wages, taxes, royalties and
local purchases.
The new owners and managers
have been busy creating a new route
to excellence. Considerable amount
of funds in both the Jamaica and Lou-
isiana facilities to upgrade asset bases,
increase reliability and position the
business for long term sustainability.
The US refinery has increased chem-
ical-grade volume and customers, as
well as worldwide smelter-grade cus-
tomer numbers. It has also recently
announced a long-term supply agree-
ment with the largest US aluminum
smelting company, further expansion
of its chemical-grade business and the
introduction of new filter press tech-
nology to reduce costs and improve
its environmental footprint. In its
short time in Jamaica, the company
has exported over 300,000 tons of
bauxite to new customers in China
and India, and secured a location near
its operations to develop a Capesize
vessel-loading capability. Additionally,
it recently made a strategic commer-
cial arrangement with Concord Re-
sources Limited, to help expand glob-
al sales and logistics bandwidth for
smelter-grade alumina and bauxite.
What the new owners won’t
change is Noranda’s support of the
community and environment of St.
Ann, Jamaica, where bauxite has
been vital for the economy since the
1950s. The wide range of initiatives it
has set up includes micro-enterprise
business development programs, and
scholarships at secondary and tertiary
education levels.
Many of Noranda’s employees
are natives of St. Ann, as well as sec-
ond- and third-generation employees.
The company wants to leave a legacy
whereby every local child for genera-
tions to come is given the opportu-
nity to be successful in an industry
and company they are proud to be
Noranda Bauxite & Alumina Headquarters
1111 E. Airline Highway, Gramercy, LA 70052, USA
Telephone: +1 (225) 869- 2100
Email: info@norandaalumina.com
Noranda Bauxite
Port Rhoades, Discovery Bay, St. Ann, Jamaica, West Indies
Telephone: +1 (876) 973-2221 Email: info@norandabauxite.com
Sponsored Report
Top: Michael Henry - Minister
of Transport & Mining, David
D’Addario DADA Holdings
and Noranda CEO and Audley
Shaw - Minister of Finance
and Public Service, shake
hands.
Middle: A Noranda train filled
with bauxite ore.
Bottom: Noranda’s bauxite
facility in Jamaica.
associated with. Noranda is also at
the forefront of sustainable mining
in Jamaica. One of its major achieve-
ments, and a model for worldwide
mining operations, is its Greenhouse
Project, which has seen it build over
100 greenhouses on rehabilitated
mined lands. Local agriculture is
transformed, with farmers reporting
500% increases in harvests, that are
no longer affected by droughts and
other problems. The company also
rehabilitates land for agriculture,
farming and forestry, and has built
three large reservoirs to protect the
local area from drought.
The revitalized Noranda is a clear
indication of the rising strength and
sustainability of the company and the
country. Having overcome potential
closure, Noranda’s success shows
what is possible through collaborative
and creative partnerships between
government and the private sector.
2
Sponsored Report JAMAICA THE NEW ECONOMIC RECOVERY MODEL

in the next five years, earning

Tourism sees a remarkable upturn $5 billion for the economy and
directly employing 125,000 peo-
ple.”
in investments and opportunities To achieve this, his ministry
is focusing on five pillars for
growth: developing new geo-
graphical markets, creating di-
The Jamaican government’s continuing development of its tourism industry is making it versified products, investing in
an increasingly ideal location for investments in the sector human capital through training,
building new partnerships and
promoting investment.
Jamaica is the best holiday desti- These pillars are underpinned
nation in the Caribbean and the by the development of five “net-
12th best in the world, accord- works” – areas that research
ing to TripAdvisor. Tourism has suggests tourists most want
long been important to Jamaica’s to experience and that Jamaica
economy, but it is currently ex- would most benefit from im-
periencing rapid expansion and proving. “People travel to fulfill
2016 saw more than 3.84 million their passions,” explains Bart-
visitors to the country, bringing lett, “our mission is to build our
in $2.55 billion. In July, Edmund products around these.” The
Bartlett, Minister of Tourism, “networks” are gastronomy;
revealed that the sector’s earn- shopping; culture; health, well-
Edmund Bartlett Michael Campbell
ings for the first six months of Minister of Tourism Managing Director, Island Car Rentals
ness and medical tourism; and
2017 were estimated to be $1.84 knowledge-based tourism. All of
billion, over 8% up on the same lett, “in the last three years, we $110-million Excellence Oys- these need investment.
period in 2016. Visitor numbers have received roughly $1 billion ter Bay Hotel in Trelawny, the Bartlett points out that shop-
also rose – up 3.9% to 2.17 mil- and we are expecting 15-20,000 $100-million redevelopment of ping, for example, is very import-
lion. new rooms to become available the Dragon Bay Hotel in Port- ant to Chinese tourists and “in
That growth has been accom- over the next five to 10 years.” land and the $1-billion Karis- order to attract them, we need
panied by an unprecedented in- Examples of projects started in ma Group Sugar Cane Jamaica to build the facilities to cater to
crease in investments, says Bart- 2017 include the building of the resort development near Ocho them.” Jamaica has a rich heri-
Rios. tage in music, entertainment and
Bartlett puts the success down sports, but investment is needed
Airline at the centre of the Caribbean to the fact that his government in major new facilities and infra-
structure.
is “very bullish about inviting
Fly Jamaica Airways plans for growth investors and careful to ensure Similar investment is required
that they are welcome and appre- to take advantage of the coun-
Fly Jamaica Airways is taking advantage of the ciated.” try’s rich natural bio-diversity
Jamaican government’s Global Logistics Hub Michael Campbell, Manag- and enable the creation of a
Initiative, which aims to establish the country ing Director of local Island Car world-class nutraceutical and
as the premier logistics node for the Americas. Rentals, confirms that “it is a medical tourism sector.
The only jet airline based in the country, it is business-friendly environment, With the government having
considering to hold an initial public offering supported by the government.” introduced the legislative, reg-
on the Jamaica Stock Exchange to help it dou- According to Bartlett, “Jamai- ulatory and policy frameworks
ble its fleet. ca’s future relies on a strong and needed for attracting investors,
Sharing the government’s vision of making viable tourism sector.” He wants Campbell states “the focus now
Jamaica a regional transport hub, the airline to see “five million visitors with- is on the private sector to be the
wants to contribute to this by collaborating
with partners in other Caribbean countries to Captain Paul Ronald Reece
create multi-destination offers. “We are strate- Chairman & CEO
gically poised to do the work and have told the Fly Jamaica Airways Ltd. THE CARIBBEAN’S
government that we are ready to undertake it,” says Captain Paul Ronald LEADING INDEPENDENT
Reece, the company’s chairman and CEO. The award-winning airline cur- CAR RENTAL COMPANY
rently offers scheduled flights from Kingston, Georgetown, Toronto and
New York. It is also building its charter business, flying passengers all over
the Americas. Cargo services are another area that the company wants to
grow and it already handles large amounts of fresh and frozen agricultural
produce. As important as business opportunities, is safety. “The principle
of the airline is that you must have safe pilots and safe cabin crew,” Reece Island Car Rentals
17 Antigua Avenue
stresses. Fully compliant with US and Canadian regulations, ISLAND PEOPLE TAKE Kingston 10
the pilots and cabin attendants all do initial and recurrent
training at FAA approved training centers. BETTER CARE OF YOU Jamaica, W.I.
The prime minister wants to make Jamaica “the center of Tel: +1 (876) 929-5875
the Caribbean” and Fly Jamaica Airways intends to be at the icar@cwjamaica.com
www.islandcarrentals.com
heart of this development. www.fly-jamaica.com

3
 JAMAICA THE NEW ECONOMIC RECOVERY MODEL Sponsored Report

engine of growth.” Bartlett agrees and “the Caribbean’s Leading who expects the company’s turn- must exceed them at all times.”
that “the private sector has a role Independent Car Rental Compa- over to be about $15.7 million When asked if he would ad-
to play by creating the products ny” since 2014, it is the market this year. vise people to invest in Jamaican
that are required and public-pri- leader in the country by a long Car rentals are increasing, as tourism, Campbell says, “the
vate partnerships (PPPs) are cen- way. “If you take all the multina- the quality of the country’s roads opportunities here are unbeliev-
tral to the sustainable growth of tionals in Jamaica and add them grows, but Campbell states that able. Any business, I don’t care
tourism.” all together – we are still bigger “the key to Island Car Rentals’ what it is, will make a profit. As
As well as investments in the than them. Avis is the second success is service, service, ser- long as you are willing to offer a
five tourism “networks”, Bartlett largest player with 450 cars. We vice. You must always, not only good service and to run it cor-
adds “we need PPPs for airport run over 1,300,” says Campbell, meet clients’ expectations, you rectly – it will make money.“
expansion, cruise liner ports, ho-
tels and lifestyle developments.”
Tenders for some of these
projects are already in progress
– in February, for example, appli-
cations were requested to devel-
op and manage Jamaica’s second
largest airport, Norman Stanley
International Airport, with a con-
tract to be awarded in December.
Bartlett also stresses that he is
keen on collaborating, rather that
competing, with other countries
in the region. “We believe that if
we could market the Caribbean
as a single destination, one that

“Public-private There’s no place like JAMAICA. It’s the spirit of our people,
partnerships are the aroma of our food, the sound of Reggae and the vision
central to the of green hills peering down on blue water. There is a feeling
sustainable growth of you get only in JAMAICA. That feeling that all is right in the
tourism.” world. And nobody does it better.
Edmund Bartlett,
Minister of Tourism

would offer a value proposition

that states ‘buy one and get all’ –
it would be a game changer.”
He is proposing joint market-
ing programs, and negotiating
multi-drop or multi-stop pack-
ages with large airlines to access
emerging tourist markets in
Asia, Africa, South America and
Eastern Europe. “This is a far
more exciting arrangement than
currently exists,” he says, “it will
boost yields for the airlines and
enable the security of route ar-
rangements.”
As tourism is embraced by
more and more countries as a
core part of their economy, Bart-
lett says Jamaica has to be inno-
vative, and create new business
models and new experiences that
will win over visitors.

Local company in pole position

One Jamaican company that has
achieved success through taking
exactly that approach is Camp-
bell’s Island Car Rentals. Named WWW.VISITJAMAICA.COM
by the World Travel Awards as
“Jamaica’s Leading Car Rental
Company” every year since 2011

For further information please visit www. prisma-reports.com 4

 THIS LAND
IS THEIR LAND
IMMIGRATION IS INEVITABLE. WHEN WILL THE WEST LEARN
THAT IT PROMISES SALVATIONNOT DESTRUCTION?
 ESSAY BY SUKETU MEHTA | ILLUSTRATION BY OWEN FREEMAN

ON OCT. 1, 1977, MY PARENTS, MY TWO SISTERS, AND I BOARDED A LUFTHANSA PLANE

in the dead of night in Bombay. We were dressed in new, heavy,
uncomfortable clothes and had been seen off by our entire extended
family, who had come to the airport with garlands and lamps; our
foreheads were anointed with vermilion. We were going to America.
¶ To get the cheapest tickets, our travel agent had arranged a circuitous
journey in which we disembarked in Frankfurt, then were to take an internal
flight to Cologne, and onward to New York. In Frankfurt, the German border
officer scrutinized the Indian passports for my father, my sisters, and me
and stamped them. Then he held up my mother’s passport with distaste.
“You are not allowed to enter Germany,” he said.

It was a British passport, given to citizens of Indian
origin who had been born in Kenya before indepen-
dence from the British, like my mother. But in 1968
the Conservative Party parliamentarian Enoch Powell
made his “Rivers of Blood” speech, warning against
taking in brown- and black-skinned people, and Par-
liament passed an act summarily depriving hundreds
of thousands of British passport holders in East Africa
of their right to live in the country that conferred their
nationality. The passport was literally not worth the
paper it was printed on; it had become, in fact, a mark
of Cain. The German officer decided that because of
her uncertain status, my mother might somehow des-
ert her husband and three small children to make a
break for it and live in Germany by herself.
So we had to leave directly from Frankfurt. Seven
hours and many airsickness bags later, we stepped out
into the international arrivals lounge at John F. Ken-
nedy Airport. A graceful orange-and-black-and-yellow
Alexander Calder mobile twirled above us against the
backdrop of a huge American flag, and multicolored
helium balloons dotted the ceiling, souvenirs of past
greetings. As each arrival was welcomed to the new
land, the balloons rose to the ceiling to make way for
the newer ones. They provided hope to the newcomers:
Look, in a few years, with luck and hard work, you, too,
can rise here. All the way to the ceiling.
OR MOST OF OUR HISTORY AS A SPECIES, since we
evolved from being hunter-gatherers to pas-
toralists, humans have not been attuned to the
radical, continuous movement made possible
by modernity. We have mostly stayed in one
place, in our villages. Between 1960 and 2015,
the overall number of migrants tripled, to 3.3 percent
of the world’s population. Today, a quarter of a billion
people live in a country different from the one they
were born in—one out of every 30 humans. If all the
migrants were a nation by themselves, we would con-
stitute the fifth-largest country in the world.
The signal challenge for the world’s richest countries
in the 21st century is accommodation of a tremendously
variegated influx of migrants. As climate change and

