Therese Raphael, Columnist

Solving the Refugee Crisis One Algorithm at a Time

Borders and barbed wire won't stop migration. Technology can make it less disruptive and dangerous.

December 3, 2015 at 9:49 AM UTC

Therese Raphael is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion covering health care and British politics. Previously, she was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe.

Have mobile, will travel.
Photographer: Carl Court/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

What if tech-savvy millennials could help solve the world's refugee crisis? How would they approach it?

In modest offices on the 29 floor of a lower Manhattan high-rise, Daniel Lizio-Katzen, recently showed me a migration wizard. It's a software program that his company, Migreat, developed to help economic migrants and is now adapting to help refugees. The wizard detects the IP address of the user and then communicates in one of 12 different languages. The interface couldn't be more user-friendly: Based on answers to a list of questions, it produces a personalized migration checklist and advice, stripped of jargon, about national laws.