Chapter 131: That Time We Took In Refugees in South America

TL: Skye

After taking a day off at Isabella's urging, Yu-jin threw himself back into governing the country.

As expected, the most urgent problem was the refugees, forty thousand of whom would begin arriving every month starting next month, for the next two years.

The truth was, the refugee issue was an enormous problem that no country in the world, not even the developed nations, had ever managed to solve properly.

Take the United States.

Even America, the world's foremost economic superpower, had been struggling for decades with the illegal immigrants pouring across the Mexican border.

The reason Drump was making such a fuss about building a wall along the border ultimately came down to the same problem, while the Democrats' decision to accept refugees in the name of humanitarianism had culminated in the political spectacle of the Texas governor sending busloads of refugees to New York.

And this was a country with a GDP of twenty-five trillion dollars.

Europe was even worse.

After the Syrian civil war began in 2015, millions of refugees poured into Europe, and the results were disastrous.

German Chancellor Merkel accepted more than a million refugees while declaring, "We can do this", but when social integration failed, the far-right AfD surged in popularity.

In France, neighborhoods with dense immigrant populations had effectively become ghettos that even the police were reluctant to enter, while Sweden earned both the title of the Nordic country that had accepted the most refugees and the gift of a soaring crime rate.

The common causes behind the developed countries' failures could be boiled down to three things.

First, jobs. Second, housing. Third, social integration.

A refugee policy would collapse if even one of those three failed, yet paradoxically, there had never been a country in human history that had managed to solve all three.

And San Marcos, a developing country, was going to accept a million people? An amount equal to ten percent of its population?

Germany had been thrown into turmoil after taking in one million refugees, and Germany had a population of eighty million. Given that, San Marcos accepting one million refugees had to be considered a plan with virtually no chance of success.

Which was why Yu-jin was sitting in his office, rifling through documents and nursing a headache.

He had read everything he could get his hands on, from reports on refugee policies in Europe and the United States to guidelines from the UN refugee agency, but none of it offered a satisfactory answer.

The biggest problems were housing, jobs, and integration.

If he wanted to socially integrate the refugees and turn them into citizens of San Marcos, he would have to provide housing and jobs near the capital, Libertad. But doing that would make public security more precarious while worsening the shortages of jobs and housing.

In other words, block one problem and another burst open. Block that one, and the first burst open again.

'What the hell is the answer...?'

Yu-jin set his pen down on the papers and closed his eyes. He felt like tearing his hair out.

Knock, knock.

Isabella entered carrying a tray.

"It doesn't seem to be going well."

"A little."

Yu-jin gave a bitter smile.

It wasn't just a little difficult. It was difficult as hell, but for some reason, he didn't want to show weakness in front of Isabella.

"Why don't you eat something first and think afterward? You need input before you can get output, don't you?"

"Mm... All right, then."

Isabella set down the tray. On it were two sandwiches and a glass of milk.

Yu-jin took an unenthusiastic bite of one of the sandwiches.

Then he turned to Isabella in surprise.

"...Wait, why is this so good?"

A rich, savory, salty flavor spread through his mouth.

The chicken breast and vegetables between the slices of bread were the same as usual, but the sauce was different.

A smooth umami flavor coated his tongue, mingling with a faint sweetness that teased his nose.

Yu-jin lifted the sandwich and examined the filling. A pale yellow sauce had been spread between the pieces of chicken breast.

"The sauce changed?"

"Yes. It's a new sauce Chef Paulo developed. Apparently, he's been experimenting with it for the past few days."

"Mm."

He took another bite. The flavor was somehow familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, yet he was certain he had tasted something like it before.

It was definitely nutty and savory, but it didn't taste like an ordinary sauce.

It had a fresh yet deep aroma, almost as if it had just been made.

Yu-jin dipped a finger into the sauce and tasted it.

"It's incredibly fresh and nutty."

"Apparently, he wanted to emphasize that fresh, savory flavor by using corn freshly harvested by the Venezuelan workers at Tortilla Farm. He roasts and grinds the corn, then mixes it with olive oil, salt, and pepper to make the sauce."

"......"

Yu-jin set the sandwich down and stared at it for a long moment.

Isabella asked with a puzzled expression.

"Is it not to your taste?"

"No. It's good. Really good, but..."

Yu-jin's gaze drifted into the distance.

Corn. Tortilla Farm. Farm. Harvest. Processing. Sauce. People.

The pieces of the puzzle began clicking into place inside his head.

And after a moment.

"This is it...!"

Yu-jin shot to his feet as realization struck him.

***

1:15 a.m.

Grand Conference Room.

The Senior Secretaries arrived one after another, their eyes bloodshot red.

Because Yu-jin's administration had no cabinet ministers, the workload placed on the Senior Secretaries was beyond imagination.

They were performing the roles normally handled by ministers in an ordinary democratic country.

In the mornings, the Senior Secretaries had to report to their respective ministries, assess the status of the projects under their supervision, hold meetings with working-level officials, and personally rush to the scene whenever problems arose to resolve them.

