The United Nations' Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, adopted December 10 in Marrakech by representatives from 164 member states, was also adopted yesterday in the General Assembly.

The compact was adopted with 152 yes votes, five nays and 12 abstentions. The U.S. was among the nations that declined to adopt the compact (others included Hungary, Austria, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Chile and Australia).

It was a wise decision by the U.S.

Although the compact is "nonbinding" and contains some official verbiage upholding the sovereignty of member nations, critics see it as an end run around national sovereignty.

There will be pressure for member nations to make decisions about their borders and immigration based, not on their national interests but on the "enlightened" views of international bureaucrats at the U. N.

The Gatestone Institute's Bruce Bawer, who calls the compact "more U.N. chicanery," spotted three defining flaws:

  • The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration — which seeks to criminalize criticism of migration — is nothing more or less than a dangerous effort to weaken national borders, to normalize mass migration, to blur the line between legal and illegal immigration, and to bolster the idea that people claiming to be refugees enjoy a panoply of rights in countries where they have never before set foot.
  • One thing about the agreement, in any event, is irrefutable: almost nobody in the Western world has been clamoring for this. It is, quite simply, a project of the globalist elites. It is a UN power-grab.
  • It is something else, too: it is an effort to enhance the clout of the UN's largest and most influential power bloc — namely, the Arab and Muslim states. Briefly put, whatever this deal is or is not, it is definitely not good news for the West, for freedom, or for national identity and security.

Bawer's take is well worth reading.

Even a favorable BBC report on the compact listed some goals that raise questions. For example, one of the 23 objectives of the compact is "to provide migrants with a proof of legal identity." This sounds like legal identity–documents–could be provided when not warranted.

Another objective is to "reduce vulnerabilities in migration, including "the conditions they face in countries of origin, transit and destination."

Well, yes, we should do what we can for people in dire circumstances (helping countries to embrace a capitalist system, for example, can be helpful but probably not what the U.N. means). But this might just as well be taken to indicate that we must open our borders until such time as all the points of origin have become functioning and prosperous.

National Review's Jonathan Tobin also sees the compact as a way to erode national sovereignty. Tobin writes:

Abuse of refugees and migrants should not be tolerated. But despite the high-minded rhetoric sounded in Marrakesh, and despite the fact that it is drafted as a “non-binding” agreement, the compact demonstrates that the defenders of “multilateralism” have no respect for the line between an obligation to respect the human rights of migrants and a right to cross borders regardless of the laws of the country being entered.

Sprinkled liberally throughout the document is language that implies rights of migrants, whether legal or illegal, to “family life,” privacy, legal identity, and even social services that have no basis in international law yet that could, in principle, override the laws of individual nations. Moreover, by recognizing migrants in this fashion — “regardless of their migration status” — the agreement blurs the distinction between refugees who are fleeing for their lives and those merely seeking entry to foreign nations for economic reasons.

The world is facing a challenge with massive migration.

Unfortunately, the United Nations doesn't have a clue how individual nations need to respond to protect their borders.