28 SEPT | OCT 2017

political conflict drive ever greater numbers of people
from the villages and war zones of the world, the dis-
placed seek sanctuary anywhere they can find it. You
think 5 million Syrian refugees are a problem now?
What happens when Bangladesh gets flooded and 18
million Bangladeshis have to seek dry land?
At the same time, there has been a dramatic rise in
income inequality. Today, the eight richest individu-
als, all men, own more than does half of the planet,
or 3.6 billion people, combined. The concentration of
wealth also leads to a concentration of political power
and the redirection of outrage against inequality away
from the elites and toward the migrants. When the
peasants come for the rich with pitchforks, the saf-
est thing for the rich to do is to say, “Don’t blame us,
blame them”—pointing to the newest, the weakest.
What is the difference between the refugee and the
migrant? It is a strategic choice of words, to be made
at the border when you’re asked what you are; etymol-
ogy is destiny. You could be sent back if you’re just an
“economic” migrant, but you could also be shunned
and feared if you’re identified as a refugee. Whether
you’re running from something or running toward
something, you’re on the run.
The refugee, as the Polish sociologist Zygmunt
Bauman said in a 2016 interview with the New York
Times, brings with him the specter of chaos and law-
lessness that has forced him to leave his homeland.
The economic and political disorder that was caused
by the orderly rich countries when they sloughed off
their redundant populations into colonies and then
retreated, leaving behind ill-defined “nation-states.”
The refugee, though, suffers from statelessness. He
cannot “go home” because his home has been wrecked
by banditry or desertification.
So, bearing the burden of his failed state, he comes
knocking on the West’s doors, and if he finds one of them
ajar, he slips in, not welcomed but barely tolerated. He
may have been a surgeon in his alleged nation, but here
he is ready to perform any task—clean the bedpans in
a hospital where he is more qualified than most of the
doctors—but can never hope to be one of them because
of the laws protecting their guild from people like him.
He must be abject, renouncing claims to an equitable
share of the wealth of his new habitation or to any kind
of political franchise. All he can hope for is a measure of
personal security and the opportunity to remit enough
money back to his family so that they can send the eldest
boy to a private school near the refugee camp in which
they await their chance to be reunited with their father,
brother, husband in his marginal existence.
We reject the refugee in the orderly nations because
he is the sum of our worst fears, the looming future of
the 21st century brought in human form to our bor-
ders. Because he wasn’t necessarily impoverished
in the country he came from—he might have been
a businessman or an engineer just a year ago, before
everything changed—he is a reminder that the same
thing could happen to us, too. Everything could change
radically, irrevocably, suddenly.
HE WEST IS BEING DESTROYED, not by migrants but
by the fear of migrants.
And yet the world’s richest countries can’t fig-
ure out what they want to do about migration;
they want some migrants and not others. In
2006, the Dutch government tried to make itself
unattractive to potential Muslim and African migrants
by creating a film, To the Netherlands, that included
scenes of gay couples kissing and topless women sun-
bathing. The film was a study aid for a $433 compul-
sory entrance exam for people immigrating for family
reunification. Except those making more than $54,000
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 29
 a year, or citizens of rich countries like the United States,
for whom the requirement was waived. The film also
showed the run-down neighborhoods where immi-
grants might end up living. There were interviews with
immigrants who called the Dutch “cold” and “distant.”
The film warned of traffic jams, problems finding a job,
and flooding in the low-lying country.
In 2011, the city of Gatineau, Quebec, published a
“statement of values” for new immigrants that cautioned
against “strong odors emanating from cooking,” which
might offend Canadians. It also informed migrants that,
in Canada, it was not OK to bribe city officials. Also, that
it was best to show up punctually for appointments. It
followed a guide published by another Quebec town,
Hérouxville, which warned immigrants that stoning
someone to death in public was expressly forbidden. The
warning was duly noted by the town’s sole immigrant
family, which refrained from stoning its women in public.
In Germany, the country’s “welcome culture” changed
in one season, from that guilt-expiating September in
2015 to “rapist refugees go home” after the Cologne
attacks that same New Year’s Eve. Of all refugees, the
most frightening is the womanless male migrant, his eyes
hungrily scanning the exposed flesh of the white woman.
The words the tabloids and right-wing politicians use to
describe these Afghan or Moroccan men are similar to
terminology used to describe black men in the United
States in the early 20th century: as sex-hungry deviants.
In 1900, South Carolina Sen. Benjamin Tillman spoke
from the U.S. Senate floor: “We have never believed him
[the black man] to be the equal of the white man, and
we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives
and daughters without lynching him.”
Fast-forward to 2017: “Pro-rata, Sweden has taken
more young male migrants than any other country in
Europe,” said Nigel Farage, a British member of the
European Parliament, in February. “And there has been
a dramatic rise in sexual crime in Sweden—so much
so that Malmo is now the rape capital of Europe.” This
claim was quickly debunked: By 2015, the year Sweden
took in a record number of asylum-seekers, sex crimes
decreased 11 percent compared with the year before.
While it is true that there are horrific stories of orga-
nized rings of rapists with immigrant backgrounds—
such as a group of Pakistanis in Rotherham, in the
U.K., who groomed teenage girls for sex—there’s no
evidence that immigrants overall rape or steal at rates
higher than the general population. Mug shots of dark-
skinned criminals, whether Moroccan or Mexican,
30 SEPT | OCT 2017
somehow strike more terror in the Western imagi-
nation than those of homegrown white rapists. The
fear is primal, tribal: They’re coming for our women.
Driven by this fear, voters are electing, in country
after country, leaders who are doing incalculable long-
term damage: Donald Trump in the United States,
Viktor Orban in Hungary, Andrzej Duda and his Law
and Justice party in Poland. It was fear of migrants
that led British voters to vote for Brexit, the biggest
own goal in the country’s history.
The phobia of migrants can be the greatest threat to
democracy. Look at Germany under Chancellor Angela
Merkel, with its flourishing economy and democratic
institutions, and then take a look at its neighbor Poland,
whose ruling party just attempted to take over its judi-
ciary, or Hungary, where Orban has destroyed the coun-
try’s free press. It shows that when countries safeguard
the rights of their minorities, they also safeguard, as
a happy side effect, the rights of their majorities. The
obverse is also true: When they don’t safeguard the rights
of their minorities, every other citizen’s rights are in peril.
AST SUMMER, I DROVE OUT to the Hungarian-
Serbian border with a volunteer for a church-
based organization providing supplies to refu-
gees. I had been in Hungary for a week studying
its attempt to win the crown of Europe’s most
hostile country for refugees. All over the country,
there were blue posters bearing questions like, “Did you
know? Since the beginning of the immigration crisis,
more than 300 have died in terrorist attacks in Europe,”
and “Did you know? Brussels wants to settle a whole
city’s worth of illegal immigrants in Hungary,” and
“Did you know? Since the beginning of the immigra-
tion crisis, the harassment of women has risen sharply
in Europe.” The government was urging its citizens to
vote in a referendum against accepting an EU quota
of refugees: 1,294 refugees in 2016, for a country with
almost 10 million people.
We crossed the Serbian border at Roszke and spent
four hours looking for a road to get to the cluster of
tents we’d seen right by the side of the highway near
the border. We drove on dirt roads in the depopulated
countryside, past orchards of apple, peach, and plum
trees. From the car window, I picked a purple plum off
a branch. It wasn’t quite ripe yet.
A woman told us which road to take to the “Paki-
stani camp.” We rattled down a rutted road by the
superhighway and came up to the camp. It was an
instant South Asian slum, but with backpacking tents
instead of plastic sheets, just like the Sziget music fes-
tival I’d just come from. The festival had been filled
with golden children, the flowers of white Europe, who,
on payment of the $363-per-person entry fee, could
luxuriate in their own tent city for a week.
There were children in the refugee camp, too, but
younger and brown: preteens and toddlers on the
run with their families. They played cricket amid the
garbage. It cost 1 euro to use the toilet at the border.
So people from the long lines of cars waiting to cross
used the bushes instead, which served as the migrants’
temporary home, where they slept and ate, waiting for
the doors of Europe to open.
We opened the trunk of our car and handed out water
bottles, chocolates, socks, and underwear. A group of
men came over; when they identified me as Indian,
they shook my hand and spoke to me in Urdu about
their travels. One of them was from the Pakistani city of
Lahore, where there were bombings and killings. He’d
been here for just a few days. The Hungarians wouldn’t
let him in even though he had no desire to stay in that
country; he wanted to go on to Germany, Sweden. The
Serbians wouldn’t let him go back to Macedonia. “It’s
closed in the front. It’s closed from the back,” he said.
A large black vehicle pulled up, and two big Ser-
bian policemen dressed in black stepped out. “Please
go,” they told us; we didn’t have official permission to
visit the camp. They reminded us that the Hungarians
were worse than the Serbians: “They have drones and
cameras” monitoring the camp from the other side of
the border fence.
For the few refugees who make it over the fence, it’s
no promised land. At the time, any migrant caught
within roughly five miles of the border would be
arrested and deported. The Hungarian provision has
HAVING BUILT UP THEIR ECONOMIES WITH
OUR RAW MATERIALS AND OUR LABOR,
THEY ASKED US TO GO BACK AND WERE
SURPRISED WHEN WE DID NOT.
since been expanded to include migrants detained
in any part of the country. In November 2015, Orban
told Politico, “All the terrorists are basically migrants.”
Like much else coming out of his mouth, this state-
ment was factually wrong: Many of the perpetrators of
terrorism, in Europe and elsewhere, are native-born,
like Timothy McVeigh and Anders Behring Breivik.
Eight months later, he turned the statement on its
head, broadening it: All migrants are terrorists. “Every
single migrant poses a public security and terror risk.”
A
N ESSENTIAL PREREQUISITE TO DENYING ENTRANCE
to the migrant is to posit a dualism, a clash
of civilizations, in which one is far superior
to the other.
In July, U.S. President Donald Trump deliv-
ered a speech in Poland about what distin-
guishes Western civilization:
“Today, the West is also confronted by the powers
that seek to test our will, undermine our confidence,
and challenge our interests.… The world has never
known anything like our community of nations.
“We write symphonies. We pursue innovation. We cele-
brate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions
and customs, and always seek to explore and discover
brand-new frontiers. We reward brilliance. We strive for
excellence and cherish inspiring works of art that honor
God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to
free speech and free expression. We empower women as
pillars of our society and of our success. We put faith and
family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of
our lives.… And above all, we value the dignity of every
human life, protect the rights of every person, and share
the hope of every soul to live in freedom. That is who we
are. Those are the priceless ties that bind us together as
nations, as allies, and as a civilization.”
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 31
 All hail Western civilization, which gave the world
the genocide of the Native Americans, slavery, the
Inquisition, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and global
warming. How hypocritical this whole debate about
migration really is.
The rich countries complain loudly about migration
from the poor ones. This is how the game was rigged:
First they colonized us and stole our treasure and pre-
vented us from building our industries. After plunder-
ing us for centuries, they left, having drawn up maps in
ways that ensured permanent strife between our com-
munities. Then they brought us to their countries as
“guest workers”—as if they knew what the word “guest”
meant in our cultures—but discouraged us from bring-
ing our families.
Having built up their economies with our raw mate-
rials and our labor, they asked us to go back and were
surprised when we did not. They stole our minerals
and corrupted our governments so that their corpo-
rations could continue stealing our resources; they
fouled the air above us and the waters around us, mak-
ing our farms barren, our oceans lifeless; and they
were aghast when the poorest among us arrived at
their borders, not to steal but to work, to clean their
shit, and fuck their men.
Still, they needed us. They needed us to fix their
computers and heal their sick and teach their kids,
so they took our best and brightest, those who had
been educated at the greatest expense of the strug-
gling states they came from, and seduced us again to
work for them. Now, again, they ask us not to come,
desperate and starving though they have rendered us,
because the richest among them need a scapegoat.
This is how the game is now rigged.
In 2015, Shashi Tharoor, the former U.N. undersec-
retary-general for communications and public infor-
mation, gave a compelling Oxford Union speech that
made the case for (symbolic) reparations owed by
Britain to India. “India’s share of the world economy
when Britain arrived on its shores was 23 percent. By
the time the British left, it was down to below 4 per-
cent. Why?” he asked. “Simply because India had been
governed for the benefit of Britain. Britain’s rise for
200 years was financed by its depredations in India.”
Tharoor’s speech reminded me of the time my
grandfather was sitting in a park in suburban London.
An elderly British man came up to him and wagged a
finger at him. “Why are you here?” the man demanded.
“Why are you in my country?”
32 SEPT | OCT 2017
“We are the creditors,” responded my grandfather,
who was born in India, spent his working years in Kenya,
and was now retired in London. “You took all our wealth,
our diamonds. Now we have come to collect.”
IF YOU BELIEVE YOU’RE A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD,
you’re a citizen of nowhere,” proclaimed Brit-
ish Prime Minister Theresa May in October 2016.
But it was only in the early 20th century that
the modern, convoluted superstructure of pass-
ports and visas came about, on a planet where
porous borders had been a fact of life for years beyond
count. Migration is like the weather: People will move
from areas of high pressure to those of low pressure.
And so they will keep coming, in boats and on bicy-
cles, whether you want them or not—because they
are the creditors.
Why are Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and
Salvadorans desperate to move north, to come to U.S.
cities to work as dishwashers and cleaning ladies? It’s
because Americans sell them guns and buy their drugs.
Their homicide figures are indicative of a civil war.
So they move to the cause of their misery; they, too,
are the creditors. If you don’t like them moving here,
don’t buy drugs.
Why are Syrians moving? Not for the lights of Broad-
way or the springtime charms of Unter den Linden. It
is because the West—particularly, the Americans and
the British—invaded Iraq, an illegal and unnecessary
war that exacerbated a four-year drought linked to
global warming and set in motion the process that
destroyed the entire region. They have reaped what
the West has sown. If there were any justice, America
would be forced to take in every Arab displaced from
his or her home because of that war. The 1,600-acre
Bush family ranch in Texas would be filled with tents
hosting Iraqis and Syrians. You break it, you own it.
The most burdened hosts, though, are the ones
that have had a much smaller role than the United
States in creating the problem. In 2016, Lebanon, with
a population of 6.2 million, hosted more than 1.5 mil-
lion refugees. Eighty-four percent of refugees are in
the developing world. The Trump administration has
moved to reduce the U.S. refugee count from a pro-
posed 110,000 to 50,000 in 2017 and may further slash
the program next year. Turkey, by contrast, with a pop-
ulation a quarter of the size, has more than 3 million
registered Syrians living inside its borders.
WE REJECT THE REFUGEE IN THE ORDERLY
NATIONS BECAUSE HE IS THE SUM OF
OUR WORST FEARS, THE LOOMING FUTURE
OF THE 21ST CENTURY BROUGHT IN
HUMAN FORM TO OUR BORDERS.
It is every migrant’s dream to see the tables turned, to
see long lines of Americans and Britons in front of the
Bangladeshi or Mexican or Nigerian Embassy, begging
for a residence visa. My mentor, the distinguished Kan-
nada-language writer U.R. Ananthamurthy, was once
invited to Norway to give a talk at a literary festival. But
the Norwegian government wouldn’t give him a visa
until the last minute, demanding that he produce tes-
timonials and bank statements and evidence that he
wasn’t going to stay in the country. When he finally got
to Oslo, the Indian ambassador threw a party for him.
“Is it easy for Norwegians to get an Indian visa?”
Ananthamurthy asked the ambassador.
“Oh, yes, we make it really easy for them.”
“Why should it be easy?” my mentor demanded.
“Make it difficult!”
Y OWN FAMILY HAS MOVED ALL OVER THE EARTH,
from India to Kenya to England to the United
States and back again—and it is still mov-
ing. One of my grandfathers left rural Guja-
rat for Calcutta in the salad days of the 20th
century; my other grandfather, living a half-
day’s bullock-cart ride away, left soon after for Nairobi.
In Calcutta, my paternal grandfather joined his older
brother in the jewelry business; in Nairobi, my mater-
nal grandfather began his career, at 16, sweeping the
floors of his uncle’s accounting office. Thus began my
family’s journey from the village to the city. It was, I
now realize, less than a hundred years ago.
Enoch Powell’s 1968 speech was aimed at people
like my family, particularly my mother’s—East African
Asians who were beginning to migrate to the country
of their citizenship. He forecast doom for an England
that would be foolish enough to take them: “It is like
watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its
own funeral pyre.… As I look ahead, I am filled with
foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River
Tiber foaming with much blood.’”
A half-century later, the Thames is not foaming over
with blood. It’s actually the opposite. The East African
Asian refugee community—Christians, Hindus, Muslims,
Parsis, and Sikhs—is one of the wealthiest communities
of any color in the U.K.; their educational achievements
eventually outran those of native-born whites.
The Hudson is not foaming over with blood, either.
“In the past decade, population growth, including immi-
gration, has accounted for roughly half of the potential
economic growth rate in the United States, compared
with just one-sixth in Europe, and none in Japan,” the
analyst Ruchir Sharma points out in the New York Times.
“[I]f it weren’t for the boost from babies and immigrants,
the United States economy would look much like those
supposed laggards, Europe and Japan.”
Countries that accept immigrants, like Canada, are
doing better than countries that don’t, like Japan. But
whether Trump or May or Orban likes it or not, immi-
grants will keep coming, to pursue happiness and a better
life for their children. To the people who voted for them:
Do not fear the newcomers. Many are young and will pay
the pensions for the elderly, who are living longer than
ever before. They will bring energy with them, for no one
has more enterprise than someone who has left their dis-
tant home to make the difficult journey here, whether
they’ve come legally or not. And given basic opportu-
nities, they will be better behaved than the youth in the
lands they move to, because immigrants in most countries
have lower crime rates than the native-born. They will
create jobs. They will cook and dance and write in new
and exciting ways. They will make their new countries
richer, in all senses of the word. The immigrant armada
that is coming to your shores is actually a rescue fleet.Q
SUKETU MEHTA (@suketumehta) is the author of
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 33
HIGHWAY
 T H E M I G R AT I O N I S S U E

