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Finding Refuge through Employment: Worker Visas as a Complementary Pathway for Refugee Resettlement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2020
Abstract
This essay identifies and explores an underappreciated win-win policy option that has the potential to address both the needs of refugees for resettlement and the labor demand of destination countries. Building upon provisions of the Model International Mobility Convention—a model convention endorsed by dozens of leading migration and refugee experts—and a program pioneered by Talent Beyond Boundaries, we explore how to scale up valuable measures for identifying job opportunities that can resettle refugees from asylum countries to destination countries. The latter can benefit from the labor of refugees and thereby offer long-term refuge for populations in desperate need of resettlement.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
Footnotes
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The authors thank Alex Aleinikoff and Emma Borgnäs for their comments and Bruce Cohen, Madeline Holland, and Stephanie Cousins of Talent Beyond Boundaries for their advice. They would also like to thank the Endeavor Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation for their funding on this project.
References
NOTES
1 “Migration in the World,” International Organization for Migration, last updated November 5, 2019, www.iom.sk/en/migration/migration-in-the-world.html.
2 Ibid.
3 See National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2017), www.nap.edu/catalog/23550/the-economic-and-fiscal-consequences-of-immigration; and Liebig, Thomas and Mo, Jeffrey, “The Fiscal Impact of Immigration in OECD Countries,” in International Migration Outlook 2013 (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2013)Google Scholar, www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/international-migration-outlook-2013/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-oecd-countries_migr_outlook-2013-6-en.
4 In fact, 37.1 percent of unauthorized immigrant workers in the United States suffered from minimum wage violations, as compared with 15.6 percent of U.S.-born citizens. Annette Bernhardt, Ruth Milkman, Nik Theodore, Douglas Heckathorn, Mirabai Auer, James DeFilippis, Ana Luz Gonzalez, Victor Narro, Jason Perelshteyn, Diana Polson, and Michael Spiller, Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America's Cities (Los Angeles: Institute for Research on Labor & Employment, UCLA, 2009). Meanwhile, a recent Australian study found that nearly one-third of temporary visa holders were paid below the minimum wage. See Berg, Laurie and Farbenblum, Bassina, Wage Theft in Australia: Findings of the National Temporary Migrant Work Survey (Sydney: Migrant Worker Justice Initiative, November 2017)Google Scholar.
5 Michael D. Shear and Miriam Jordan, “Trump Suspends Visas Allowing Hundreds of Thousands of Foreigners to Work in the U.S.,” New York Times, June 22, 2020. Later in the essay, we propose a hybrid points/employer system geared toward meeting actual demand for foreign labor that is unlikely to be filled by existing U.S. residents.
6 Both figures were taken from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR Global Trends Report: Forced Displacement in 2019 (Geneva: UNHCR, 2020), www.unhcr.org/5ee200e37.pdf.
7 Ibid.
8 “Refugees at Highest Ever Level, Reaching 65m, Says UN,” BBC News, June 20, 2016, www.bbc.com/news/world-36573082. The BBC is counting the internally displaced with externally displaced refugees.
9 UNHCR, UNHCR Global Trends Report.
10 UNHCR, UNHCR Projected Global Resettlement Needs: 2021 (Geneva: UNHCR, 2020), www.unhcr.org/en-us/protection/resettlement/5ef34bfb7/projected-global-resettlement-needs-2021.html.
11 UNHCR, “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees” in Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (U.S.T. 6259, United Nations Treaty Series 189, no. 2545, July 28, 1951), www.unhcr.org/en-us/3b66c2aa10.
12 Tim Gaynor, “2015 Likely to Break Records for Forced Displacement—Study,” UNHCR, December 18, 2015, www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2015/12/5672c2576/2015-likely-break-records-forced-displacementstudy.html.
13 UNHCR, UNHCR Global Trends Report.
14 Ibid.
15 The text, list of commission members, and signatories of the Model International Mobility Convention can be found in a special edition of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law entitled “The Model International Mobility Convention” (vol. 56, no. 2 [2018]). Michael Doyle served as the convenor of the commission. Readers wishing to sign the convention can do so on the Model International Mobility Convention website at www.internationalmobilityconvention.org.
16 Office of the Press Secretary, White House, “Fact Sheet on the Leaders’ Summit on Refugees,” White House: President Barack Obama, September 20, 2016, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/20/fact-sheet-leaders-summit-refugees. It remains to be seen whether the promises are kept.
17 United Nations General Assembly, sec. 4 in “New York Declaration for Refugees and Minors,” A/RES/71/1, October 3, 2016, undocs.org/en/A/RES/71/1.
18 Sec. 63 in ibid.
19 Sec. 52 in ibid.
20 Sec. 68 in ibid.
21 “Realistic utopia” is a concept of John Rawls. See John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 7.
22 Articles 209–13, Model International Mobility Convention, 2017, mobilityconvention.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/pdf/mimc_document_web.pdf.
23 Michael Clemens and Lant Pritchett, “Temporary Work Visas: A Four-Way Win for the Middle Class, Low-Skill Workers, Border Security, and Migrants,” Center for Global Development, April 11, 2013, www.cgdev.org/publication/time-bound-labor-access-united-states-four-way-win-middle-class-low-skill-workers-border.
24 ILO News, “New ILO Figures Show 164 Million People Are Migrant Workers,” International Labor Organization, December 5, 2018, www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_652106/lang--en/index.htm.
25 Yannick Binvel, Michael Franzino, Alan Guarino, Jean-March Laouchez, and Werner Penk, Future of Work: The Global Talent Crunch (Korn Ferry, n.d.), www.kornferry.com/content/dam/kornferry/docs/article-migration/FOWTalentCrunchFinal_Spring2018.pdf.
