Of late, newspapers have been saturated with heart-breaking images of the plight of African and Middle Eastern refugees stumbling ashore several Greek islands under the banner “The Refugee Crisis.” Yet while recent events have obviously represented a humanitarian disaster for the desperate migrants, the crisis to which many Europeans refer is in fact how they will deal with the influx. In the face of such immense suffering, a narrative has arisen that Europe’s amnesty program is a travesty for the natives of host nations. “Refugees will take our jobs” is the battle cry for many, but it is a false one. There are lessons to learn, ironically, from a country that many are fleeing on rafts: Turkey.
There are over 1.5 million refugees in the country as of the beginning of 2015 and upwards of 20 existing camps with more being built. Britain’s paltry 20,000 refugees seem almost insignificant in comparison. An Institute for the Study of Labor paper sought to analyze the presumed negative impact of this influx of supposedly cheap migrant labor into the Turkish market. Generally, it is assumed that those willing to sell their labor to an employer at a lower rate would undercut natives who generally expect a higher wage. However, the research found that despite a five percent population increase from refugees, and no statistically recognizable outflow of Turks, there was no noticeable difference in the employment of native workers. Moreover, the figures were consistent across all skill levels, with minimal drops in the employment levels of natives ranging from relatively unskilled workers to highly-skilled college graduates.
These results are important for several reasons. Chiefly, they show that the make-up of the refugee population seems to broadly reflect the skills make-up of the population at large and isn’t simply composed of unskilled workers. It also shows that the expectations of large-scale social unrest resulting from “job theft” likely wouldn’t materialize. While it’s true that there are issues with the integration of refugees in Turkey, these problems haven’t arisen because refugees are flooding the labor market and depressing wages.
Taking these statistics and applying them to Britain reveals that the reluctant host could have much to gain by instituting a more open amnesty policy. The country has gained in the past from an influx of particular ethnic groups. Filipino nurses and doctors staff hospitals across the United Kingdom with a specifically targeted role in Northern Ireland. The Polish diaspora run successful plumbing businesses, work seasonal jobs on farms and take on jobs as nannies.
Councillors in regions with understaffed hospitals are already calling for empty positions to be offered to qualified refugees. The country’s chronic skills shortage in construction and engineering could also be addressed by a targeted intake of refugees: the statistics seem to suggest that the asylum-seeking population not only contains a significant amount of highly skilled workers, but is relatively young. While seemingly unimportant, this is key for rapidly aging European nations like Britain, where a comprehensive study by the Nuffield Trust estimates the number of elderly people with chronic illnesses will increase by 50 percent by 2030, putting huge pressure on public services.
When considering the plight of refugees, Britain and other European nations should consider their own skills shortages and aging populations. A moral argument should be enough, but economics prove definitively that Europe must, and should, do all it can to help those seeking refuge within its borders.