HELL

THROUGH

THE HUMANSMUGGLING
ROUTE ACROSS THE
SAHARA MAY HAVE
BEEN THE DEADLIEST
ON EARTH. THEN EUROPE
MADE THE JOURNEY EVEN
MORE TREACHEROUS
BY TRYING TO
SHUT IT DOWN.
STORY BY TY MC CORMICK
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NICHOLE SOBECKI

LI LEANED INTO THE ACCELERATOR and squinted

into the darkness. It was 3 a.m. on the south-
ern edge of the Sahara, still another three days’
drive through dizzying heat and shifting sand
dunes to get to the border with Libya. He was
doing 60 miles per hour with the headlights
off, maneuvering the black Toyota Hilux around steep
ravines and past rocky outcroppings by starlight in
order to avoid detection. In the back, 25 Europe-bound
migrants, all of them from Nigeria, clung to each other
and to a handful of wooden poles that were wedged
into the open bed of the truck.
A solemn 33-year-old with stained teeth and heavy
bags under his eyes, Ali had made the perilous trip
to Libya more than 100 times before—but never by
this route. A few months prior, after Niger’s gov-
ernment struck a deal with the European Union to
shut down one of the world’s most heavily trafficked bilities of what he might encounter when he felt the
human-smuggling routes, the army had begun inter- ground fall away and the vehicle pitch to the side. For
cepting convoys of migrants. The soldiers arrested the a moment, he was airborne. Then the truck hit the
drivers and impounded their trucks. Sometimes, Ali ground with crushing force, careening to a halt on
and other drivers said, they opened fire on vehicles its side at the bottom of a gully he had missed in the
that tried to flee, aiming for tires but hitting people as darkness. He heard the groans before he wriggled him-
well. So the drivers stopped using the main road across self free from the wreckage. Then he saw the trail of
the desert, a well-worn national route that ran more people thrown from the truck at odd intervals behind
than 600 miles to the Libyan border, and forged their him. Two of them lay prostrate under a 50-gallon fuel
own paths across the vast and uninhabited Sahara. tank. Their bodies were still.
Each time he crested a dune, Ali imagined the army Shaken but unhurt, Ali pulled out his Thuraya sat-
lying in wait. He had long dreaded desert bandits, noto- ellite phone and called a friend in Agadez, the age-old
rious for carjacking travelers along the old national caravan city in Niger that has become inextricably
route and then leaving them to die of thirst or exposure. linked with the modern migrant trade. He gave the
Now he imagined new ways to suffer at the hands of friend his coordinates so that he could send a search
a military that had once profited from human smug- party and then fished a trowel out of the truck. As
gling by levying an unofficial tax on each vehicle but the injured migrants looked on, he buried the two
which had recently begun to hunt drivers like Ali with dead Nigerians in a shallow grave in the sand. “I don’t
the same urgency that it pursued al Qaeda militants. remember their names,” Ali said. “There are too many
Ali’s mind was running wild with terrifying possi- who come and go. I can’t keep them in my head.”

36 SEPT | OCT 2017

 NTIL A LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR AGO, Agadez was
the epicenter of massive waves of migration
from Africa that began in 2011, when the fall
of Libya’s dictatorship opened a clear path
through weak and failing states to Europe’s
southern border. In 2016, a record 181,000 peo-
ple arrived on Italy’s Mediterranean coast. Most of
them were sub-Saharan Africans fleeing poverty, war,
and oppression. More than half of them likely traveled
through Agadez on their way.
Comprising a dense warren of mud-brick com-
pounds that bear the same shade of cocoa brown as
the surrounding Sahara, Agadez has been a place of
exchange for more than 600 years. Like Timbuktu in
neighboring Mali, it was a center of Islamic learning
in the Middle Ages and an important transit point
for caravan traders. But whereas the cargo of old was
gold, salt, and slaves, now it is weapons, narcotics,
and migrants. The trade touches almost everyone in
the city, whether they are directly involved or living
off the service industries that have developed around PREVIOUS SPREAD:
it. Grocers, hoteliers, the police—all of them are to Migrants bound for
Libya crowd into a
some extent dependent on this illicit flow of people Toyota pickup truck
and goods. Before the crackdown began, the Nige- on the edge of the
rien army openly escorted the smugglers’ convoys Sahara. LEFT: Trucks
carrying migrants
into the desert in exchange for a share of the profits. leave Agadez, Niger,
Sometimes hundreds of Toyota Hiluxes made the headed for the open
crossing in a single day. desert. RIGHT: Men
pray before they
In its heyday as a smugglers’ paradise, from 2013 start the treacherous
to 2016, Agadez was crawling with profiteers who had journey across the
money to burn. They would flock to the bars and night- desert from Agadez
to Libya.
clubs, Tuaregs and Toubous in flowing traditional
jalabias mixing with Nigeriens of other ethnicities
in high-tops and skinny jeans, dancing and draining
$4 cans of Heineken until the call to prayer echoed
through the city at dawn. But when I visited in May, the
city no longer felt like a freewheeling frontier boom-
town. Market stalls sat empty in the 110-degree heat
while drivers lounged all day in their yellow three-
wheeled taxis without scoring a fare. The nightclub at
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 37
38 SEPT | OCT 2017
 ABOUT THIS STORY

With tens of millions of migrants and refugees expected to arrive in Europe

in the coming decades, in addition to the million-plus who have arrived in
each of the last two years, the European Union is pouring billions of dollars
into countering migration at its source—mostly in impoverished and
war-torn countries in Africa. It is funding development projects, border
security, and detention facilities, where migrants are held, often in abysmal
conditions, until they can be returned home. This piece is part of an eight-
part FP investigation into the unintended consequences of these “pay-to-
stay” agreements, designed to prevent African migrants from making the
perilous voyage to Europe. Read the complete series at FOREIGNPOLICY.COM.

the Hotel de la Paix, a garish modern fortress rumored

to have been financed by Muammar al-Qaddafi, still
opened each night around midnight, the purr of a
diesel generator audible over the rollicking pulse of
Tuareg music. But every time I went in, the place was
mostly empty.
The collapse of Agadez’s economy was just one of
the unintended consequences of Europe’s bid to halt
the flood of unwanted migrants and refugees toward
its shores. In 2015, as the European Union was strug-
gling to cope with what would amount to a record
1.3 million asylum-seekers that year—a 122 percent
increase from 2014—EU officials held a series of emer-
gency talks with African leaders. In November of that
year, they announced a $1.9 billion EU Emergency
Trust Fund for Africa designed to combat the root
causes of migration, including poverty and conflict.
The EU also struck bilateral agreements with several
African countries that migrants depart from and travel
through on their way to Europe, aiming to strengthen
border controls and disrupt smuggling networks. It
designated Niger a priority country as part of a part-
nership framework agreement it made with the gov-
ernment in 2016, paving the way for a pledge of $633
million in exchange for stopping the flow of migrants
through its borders.
In addition to funding development projects
designed to wean the economy off trafficking, the
EU, along with some of its member states, delivered
training and equipment to Niger’s security forces to
help them clamp down on smugglers. Soon the same
army that once escorted smugglers to Libya was put-
ting them behind bars to be sentenced under a new Migrant laborers
anti-trafficking law passed with the encouragement crowd onto the back
of European governments. of an old Mercedes-
Benz truck bound for
From behind a broad wooden desk stacked with gold mines in Niger’s
files, Yahaya Godi, then the secretary-general for the far north.

