There is one similarity between the Israel/Gaza crisis and the U.S. unaccompanied child immigrant crisis: National borders enforcing social inequality. When unequal populations are separated, the disparity creates social pressure at the border. The stronger the pressure, the greater the military force needed to maintain the separation.
To get a conservative estimate of the pressure at the Israel/Gaza border, I compared some numbers for Israel versus Gaza and the West Bank combined, from the World Bank (here’s a recent rundown of living conditions in Gaza specifically). I call that conservative because things are worse in Gaza than in the West Bank.
Then, just as demographic wishful thinking, I calculated what the single-state solution would look like on the day you opened the borders between Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. I added country percentiles showing how each state ranks on the world scale (click to enlarge).
Israel’s per capita income is 6.2-times greater, its life expectancy is 6 years longer, its fertility rate is a quarter lower, and its age structure is reversed. Together, the Palestinian territories have a little more than half the Israeli population (living on less than 30% of the land). That means that combining them all into one country would move both populations’ averages a lot. For example, the new country would be substantially poorer (29% poorer) and younger than Israel, while increasing the national income of Palestinians by 444%. Israelis would fall from the 17th percentile worldwide in income, and the Palestinians would rise from the 69th, to meet at the 25th percentile.
Clearly, the separation keeps poor people away from rich people. Whether it increases or decreases conflict is a matter of debate.
Meanwhile
Meanwhile, the USA has its own enforced exclusion of poor people.
The current crisis at the southern border of the USA mostly involves children from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. They don’t actually share a border with the USA, of course, but their region does, and crossing into Mexico seems pretty easy, so it’s the same idea.
To make a parallel comparison to Israel and the West Bank/Gaza, I just used Guatemala, which is larger by population than Honduras and El Salvador combined, and also closest to the USA. The economic gap between the USA and Guatemala is even larger than the Israeli/Palestinian gap. However, because the USA is 21-times larger than Guatemala by population, we could easily absorb the entire Guatemalan population without much damaging our national averages. Per capita income in the USA, for example, would fall only 4%, while rising more than 7-times for Guatemala (click to enlarge):
This simplistic analysis yields a straightforward hypothesis: violence and military force at national borders rises as the income disparity across the border increases. Maybe someone has already tested that.
The demographic solution is obvious: open the borders, release the pressure, and devote resources to improving quality of life and social harmony instead of enforcing inequality. You’re welcome!
Cross-posted at Family Inequality.
Philip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog Family Inequality. You can follow him on Twitter or Facebook.
Comments 25
M_Young — July 21, 2014
Your 'solution' would, of course, increase social inequality in the US. It already has, as we have had de facto open borders for decades.
Worse, the externalities (crowds, traffic, 'development) 's the massive influx would (and already have) dramatically decrease the quality of life for Americans.
Finally, it is doubtful that the expanded states would be able to generate the per capita wealth to 'work on ways to end social inequality'. Quite the opposite -- it is well known that 'Hispanics' lag the current majority of the US (white non-hispanics) in education and income **for generations**.
We would, in short, become Mexico. Not a happy outcome for anyone.
Bill R — July 21, 2014
I know your proposed solution is less a serious recommendation than a provocative end note, but that's the problem in a nutshell, i.e., a lack of serious recommendations that are politically feasible.
For starters, let's agree that anyone who completes an advanced degree in the US can stay here instead of being kicked out.
John — July 21, 2014
We really just need to annex S. American countries and take them under our wing. We increase the standard of living for all these third world nations, and we get to harvest all their natural resources.
It broadens the borders, improves the quality of life, and increases social harmony. Its a win-win situation for everyone.
Mr. S — July 21, 2014
It's true. Isn't America supposed to welcome the disillusioned, the poor, the huddles masses?
If it were up to me, I'd open borders and remove most welfare programs, including the minimum wage. While everyone should be allowed to live here, living here shouldn't entitle you to anything. It's funny how that concept, and the resulting self-motivating spirit is more easily found among prospective immigrants than current citizens. That makes them more American than a lot of us.
What really makes me sad is Xenophobic conservatives want to keep immigrants out to protect American jobs, while liberals want to discourage outsourcing jobs for the same reason. You'd hope that one day we'll recognize that people are just people, who usually just want to care for their children or loved ones.
Lunad — July 21, 2014
I should point out that the populated side in the picture of the US/Mexico border is the Mexico side, since it is not apparent from context.
mimimur — July 21, 2014
What always strikes me about this and about migration politics in general in the western world is just how twisted our self preception is. I mean, wethink of ourselves as the heroes for letting people in and paint ourselves as powerless when we don't claiming that the burden is just so big that it's impossible to take in more.
But take for example the conflict in Syria where a million or more people are on the run. Where do they go? Not to the rich heroic countries (they just can't take them in), but to their neighboring countries. The countries that we still paint as poor, corrupted or victims in one way or another take in hundreds of thousands of refugees, even when it results in refugee camps. Just about all refugees end up in their neighboring countries - of they live in the middle east, that is.
Now, look at the border to Mexico or to the Mediterranean sea of death by comparison. Whose politics are monstrous?
ViktorNN — July 22, 2014
The glaringly obvious problem with this argument is that it doesn't take into account the extreme levels of wealth inequality within Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
These countries are far from incapable of taking care of themselves, a fact which weakens the analogy to Gaza/West Bank, which are reliant on UN aid.
Given that Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are countries with extremely wealthy oligarchies, the moral question of who should take care of the poor people in these countries should first ask what moral obligation these oligarchs owe. I would answer that they owe the most!
Going further, a far more interesting, insightful analysis than the one presented by Cohen would ask how the migration of the poor of these countries functions to benefit the oligarchs of Mexico, Central America, AND the United States.
The facts suggest a kind of exchange of labor where Mexican and Central American oligarchies are relieved of providing a social welfare system for their own people, while oligarchs in the U.S. get the benefit of driving down wages and benefits for the U.S. middle class through the creation of a permanently unemployed and underemployed underclass.
Given all this, opening the borders would likely be a disaster for everyone except the very rich who would of course love to see a kind of de-regulated "labor free trade zone" in the form of the expansion of South and Central America's underclass to include N. Americans.
This is why you see opening the borders rhetoric most often championed by anti-regulation obsessed libertarians like the Kochs, the Chamber of Commerce, Rand Paul, etc. etc.
LeilaM12 — July 26, 2014
I think it's weird that you say "border fences do this"... Correlation not causation etc. Cause I would argue what makes Palestine so poor is the occupation.
Alison M — July 31, 2014
The statistics in this article are idiotic. I see no reason to believe that combining two or more countries would actually make citizens of those countries closer to the new 'average' generated by the numbers. Until you start analyzing government programs, natural resources, and employment markets, all you're doing is gerrymandering the census. The US fertility rate is 1.9, but nobody actually has 1.9 children.
PNWman — August 13, 2014
This is the worst kind of liberal claptrap.We have 50 million poor people in the US.
Allowing in millions more is suicidally stupid.