The closest precursor to the wave of emigration happening from African nations today may be the great Irish emigration of the mid-19th century. The story of the Irish potato famine is a familiar lesson from elementary school: To escape starvation, thousands of Irish men and women left their farms for the cities and seaports of America between 1845 and 1849. But in fact, young Irish adults began putting down their hoes and moving across the Atlantic well before that. In 1821, emigration from Ireland to the United States was already occurring at a clip of roughly 13,000 people per year. The rate of migration rose to 93,000 in 1842, five years before the potato famine would temporarily double that rate. As in many African countries today, declines in child mortality in Ireland a century and a half ago predated growth in its manufacturing sector. Ireland struggled to compete with the larger factories of England and the barriers that English industrialists erected against Irish goods. And so, Ireland remained mainly rural and poor, but the Irish were healthier than their counterparts living in the smoke-choked cities and crowded textile mills of Wales and England. A shift in farming practices toward tillage increased crop yields—yes, particularly in potatoes—and improved nutrition, but it did nothing to expand the prospects for young Irish men and women beyond dreary tenant farming. So, many emigrated. The overcrowded voyages that brought those migrants to the United States were so rife with disease and peril that they became known as coffin ships. Two lessons emerge from the Irish and other demographic-fueled migrations in recent history. First, whether more migrants manifests as “a migration crisis” depends on the choices of policymakers. The hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants that arrived in Boston, New York and Philadelphia in the 19th century became Irish-Americans, starting businesses and building the country’s roads, canals and cities—the foundation for America’s future prosperity. A viable pathway to legal migration, lower barriers to business ownership and thoughtful employment policies can provide migrants from sub-Saharan Africa with the same chance. Second, while profound population pressures in regions like sub-Saharan Africa will produce more migrants, the volume and pace of people moving from there depends on the ability of home countries to accommodate the aspirations and basic needs of their growing number of young adults. Which brings us back to Trump and the other populists across Europe campaigning for protectionism and against the rates of immigration from poorer, non-Western nations. Freer trade and greater aid investments in quality education, family planning and reproductive health programs won’t stop young Africans from wanting a better life and emigrating. But they can provide some of the hundreds of migrants boarding rafts today, and tomorrow, with a reason to stay and the means to achieve that more hopeful future for their home countries. And that, as Trump suggests, could benefit everyone. Thomas J. Bollyky is senior fellow for global health, economics and development at the Council on Foreign Relations. This essay is adapted from his book, “Plagues and the Paradox of Progress: Why the World is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways.” You can follow him on Twitter @TomBollyky.Migration is most often viewed as the product of desperate circumstances, but refugees only account for one out of 10 migrants leaving Africa.
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