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 39
 governorate of Agadez, explained his government’s
abrupt change of heart. “We must fight against migra-
tion and human trafficking because it has many conse-
quences,” he told me. “For instance, there is insecurity.
It may also be connected to terrorism or the traffic in
weapons.”
Surrounded on all sides by conflict and instabil-
ity—the country shares borders with Nigeria, Mali,
and Libya, all of which harbor significant terrorist
threats—Niger has positioned itself as a key counter-
terrorism partner for Western nations, including the
United States and France, both of which have mili-
tary bases in the country. As a result, it has received
hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance
from those nations. The migration crisis has presented
Niger with a similar opportunity to line its coffers, and
it has happily adopted Europe’s view of human smug-
glers as a threat to regional stability.
“It’s very impressive how they fight for security,”
said Ambassador Raul Mateus Paula, the head of the
EU delegation in Niger, when I went to see him in Nia-
mey, the capital. “This is very, very important because
they are in the middle of problems: Libya, Mali, and
Nigeria. So they have to increase dramatically their
security expenditures. That’s one of the reasons why
the European Union is making a huge effort of bud-
get support.”
Paula seemed pleased with the government’s efforts
to halt migration so far. He pointed to the dramatic drop
in migrants recorded transiting through Niger en route
to Libya and Algeria, key jumping-off points to Europe,
as evidence that the partnership is working. Between
February and May 2016, the International Organiza-
tion for Migration (IOM), which has received funding
from the EU to open transit centers where migrants are
encouraged to return home, recorded 116,347 “outgo-
ing” migrants in Niger. During the same period this
year, it recorded less than a quarter of that number. In
press releases, the EU has touted the number of smug-
glers arrested and trucks impounded by authorities. “I
think that they made very, very important reforms,”
Paula said. “And I think we have to keep working with
them, support them, to fight terrorism [and] traffickers.”
The actual impact of Europe’s intervention in Niger
is less clear. Since the crackdown began, smugglers
have mostly stopped passing through established out-
posts and way stations, including those where IOM
monitors the flow of migrants. This raises the pos-
sibility that the organization is underestimating the
40 SEPT | OCT 2017
number of migrants still passing through Niger, per-
haps by a significant margin. That possibility seems
even more likely in light of the data on migrants who
actually make it across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy.
As of Aug. 2, IOM reported that 95,215 migrants had
arrived in Italy this year from North Africa—just 2.73
percent fewer than during the same period last year.
The vast majority of them came from West African
countries, including Nigeria, Guinea, Ivory Coast,
and Mali, meaning that it’s likely they passed through
Niger on their way.
HAT IS CLEAR IS that Niger’s EU-funded
crackdown has heightened the risks for
smugglers, as well as for migrants. One
of those who paid a price for defying the
authorities was Garba Hamani, a coxeur,
or connection man, who was arrested last
year as he loaded 49 migrants into trucks. They were
eventually released and taken to the IOM transit cen-
ter, but Hamani spent nine months and 20 days behind
bars. He said the jail in Agadez was filled with people
connected to the migrant trade—smugglers, drivers,
and coxeurs like him. But the smuggling business hasn’t
stopped; it’s just been driven deeper underground. “You
cannot stop this thing. If the government stops people
here, they will just go another way,” he said.
The new routes are both longer and more danger-
ous, according to nearly a dozen drivers I interviewed
in Agadez. Some pass through mountainous regions
outside the city before crossing vast stretches of desert.
Some hug the border with Chad. One area where many
of the new routes converge is in a desolate region some
20 miles outside of Dao Timmi, an old military instal-
lation in the far north of the country. Here, the trucks
slow to a crawl and pass single file through a minefield
that dates back to an uprising by ethnic Toubous in
the 1990s. Used for years by weapons and drug smug-
glers because authorities stayed away, the route is now
commonly taken by migrants. “They made it a crime,
so now it follows the criminal routes,” Hamani said.
Ali, who like most of the smugglers I spoke with
asked to be identified by only his first name, started
taking the road through the minefield soon after the
crackdown started last year, a few months before
his deadly nighttime crash. So did Laminou, a mus-
cle-bound 25-year-old with short dreadlocks. Lami-
nou deals in cars, specifically stolen cars from Libya
that he smuggles in without papers. One day, he came
upon a nightmarish scene: the obliterated remains of
a pickup truck surrounded by the dead bodies of mul-
tiple migrants. “We couldn’t tell them apart. It’s one
man’s leg, one man’s arm—all black,” he said. He and
another driver did their best to bury the remains. Then
they prayed together and set off again in their trucks.
No one knows how many migrants have died in the
desert. Trucks get lost, break down, or are attacked
by bandits all the time. Often, nobody finds out until
another driver happens upon the human remains.
“We know that many people are dying in the Mediter-
ranean. But many are dying in the desert as well, and
we have not many statistics,” Paula said.
In addition to being more dangerous, the new routes
are also more expensive. Where it once cost around
$300 to travel to the next staging post in Libya from
Agadez, it now costs more than double that amount. As
a result, many more migrants are finding themselves
stuck in the squalid compounds known as “ghettos”
that smugglers have set up in secret locations through-
out the city. This was the predicament Sheriff Sonko
had been facing for the past nine months. A baby-faced
21-year-old, he left Gambia without telling his parents
so they couldn’t try to talk him out of making the jour-
ney. But he hadn’t bargained on the price of crossing TOP: A former coxeur,
Garba was arrested
the Sahara to skyrocket overnight. “If my parents don’t last year as he loaded
pay, I won’t leave here,” he told me. 49 migrants into
Increasingly raided by the authorities, who arrest trucks. He spent
more than nine
the smugglers and turn the migrants over to IOM, the months in prison.
ghettos are getting smaller, and they are constantly MIDDLE: Moussa
being moved so they won’t be discovered. Gaining was a driver for
migrants traveling
access to the one where Sonko was living took days of to Libya. After
negotiation because the smugglers feared I would be Nigerien authorities
followed or would otherwise inadvertently reveal its began cracking
down on smugglers,
location. The day I visited the half-finished compound he applied to an
in a largely abandoned neighborhood on the farthest EU-funded program
margins of the city, just four other migrants besides designed to help
former smugglers
Sonko were there—two from Cameroon and two from transition to new
Guinea. A group of 29 West Africans had departed for careers but said he
Libya the night before. The structure itself was crum- had yet to receive any
financial support.
bling and covered with a thick dusting of sand. The BOTTOM: Nine months
dirt floors were bare except for a few empty water bot- ago, Kader was
tles, plastic bags, and a broken sandal—the detritus of driving a truck full
of migrants to Libya
an unknown number of previous inhabitants. On the when he came across
walls, migrants had scribbled phone numbers, pre- a military checkpoint.
sumably of family members, drivers, and coxeurs. In He fled into the
desert to avoid arrest,
one corner, someone had left a message in block let- leaving the migrants
ters: “The road of success never smooth.” and his vehicle.
Migrants prepare to ew routes pose new risks for those who
make the dangerous attempt to ply them. But just as dangerous
three-day journey
from Agadez to Libya is the climate of fear that has settled over
in the bed of a Toyota the Sahara in the wake of the crackdown.
pickup truck. Ali blames himself for the deaths of the two
migrants killed in the crash. But he also feels
resentment toward the EU for having forced him to
drive with his headlights off. “When they arrest you,
that’s not a law coming from here,” Ali said. “That’s
a law coming from Europe.”
When faced with the choice between ensuring their
own freedom and saving their human cargo, many
drivers choose freedom. Sometimes that means leav-
ing migrants behind in the middle of the desert and
speeding off to avoid a military patrol. According to
Azaoua Mahaman, an IOM official based in Agadez,
more and more migrants are being abandoned in this
way. Since the beginning of the year, he said in May,
IOM had worked with Nigerien authorities to facil-
itate nearly a dozen rescue operations. “The main
42 SEPT | OCT 2017
reason we see abandoned migrants is because of the
patrols,” he told me. “[The smugglers] are afraid of
going to prison, so they drop the migrants and flee.”
This is hardly an irrational response. Unverified
reports that the military has opened fire on migrant
vehicles have circulated widely. Three different driv-
ers told me that they knew of such incidents, though
none had been present when they occurred.
One migrant was there when soldiers lit up a vehi-
cle carrying two dozen passengers: In April, a slen-
der 21-year-old Nigerian named Yinka was traveling
through the desert in the back of a Hilux when sud-
denly gunshots rang out. Bullets shredded the tires
beneath her and punched through the side of the vehi-
cle. One hit her friend in the stomach, and she doubled
over. Auntie Biola, as the six other women traveling
together from Nigeria’s Oyo state called her, bled to
death as Nigerien soldiers looked on.
The driver fled the scene, and the migrants were all
taken into custody. But first, the soldiers, who Yinka
said were wearing uniforms, beat them all and raped
the six surviving women. She said they were beaten
and raped again when they arrived at the police sta-
tion in Madama, one of the last settlements before
the Libyan frontier. Because the other survivors of
this ordeal had all been repatriated to Nigeria by the
time I met Yinka in the IOM transit center in Agadez,
I was unable to verify her claims. But her account was
consistent with testimony from other migrants at the
center and with reports by rights groups on abuses,
including rapes, committed by the Nigerien military
as recently as 2007. Niger’s armed forces and its min-
istries of defense and interior did not respond to writ-
ten requests for comment; Paula, the EU ambassador,
told me that he was not aware of any reports of abuse.
“The traffickers,” he said, “are the real criminals.”
OST NIGERIENS WOULD DISAGREE. Smugglers—
known as passeurs, or “ferrymen”—are
widely regarded as providing a vital service.
(Migrants who send home remittances are
seen as heroes in this part of the world.) Still,
passeurs are often involved in other forms of
criminal activity—weapons and drugs, for instance—
and now many of them are out of work. The crack-
down hasn’t stopped the flow of migrants, but it has
diverted much of the human traffic away from Aga-
dez and pushed most of the profits toward smugglers
with the highest appetite for risk. For those who are
still making the trip, the EU has laid out a feast. For
everyone else, it’s famine.
“Today, [illegal migration] generates more money
than before,” Rhissa Feltou, the mayor of Agadez, told
me. But the profits go to “small mafia groups” instead
of to a broad cross-section of society as they did before.
The new policy, while necessary in his view, means
that Agadez will suffer because its residents have his-
torically been dependent on smuggling.
The EU has pledged to fund job trainings and
other development projects to help former smugglers
transition to new careers. But the crackdown
commenced more than a year ago, and former drivers,
coxeurs, and ghetto owners all said in May that they
had yet to receive any assistance. (The EU said the
programs were on track and that the job trainings
would begin soon.)
“We are very angry with the EU because they prom-
ised to help us. We even declared that we stopped the
job,” said Mohamed, a lean, weather-beaten man in
his early 40s who once ran a lucrative migrant ghetto
out of his home. “But the promises have not been met.
They have destroyed the life of Agadez.”
Eighteen months ago, Mohamed was moving more
than 300 migrants a week through his ghetto, for a
weekly profit of around $10,000 to $13,000. Busi-
ness was so good that he decided to knock his house
down and build a bigger one so that he could fit more
migrants in his courtyard. But before the new house
was finished, the crackdown was underway, and he
was forced to take his business underground.
Today, he lives with his wife and children in a single
room in the courtyard of his younger brother’s house
in Agadez’s old town, not far from the ancient mosque
whose conical minaret towers over the rest of the low-
slung city. Mohamed comes from noble Tuareg lineage,
and his older brother was once a famous musician in
Agadez. (Posters of the brother in traditional Tuareg
dress hung from the walls of the compound, along-
side a framed photograph of Qaddafi in aviators and
a flowing headdress.) But the family appeared to have
fallen on hard times; goats pranced through the living
space, and pigeons clucked from inside a coop made
of mud and straw.
“The way I live now and the way I lived one year ago
is very different,” Mohamed said, leading me out of
the compound and across a narrow alleyway between
crumbling mud walls to a larger, half-finished complex
made of rectangular brown bricks. This was once his
home, he explained, and where he had made a small
fortune housing migrants before they were smug-
gled to Libya.
He told me that he would wait to see if anything
comes of the promised job training programs, but he
doubts that kind of legitimate work would ever pay as
much as he earned running a ghetto. Many of the smug-
glers he knows have already gotten back into the game,
including his third brother, who was arrested in a sting
by authorities in May. “Some people will try and get
caught. Others will take the dangerous routes and die,”
Mohamed said. “This migration business, anyone who
has experienced it can never leave it.”Q
TY M C CORMICK (@TyMcCormick) is Africa editor at
FOREIGN POLICY. NICHOLE SOBECKI (@nicholesobecki)
is a photographer and filmmaker based in Nairobi.
This reporting was made possible in part by the
Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 43
A VOICE IN THE NIGHT

