A friend just posted an short video of migrants beaching their dinghy on the Spanish coast. I'm not reposting because the image will be taken out of context. Here is the question:
Why do people risk their lives in such dangerous means of transport in the 21st century? Thread 1/
Why do people risk their lives in such dangerous means of transport in the 21st century? Thread 1/
It's not just that conditions in Syria or Eritrea are appalling, or that order has broken down in Libya, but that safe transport is forbidden to them. 2/
Air and shipping companies are made liable for the cost of returning anyone who didn't have the right visas to travel. So obviously enough they refuse them. 3/
The only option available is to pay vast sums to smugglers to try and get you across. 4/
But this mode of arrival is what's created such alarm in western countries. It seems completely freelance and out of control (even though the numbers are not any more so large) 5/
It makes people's states look weak, and that alarms people out of proportion to what's happening, and would alarm them even if far right revivalists weren't doing their best to fan the flames 6/
It's not possible to deter these people - they're already willing to risk death.
We haven't yet become sufficiently barbarous (Orban or Salvini excepted) to be willing to let them die. 7/
We haven't yet become sufficiently barbarous (Orban or Salvini excepted) to be willing to let them die. 7/
So how to deal with this problem? First, some context /8
The proportion of people on the move isn't especially high. It's been higher in the past, when we were poorer, and we've coped. 9/
Europe's demographics turning bad. The population in many countries will soon start to shrink, if it hasn't started already (that is actually a big reason for the rise in xenophobia as people feel they are in decline and risk being overrun) 10/
But we've made for ourselves a problem out of a solution that we're lucky enough to have presented 11/
What's needed is to bring order to the situation. To drive the smugglers out of business by creating a managed migration system 12/
Instead of dinghies people will arrive on ships and planes, and --- this is important --- be met by state agencies to integrate them into European society 13/
Instead of sending one young man from a family to somehow make a living for all his relatives, people can make the journey as part of a balanced population 14/
This makes it easier to integrate them and avoid people's fears of large numbers of young men. 15/
It would be very roughly speaking a modernised form of the immigration the United States used to have.
Though it did involve tensions it was on the whole successful. 16/
Though it did involve tensions it was on the whole successful. 16/
It involves a quid pro quo of integration: we'll provide a way for you to make your life here, but you'll adapt to becoming European (as generations of immigrants became American - keeping many cultural customs, but accepting the basis of the American liberal social contract)/17
It won't come free. In the short term it will cost some money, but in the medium term at the latest it will pay for itself.
But, then compare it to the alternatives 18/
But, then compare it to the alternatives 18/
The current system of ineffective enforcement evaded by smugglers is bad for the migrants who get into debt and die, and bad for the receiving societies where xenophobic populist exploit the situation. 19/
It's also extremely expensive. The naval missions, the deals with Turkey and other places, and so on cost a lot of money.
It's about as effective as the war on drugs.
20/
It's about as effective as the war on drugs.
20/
It's time to do some serious work to find out how such a system could be created. Perhaps @StephanieWinet or @RebekahL_Smith have already started doing so. 20/
And finally it would be a positive response that would show we're capable of dealing with this.
It cannot be that there's no alternative to xenopbia.
ENDS
It cannot be that there's no alternative to xenopbia.
ENDS
