applications across OECD countries and a 76 percent drop of applications
from former Yugoslavia for which Germany had been the preferred
country of destination in 1992, implying again the limits of policy based
explanations.
Regarding the remaining two measures—the denial of free movement and
cash benefit payments—it is perhaps not surprising that these measures
have not deterred asylum seekers in any significant numbers. The
prospect of personal safety from persecution and a green card at the end of
a successful determination procedure might make even the prospect a few
months on non-cash benefits in say North Dakota just about bearable. The
effectiveness of dispersal regimes is further reduced by the fact that, short
of a general policy of detainment, there appears to be little a host-state
can do to prevent the movement of those determined to join relatives or
friends in other parts of the country. Even the policy of withdrawing
housing and welfare assistance in such cases, as practised by some sates,
has not always had the wanted deterrent effect.32 Finally, the role of cash
benefits payments as a pull factor for asylum seekers has without doubt
been greatly exaggerated in the media and by policy makers. Payments of
benefits at a level that is often much less than the social assistance
minimum will clearly be of limited attractiveness, in particular when
many OECD countries have failed to effectively curtail illegal employment
opportunities which promise vastly higher rewards.
32 Germany for example practises such a policy and has found it wanting in particular as
asylum seekers assigned to some parts of Eastern Germany chose to forfeit assistance in
the light of a disproportionately high incidence of racial violence in areas that until very
recently had had very little experience with (non-white) foreigners. This suggests that
dispersal schemes sometimes have also failed to achieve their goal of decreasing local
residents’ adverse reaction towards asylum seekers which is thought to result from the
concentration of such groups in metropolitan areas.
31