HOW A SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR
IN SPAIN IS HELPING RESCUE
REFUGEES WITH LITTLE MORE THAN
FERVOR AND A PHONE.
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY
BY GREGORY BEALS
T IS ALMOST COMPLETELY DARK in Ángeles De Andrés’s
sixth-floor apartment. A nightlight reflects off
a 3-foot statue of the Madonna, which is flanked
by porcelain angels. A red kilim covers the wooden
floor.
Dressed in sweatpants and a blue shirt, De
Andrés sits on her living room couch beside her fluffy
white dog, Lana. The lights of the Galician port city of
Vigo glow in the distance, though it is hard to make
out the harbor through the diaphanous curtains. The
massive wooden coffee table in front of her is covered
with maps of the Aegean Sea; it takes up so much space
that it is difficult to navigate the room.
She flicks her tablet with the little finger of her right
hand, and her gaze intensifies in the light of the screen.
Messages have been coming in throughout the day,
via the instant messaging service WhatsApp, from
refugees in Europe, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. A Syrian
man named Kawa Horo, who is currently living in
Sweden, has sent photographs of a Syrian refugee in
Turkey who is injured. “This young man has a broken
neck and needs a device for treatment,” he wrote to
De Andrés. “Can we help him[?]”
Many people reach out to De Andrés this way, all of
them seeking help and in varying stages of distress—a
group of 30 Syrians lost on a raft in the Aegean, an
Iraqi family without a place to stay in Erbil. Nearly
1.5 million refugees and migrants from Syria, Afghan-
istan, Iraq, and elsewhere have arrived in Europe by
boat since 2015, according to the U.N. refugee agency;
more than 11,000 have perished on the high seas in
the attempt. Though the flow of migrants making the
crossing has consistently declined since 2016, thou-
sands are still attempting the journey.
Over the past four years, De Andrés says she has
built a network of about 3,000 refugees and volunteers
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 45
 without ever leaving her hometown of Vigo. She calls
it “Red Alert”—a play on red, the Spanish word for net
or network.
De Andrés is not a trained aid worker, but her col-
laborative efforts to track people attempting to cross
the eastern Aegean have helped shine a light on urgent
cases, providing assistance to those in need. Proac-
tiva Open Arms, the Spanish lifeguard NGO that has
plucked thousands of refugees from rubber rafts in
the eastern Aegean and the Mediterranean Sea, cred-
its her with having saved many lives.
That night De Andrés stays up until 3 a.m. respond-
ing to messages, though most of the problems passed
her way go unresolved. In the days that follow, some
progress is made: It turns out the man in Turkey needs
around $3,500 for a neck prosthesis, so De Andrés
reaches out to her WhatsApp network and online to
friends to see how best to raise the funds. The Syrians
whose raft was lost at sea made it safely to the Greek
island of Chios. She says she plans to send $60 out of
her own pocket via Western Union to the family in Erbil.
“We can’t stop war, nor can we save everybody,” De
Andrés says. “But we can save this one and that one.”
HE IS NOT, BY HER OWN ADMISSION, a typical
humanitarian. De Andrés is afraid of flying,
has no passport, and seldom strays more than
10 miles from Vigo, a picturesque coastal city in
northwestern Spain near the border with Por-
tugal where she has lived since she was 3 years
old. It’s where she earned two degrees in business and
tourism at a vocational training center.
Sturdy but compact, she has soft brown eyes and
a self-effacing smile that hints at a kind of mischie-
vousness. De Andrés speaks in deliberate sentences,
the way a schoolteacher might address a classroom.
Which is perhaps not surprising given the decades she
has spent working at an after-school program for aca-
demically talented teenagers, which she owns and has
run since 1990 from a modest office on the first floor
of a stately building on Rúa Urzaiz, just beyond the
PREVIOUS SPREAD: city’s upscale Avenida Gran Vía. A portrait of Mother
Ángeles De Andrés Teresa and a Buddha statue sit on the shelves behind
sits in her home her large wooden desk.
reviewing messages
on WhatsApp. De At 47, De Andrés does not smoke or drink and has
Andrés is often never been married or had children. She is what she
awake until 3 a.m. calls a “free Catholic.” She attends Mass and takes
tracking refugee
emergencies on her Communion, but her faith doesn’t keep her from being
network, Red Alert. open-minded. “I don’t believe in extremes,” she says.
46 SEPT | OCT 2017
“Neither in politics nor in religion.”
Red Alert came together not as the result of any
one distinct action tied to a singular goal but from De
Andrés’s obsessive web surfing and social networking. In
2013, when the Syrian war was in its second year, she was
reading everything she could about the conflict. While
scouring Facebook, she met Wael, a young refugee who
had fled Syria in 2012 and was then living in Turkey.
“We talked about politics. We talked about [Bashar
al-]Assad. We talked about ISIS,” Wael told me in a tele-
phone conversation from Sweden, where he has lived
since 2014. “We talked about how the war could not
be stopped.” Their conversations, which took place in
English, migrated from Facebook to Skype.
Wael felt he had no future in Turkey and was des-
perate to find a way into Europe, so De Andrés says
she offered to help him try to resettle in Spain. In the
meantime, Wael introduced De Andrés to other Syr-
ian refugees on Facebook and WhatsApp.
She named the first WhatsApp group she created
“Spanish Arab Team,” and after a few weeks, she was
talking to dozens of Syrian refugees, trying to help in
whatever way she could. When a family of refugees
became separated after arriving in Athens from Tur-
key, she used the network to help reunite them. If peo-
ple needed clothing, she says she would send money,
sometimes donated by others but often from her own
pocket, to be collected by the refugees at a local shop.
But it wasn’t until De Andrés met Mohamed Has-
san Hajira, a Syrian refugee who had been a captain in
the Syrian merchant marines, that Red Alert started
coordinating operations.
In the fall of 2015, Hajira spotted an urgent message
De Andrés had posted on Facebook about a group
trying to cross the eastern Aegean: “One boat is sinking
and needs help,” he remembers the message reading.
He reached out to De Andrés, and their partnership
began.
Hajira, known as Captain Mohamed inside the Red
Alert group, says he fled his home of 41 years after being
pressured by Syrian secret police to pay bribes in order
to remain in the merchant marines. He traveled to Tur-
key and then, like the vast number of refugees coming
to Europe, by boat from Izmir to Lesbos, Greece, before
making his way north to the seaside town of Kalmar
in Sweden.
At 47, Hajira is soft-spoken; his thinning hair and
glasses make him look older than his years. He now
works with Red Alert most days, often until 5 a.m.
“WE CAN’T STOP WAR,
NOR CAN WE SAVE EVERYBODY.
BUT WE CAN SAVE THIS ONE AND THAT ONE.”
“I see too many people are going to drown,” he
says. “And so I promised myself I would help with
the deaths at sea.”
Hajira’s partnership with De Andrés was critical
for Red Alert’s success at sea. She was working with
someone who understood sea charts and the impor-
tance of wave heights and winds in determining the
trajectory of a lifeboat crossing from Turkey to Greece.
Hajira knew that, for the most part, the trip could
be made while maintaining contact online. Because
De Andrés does not speak Arabic, he opened a separate
WhatsApp group for her where real-time translation
to English could take place as the boats were crossing.
He and De Andrés divide the conversations with
refugees getting ready to make a sea voyage into two
separate phases: preparation and departure.
In the preparation phase, Red Alert advises refu-
gees on essentials like how to determine whether a life
jacket is safe and warns them to make their departures
at night rather than in the morning when the sailing
conditions are more dangerous.
Before they set off, the refugees inform the net-
work of their positions via GPS (taking advantage of
WhatsApp’s location-sharing feature) and the num-
ber of passengers on the boat. This is an important
metric, Hajira says, because the inflatable rafts can
easily sink if loaded beyond capacity. “If the boat is 9
meters,” he says, “it is a maximum of 40 people. If the
boat is 6 meters, the maximum is 25 people. If there
are more than 40 people, we give them the number
of the Turkish police so they can catch the smuggler.”
Once the journey begins, Hajira asks the refugees to
ping their location every 30 minutes.
He and De Andrés have also developed an emer-
gency text system by which refugees can signal even
with a weak battery, texting “1” if the motor of the raft
has stopped, for example. When the migrants aren’t in
texting range, Hajira uses sea charts and examines the
wind speed, currents, and the power of the raft’s motor
to estimate the journey’s duration. If a boat does not call
after a specified period of time, he and De Andrés call
the Greek or Turkish coast guard.
Establishing a relationship with these coast guards was
not easy; there isn’t a protocol for calling in rescues—just
an emergency telephone number similar to “911” in the
United States. Convincing the authorities that her calls
were legitimate was more difficult still, and De Andrés
says there were several times when she had to plead with
Greek or Turkish authorities to launch rescue opera-
tions. The key, she says, was persistence and kindness.
This cajoling perseverance has served De Andrés well
during the operations she has coordinated. Like on a
spring night in 2016, when Red Alert helped an 18-year-
old named Ivan navigate a rubber boat carrying some 50
people from Izmir in Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos.
T WAS A CLEAR NIGHT. The sea was calm, and Ivan
could see the stars.
It had been nearly three years since his family
had fled the outskirts of Aleppo in Syria to Izmir,
where, without the proper identification card, he
wasn’t able to attend school and had to make ends
meet by taking on odd jobs. Unable to access a formal
education, he decided he would save his money to pay
a smuggler more than $1,500 for the crossing to Europe.
On March 3, 2016, he and a group of around 50 oth-
ers (including, he says, almost a dozen children) piled
into a large van and were driven to a departure point on
a secluded beach several hours from Izmir. Ivan, who
had learned of De Andrés’s WhatsApp group through a
Spanish journalist and translator weeks before in Izmir,
began messaging the group just before the journey.
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 47
Images—like After the smugglers prepared the inflatable raft, Ivan
these provided by says they approached him, offering a discount on his
Mohamed Hassan
Hajira—along with fee if he would agree to steer the boat. When he balked,
screenshots of he says they threatened him: If he didn’t do it, all of the
GPS locations, text passengers would be returning to Izmir. So he agreed.
messages, and voice
recordings, routinely Ivan, who asked that only his first name be used,
flow via WhatsApp is now 19. From his photos, he appears short and thin
from migrants to Red with closely cropped hair and glasses. Speaking over
Alert as they cross
the Aegean Sea. the telephone via WhatsApp from Dijon, France, where
he is trying to register at a local high school, his high-
pitched voice trembles when he talks about that night.
“It was quiet when we started,” he says. He wasn’t
feeling anything in the moment, not even fear. “You
just have to keep going.”
But then he started receiving messages from De
Andrés. “I felt like I had someone beside me to help
me to cross this sea,” he says. “I was happy for that. I
had no friends on the boat.”
As he steered the boat, Ivan passed his cell phone to
another passenger to type messages as they traveled
farther from shore. Once out at sea, the waves became
heavier. Ivan sent a text message to De Andrés and
Hajira. She wrote back, urging him not to go faster—
increasing the boat’s speed could cause the bow to fill
with water, placing them in greater peril. Nobody should
stand up, she warned, as their shoes might break through
the vessel’s flimsy plastic floor.
48 SEPT | OCT 2017
Two hours later, the boat approached the Greek
shoreline. Ivan spotted a Greek coast guard ship
approaching. De Andrés had called the coast guard
via an emergency telephone number.
“I saw them on the horizon,” Ivan says. “They were
saying, ‘Just stop the boat and come to our path. Don’t
worry, everything is going to be all right.’”
FTER RED ALERT HELPED ITS FIRST boat safely to
shore in 2015, the refugees it helped asked
Hajira how to join De Andrés’s network. “I
would train them and put them to work. After
six months, we had 50 people,” Hajira says. “All
that happened under Ángeles’s umbrella.”
The genesis of Red Alert coincided with the mass
arrival of migrants to European shores and the chaos
that came with it, beginning with the loss of 360
people after a migrant ship capsized off the coast of
the Italian island of Lampedusa on Oct. 3, 2013. The
incident sparked outrage across Europe. Eight days
later, another boat sank near Lampedusa, killing 34
people. By 2014, refugees were arriving to Europe in
large numbers through what were believed to be safer
routes, first over land between Turkey and Greece
and then, after the borders were closed, across the
eastern Aegean.
 By the following year, volunteer groups in places
including Lesbos; Idomeni, on the Greek border with
Macedonia; Calais, France; and Berlin had already
begun to step in to assist new arrivals. Some did so with
more efficiency than others, but the role of civilians
became more critical than it had been since the con-
struction of the European Union. Kilian Kleinschmidt, a
humanitarian consultant who has worked as an advisor
to the German and Austrian governments on refugee
issues, says these kinds of on-the-ground responses
and groups like Red Alert serve as “an expression of a
new reconnect between people and society.”
“Civil society absolutely has a role to play,” he says.
“Otherwise [Europe] discovers that it has a real prob-
lem. Suddenly, they are not willing to put just 5 euros
in a donation box. Suddenly, they can do something
themselves.”
Indeed, it is the singular urgency of that civic mis-
sion that connected as unlikely a team as a Syrian sea-
man and a Galician school administrator.
Hajira says Red Alert is not alone—that there are at
least seven other WhatsApp groups like theirs run by
volunteers covering the eastern Aegean crossings alone.
Other mainstream organizations like Human
Rights Watch were also quick to take advantage of
the WhatsApp groups to access real-time information.
“WhatsApp and, to a lesser extent, Viber are crucial
communication tools for most asylum-seekers,” says
Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director for Human
Rights Watch. “[They] allow us to obtain information
about abuses occurring in places we can’t go, whether
it is the forests of Bulgaria, where police regularly beat
and rob asylum-seekers, or the horrible closed detention
camps in Hungary: We get people’s WhatsApp numbers
and can communicate with them directly.”
There are obvious limits to what Red Alert volun-
teers can achieve without the benefit of institutional
support. “[De Andrés] should be encouraged,” says
Paul Spiegel, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center
for Humanitarian Health, in reference to Red Alert’s
mission. “But the question is what happens when she
is not there. These are piecemeal efforts and very pos-
itive things that are happening. But they need to be
more structured to ensure that this is not a one-off.
They need to be formalized in some way [so] that they
can remain functional without diminishing the same
spirit that we see in volunteers.”
There’s no question that volunteers are an essential
part of migrant rescue efforts. “But there is an issue of
quality control,” Kleinschmidt says. “There is always
a high potential for amateurism and naiveté.”
But the NGOs doing this work face the same poten-
tial pitfalls. To be sure, De Andrés and her crew do not
have the capacity of a large nonprofit. Nor do they
aspire to. But they do point to an alternative method
by which decentralized networks can provide direct
help to those who need it.
She is “not an angel,” says Ivan of De Andrés. “But
she is very kind. She directed me to a safe passage.”
HEN DE ANDRÉS WAS A CHILD, her father
ran cafes with gambling machines in
Ourense, the third-largest city in Gali-
cia. It is a stop on one of the dozens of
routes of the Camino de Santiago, where
religious pilgrims make their way along
the road to Santiago de Compostela to visit the shrine
of St. James the Greater. The Camino de Santiago is
supported by good Samaritans offering a meal or a
place for strangers to stay.
This hometown tradition has always resonated
deeply with De Andrés. She came to understand
the service as something that could just as easily be
reproduced online for asylum-seekers. “We copied
the Camino de Santiago,” she says. “We copied the
route of pilgrims.”
When she talks about her life outside of Red Alert,
she calls it “boring.” It wasn’t until she began to man-
age a network of online volunteers that extends thou-
sands of miles—from Sweden to Greece to Syria and
Iraq—all orchestrated from her anchored position on
her sofa that she found her true purpose.
De Andrés views the WhatsApp network she cob-
bled together as a counterweight to terrorist networks
like al Qaeda and the Islamic State. “If they can use
the internet to recruit people in various cities for evil,
then we need to be able to recruit people to do good
in any part of the world.”
The effort to create connections between refugees
and those able to assist them, she believes, is part of
a Manichaean struggle between darkness and light.
“Evil is strong,” she says. “But good people are stron-
ger. We are stronger because we are many.”Q
GREGORY BEALS (@gregbeals) is a journalist and former
aid worker who has spent the last decade covering
conflict zones.
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 49
AFGHA
ON T HE EDGE OF
NISTAN
A DECIMATED ECONOMY, A RESURGENT TALIBAN, AND GROWING TENSIONS WITH IRAN
ARE DRIVING DISENCHANTED AFGHANS TO SEEK OPPORTUNITIES ABROAD.
AND FOR MANY IT’S THEIR ONLY OPTION.
 STORY BY SUNE ENGEL RASMUSSEN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW QUILTY
F ALL OF AFGHANISTAN’S LAWLESS PROVINCES,
Nimruz is perhaps the rawest and most
untamed. The desert in southwestern
Afghanistan, cornering up against Iran
and Pakistan, looks like something out of
Mad Max: a post-apocalyptic wasteland where
only camel herders and smugglers seem to thrive.
Sandstorms kick up without warning, swallowing the
horizon in a thick beige mist. Out of the haze, a group
of motorcyclists suddenly rides past, their hair stiff
with grit and their eyes hidden by goggles.
This is wild country.
Nimruz is a microcosm of what has gone wrong in the
Afghan war. The province’s lawlessness is a testament
to the Western-backed government’s failure to assert
authority and curtail rogue strongmen. As Afghanistan’s
drug-smuggling hub, it provides a financial artery for the
Taliban, who appear stronger than ever. And because of
its largely unprotected borders, and complicity from the
few forces that actually guard them, it has long been a
gateway for the growing number of Afghans who, facing
increasing violence and a stagnant economy, have sim-
ply lost hope that their motherland can be their home.
Despite the dangers that await—kidnappers, insur-
PREVIOUS SPREAD: gents, corrupt border guards, and some 16,000 square
Members of the miles of merciless terrain—what lies beyond the wilder-
Afghan National
Security Forces ness calls to young Afghan men like sirens in the desert.
guard a facility used The most ambitious travelers aim for Europe, where
by engineers and in 2015 Afghans made up the second-largest group of
workers near the site
of the Kamal Khan asylum-seekers, trailing only Syrians. The subsequent
dam project on July tightening of controls on several European borders
14, 2016. If all goes has since prevented many Afghans from reaching
according to plan,
the dam will be filled the continent’s shores. But they still choose to leave
by the Helmand Afghanistan, settling instead to work as day laborers in
River and provide Iran. According to those who have made the journey,
much-needed water
to districts of Nimruz it costs about $500 per traveler, which can be earned
province. back in a month as a construction worker, bricklayer, or
52 SEPT | OCT 2017
fruit picker in Iran. That is more than twice the salary
of an Afghan soldier on the front line. There are risks
that come with this trade-off. Once migrants make it
to Iran, they often face mistreatment from employ-
ers. And many young Afghans pick up drug habits in
Iran, which has the world’s largest demand for opiates.
Still every day, hundreds of men from all over Afghan-
istan set out in pickup trucks at breakneck speed. The
first six-hour leg by car takes migrants through the des-
ert to the border of Pakistani Baluchistan. The next 24
hours on foot cut through Taliban-held areas of Paki-
stan into southern Iran, where a third team of smugglers
ferries travelers onward in overcrowded cars. The arid
heat is punishing, and any encounter is risky—whether
with the Taliban, gangs of robbers, or trigger-happy
Pakistani and Iranian border guards. Both Afghan bor-
der police and national police, as well as the Taliban,
squeeze drivers for payment on the way.
“Of course it’s very dangerous. They take us in three
cars, going very fast, and accidents happen all the
time,” says Shafiq Amiri, a young man from Kabul. “I
know I can get hurt, but what can we do?” He had to
leave Iran after a previous trip because he was unable
to find work but is undeterred. “I have to go to Iran so
I can send money home to my family.”
IMRUZ’S PROVINCIAL CAPITAL, ZARANJ, is like no
other Afghan town. As Afghanistan’s smug-
gling capital, it houses about 160,000 perma-
nent residents, but its contours are shaped
by streams of passers-through and torrents of
money flowing from drug barons, arms deal-
ers, and human smugglers.
It’s July 2016 when photojournalist Andrew Quilty and
I arrive in Zaranj to explore this place that can go many
months, if not longer, without seeing a foreign reporter.
 Suspicion pervades every corner of town. People
speak to us in hushed voices and warn us more than
once of kidnappings. While we are in town, stories
circulate about a wealthy businessman whose kid-
nappers dug a hole and gave him a tube to breathe
through before burying him. Police tell us that the
kidnappers spent a week extorting the man’s family.
By the time they received the ransom, he was dead.
The family took revenge and paid the Taliban to kill
the two kidnappers.
Syed Abdul Hai Sadat, a local employee of the Inter-
national Organization for Migration (IOM), says he has
deliberately made only one friend in the 10 years he has
worked here. “The more friends you have, the more prob-
lems you have. You can’t trust anyone here,” he says. TOP: One of the men who charge a small fee to lug returnees’ belongings
across the border pushes a cart of luggage over the Pol-e Abrisham,
In the scorching heat of the summer, daytime in the bridge that provides a crossing point between Afghanistan and Iran,
Zaranj is sleepy, bordering on comatose. But the city just outside the city of Zaranj, in Nimruz province. ABOVE: In the back
comes to life in the evening, when buses from Kabul of a pickup truck driven by a smuggler, a group of Afghans, soon to be
migrants living illegally in Iran, begin their journey from the southern
and Herat arrive, throwing open their doors to hun- outskirts of Zaranj to the border with Pakistan, where they intend to
dreds of bleary-eyed men who stream into decrepit, travel with other smugglers to their final destination.

