Refugees and revolution

As the world struggles to cope with refugee movements, the latest change in Australia's neighbourhood being the ejection of refugees from Thailand due to a crackdown there, it becomes more and more obvious that the idea of 'containment' is not only cruel, but ludicrous.

Containment means essentially to imprison people where they are, being either a country that is dangerous or non-functioning,or some kind of refugee transition or concentration camp. Containment has the fatal flaw of completely failing to address the cause of the problem. In fact, containment deliberately avoids trying to address the causes of refugee movements.

Unstable governments and undeveloped infrastructure and economies are the cause of refugee movements. By using containment, destination countries are essentially playing a game of 'keepings off' with refugees. That is, we are just keeping them away from our wealth. This is a kind of paranoid zero-sum game where we think by stopping them from moving around we can remain healthy and wealthy for any amount of time.

The problem is, containment is extremely expensive. The first round of the Pacific Solution in Australia was estimated to cost as much as $1B Australian. Currently, there may have been four times that spent in the current effort. The EU spends great amounts of money simply on search and rescue, never mind actual processing and resettlement.

Perhaps this money would be better spent on construction of basic infrastructure in developing or troubled countries, development of good government [as far as we practice it], and yes, even some early intervention in regions where there is effectively no government. I say early intervention as waiting for a civil war to break out before endeavoring to supply aid is a gross waste of time. The places to start would be countries that are reasonably stable but require help to solidify their government and provide better for their people. At least this way the world would be decreasing the likelihood of further countries collapsing and triggering refugee movements.