Essay: Long term relative and absolute gains (climate change, immigration)

The world is imperfect as it is lead and managed by imperfect people making challenges, which is inevitable.  Success is often defined by the wise, not by avoidance of challenges but by how one responds to challenges, and this applies to countries as well.  Countries are constantly managing forces that challenge their stability; economic, political, racial and religious stability. Two concepts that refer to how states will act in the international community are absolute and relative gains. Relative gains only looks at the individual gains in respect to others while absolute gains looks at the total effect of the decision. Absolute gains will engage in comparative advantage and improve the overall economy while relative gains is a zero-sum game and will engage in competition where one state can only can keep exceeding by gaining from others.
When factors come out of balance conflict can ensue causing people to flee for a more stable environment.  This process of people looking for a better life is known as “migration”.  Migration is not a country problem it is a world problem.  Migration affects multiple countries with the one that migrants are leaving and the ones they are going to.  People bring their customs, religious beliefs, disease, etc. leading to these being disruptive to the receiving country.  Therefore it is productive for countries to work together to address this process, for cooperation would bring more absolute gains to these countries.
The recent unrest in Central America has caused economic instability.  This instability has manifested itself as political retribution, starvation, and dangerous conditions causing its citizens to search opportunities and safety in other countries.  This particular migration is so populous that it is known as a caravan.  This caravan carries with it contagious diseases that require immediate attention and risk of spreading to the community that it inhabits.  Furthermore this group is 80% young men which brings with it both opportunity and potential problems.  All of these issues pose both challenges and opportunities depending on how the respective countries handle it.  They have to decide if they’re interested in long term or short term solutions as well as relative or absolute gains.
The USA was founded and built by immigrants and appreciates the value of people seeking to bring their skills and passion and contribute to its society therefore focusing on real absolute gains. These absolute gains would include more tax paying contributors to society, replacing the aging workforce, and increasing diversity within a country. The USA is working with Mexico to better deal with the size of this migrant caravan to allow for the best long term and short term outcome.  The USA is also helping Mexico financially in dealing with this challenge which in turn helps both countries work collectively towards the best outcome, expanding our economy in absolute gains.
The world is foregoing the highest levels of displacement on record, among them are nearly 22.5 million refugees. Millions of people have been denied access to basic rights such as healthcare, employment and freedom of moving, and education. Government spending for receiving and integrating people looking for international protection varies across countries. In many countries the cost of integrating refugees is largely borne by sub-central governments, in particular for housing, education, and social expenditure. In addition to an unsafe environment and conflict, natural disaster, sometimes due to climate change, can also force people to seek refuge in other countries. Hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and mudslides are increasing in intensity. Although most factors seem internal, they can result in causing people to cross borders.
Due to climate change, the advantages of cooperation now outweigh the potential gap in relative gains between cooperating countries. Countries are having to work together on this issue due to the millions of people flooding into various areas around the world. The long terms gains of this issue would be the stabilization of refugees which puts countries in a better position to help their fellow countryman, that couldn’t flee, and fight the persecution. After WWII, the United States was the leading country for accepting in refugees, it was even said that if a refugee got the chance to start over in a new country the highest percentage of where they would end up would most likely be the United States. The case for immigration is strong. Evidence clearly shows that refugees are a positive economic influence that can stimulate long-term growth, bringing more economic opportunity and expanding the workforce making it more efficient. But there are many people who refuse to believe this is true, saying that these refugees are not our country’s responsibility. President Trump and his administration have limited the amount of refugees that the United States takes in while also withdrawing the USA from the global community for refugee protection. We live in a divided world, half saying it is our humanitarian right to aid these people fleeing their homes, while the other half wants to stay put and not change the way our country has effectively been working. The United States is looking for the relative gains within refugees, wanting to limit their access into our country therefore to keep the USA competitive and on top continuing to gain from other countries.
Climate change is increasing beyond most scientific forecasts and is only worsening. A new theory is that 50-200 million people by the year 2050 will flood into different countries. The long term effect of climate change is that natural resources are becoming more scarce, such as drinking water is likely to become even more limited than it is right now. These resources are what make countries strive, without them these refugees have no option but to flee their homelands and start a new beginning.
