A Secondary Benefit of Democratization

In recent years the West in general, but Europe in particular, has been experiencing an immigration crisis as millions of migrants have flowed westward seeking, for the most part, economic opportunities, but also political and cultural freedoms denied them in their homelands. Many of the latter have been refugees, seeking and being granted asylum in the West. Critics of Bush's Middle East policy have long predicted that by destabilizing the region it would dramatically increase the refugee flow and exacerbate the problems created by an influx of immigrants into western societies. But, in fact, the opposite has happened.

The BBC reports:

Asylum falling around the world

The number of asylum seekers coming to the industrialised world fell by a fifth in 2004 to its lowest level in 16 years, according to the United Nations.

Well, actually this is very good news, but the way it has been reported masks the real situation.

Much of the decline in refugees was due to two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan:

[T]he number of asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Iraq continued to fall - the two nations formerly having produced some of the largest movements of people into Europe in recent years.

The number of Afghans seeking asylum has dropped by 83% since 2001 while Iraqi asylum applications have fallen by 80% since 2002. These falls have coincided with regime changes in both countries.

Read the whole thing here:

Note that in both cases American invasion rather than swelling the flow of refugees has almost eliminated it. In fact, though it is not reported in this article, in both countries former refugees have been returning home in large numbers.

The full consequences of the Bush Doctrine are just beginning to become apparent and as they do the world is increasingly becoming a better place.