No matter if the United States votes in a Trump or a Biden, those immigrants highlighted in our media feeds—scaling the wall, crossing the desert, detained at the border, massed in a border facility—aren’t going away.

Writes Bloomberg columnist Max Hastings: “Whereas in 2000 there were estimated to be 150 million migrants — people living outside their country of birth — today the figure is 272 million and rising. In 1970, there were fewer than 10 million migrants in the U.S., which is overwhelmingly the global destination of choice; today there are 44 million. In Europe, there are 82 million migrants, representing a 10% rise since 2015.” (“Immigration Is the Wealthy World’s Challenge of the Century,” April 11, 2021)

If you are threatened by war, crime, or starvation, you will search for any avenue offering escape. You may climb a wall, risk drowning at sea, or pay a smuggler who stuffs you into an overloaded truck where you risk smothering.

What is ironic is the need of developed countries for migrants. They need them for jobs, for new ideas, and for shoring up their shrinking birth rates. Immigration has been a part of renewal since the beginning of recorded history.

But as Hastings says: “Everyone but the most fervent libertarians, however, recognizes that the Western democracies would be overwhelmed if all those who wish to live among us should come to do so.”

Hastings believes the United States is fortunate in that migrant-sending countries in the Western Hemisphere are more susceptible to help at the source. That is, with economic aid for smaller populations.

However, the take home point from the article is the need to address the sources of migration—the dysfunctional governments, the wars, the famines caused by climate change, for example.

Obviously, these problems were a long time in the making and will not be remedied by band-aid solutions.

We may derive some hope, however, by remembering that the Cold War, threatening global nuclear disaster, was averted by unusual global cooperation. These efforts included NATO and humanitarian aid and, through all those tense years, continued talks between supposed adversaries like the United States and the Soviet Union.

Averting a devastating major war called for tremendous cooperative efforts. Solutions to the global migration crisis will demand no less.