From late afternoon onward, most of them had to return to the Presidential Palace to report to Yu-jin, and if those reports ran long, it was hardly unusual for them to go past ten at night.

Six days a week, they came to work at eight in the morning and were lucky to leave by eight in the evening.

Naturally, the Senior Secretaries summoned in the middle of the night were reaching the limits of exhaustion, but not a single one had any intention of complaining.

In the current San Marcos, judicial, legislative, and executive authority were all controlled by the Presidential Palace.

On top of that, Yu-jin not only held command of the military, he was practically the Leviathan of San Marcos, backed by a population that gave him a 99.8 percent approval rating.

Of course, the Senior Secretaries weren't keeping quiet because Yu-jin was a tyrant.

After six years of working together, they had learned one undeniable fact: Yu-jin worked harder than anyone else in the room.

As the Senior Secretaries drank water and tried to wake themselves up, the doors to the Grand Conference Room opened and Yu-jin walked in.

Every eye turned toward him at once.

Except something was a little strange.

In one hand, Yu-jin was carrying a thick rope tied into a tight knot.

The Senior Secretaries looked at one another.

'What's that?'

Yu-jin took the seat at the head of the table and placed the rope on top of it.

"I'm sorry for calling all of you here so late."

The Senior Secretaries shook their heads. They meant that he didn't need to apologize, though if they were being truthful, he probably should.

Yu-jin looked over each of their faces in turn. Bloodshot eyes, dark circles, misbuttoned shirts. He felt guilty, but this wasn't something that could wait until tomorrow.

"I've spent a great deal of time thinking about this refugee problem."

Yu-jin began speaking slowly. The Senior Secretaries straightened their backs.

"How can we turn them into our people? What if they remain isolated from our citizens? What if their lives actually become worse? I've gone through those questions hundreds of times."

The Senior Secretaries listened in silence.

"Where do we house them? How do we provide jobs? How do we achieve social integration? The problems are all tangled together. Solve one, and another gets worse. Solve that one, and the first becomes a problem again."

Yu-jin lifted the rope from the table.

"Just like this knot."

The Senior Secretaries stared at it.

The rope had been twisted and tangled through itself so many times that it was impossible to tell where it began or ended.

"And today, I finally found the answer."

Yu-jin looked at Isabella.

"Chief of Staff?"

"Yes."

Isabella stepped forward and drew a longsword.

Shing.

Then she raised the blade above her head and brought it down.

Slice!

One stroke.

The razor-sharp blade cleaved the thick knot in half.

"......"

The conference room fell silent.

"I'm sure all of you know how Alexander the Great dealt with the Gordian Knot. I've decided that, just like this knot, instead of untangling an impossible problem, we'll solve it without untangling it."

"C-Could we hear the specifics?"

Ricardo asked.

"It's simple. We treat the refugees exactly the same way we treat the Venezuelan workers."

Yu-jin walked over to the map of San Marcos hanging on the wall.

"I'm planning to establish farms throughout the country."

The Senior Secretaries' eyes widened.

Yu-jin pointed to the map. The locations were undeveloped regions in the north and south, far from Libertad.

"Here. The Northern Plains. Here. The Southern Fortaleza Basin. And here. The Eastern Manaus Highlands. All three regions have plenty of fertile land that has yet to be developed."

Yu-jin turned around to face the Senior Secretaries.

"We'll establish large-scale farms in these areas and plant crops suited to the tropical climate, corn, cassava, sugarcane, beans, tobacco, and so on. Then we'll give each month's incoming refugees four weeks of social orientation and basic agricultural training at military bases before sending them to these farms and helping them become self-sufficient."

"......"

Yu-jin continued explaining as he drew circles on the map.

"First, we'll have them work on the farms and build temporary housing using shipping containers. Of course it'll be uncomfortable. Well... there may be no electricity during the process, and getting running water in place may be difficult, but considering how the Venezuelan refugees are living now, it shouldn't be that bad. Later, we can use part of the farms' profits to improve their housing."

"Th-Then what about social integration...?"

"Why do we have to take the refugees in as citizens?"

"...?"

The Senior Secretaries could only blink at the shocking statement.

"No matter how hard we try, the refugees aren't going to think of San Marcos as their homeland. Instead of wasting our energy on something that won't work, we should focus on what we actually can do."

Only then did the Senior Secretaries understand Yu-jin's intention.

Provide food, clothing, and shelter in exchange for their labor.

Since the refugees were unlikely to integrate with the citizens of San Marcos anyway, they would be kept separate from Libertad.

In other words, instead of accepting the refugees as citizens, San Marcos would enter into a kind of transactional relationship with them.

"......"

The conference room fell silent.

The Senior Secretaries looked at one another.

Their expressions were complicated.

They had to admit that Yu-jin's idea was efficient and logical.

Give up on what couldn't be done and focus on what could.

But.

'Wait...'

Every single one of them knew the original model for this policy.

'That's a Soviet-style Collective Farm?!'

And just like that, the expansion of Tortilla Farm was decided.

*****

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