The World’s Immigration Policies Are Outdated. Here’s How to Catch Up.

More than a week after a fishing boat overcrowded with asylum-seekers capsized off the Greek coastline, only 104 survivors have been found, and as many as 550 adults and 100 children are now feared dead by the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration. The European commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, said that the sinking may be the “worst tragedy ever” in the Mediterranean Sea, also warning that such journeys have increased sevenfold compared to last year.

The news cast a shadow over World Refugee Day on June 20, which honors people forced to flee their homes and commemorates the anniversary of the United Nations’ adoption of the 1951 Refugee Convention—the birth of the modern humanitarian migration system. For more than 70 years, this system has divided immigration governance into two tracks: one for voluntary migrants and another for forced migrants. But this dichotomy seems less and less suited for today’s reality.

For all the complexity of global immigration policy—dozens of visa types per country, each regulated by obscure requirements—this split still underpins most legal frameworks. Voluntary migrants are those who move to advance their career and socioeconomic status on labor visas, join relatives on family visas, enroll in an educational program on student visas, or invest in a new market on entrepreneur visas. Meanwhile, forced migrants move because their lives are endangered; persecution qualifies them for admission and refuge under international law.

The nature of global migration today is changing, and policy is struggling to keep up. The many people seeking to cross the borders of the United States or the European Union are neither voluntary migrants nor entitled to refuge. They are forced migrants who don’t qualify for refugee status. Because there are few legal pathways for them to enter destination states, borders are becoming harder to control, reactionary nativism is rising, and tragedies such as last week’s shipwreck in the Mediterranean are becoming more likely. It doesn’t have to be this way.

International regulations governing refugee admissions are effectively unchanged from 1951, when U.N. members ratified rules that granted entry to safe third countries to anyone who credibly faces oppression and fears for their life in their country of origin. These rules were designed with the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust fresh in mind, and receiving governments deliberately circumscribed their application to people who were persecuted on the basis of their political beliefs, religion, identity, or social class.

However, international law has not been adapted to address modern threats such as gang or militia violence, or the pervasive loss of arable or habitable land due to climate change. Others face equal pressure from an economic collapse pushing their families to the edge of starvation. There is little doubt that many of the people trekking across the Sonoran Desert or the Mediterranean Sea—predominantly coming from Central America, Western Asia, or sub-Saharan Africa—are forced to migrate. These problems are not new. But thanks to more accessible transportation, the communication of mobility opportunities via the internet, and the intensification of these threats, migrants that may have once only reached neighboring countries in the global south are now able to reach North America or Europe in greater numbers than before.

These families and individuals cannot return to their countries of origin, but they usually do not qualify for asylum either. That is why so many nonrefugee forced migrants try again after being denied at the border or interdicted at sea. An increasing number of people are entering the United States and the EU without authorization or filing asylum claims that grant years of parole while they wait to be adjudicated, even if they are unlikely to be approved. The ambiguous status of these migrants has allowed nativist political leaders to label asylum-seekers as exploitative when they are simply seeking refuge in countries that do not recognize the threats they are fleeing.

To be sure, most nonrefugee forced migrants are also seeking work or may intend to join relatives in specific destination countries. But these mixed motivations do not change their fundamental vulnerability, just as career goals and a desire to reunite with family do not change the humanitarian status of refugees who flee persecution. Even though immigration laws may classify people according to a single purpose for migrating, no one is so singular in their needs.

The future order and stability of global borders depends on how countries respond to this complicated policy challenge. Most governments are struggling because they are applying yesterday’s laws to address modern trends in human mobility. But there are two simple shifts that governments can make now to adjust current systems to the new realities of global migration.

First, existing voluntary migration programs can begin to account for new forms of humanitarian vulnerability. Most labor migration programs currently evaluate immigration applicants on the basis of skills, a job offer, or credentials. Similarly, applicants for family reunification are evaluated on their relationship to their sponsor. But these programs could take the vulnerability of applicants into account in their decision-making. Many people who wish to reunify with relatives or who are willing and able to work in industries with labor shortages are also fleeing humanitarian emergencies.

Countries with points-based systems, such as Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, evaluate applicants on a range of criteria and factor in attributes such as language proficiency and previous visits. These states could begin favoring those in vulnerable circumstances when dealing with similarly situated applicants. Other countries could likewise take circumstances into account in applications for temporary labor programs or family unification visas—for example, considering distant relatives, who are normally not prioritized but could be in vulnerable situations. Such incremental shifts to existing policies would not require a policy overhaul. They would also not open the door indiscriminately, allowing governments to avoid public backlash.

Second, governments can pursue more temporary migration programs that acknowledge acute humanitarian emergencies and accommodate nonrefugee forced migrants while preserving the state’s ability to repatriate immigrants when conditions demonstrably improve. One example of this is the temporary protected status designation in the United States, which grants legal residency to foreigners already in the United States when inhumane conditions endanger their return to countries of origin. The European Union’s own temporary protection directive—introduced in the wake of the Yugoslav Wars—has been much more limited, applying only to ostensible refugees, including Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion last year.

Temporary labor migration schemes have grown in recent years, largely driven by governments that acknowledge demographic crisis and pressing labor shortages but lack the political capital or desire to commit to permanent visas. This is the logic behind Japan’s 2019 expansion of its immigration program to include more foreign trainees. This approach—in which immigration regimes focus on temporary visas without access to citizenship—could similarly be applied to people in dire straits. However, these temporary programs do not acknowledge that complex emergencies often make repatriation impossible or at least unethical.

The factors driving nonrefugee forced migrants to emigrate will not fade away: intensifying climate change, the proliferation of firearms to nonmilitary actors, gaping economic inequality, and imbalanced demographic dynamics. The international community has made some early progress as it relates to the recognition of migrants fleeing natural disasters and other climate change effects, but only in nonbinding and regional frameworks. If states can engage in honest conversation about these broader shifts in human mobility, more innovative solutions will arise. But right now, governments are using old tools to address a new challenge.