It’s looking like the Awami League government is turning the refugee crisis consequent to climate climate into a policy issue.
The Daily Star reported today that,
“A parliamentary standing committee on Tuesday asked the expatriate welfare ministry to start preparation for rehabilitation of two crore people with jobs abroad, who are feared to be displaced because of climate change.”
“We have asked the ministry to take serious steps so that the displaced people can be rehabilitated to Europe and other countries,” said Anisul Islam Mahmud, chief of the parliamentary standing committee on expatriate welfare and overseas employment ministry.”
It is interesting to note that Europe, in particular was singled out as an export market for Bangladeshi manpower. Throughout the 1980’s, the Middle East served as the export-oriented market for excess human capital in Bangladesh; South East Asia absorbed excess human capital in the 1990’s and onward. European countries and the U.S. market had better prepare for the oncoming rush which sure to overwhelm Bangladesh’s ability to situate skilled laborers in Western markets.
If today, and in years recently passed, the public in western democracies has been concerned about government outlays for unskilled and, perhaps, illegal workers, then, as the Bangladesh government’s move intimates, climate change will create an influx that we have yet to conceive in our public imagination. Perhaps the Democratic Congress would do well to think seriously about immigration reform so that the U.S government and other western governments are able cope with the coming wave. Though unlikely to be the case, one might even that whatever policy initiative is left standing it might concern itself with equality of opportunity for each new visitor; some semblance of justice might be proffered to each new staying guest.
