IMMIGRATION thread

[Viking]

At any rate, in most cases it shouldn't really be relevant anyway once the process of naturalization goes through.

Indeed, this is for the time before refuge/citizenship/similar has been granted.

What do you mean by more robust?

A definition that is less likely to give incorrect classifications relative to what is intended.

The way you sound it seems like you want them to basically get locked up in the first "safe" country they cross into, regardless of how strenuous that is for the country or how they are/can be treated there

That's a rather weird interpretation. A more immediate interpretation is that refugees that pass perfectly safe countries without seeing if they can stay there, are no longer counted as refugees (does not include obvious exceptions like travelling by air to countries they have been granted refuge in).

I would argue that this is not a very fair or useful way to handle this. Assume a worst case where all countries around Lebanon break into civil war and according to you Lebanon then has to host something like 10 times its population in refugees.

Refugees should first and foremost be settled in the nearest possible countries with populations that are similar culturally. If refugees don't have to learn a new language completely from scratch, that's a huge benefit. If refugees don't have a different religion (or follow a different branch of the same religion), they are less likely to stand out as a separate group from the rest of the population a few generations later - they might even have completely assimilated within, say, 10 generations.

This is best for everyone. The descendants of the refugees don't have to live in a country where they are stigmatised and discriminated against, and the majority population of the countries where these refugees did not settle do not have to worry about hostile individuals among the descendants of the original refugees, nor general friction between the two groups. When the refugees settle closer to their home country, it is also easier to move back home when it is safe, or, if they don't, visit relatives and friends who still/now live there.

Of course Lebanon shouldn't have to take all the refugees themselves, so look at the map for Arab and/or Muslim countries relatively close, and you'll find a very long list of countries that can take their share (both in Africa and Western and Central Asia).