The climate crisis is already causing migration of  people  caused by droughts, floodings, hurricanes , or other extreme weather events. People are moving to safer regions which are often the global north or western countries, which have historically contributed most to greenhouse gas emissions and are least affected by climate change.

In these target countries immigration is a intensely discussed subject with opinions ranging between two extremes:

• Total control of borders, limiting immigration using specific criteria which are in the (economic) interest of the country (right-wing opinion)
• No control of borders, allowing anybody immigrating to their target country without applying any criteria (left-wing opinion)

Personally, I think that a state should take control of their borders, be able to control immigration at a specific level agreed by representatives of the people. Uncontrolled immigration may exceed the capabilities of the state to integrate immigrants, exceed tolerance of the national population, split the parliament between pro- and contra-immigration parties, ultimately making opinions on immigration extreme, that it becomes difficult to reach a democratic consensus leading to political instability, and surge of extremist movements.

As an example, I would like you imagine a private houseowner who wants to invite guests to a party, if he considers carefully who, how many, and when to come, he will probably enjoy a happy event. If he, however, invites the general public (eg annoucing it on Facebook), his house may be overrun by interested people, whose diversity and number may go beyond what he can understand and afford, and may lead to large damages done to the property.

Personally, I think that immigration has to be controlled to achieve a balance between:

• national interests for security, economy, and education
• national  and historical moral responsibility
• national social values

I would like to emphasize that even if it is not in the national interest of security and economy to allow more immigrants to enter, to solve global problems like the climate crisis it is very important to understand the effects on other regions and ethnic groups. Building walls, excluding people and let them suffer outside the borders of one’s own nation, may lead to ignorance and denial of human suffering and make it harder to take climate action. It may also lead to corruption of the moral and social basis in a society, if the state violates the very humanistic values to foreigners, which it is supposed to protect for its citizens. A state excising such violence may turn such violence to its own citizens. Therefore, it is important to confront one’s citizens with the effects of own behavior on other people and feedback the effects in remote regions or distant ethnic groups into the society to increase awareness of effects of the nations policies and provide and opportunity to develop solidarity and compassion with such climate refugees.