South Korea is Coping with Refugees from Yemen (I'm not making this up!)

East Asian societies are among the most closed countries in the world in terms of letting in migrants. So it doesn't take very many people seeking asylum to create a real problem. But refugees from the Middle East are not what you'd expect even in the most open of times, yet a story by Reuters news agency (with thanks to Foreign Policy for the link) tells us that South Korea is coping with several hundred Yemenis seeking asylum there.

South Korea will tighten laws governing the arrival of refugees, the Justice Ministry said on Friday, after a rapid rise in the number of Yemeni asylum seekers sparked anti-refugee sentiment in the racially homogeneous country.

More than 552 people from Yemen arrived on the southern resort island of Jeju between January and May, more than the 430 Yemenis who had ever applied for refugee status in South Korea, the ministry said.

The country has granted refugee status to just over 800 people since 1994. The sudden surge in Yemeni arrivals has fueled concern that many could be seeking economic advantage rather than protection and that they could lead to an increase in crime and other social problems.

Obviously the civil war in Yemen is creating hard times for people there and it is reasonable to think of getting out if you can. But why go to South Korea?

The reason the asylum seekers have chosen Jeju can be traced to a direct flight from Kuala Lumpur, established by budget carrier AirAsia X in December, a Justice Ministry official said. “A few Yemenis started to enter the country in early December and the news about the new flight spread among the 2,800 Yemenis in Malaysia,” the official said, declining to be identified by name.

So, if you can get from Yemen to the capital city of Malaysia, you can catch a direct flight to South Korea. Let's just say that nobody saw that coming. 

UN Rejects Trump's Choice for Head of International Organization for Migration

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) was created after WWII to help resettle European refugees from that war. Over time it has become the world's major organization keeping track of international migrants and helping to formulate migration policies. The IOM is based in Geneva and has always had a connection to the United Nations, although that was tightened up in 2016. Since the 1960s, the director general of the IOM has been an American, most recently William Lacy Swing, a long-time American diplomat and ambassador to several countries. He recently retired and the assumption was that another American would take his place. But, no--as multiple media outlets, including The Guardian, reported today.

United Nations member states have emphatically rejected the US candidate to lead the organisation’s migration agency, despite the risk of financial reprisals from the Trump administration. Ken Isaacs finished a distant third in the last round of voting for the position of director general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a position that has been held by an American since the 1960s. The decisive vote appeared to be a response to Donald Trump’s policies on migration as well as the rejection of a candidate who had tweeted Islamophobic comments and cast doubt on climate change science.

António Vitorino, a Portuguese Socialist party member who is close to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, was elected despite a determined and well-resourced campaign by the US mission to the UN.

The U.S. has been the biggest donor to the IOM and the Trump administration's response to rebuffs of this type are typically to withdraw support. We'll have to see if that happens here.

Where Have the People at the Border Come From?

Yesterday I summarized information showing that there is no crisis at the border. Rather, the sources and characteristics of people trying to cross the southern border into the U.S. without documentation is shifting from laborers from Mexico to people fleeing violence in Central America--especially the "northern triangle" of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Stephanie Leutert, who is Director of the Mexico Security Initiative at UT, Austin, published a nice analysis yesterday that adds to the picture. In particular, she takes a detailed look at the origins of these immigrants from Central America and discusses reasons for their fleeing their homes, as well as reasons why they prefer to keep going north to the U.S., rather than settling in Mexico. She put together the map below of the hometowns of people detained by the Border Patrol.

For the most part people are trying to save their lives and/or the lives of their children from gangs that will kill you if you don't cooperate, aided by governments that are too corrupt to do anything about that. Professor Rumbaut pointed me today to a story on Vice.com that is even more explicit than Stephanie Leutert's article in naming the U.S. as the instigator of much of this violence. We are experiencing "blowback" from a wide range of covert CIA operations in the region over the past several decades.

