Challenge: Refugee City or Country

With a PoD of 1900, have one area of the world be an area that refugees in virtually any numbers can freely move to with minimal requirements, and stay in until whatever crisis is going on is averted, if not forever after being admitted.

It doesn’t matter whether it is a colony, an uninhabited or near uninhabited area, or whatever when it’s created. Just that it will functionally take all refugees with a reasonably broad definition.

It also has to be a nice enough place that people are willing to go. It also has to be reasonable safe for all.

How can such a place be created, and last until the present?
 
There's a half-decent Tim Robbins sci fi movie where this is true of Dubai following an oil crash. Maybe there's an historical place that meets the criteria: visions of cosmopolitanism; lots of money; a catastrophic market implosion.

Anything spring to mind?
 
Hong Kong after the Communist takeover of mainland China fits the bill. British policy varied from an open-ish border to turning a blind eye to a cat-and-mouse "touch base" policy to finally automatic deportation. Of course, the PRC did whatever it could to prevent escape. For a while, Vietnamese boat people were allowed freedom to live and work, but as numbers increased, new boat people were sent to prison-like refugee camps.

Most of Hong Kong's tycoons today are descendants of the wealthiest families of Shanghai who fled the Commies. The Triads, KMT supporters, and Communists all carved out their enclaves.
 
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