欧洲无法解决难民危机

    欧盟再次面临危机，每月数以万计难民抵境，其中很大一部分来自陷入内战的叙利亚。

    欧盟统计局的数据显示，2014年进入欧盟28国寻求庇护的难民人数达62.6万人，创历史新高，而且没有迹象显示其增长势头将很快放缓。2012年中东和北非地区的冲突激化，造成数十万人无家可归，从那时起涌入欧洲的难民数量开始快速上升。

    报纸和电视上充斥着许多难民丧生，或被欧洲这个全球最富裕大洲拒之门外的图文报道。对欧洲领导人来说，局势已经到达拐点。美国记者史蒂芬•厄兰格上周三（9月3日）在《纽约时报》上发表文章指出，当前的难民危机和席卷欧洲的债务危机有相似之处。

    厄兰格认为，从某种意义上讲，紧张的局势使希腊危机和移民危机从两个方面反映出了同一问题。希腊人依靠欧元大举借贷生活，这些借款由德国的最优质信贷提供支持。而当希腊遭遇财政问题时，却拒绝按德国的要求大幅紧缩开支。

    同样的，东欧边远地区的民众一直享受着自由进入德国市场的福利。但当那些非欧洲难民穿越他们的土地，前往更富裕的欧洲核心地区寻求庇护或工作时，这些东欧国家也未能按德国的要求采取相应措施。

    以上分析不仅对欧债危机的经济原理进行了错误解读，也过于相信欧洲有能力解决境外战争带来的危机。首先，欧债危机的情况要比“希腊在德国信贷支持下无节制借款”更为复杂。和生产率较低的经济体建立货币联盟后，欧元对德国来说一直处于低估状态，多年来德国经济一直得益于此。将产品低价出口到欧盟其他地区让德国受益匪浅。

    同时，正如牛津大学教授、国际移民研究所联合主任海因•德•哈斯指出的那样，涌向某个国家的移民多少与输入国的经济健康状况以及移民输出地的情况直接相关。正是由于这个原因，欧盟上一次移民“危机”才会出现在1992年，也就是波黑战争进入白热化之时。只要输入国的情况远好于输出国，任何阻止移民的措施都只会加快移民速度，并让正在逃离的民众陷于危险之中。德•哈斯写道：“移民限制虽然经常可以减少移民数量，但作用往往相当小。同时，这些限制措施通常有四种潜在副作用（或者称之为替代作用），这些副作用会进一步削弱这些措施的效果，甚至让它们适得其反。”

    这四种副作用是：

    •移民找到其他非法移民渠道。“比如，欧洲国家曾在20世纪70年代设法限制摩洛哥和土耳其工人移民，但后者继续以家庭移民和非常规移民的形式出现。”

    •“现在就走，否则再也无法移民”，这种想法会让移民争相逃离，以免受限于新政策。”

    •移民另寻出路。“举例来说，如果某个欧洲国家收紧庇护政策，寻求庇护的人就可能流向邻国。我们还发现，地中海的移民管控并未阻止移民潮，只是迫使移民和走私者采用其他路线。”

    •“第四种副作用可能最严重，那就是移民限制不光减少了入境移民数量，还减少了返回输出国的移民数量。换句话说，这样的措施减少了人口流动，使移民成为永久居民。具有讽刺意味的是，这和相关政策要达到的目的恰好相反。”

    因此，虽然德国动用了大量资源来安置难民，德国总理安吉拉•默克尔还动用政治资本敦促欧盟国家拿出更多资源来帮助难民，这些举措虽然值得赞赏，但实际上最吸引难民的还是德国经济。而且，正是因为德国拒绝对存在问题的欧洲货币联盟进行调整，才削弱了意大利和希腊等国摆脱经济危机的能力。（财富中文网）

    译者：Charlie

    校对：詹妮

    The European union is suffering from yet another crisis: the tens of thousands of migrants arriving at its shores each month, a large portion of whom are fleeing the civil war in Syria.

    According to Eurostat, the number of asylum seekers in the European Union’s 28 member states reached a record 626,000 in 2014, with no sign that the flow will abate any time soon. These numbers have been quickly rising since 2012, when conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa came to a boil and displaced hundreds of thousands of refugees.

    With newspapers and television dominated by pictures and reports of hundreds of migrants who have either died or been turned away by the richest continent in the world, the situation has reached a breaking point for Europe’s leaders. In a piece in Wednesday’s New York Times, Steven Erlanger argued that the migrant crisis bares resemblance to the debt crisis that continues to plague that EU:

    That tension has, in some sense, made both the Greek and migrant crises two sides of the same problem. The Greeks lived large borrowing in euros, which Germany backed with its sterling credit, and then challenged Germany’s demands for harsh austerity when it ran into financial problems.

    Similarly, people in the eastern reaches of Europe have enjoyed unfettered access to the big German market. But they have balked at Germany’s evolving demands for how to grapple with non-European migrants crisscrossing their lands on their way to seek asylum or work in Europe’s wealthier core.

    This analysis gets both the economics of the European debt crisis wrong and places too much faith in Europe’s ability to solve a crisis that is the result of wars outside its borders. First, the European debt crisis is a bit more complicated than Greeks going on a borrowing binge backed by German credit. The German economy has benefited for years from its use of a currency that is undervalued because its alliance with less productive economies. Germany has benefitted immensely from its ability to export its products cheaply to the rest of the EU.

    Meanwhile, as Hein de Haas, co-director of the International Migration Institute and professor at the University of Oxford, has pointed out that the level of immigration to a given country is directly related to the economic health of the destination and the conditions within the point of departure. That’s why the previous migrant “crisis” in the EU happened in 1992, at the height of the Balkan Wars. As long as the destination country offers far better conditions than what’s available in migrants’ home countries, any efforts to stem the flow will only speed up migration and endanger those who are fleeing. de Haas writes, “while immigration restrictions often reduce immigration, these effects tend to be rather small. In addition, restrictions often have four potential side-effects (‘substitution effects’) which further undermine their effectiveness or can even make them counter-productive.”

    Those four side-effects are:

    • Migrants find other illegal channels through which to migrate. “For instance, when European countries tried to curb immigration from Moroccan and Turkish workers from the 1970s, people continued to migrate as family and irregular migrants.”

    • “Now or never migration,” where migrants rush to avoid new restrictions.

    • Migrants simply use another geographic route. “For instance, if one European country toughens its asylum policies, this may divert asylum seekers to neighbouring countries. We also see this with migration controls in the Mediterranean Sea, which do not stop migration but rather compel migrants and smugglers to use other geographical routes.”

    • “The fourth and probably strongest side effect of immigration restrictions is that they not only reduce immigration but that they also reduce return migration. In other words: they reduce circulation and push migrants into permanent settlement. Ironically, this is exactly the opposite of what the policies aim to achieve.”

    So while it’s laudable that Germans have spent extensive resources on refugee resettlement, and that German chancellor Angela Merkel is spending political capital on the effort to get EU countries to devote more resources to help these refugees, it’s actually the German economy most of all which is attracting them. And it’s German resistance to fixing Europe’s broken currency union that is hampering the abilities of countries like Italy and Greece to recover from the economic depression they are suffering from.