Fairness favored in Europe’s refugee crisis

Stanford scholars surveyed 18,000 citizens of 15 European countries and found that they support allocating asylum seekers proportional to each country's capacity, even if the number of asylum seekers to their own countries would increase. Europe has experienced a deluge of immigrants since 2015 when more than 1.3 million people applied for asylum. The numbers have only increased and European leaders are searching for answers to solve this growing crisis. Stanford research indicates that Europeans favor an allocation system for immigration that would spread the burden more equitably. (Image credit: Route55 / Getty Images) In research appearing this week in Nature Human Behaviour , Kirk Bansak, Jens Hainmueller and Dominik Hangartner of Stanford's Immigration Policy Lab asked 18,000 European citizens their opinions on the issue. Their findings revealed that Europeans favored an allocation system proportional to each country's capacity - even when it meant the number of asylum seekers in their respective country would increase. The Stanford News Service spoke to Bansak, Hainmueller and Hangartner about their research.