Ethical Refugee Policy and the Moral Relevance of Numbers: Response to Adelman and Churgin.

The article comments on the research papers presented by Michael J. Churgin and Howard Adelman regarding the government policies of countries toward refugees which appeared in the Spring 1996 issue of International Migration Review. Adelman examines in detail efforts by Tutsi refugees from Rwanda to exercise their right of repatriation between 1991 and 1996 and the varying attitudes of different Canadian ministries and agencies toward that objective. Churgin takes a longer historical perspective to assess changes and continuity in patterns of response by the U.S. government to mass migrations. The common feature of these two articles is a focus upon the perspectives of decisionmakers in advanced democracies and their ability to affect migration flows. An implicit issue suggested by both articles is the moral relevance of numbers of claimants in determining an acceptable response to particular migration flows. Adelman is concerned with the right of refugees to membership in their state of origin and the process by which they might seek to exercise a right to repatriation. He chooses to examine this issue not from the refugees' viewpoint but from that of a third country, Canada. The Canadian perspective proves to be a fractured one, as six different ministries and agencies of the Canadian government pursued often contradictory objectives in their interactions with the previous Rwandan regime and with representatives of Tutsi exiles.