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 53

Mohammad neon-lit hotels carrying belongings in plastic bags or
Samiullah, the knockoff U.S. military backpacks.
governor of
southwestern On our first evening in town, we visit a cluster of
Nimruz province, sits hotels where migrants sit and wait, often a week, for
inside a building he a smuggler to call. The men are huddled around a
calls “the palace,” in
his compound in the few floor fans that push around the stale air without
provincial capital, actually cooling it. Looking like so many undernour-
Zaranj, on Aug. 6. ished and drug-abusing laborers returning from Iran,
a skeletal Gulabuddin Ayoubi tells us that he is going
to Iran the following day, his fourth time.
“I would love to stay here, in my home in Bada-
khshan,” he says. “But I cannot find work, and I need
to make money for my family. In Iran, we can do all
kinds of work. When I was 16, I tried to join the police,
but they wouldn’t let me because I was too young. Now
I am too afraid. A lot of people are dying.”
With the Taliban controlling or fighting for control
of 40 percent of the country, and ordinary Afghans
disillusioned with their political leaders, the Afghan
government is stretched beyond capacity—militarily
54 SEPT | OCT 2017
and politically—in most parts of the country. Remote
Nimruz is a low priority, so the state has little author-
ity in Zaranj and virtually none outside it.
For centuries, Nimruz has been one of Afghani-
stan’s unruliest areas, partly because governments
paid it little heed. “These marginal areas were always
troublesome, but not particularly important,” says
Thomas Barfield, an anthropology professor at Bos-
ton University and author of Afghanistan: A Cultural
and Political History.
After 2001, however, the importance of Nimruz
grew. A vast injection of foreign aid and military funds
strengthened, to some extent, state institutions, but
much of the money went unaccounted for. The United
States spent more in civilian aid to Afghanistan than
was spent on rebuilding all of Europe after World War
II, and Afghanistan still ranks among the poorest, least
developed countries in the world. Largely due to rife
corruption, Western money has inflated the power
of local strongmen, criminals, and insurgents who
undermine the state. In Nimruz, these nongovern-
mental forces are the order of the day.
“It is like giving steroids to a bodybuilder: He was
already going to the gym, but he didn’t get that way
just by lifting weights,” Barfield says.
Further upsetting the already unstable region is
a centuries-old conflict with neighboring Iran at its
historical source: water. It was an attempt to divert
water that, according to historians, prompted the
invading Timurids in the 14th century to blow up the
dams in the area. And despite a 1973 water treaty, the
two countries regularly accuse each other of appro-
priating more than its fair share.
Compounding tensions in recent years is Iran’s
covert support for the Taliban. As the United
States tries to withdraw from its longest war, Iran is
reasserting its influence in western Afghanistan, in
part by propping up the insurgency. Along the border,
Iran has created a buffer zone by arming local militant
groups as a bulwark against the strongly anti-Iranian
Islamic State, which has cropped up in pockets around
Afghanistan since it first declared a local chapter in
2014. Afghan officials even believe that Iran has been
instrumental in some of the largest Taliban offensives
against the government in western Afghanistan.
The flow of Afghan migrants, particularly from
Nimruz, and Iran’s treatment of them once they arrive
have only amplified these frustrations. A few years
ago, Iran took measures to stop Afghans from entering
the country illegally; a 15-foot-high wall now runs
along the border. However, according to authorities in
Nimruz, some influential Afghan landowners charge
migrants for passage, bribing Iranian police to open
the gates.
The legal way into Iran is via the Pol-e Abrisham,
the Iranian-built bridge that connects the two coun-
tries over the Helmand River and sits exposed to the
wind on the outskirts of Zaranj.
Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Iran has
welcomed millions of Afghan refugees, most of whom
received working papers and were allowed schooling.
Today, however, about two-thirds of the 3 million
Afghans in Iran are there illegally, according to the
United Nations, exposing them to workplace abuse,
police harassment and arbitrary arrests, limited health
services, and, in the case of minors, child labor.
“Afghan workers face various forms of abuse ranging
from theft to verbal and physical abuse, irregular pay-
ment of salary, and long working hours, particularly
for daily laborers,” says Nassim Majidi, the co-founder LEFT: At the Mowla
of Samuel Hall, a research group that has done exten- Ali Hotel on the
outskirts of Zaranj,
sive work on Afghan migration. friends Ahmad and
Regardless of the widespread abuse of Afghans there Assadullah wait for
(which has been thoroughly documented by Human a bus back to their
home province. RIGHT:
Rights Watch), Iran remains the primary destination. A guest sits on a
According to IOM statistics, in the first six months of balcony at the hotel
2017, a total of 80,530 Afghans fled abroad, more than at sunset on Aug. 6.
The hotel caters to
half of them to Iran and 23 percent to Europe. Afghan migrants who
While there is no one simple explanation for why are either making
Afghans continue to migrate in such high numbers, their way illegally to
Iran and beyond or
Liza Schuster, a migration expert with City University returning.
of London, says, “Structural drivers such as insecurity,
conflict, unemployment, lack of opportunity, lack of
faith in the government and the future, and corrup-
tion make the whole population vulnerable to migra-
tion.” But she adds, “A trigger is needed to make people
actually leave.” That precipitous event may include
a terrorist attack, the mother you cared for dying, or
simply being passed over for a job.
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 55
 One afternoon, after a few days in town, we meet
16-year-old Gul Mohammad, who has just returned.
On his journey to Iran, after crossing the Afghan-
Pakistani border in a pickup and hiking through
Taliban territory, he was bundled into the back seat of a
car, which soon came under fire from Iranian security
forces. Mohammad was hit in the back with a bullet.
Iranian police ferried him to a hospital, but weeks later,
when he was able to walk again, he was shoved onto a
bus and driven to the bridge. When we meet him, soon
after his crossing, he’s in blue hospital clothes, clutch-
ing a colostomy bag in one hand and an envelope with
X-rays in the other.
“As soon as I feel better, I’m going back to Iran,”
he says, looking shellshocked. Mohammad is from
Maimana, which is a 560-mile drive from Zaranj. As
the oldest son, he has likely been entrusted with the
family savings. If he doesn’t send money back, they
will have nothing.

T NIGHT, IN ZARANJ, addicts congregate in cor-

ners of the city, smoking opium, heroin, and
crystal meth, all of which can be purchased for
less than a dollar a hit. Afghanistan produces
about 90 percent of the world’s opiates, much
of which is smuggled through Nimruz.
On the outskirts of town, the Chigini drug rehabil-
itation clinic run by the Afghan Ministry of Counter
Narcotics houses about 150 addicts at a time. The
rehabilitation program is simple: cold turkey, simple
food, light exercise, and some medication for the pain.
But the first step is a head shave. As patients sit in a
hall on the concrete floor, dozens of bald heads facing
the same direction, they look like a cult of reborn zeal-
ots. But here redemption is rare. Everyone I speak to
has relapsed after a previous 45-day treatment. Staying Dozens of drug
clean without a job, and, in many cases, having lost one’s addicts smoke opium
and crystal meth,
family to the ravages of addiction, is severely difficult. just after sunrise, in
And nearly everyone says he picked up his habit in Iran. an abandoned store
“Most people go to Iran to find work,” says Huma- in central Zaranj.
When asked whether
yun Amini, the clinic’s director. “They are encouraged he’d become
to do drugs so they can work longer without getting addicted in Iran, a
hungry. They are illiterate. So they are trapped in this man squatting by
the wall gestures,
drug addiction, just for doing more work.” making a wide arc
After lunch, a couple of men lead the group in sing- with his hand to the
ing Persian songs, accompanied by a beat from the other addicts nearby.
“Everyone here has
bottom of a plastic water jug. Amir, 27, immediately come back from
bursts into tears. Iran,” he says.

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 57
Afghan men hoping “The song reminded me of my mother,” he says. Amir
to reach Iran via has been using for nine years, since he first went to Iran.
smuggler-provided
transport wait inside “She was in a coma for 35 days. Finally, she died. Ten
a small general days later, I came here because I felt so guilty.”
store that doubles The Chigini clinic closed down in May due to lack of
as a holding room
for migrants in the funding, according to Amini. A private businessman,
village of Kolokhak, Haji Nazir, established another clinic with a 500-bed
outside Zaranj, capacity this year.
on Aug. 4.
FTER THE SUN SETS ON OUR FOURTH DAY in town,
the son of the governor, Mohammad Sami-
ullah, invites us for freshly barbecued lamb
kebab. A handsome 20-something with stub-
ble and striking green eyes, Haris Stanikzai
oozes self-confidence. He also smells like an
entire duty-free perfume shop. As an only son, he is
in Nimruz to advise his father and—perhaps more
importantly in a town as desolate as Zaranj—keep
him company.
Due to risk of kidnapping, his father forbids him to
leave the compound alone. So Stanikzai’s only friends
in Nimruz are his bodyguards. To him, this place is
not a gateway to freedom. It is a prison.
Stanikzai’s entire being is twitchy with boredom; he
struggles to keep himself busy. As a whole lamb siz-
zles on the barbecue, he gives us a tour of his “zoo”—a
large garden in the governor’s compound.
“Look at those two beautiful goats!” he exclaims,
pointing to a small enclosure.
I pause. “I think those are springboks,” I tell him.
The price tag for flying these animals, whatever they
are, from Kabul was $6,000 a head, Stanikzai says.
The zoo also boasts various birds, including peacocks
and parrots, but most of the animals died in the heat,
including an antelope family.
Stanikzai’s life is worlds apart from the poor
migrants flocking to Nimruz, and he is disparaging
of their eagerness to leave.
“No one thinks about their country. Everyone thinks