26 For a comprehensive and recent review of the organization's efforts in recent years, see Talent Beyond Boundaries, Global Evaluation: Labour Mobility Pathways Pilot 2016–2019; Global Evaluation Report (Talent Beyond Boundaries, June 1, 2020), static1.squarespace.com/static/5dc0262432cd095744bf1bf2/t/5ed62ca2a8c2082cb652b167/1591094458187/TBB+Global+Evaluation+2020+Final+%28external%29.pdf.
27 Ibid.
28 A 2017 survey of Syrian refugees concluded that the vast majority—nearly 70 percent—no longer possessed their Syrian national ID cards. See Norwegian Refugee Council, Syrian Refugees’ Right to Legal Identity: Implications for Return (briefing note, January 2017), www.nrc.no/globalassets/pdf/briefing-notes/icla/final-syrian-refugees-civil-documentation-briefing-note-21-12-2016.pdf. Additionally, 36 percent of refugees in Canada with prior work and educational credentials have faced difficulty in getting their credentials recognized upon resettlement. See Harvey Krahn, Tracey Derwing, Marlene Mulder, and Lori Wilkinson, “Educated and Underemployed: Refugee Integration into the Canadian Labour Market,” Journal of International Migration and Integration 1, no. 1 (2000), pp. 59–84, at 74.
29 Alexandra Mergener and Tobias Maier, “Immigrants’ Chances of Being Hired at Times of Skill Shortages: Results from a Factorial Survey Experiment among German Employers,” Journal of International Migration and Integration 20 (February 2019), pp. 155–77.
30 T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Leah Zamore, The Arc of Protection: Reforming the International Refugee Regime (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2019), pp. 80–85, 115–17.
31 Within the framework of the Model International Mobility Convention, the refugee labor visa holders would also acquire rights to portable retirement “pensions” and other rights including permanent residence after a set period of lawful residence.
32 Several European countries, including Germany, Spain, and Sweden, also rely, in large part, on employer input in allocating economic-stream immigration visas.
33 Aneta Bonikowska, Feng Hu, and Garnett Picot, “A Canada-US Comparison of Labour Market Outcomes among Highly Educated Immigrants,” Canadian Public Policy 37, no. 1 (2011), pp. 25–48.
34 Barry R. Chiswick and Paul W. Miller, “Educational Mismatch: Are High-Skilled Immigrants Really Working at High-Skilled Jobs and the Price They Pay If They Aren't?” (discussion paper no. 4280, IZA, July 2009), ftp.iza.org/dp4280.pdf.
35 Demetrios G. Papademitriou, Doris Meissner, Marc R. Rosenblum, and Madeleine Sumption, Aligning Temporary Immigration Visas with U.S. Labor Market Needs: The Case for a New System of Provisional Visas (Washington, D.C.: Migration Policy Institute, July 2009), www.migrationpolicy.org/research/aligning-temporary-immigration-visas-us-labor-market-needs-case-new-system-provisional.
36 Papademitriou, Demetrios G. and Sumption, Madeleine, Rethinking Points Systems and Employer-Selected Immigration (Washington, D.C.: Migration Policy Institute, June 2011)Google Scholar, www.migrationpolicy.org/research/rethinking-points-systems-and-employer-selected-immigration.
37 Lazaro Zamora and Jeff Mason, Merit-Based Immigration System, Bipartisan Policy Center, April 11, 2017, bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/merit-based-immigration/.
38 Demetrios G. Papademetriou and Kate Hooper, Competing Approaches to Selecting Economic Immigrants: Points-Based vs. Demand-Driven Systems (Washington, D.C.: Migration Policy Institute, April 2019), www.migrationpolicy.org/research/selecting-economic-immigrants-points-based-demand-driven-systems.
39 Zamora and Mason, Merit-Based Immigration System.
40 Roy Maurer, “Are ‘Merit-Based’ Immigration Systems the Answer? Successful Points-Based Systems Require Flexibility,” Society for Human Resource Management, June 4, 2019, www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/trump-merit-based-points-immigration-systems-canada-australia.aspx.
41 Koslowski, Rey, “Shifts in Selective Migration Policy Models: A Comparison of Australia, Canada, and the U.S.,” in Czaika, Mathias. ed., High-Skilled Migration: Drivers and Policies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)Google Scholar.
42 Papademetriou and Hooper, Competing Approaches to Selecting Economic Immigrants.
43 Talent Beyond Boundaries has proposed the idea of a loan fund to cover the costs of skilled migration for refugees. This could be government funded and similar to loan programs that countries such as Australia make available to humanitarian refugees.
44 We are aware that allocating 10 percent of labor visas for refugees may initially appear to shrink the opportunities for vulnerable migrants ineligible for refugee status for whom economic migration may serve as their sole lifeline. Yet given the limitations of responsibility sharing vis-à-vis humanitarian refugee resettlement and the need for foreign labor across the globe, we believe that a robust and effective labor migration system, as proposed in the MIMC, will be able to contribute to meeting the needs of both vulnerable economic migrants and refugees.
45 In F.Y. 2018, the United States issued 925,000 temporary worker visas in addition to the 140,000 permanent employment-based visas already granted each year. See Brittany Blizzard and Jeanne Batalova, “Temporary Visa Holders in the United States,” Migration Policy Institute, December 5, 2019, www.migrationpolicy.org/article/temporary-visa-holders-united-states#Workers.
46 UNHCR, UNHCR Global Trends Report.
47 See Articles 21–13, Model International Mobility Convention for responsibility sharing and other measures taken to promote humane solutions to a shared global regime. And see Aleinikoff and Zamore, Arc of Protection for a “Global Action Platform for Forced Displacement” to address emergencies before they become protracted (pp. 120–24).