Now, as to the question of why these people don't stop in Mexico, keep in mind that southern Mexico is less prosperous than the middle and northern part of that country. My colleagues Justin Stoler and Piotr Jankowski and I showed several years ago that migrants from Mexico to the U.S. were coming increasingly from the south because that's where the economy was bad and they couldn't find jobs. Furthermore, Mexico is also a violent country, even if less so than the Northern Triangle. CNN just today reported that May 2018 hit a record for homicides in that country, and that "in the nine months leading up to this weekend's presidential election, 132 politicians have been killed. That's according to Etellekt, a risk analysis and crisis management firm. The group's report, released Tuesday, found that 22 of Mexico's 32 states have seen a political assassination since campaigning began in September. Etellekt's tally found 48 of the victims were candidates. The rest included party workers." Much of that violence is linked, directly or indirectly, to the trafficking of drugs--as is true in Central America as well--and that situation is almost entirely a result of the huge demand in the U.S. for these illegal drugs. So, once again, it comes back to things happening in or by the U.S. that has created the current situation.

There is no Crisis at the Border

There is no one in the world who knows more about migration between Mexico/Central America and the U.S. than Professor Douglas Massey of Princeton University. That is why it is so useful that he has posted a very informative article on The Conversation about the crisis--or lack thereof--at the border. This is not just fact-checking--these are the facts.

The news today is full of dire pronouncements about the “crisis” at the Mexico-U.S. border. In reality, there is no crisis, at least as portrayed in the press and by the Trump administration. Undocumented entries across the border are, in fact, at all-time lows. The mass entry of migrants from Mexico seeking work is over and done with.  The people now arriving at the border are not Mexican workers, but a much smaller number of families from Central America seeking to escape dire circumstances caused in part by U.S. military intervention in the region during the 1980s.

Given President Trump’s demand for the construction of a border wall, many people may no doubt be surprised to learn that net undocumented migration to the U.S. has been zero or negative for a decade. Mexican migration ended not because of U.S. border enforcement, but because of Mexico’s fertility transition. The number of children per woman declined by about 68 percent between 1960 and 2016.  As a result, Mexico has become an aging society. The population’s average age has risen from 16.6 in 1970 to 28.6 today.

And what about all of those stories about rapists and criminals? Professor Rubén Rumbaut of UC, Irvine, who knows more about this than anyone else, has just published a paper showing again that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than are native-born persons. For most undocumented immigrants the only crime they committed was the "crime" of entering the U.S. Thus, they become "crimmigants" as I blogged about last year.

Plant-Based Diet is Good For You (and the Planet)

Today I came across an op-ed by a physician in south Florida extolling the health virtues of a plant-based diet, and I couldn't help but comment on it. Here's his takeaway:

The U.S. cannot prescribe our way to health. It doesn’t work. We have some of the world’s highest rates of chronic disease yet spend the most on medical care. It’s time for the U.S. to take the lead in lifestyle medicine, particularly plant-based diets, in the same way we have become leaders in prescription-based medicine — to the much greater benefit of our patients and our national healthcare budget!

And what is it that we should be doing and why? Dr. Bansal focuses on diabetes, which is closely related to diet, and which he argues could be controlled better if people adopted a largely plant-based diet.

The key is a reasonable amount of naturally-occurring, unprocessed carbohydrates, specifically from a variety of source plant materials. Additionally, plant-sourced foods provide more than enough protein. In fact, research in the U.S. back in the 1960s showed how much protein the average man and woman needs per day: the maximum is around 60 grams for 70-kg men and 50 for 60-kg women[5],[6],[7],[8]. Research also showed that eating a variety of plant-based foods, even exclusively, will supply all 9 essential amino acids (the other 11 made endogenously)[9],[10],[11]. We now eat too much protein (90 grams/day or more) with no benefit and some risk[12],[13],[14]. First, through a series of pathways, excess intake of protein gets indirectly turned to fat and prevents the burning of fat already present. Next, it overtaxes the liver and the kidneys in the processing of excess protein and then secretion and partial reabsorption in the glomerular filtration system. [The numbers are to books and journals referenced in his article.]

This is all about the Blue Zone diet and lifestyle that I blogged about nearly three years ago. About 1/3 of our healthy life expectancy (and longevity) can be attributed to genetics, but the bulk of it relates to life style and diet is a huge part of that. 

The benefit to the planet is that if we decrease the amount of meat we eat, we also lower methane gas emissions into the atmosphere, and we more efficiently grow food for humans, rather than for animals that we intend to kill for dinner. I first blogged about this back in 2013, and most recently mentioned it on Earth Day this year. And it is unlikely that this will be the last time I blog about--it is that important, in my opinion.