58 SEPT | OCT 2017

about their own benefit,” he says. “They are happy to
go to Iran to do the labor work, to clean the toilets, to
be treated in a very bad way. But they won’t stay in
their own country to serve in the police and the army.”
But Stanikzai also shares their lack of hope and is
himself a prospective migrant. He feels out of place
in Afghanistan and wants to join his fiancée in Ger-
many. So he has reached the conclusion that although
he adores his parents, he must also leave. The pond is
just too small.
After dinner, lounging on pillows with the flowery
perfume emanating from his crisp shalwar kameez,
Stanikzai puffs on a hookah and breaks out in a love bal-
lad he says he sings to his fiancée over the phone—“My
Heart Will Go On,” Céline Dion’s song from Titanic. His
rendering is badly out of tune but sincere.
A few days earlier, Stanikzai mobilized his body-
guards to take us deep into the desert—with his father’s
permission. The governor adheres proudly to pashtun-
wali, a traditional Pashtun code of hospitality, so if the
foreigners want to see the desert, even if he doesn’t
understand why, his son will escort them.
Stanikzai was giddy with excitement. He recalled the
last time the governor (as he calls his father) left town.
Stanikzai—for all purposes the acting governor—had
raced into the desert with a machine gun and, scream-
ing to the heavens, fired blindly into the sun.
“I was feeling totally free,” he reminisced with a grin.
Stanikzai, his dozen-strong entourage of bodyguards,
Quilty, and I piled into pickups and followed the Hel-
mand River south, toward Chahar Burjak, two and a half
hours from Zaranj. The highway was dotted with pick-
ups heaving with hopeful migrants, weighing the vehi-
cles down so the bumpers almost brushed the asphalt.
Passengers had stocked up on the bare travel necessi-
ties: goggles and water.
As we left the highway, all roads and signposts van-
ished. A sandstorm broke out. We couldn’t see anything
beyond 15 feet ahead of us; sand slid down the windows
like dregs in a wine glass. The driver reassured us; he
grew up around here, he said, and could find his way
blindfolded. That was, in essence, what he was doing.
It was clear then why migrants are so dependent on
smugglers—and why smugglers are so difficult to catch.
When we reached Chahar Burjak, stopping at a base
that houses at least 120 police, the wind had calmed
down, giving us a view of the wide expanses. Behind
us ran the Helmand River, and in the distance a few
pickups on patrol sped across the sand, beating up
tails of dust, carrying policemen with AK-47 assault
rifles and rocket launchers poking out of the cars like
quills on a hedgehog.
Before we set out with Stanikzai and his crew, we
had met with Rahmatullah Naser, a chatty lieutenant
colonel in the national border police, tasked with the
thankless job of plugging the holes that allow peo-
ple, guns, and drugs to be smuggled through Nimruz.
“We have tried to crack down on them in the past,
but smugglers just choose different, more dangerous
routes. In the past year, many died and got lost,” said
Naser, a few days’ stubble showing on his chin.
“It’s like the door is open, and I’m trying to close
the window,” he added, his voice coarse, his breath
reeking of whiskey.
HE DESERT TAKES, AND THE DESERT GIVES . For
instance, the Toyota Hiluxes packed with heavily
armed Taliban fighters, who occasionally appear
out of nowhere and start firing rocket-propelled
grenades and machine guns at outposts. Here,
nobody doubts who sent them: Iran.
In Zaranj, water is so scarce that local entrepre-
neurs pump it out of lakes and distribute it to private
homes for $5 a truck tank. The government is in the
early stages of building a large-scale water dam, called
Kamal Khan, to boost agriculture and livelihoods by
providing electricity and irrigating 175,000 hectares of
land. The project has roused ire in Iran. The Hamoun
wetlands on the Iranian side of the border suffered
greatly under the Taliban regime, which choked off
the sluices at the Kajaki Dam farther upstream, and
Iran now fears that diversion of the water will dry out
the wetlands completely. The Kamal Khan project has
moved at a glacial pace but is a pillar of Samiullah’s
governorship. In Nimruz, authorities say Iran is try-
ing to sabotage the dam project by propping up the
local Taliban.
“The Taliban are close to the border, so they get better
weapons and can cross the border to recuperate,” says
Humayoon, the burly, mustachioed base commander.
We seek shade inside the base, where a group of NEXT PAGE:
police commanders are washing down dry fruits with A bodyguard
working as part of
Monster Energy drinks. The green tea we drink has a a security detail for
trace of sand. Outside, a storm seems to be gathering Haris Stanikzai and
again. The gusts sweeping western Afghanistan—aptly his entourage visits
the site of the Kamal
named the “120 Days’ Wind”—define life here more Khan dam project on
than any human authority. July 14, 2016.
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 59
 “We are not scared of war. We are scared of this
wind,” says Fazl Ahmad Zuri, one of the commanders
gathered at the base.
From here, the police watch as smugglers ferry one
truckload of migrants after another through the des-
ert. They say they are incapable of stopping them.
“They are traveling like animals. Many die in the
desert. Girls are raped,” Zuri says. “More people were
killed migrating than in the security forces.”
N OUR LAST DAY IN ZARANJ, we get a call from Khoda
Rahim, a human smuggler I have tried to meet
for five days. Success eventually comes with
help from an unexpected side: a source in the
Afghan intelligence services who is friends with
Rahim. In a crumbling mud house in a back
alley, Rahim, sweating, with a heavy gut, explains how
the smuggling industry works. The intelligence agent
listens from his spot in the corner.
Rahim came to Nimruz about five years ago from
Faryab in the north, where he still goes often. That con-
nection is the spine of his business, as he primarily
“guides” migrants from his home province, whom he
calls his relatives.
60 SEPT | OCT 2017
“People from all 34 provinces have hotels here, and
people go to their relatives,” he says. Rahim’s job is to
get people to the border by connecting them to drivers.
From there, a Pakistani “guide” takes over.
A gentle call to prayer wafts over the mud roofs,
bathed in the golden late-afternoon sun. Rahim seems
unremorseful about sending young men into uncer-
tainty and danger. His profits have put two of his four
children in school. He claims he doesn’t give his clients
any illusions about life in Europe.
“Two hundred Toyotas leave Chahar Burjak for the
border every single day,” he says. “You don’t think the
government knows this? But of course we have to be care-
ful. If the intelligence agents catch us, they’ll arrest us.”
I eye the intelligence agent in the corner. He doesn’t
flinch.
“People only leave because they are hungry. If we had
money, we would not leave home. All families have at
least one relative working in Turkey or Iran or Europe
who sends money back,” Rahim says. “As long as there
is no work for Afghans, they will keep going.” Q
SUNE ENGEL RASMUSSEN (@SuneEngel) is the Guardian’s
correspondent in Afghanistan. ANDREW QUILTY
(@andrewquilty) is a photojournalist based in Kabul.
 A conversation with

Ambassador Samantha Power

Fixing American Foreign Policy

November 8, 2017

Marines’ Memorial Theatre To purchase a ticket, visit:

609 Sutter Street, 2nd Floor worldaffairs.org
San Francisco, CA 94102 415.293.4600
 The Disturbing
Paradox of
Presidential Power
Trump’s actions
are forcing us
into uncharted
constitutional waters.

“THE EXECUTIVE POWER shall be vested in a

President of the United States of Amer-
ica.”—Article II, Section 1, U.S. Constitution
Debates over executive authority gen
erally take place at the margins of the
president’s powers. Our collective under-
standing of the limits of executive power
flows from an iterative process: Presidents
test the boundaries of their authority and
either successfully expand those boundar-
ies in the process or get batted back by other
branches of government. Other branches
encroach on presidential authority and
either get away with it—and thereby nar-
row the president’s power—or not.
Our understanding of the boundaries of
presidential authority flows from Abraham
Lincoln suspending habeas corpus on his
own and then going to Congress for ratifica-
tion. It flows from Harry Truman trying to
seize the steel mills and having the Supreme
Court block him. It flows from presidents
over time going to war on their own author-
ity and Congress letting it happen.
Two centuries of experience with this
approach to defining the parameters of the
presidency have taught us that a certain vig-
ilance in policing the outer bounds of pres-
idential power is necessary—particularly
when those outer bounds involve the coercive authorities of the
office. So when a man who wears his propensity to abuse power on
his sleeve was elected president last November, many commenta-
tors and critics instinctively knew to treat his enthusiastic remarks
in favor of torture and certain war crimes as potentially more than
mere words. They knew, without being told, to be concerned about
the possibility of intelligence abuses. They worried about what he
might do with drones. They worried about which “bad dudes” he
might bring to Guantánamo Bay.
Eight months of Donald Trump’s administration, however, sug-
gest that—for this president, anyway—our collective anxiety has
been at least somewhat misplaced. Trump’s presidency has been
abusive in the extreme, but the authorities he is abusing do not
lie at the margins of presidential power. They lie at its core. And
they thus raise a different question from the one we have taught
ourselves over the centuries to ask.
Consider that since Trump has taken office, the fights
over the major issues of presidential power that have divided

Americans since 9/11 have largely disap-
peared from view. There’s a reason for that.
For all the fretting about Trump’s noxious
comments on torture, interrogation policy
hasn’t changed. Neither has detention pol-
icy—at least not yet. The authorities of the
intelligence agencies to collect and process
information have not increased under this
administration. And, ironically, the person
most vocal in complaining about alleged
intelligence abuses has been Trump him-
self, whose complaints of illegality on the
part of the intelligence community—from
his predecessor “wiretapping” him to his
gripes about “unmasking”—few commen-
tators other than his core loyalists have
taken seriously.
Trump’s abuses, rather, have almost uni-
formly occurred in areas where the presi-
dent’s power is not contested, areas at the
very heart of what the Constitution calls
“the executive Power.”
Few serious constitutional scholars,
after all, doubt the president’s power to
“appoint … Officers of the United States”—
and thus to remove them. This is what
Trump did to FBI Director James Comey.
It is also what his tweets and interviews
portend with respect to Attorney General
Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General
Rod Rosenstein. And, of course, it would
be by forcing the firing of special coun-
sel Robert Mueller that Trump might ulti-
mately threaten the Russia investigation.
The power to hire law enforcement offi-
cers who will act in his personal interests
is certainly corrupt, but it’s a corrupt use
of an undisputed authority.
Nor is there any serious debate over the
president’s power to direct his administra-
tion to take action based on bad informa-
tion and no coherent process. No language
within the Constitution requires Trump to
follow a process of any kind before direct-
ing the executive branch in some course of
action or another. Rather, it gives him the
authority to require written opinions from
his cabinet officers on subjects related to
their duties. If he wants to circumvent them
before issuing fateful executive orders, he
gets to do that.
Even the president’s power to spill
highly classified information to foreign
adversaries is pretty clearly established.
The Constitution makes clear that “he shall
receive Ambassadors and other public Min-
isters.” And the elaborate system of classi-
fication of national security information
is almost entirely a creature of executive
orders designed to protect the information
the president chooses to protect. So if he
wants to receive ambassadors in the Oval
Office and blow secrets to them there, well,
they’re Trump’s secrets to blow.
And, of course, the president’s author-
ity to speak his mind, including on Twitter,
is likewise beyond any serious question.
Many of the abuses of authority in which
Trump has engaged have taken the form
of tweets—from maligning people in a
fashion that would almost certainly be
legally actionable were Trump not presi- “faithfully execute the Office of President
dent to announcing new military policies
on transgender service members with-
out first establishing an official change
in procedure.
But the president has the right to say
what he wants. In fact, the Constitution
actually requires that he “shall from time
to time give to the Congress Information
of the State of the Union, and recommend
WE MAY HAVE SPENT TOO MUCH ENERGY
POLICING THE MARGINAL POWERS OF
THE PRESIDENCY RELATIVE TO THE
ENERGY WE HAVE SPENT POLICING
ITS DISCRETIONARY CORE.
to their Consideration such Measures as
he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
It doesn’t specify that he should do so in a
speech rather than, say, in a tweet.
The paradox here is that this most abu-
sive of presidents is engaging in his abuses
without needing to make robust assertions
of executive power. And this suggests that
we may have spent too much energy polic-
ing the marginal powers of the presidency
relative to the energy we have spent polic-
ing its discretionary core.
Trump is forcing us to confront the
question of what minimum standards,
if any, Congress—which has the power
to impeach and remove the president—
should demand of a president in the
exercise of the central discretionary
judgments associated with the office.
That is, he’s forcing us to think about the
true meaning of the obligation to “take
Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”
by a person who has taken an oath to
of the United States” and “preserve, protect
and defend the Constitution of the United
States.” After more than two centuries and
44 presidents, these remain strangely
uncharted constitutional waters. Q
BENJAMIN WITTES (@benjaminwittes) is editor
in chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow at
the Brookings Institution.
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 63
 Trump’s Massive
Miscalculation
How the current
administration totally
misunderstands the
economics of
immigration.

NO ISSUE IS AS CLOSELY ASSOCIATED with U.S.

President Donald Trump’s ascendancy as
immigration, but those who thought his
only concern was stopping illegal immi-
gration weren’t paying close attention.
Trump’s ugly campaign rhetoric may have
focused on illegal immigration—build-
ing walls, protecting Americans’ jobs, and
stopping a largely imagined crime wave—
but, behind the scenes, candidate Trump
was working closely with hard-liners who
have long lobbied for cutting legal immi-
gration drastically.
In a mostly ignored 2015 campaign
policy paper titled “Immigration Reform
That Will Make America Great Again,”
Trump promised, “Before any new green
cards are issued to foreign workers abroad,
there will be a pause where employers
will have to hire from the domestic pool
of unemployed immigrant and native
workers.” He also proposed making it
more difficult for employers to hire highly
skilled foreign-born workers on H-1B visas,
reining in funding for refugee programs,
and ending the J-1 exchange program that
brings in foreign workers. It should come
as no surprise then that on Aug. 2 the White
House threw its weight behind the most
sweeping restriction on legal immigration proposed in nearly
a hundred years.
The Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment
(RAISE) Act, which was introduced by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)
and David Perdue (R-Ga.) with the support of the Trump admin-
istration, would almost immediately cut 41 percent of legal immi-
gration to the United States, halve it within 10 years, implement
a point system that favors skilled workers and English speakers,
largely eliminate family sponsorship except for spouses and
children under 18, and dramatically change the demographic
profile of new immigrants. The bill is a throwback to an earlier
era, when the 1917 and 1924 immigration acts, for the first time
in the country’s history, imposed broad restrictions on immigra-
tion to the United States.
The RAISE Act is missing the inflammatory language of those
earlier laws, but its intent appears similar—to keep immigrants out.
The 1917 law barred “all idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons,
epileptics, [and] insane persons” and virtually all immigrants