Climate change is now affecting every country on every continent. The governments of more than 190 nations gathered in Paris in 2015 to discuss a possible new global agreement on climate change, focused on reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and avoiding the dangers of increasingly treacherous climate change. This created absolute gains of cooperation between nations to solve an issue, and solve it quickly. For the first time in history the world would come together to work on reducing the reliance of humanity on fossil fuels. Two years later to the present day, the world is now facing reality. Under President Trump, the United States are planning on withdrawing from this agreement, along with other countries who think they will fail to hold their end of the promise. The Paris agreement laid out forceful goals to limit the planets warming, and even then these goals seemed ambitious and far fetched at the time. Furthermore the agreement might be too onerous for the developed nations that signed off on financing much of the costs as we watch the violent protests in Paris spread and intensify.  The French citizens are rebelling against the increased gas taxes that are a result of the Paris agreement.  It’s ironic that the agreement that was designed to address climate change and thus help reduce mass immigration is causing unrest and destabilizing the political base and could possibly lead to an exodus of its people.
Many leave their country for better opportunity or for better climate but unfortunately some leave for personal safety.  Venezuela has lost over 2 million of its citizens since the socialist government took control.    The rich had allegedly pillaged the county’s wealth causing the poor to rally its political base.  They won but their victory came at a heavy price as many of the wealthy have moved out of the country taking their wealth and influence with them.  Often times in an effort to right a wrong or address inequality the politicians don’t balance their approach or worse they make decisions unilaterally without consulting their base and without that support even the best ideas fail. The Venezuelan government is isolating themselves with only communist and socialist countries willing to associate with them.  This reminds me of Proverbs 13:20 that says “Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm”.  Venezuela is suffering.  They are running out of electricity and food to the point that the people are eating the zoo animals.  As the Venezuelan politicians reach out to Cuba and Russia for support and shun the USA and other democratic countries they are limiting their options and thus their potential.  They are focused on short term goals with only relative gains.  Unfortunately history shows us that things will likely get much worse before they get better and this will only exacerbate the migration of its people to safer more stable countries.  People that are fleeing countries like Venezuela due to safety and persecution are called refugees as they are seeking refuge from harm.  This type of immigrant is given more priority in a country’s immigration process as lives are at stake.
The European Union is a good example of how working together to address long term and absolute goals can not only address challenges but ultimately make a country stronger.  As the USA and China have grown to be economic superpowers Europe was seeing its world influence diminish and thus becoming susceptible to political and economic destabilization.  Over the last several decades the European countries bonded together to form the European Union allowing them to compete on a global level.  This has provided stable governments allowing for productive migration.  But as I mentioned before, leadership can sometimes become too confident in their decisions and cause problems when they meant to do good.  This has happened with the EU.  The EU Ministers assigned too many refugees to England as a result of the Syrian war and the English people rebelled as they found the mass influx of immigrants too disruptive to their culture.  The people of England recently voted to leave the EU to not be bound by their immigration authority and take their sovereignty back.  This became known as Brexit.
Countries working together to address country specific and global issues is a difficult task with often dynamic objectives as situations evolve overtime and political systems mature.  Focusing on long term and absolute results will always bring about longer lasting stability and thus prosperity within the world. The alternative to working together is isolation and that has almost always lead to war. When countries see themselves as superior and begin to start that isolation process other countries tend to rebel and react to this unequal power distribution.  In a strange way war will also bring about resolution but sadly many people are killed and cultures often changed if not completely eliminated.
Countries working together is the only solution to solving these 21st century problems as I have stated in this paper. Migration, refugee flow increasing, and climate change are just three out of the thousands of problems in our world today. Absolute and relative gains should be looked at as positive gains in order to better our world, not competing for who does what better. Competition is healthy but not at the expense of human safety and rights. It’s a tricky balance that requires vigilant commitment to long term relative and absolute gains.