, Columnist
Europe and the U.S. Could Make Migration Manageable
Solutions exist, but the issue has become too politicized for politicians to consider them.
Lives in limbo.
Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images North America
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As the global number of asylum seekers continues to increase, migration is now a political lightning rod on both sides of the Atlantic. And yet politicians don’t seem interested in solving the problem so much as wielding it against opponents.
According to a new European Union report on the asylum situation, 954,000 asylum applicants were awaiting decisions in Europe at the end of 2017, 16 percent fewer than a year earlier. Fewer new applications were lodged, and more of them were rejected as the share of people arriving from war zones and genuinely violent countries has gone down.