Illustration by MATTHEW HOLLISTER


from what was called the “Asiatic Barred
Zone.” The 1924 act restricted immigration
from Southern and Eastern Europe, then
the largest source of immigration, because
immigrants from those countries were
presumed unassimilable. Of course, those
fears proved unfounded as immigrants,
many of them illiterate, eventually learned
English and climbed the socio-economic
ladder, achieving parity with other
Americans within a couple of generations.
Current data suggests that the same is true
for newer immigrants as well.
The children of immigrants now have
higher college graduation rates than the
overall population: 36 percent compared
with 31 percent, respectively. Fear that
today’s immigrants won’t assimilate as
quickly as previous generations may be
driving the RAISE Act, but that fear is over-
blown at best—and at worst motivated by
prejudice toward immigrants from Latin
America and Asia.
According to analysis by the Migration
Policy Institute, the RAISE Act would have
an immediate effect on immigration from
Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the Phil-
ippines, China, India, and Vietnam—the
countries that most rely on family-based
visas—because although some immigrants
from these countries might qualify under
the new, skills-based system, most would
not, and there would be fewer visas to go
around. Legal immigrants from Mexico
and Central and South America would
largely disappear from the mix, as would
many Asians who aren’t fully proficient
in English or haven’t yet earned college
or graduate degrees.
Although supporters of the RAISE Act
claim it will improve the quality of immi-
grants admitted to the country by taking
only those who are highly skilled, the loss
of lower-skilled immigrants under the pro-
posed bill is a major problem.
The assumption of the bill’s authors
and the Trump administration is that
unemployed Americans, or those who have
dropped out of the labor force altogether,
will step in to take jobs currently held by
lower-skilled immigrants living in the
country legally or illegally. But there is
little evidence that this would happen.
Will Americans who can now draw
unemployment, welfare, or disability
benefits suddenly rush to take jobs
picking crops, milking cows, scrubbing
toilets, processing poultry, or replacing
roofs, even if the pay is somewhat higher
than what immigrant workers in those
jobs currently receive? One of the reasons
immigrants, here legally or illegally, fill so
many of these jobs is that their skill sets
match them.
According to the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics, “Two-thirds of the
30 occupations with the largest projected
employment increase from 2012 to 2022
typically do not require postsecondary
education for entry.” In choosing a
low-skilled worker, can employers be
faulted for picking a foreign-born worker
for whom the job presents upward
mobility and a chance to provide a better
opportunity for his or her family over
an American whose failure to graduate
suggests issues with perseverance,
discipline, or delinquency?
The current system, with all its flaws,
provides a better match to the U.S. labor
market than the RAISE Act. If Congress
and the Trump administration want to
THE RAISE ACT IS MISSING THE
INFLAMMATORY LANGUAGE OF THOSE
EARLIER LAWS, BUT ITS INTENT APPEARS
SIMILARTO KEEP IMMIGRANTS OUT.
improve our immigration system, moving
to a more skills-based program is a good
idea—provided it recognizes the need for
a broad range of skills among immigrants,
including those generally regarded as low-
skilled but who fill niche markets. Most
importantly, however, the system must be
flexible and market-oriented and shouldn’t
ignore the country’s real demographic
challenges. The biggest of these, as in most
industrialized nations, is a falling birthrate
and an aging population. We face looming
Social Security and Medicare crises, caused
by a shrinking population.
The goal of a sensible immigration
policy should be to bring in the workers
America needs. The one thing a
21st-century immigration policy should
not do is return to the prejudicial early
20th-century mentality that only certain
groups will make good Americans. It was
a false premise in 1917, and it is no less so
today. America remains that “shining city
on a hill” that Ronald Reagan famously
spoke of and should be, within reason and
national need, “open to anyone with the
will and the heart to get here.” Q
LINDA CHAVEZ (@chavezlinda), a senior
fellow at the Niskanen Center and founder
of the Becoming American Institute, was
the director of the White House Office
of Public Liaison under Ronald Reagan
from 1985 to 1986.
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 65

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emerging leaders from the U.S., U.K., and Germany with the opportunity
to gain professional experience in business, media, law, policy, and
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2017 STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION
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KHOSVODXQFKFDUHHUVLQSHDFHDQGVHFXULW\ Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: 89.44% 16. This Is a General Publication.
Publication of this Statement of Ownership will be printed in the September/October 2017
issue of this publication. 17. I certify that All Information Furnished on this form is true and
+HUEHUW6FRYLOOH-U3HDFH)HOORZVKLS complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this
QLQIR#VFRYLOOHRUJQZZZVFRYLOOHRUJŶ#6FRYLOOH3) form or who omits material or information requested on this form may be subjected to
3URYLGLQJ2SSRUWXQLWLHVIRU7RPRUURZҋV/HDGHUVLQ3HDFHDQG6HFXULW\ criminal sanctions (including fines and imprisonment) and/or civil sanctions (including civil
penalties). Matthew J. Curry, August 1st 2017.
 A Shrinking Island
A tolerant and diverse
cosmopolitan center,
Beirut is a reminder of
what the Arab world
could be again.

MY FAVORITE BEIRUT CAFE is on a street corner

opposite a large park, one of the few green
spaces in the concrete jungle that is the
city I still call home. The trees in the park,
known as the Jesuit Garden because it was
once a summer retreat for Jesuit priests liv-
ing closer to the coast, shield the remains
of a Byzantine church.
The waitress, Lea, a student of health and
nutrition at a Beirut university, brings me an
espresso as soon as I walk through the door.
She grew up in Zahleh, a predominantly
Christian town in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
Jad, the cafe’s expert juicer, is a Syrian who
has lived in Lebanon most of his life but is at
home neither here nor there. He greets me
with a cheerful “Bonjour!” whenever he sees
me. Mohammed is in charge of preparing
the Middle East’s smoke of choice—water
pipes—for the evening clientele. At a table
next to me, a family is having an animated
conversation in Armenian.
Sometimes I cheat on my favorite spot
and go to another cafe around the corner,
Abu Dany’s, for a sickly sweet Nescafé with
condensed milk, a Middle Eastern staple.
A big picture of the Virgin Mary hangs on
the wall next to a large gold plaque with the
words “God” and “Mohammed” in Arabic
calligraphy. The waiter sports a large cross on his chest, and the
woman behind the register, who appears to be the owner, speaks
with a recognizable accent from a nearby Sunni neighborhood.
I’m curious about how these worlds intersect, but I don’t pry.
Instead, I try to relish what feels like a utopia of coexistence in a
country that is a tinderbox, in a region where fanaticism seems
to rule. This feels like the world my parents spoke of—the one I
read about in books and that I often glimpsed during my life as a
student on the campus of the American University of Beirut. But
this small, protected island of diversity is a relic of the past, now
besieged by those who push for religious and cultural homogene-
ity. And it is a past the younger generations have never known and
that the older generations are starting to forget.
The Arab world is less varied today than it was a century ago.
Back in the 19th century and up until the 1960s, the eastern Medi-
terranean was known as a hub for trade and for its vibrant literary
and art scenes. It served as a refuge for minorities and was more
tolerant and cosmopolitan than Europe had ever been.
In his book Levant, Philip Mansel writes about the “religious
uniformity [that] continued to be enforced in most European

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 67
countries with hysterical severity” until the
early 20th century, while only the Levant
had mosques, churches, and synagogues
side by side for centuries, with no ghettos
and no religious persecutions.
But after the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire, World War II, and decolonization,
cosmopolitanism clashed with national-
ism across the Arab world. The expulsions
of minorities, who were often associated
with the colonizing powers, led to increas-
ing cultural and social homogenization.
The demographic changes included the
expulsion of the Greek community from
Smyrna—known today as the Turkish port
city of Izmir—in 1922 and continued in the
1950s with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel
Nasser kicking out thousands of French,
Greeks, Italians, and Jews, putting an end
to the golden age of Alexandria. The cre-
ation of Israel in 1948 provoked the exodus
68 SEPT | OCT 2017
of several hundred thousand Palestinians,
forever changing the land’s demographics,
while Arab Jews left or were expelled from
Arab countries.
When my father was a child, he could
drive from Beirut through Palestine to Egypt.
No longer. And the borders are becoming
more impenetrable, closed shut by wars.
Ten years ago, when I reported from the
Middle East, I could drive from Beirut to
Syria and into Iraq or Jordan, all the way to
Kuwait. Those memories feel like a past life.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the
tolerance and diversity of the Levant were
unparalleled and unmatched. “There was
no Levant for Muslims in Europe,” Man-
sel writes. No open arms, no acceptance
of the other.
Today, Europe is layered with waves of
immigrants, labor workers, and refugees.
Yet despite its diversity, it frets over the
recent arrival of refugees, describing them
as a flood even when they represent less
than 1 percent of the continent’s total pop-
ulation. This reaction is the result of Euro-
peans’ own sense of insecurity about their
identity and values, coupled with their
paradoxical sense of superiority. It is a sim-
ilarly toxic brew of insecurity and superior-
ity that has been rising in the Middle East,
driving some to increasingly enforce cul-
tural and religious homogeneity.
Today, not only are we losing or kill-
ing our minorities—from Egypt’s Copts
to Iraq’s Yazidis—but we are also witness-
ing dramatic demographic shifts that are
reshaping the identity of whole areas. Iran
and Saudi Arabia’s struggle for political
primacy has driven much of this: In Syria,
where Sunnis have been forced out of cer-
tain areas by violence, Iran is resettling
Lebanese and Iraqi Shiites in their stead,
pushing for full sectarian segregation.
In Lebanon, a country that had a pop-
ulation of 4.5 million in 2011, before the
refugee crisis, and that strives to maintain
a delicate balance among its Sunni, Shi-
ite, and Christian minorities, many worry
about the long-term impact of the influx
in recent years of around a million mostly
Sunni, mostly conservative Syrian refugees
on the fabric of society.
Sipping an apple, carrot, and ginger
juice on the terrace of my Beirut cafe, I
know I am sitting on an island that is
shrinking rapidly. But I persist in believ-
ing that it will expand again when the
madness of war in the region ends. Call
me nostalgic, but preserving memories
of our diverse, cosmopolitan, not-so-dis-
tant, and of course imperfect past is a way
of reminding us of who we once were. And
it just may provide us with a blueprint for
how to chart a better path forward. Q
KIM GHATTAS (@BBCKimGhattas) is a BBC
correspondent covering international
affairs and a public policy fellow at the
Woodrow Wilson Center.
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What a Just
Immigration
Policy
Looks Like
THE SOMALIBRITISH WRITER WARSAN SHIRE
begins her poem “Home” with the line,
“No one leaves home unless / home is the
mouth of a shark.”
Whatever the inciting forces are that
propel people to undertake what is
inevitably a dangerous, expensive, and
arduous journey from their homeland
into the unknown—the kind that rips
apart families—they must be grim. And
in the increasingly politicized debates
within “destination countries” over what
to do with those arriving seeking safety,
we have failed to examine the root causes
that drive people from their homes in the
first place.
There are in the world, right now, more
than 65 million displaced people. That’s
more than at any time since World War II,
and it’s only going to grow. In the next five
or 10 years, there will be huge swaths of
individuals displaced by climate change.
The United States has historically resettled
more refugees than every other country
combined. This may be the year that the
tradition falters.
The United States must continue taking
in refugees, and we should be taking in a
lot more than we are now.
But this is not an issue that lends itself
to simple political messaging. It calls into
question fundamental assumptions. In
order to believe that a lot of people are
80 SEPT | OCT 2017
the final word
going to be displaced by climate change,
you have to believe that climate change
exists.
Oversimplifying and politicizing our
understanding of forced global migration
is a handy but dangerous political tool. The
forced displacement of humans, and how
to handle it as a global community, is an
incredibly nuanced and complicated issue.
It cannot be aptly understood or addressed
in 140 characters.
When President Donald Trump issued
the first travel ban in January, the Islamic
State referred to it as a “blessed ban”
because it reinforced the group’s narra-
tive of an anti-Islam West. But when our
country takes in refugees, we’re giving peo-
ple refuge from the Islamic State and the
other “evil” forces that we claim to be trying
to fight, bolstering our allies in the region
that struggle to host millions of Syrian and
Iraqi refugees and demonstrating that our
projection into the Middle East is not myo-
pically militaristic.
Yet immigration is much broader and
more encompassing than just the question
of refugees. In Europe, there is an ongoing
debate about whether the people washing
up on the shores of Greece and Italy are
economic migrants or refugees. That
As told to Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, a contributing writer to FOREIGN POLICY.
This text has been condensed and edited for publication.
by BECCA HELLER
determination is legally important in the
United States and Europe because the
1951 Convention Relating to the Status
of Refugees prohibits the deportation of
someone with a valid claim to refugee
status. But the terminology also has
a dialectical significance, an implied
“good immigrant” and “bad immigrant.”
It is much easier to dismiss an economic
migrant as someone who’s merely
opportunistic, as opposed to someone
escaping the jaws of a shark.
Immigration doesn’t have to be a par-
tisan issue. We’ve allowed the rhetoric to
become so polarized that many believe that
there is a dichotomy between the working
American in the Rust Belt trying to afford
rising health insurance premiums and the
immigrant trying to come over to seek a
better opportunity, to contribute to Amer-
ica, or to flee persecution.
What they want is essentially identical:
to work hard and achieve happiness, safety,
and security for themselves and their fam-
ilies. A founding premise of America is
that this is a place for immigrants to come
and start over.
A “just” immigration policy can look like
a lot of different things. What we’re seeing
from this administration is a sharp series
of examples of what it cannot look like. It
can’t look like a system that prefers certain
religions or countries of origin, that is arbi-
trary or prejudiced or abusive. It can’t scare
children out of attending school or women
out of reporting domestic violence. It can’t
boil down to the luck of who happens to be
stamping passports in your customs line.
Of course we cannot let in every single
immigrant and refugee in the world, but
ours cannot be a selection process based
on bias or fear or discrimination. It must
be a transparent process that treats all peo-
ple with respect. It must be welcoming.
It should not ever be a system where
refugees or immigrants, having uprooted
themselves from their homes and journeyed
thousands of miles, arrive at our borders
only to be told, “America is closed.”Q
Illustration by THOMAS PITILLI
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Addressing the critical issues
facing Asia in the 21st century
At Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan Airport, young men and women snake through the international
terminal, waiting their turn to begin what could be the world’s longest commute to work.
More than 1,500 people depart the country in this way every day, mostly bound for
temporary jobs as construction workers, domestic servants, or low-skill laborers in the
Gulf countries and East Asia, cut adrift in a foreign land. The Asia Foundation recently
developed Shuvayatra (Safe Journey), a safe migration tool for migrants. Our new
study examines the impact of labor migration economically, socially, and politically on society.

Watch our film and read the study at asiafoundation.org/labor-migration