The drowned body of little Aylan Kurdi is on front pages all over the world. His surname and the name of his home town, Kobani, tell the story of why his family were so desperate to leave their homeland.
What can be done to stop this happening, as the Middle East burns? What should be done? In the long term – God only knows.
But we don’t have to know. In the short term there is something we can do which has a proven record of saving lives in a similar situation.
Could Australia’s ‘stop the boats’ policy solve Europe’s migrant crisis?
When the bodies of asylum seekers en route to Australia washed up on the shores of Christmas Island in 2010 everyone was in agreement that something needed to be done.
Five years later Australia has implemented one of the harshest border policies in the world. It is characterised by three core points: turning or towing back boats of asylum seekers at sea; forcing asylum seekers to live in detention centres across the Pacific in Nauru and Papua New Guinea; and guaranteeing they will never be resettled in Australia.
Dozens of would-be migrants are reported to have drowned between Libya and Sicily, the latest tragedy in the Mediterranean this spring. The increasing numbers making the perilous journey on overloaded boats has brought the issue of migration into Europe to a head. But what can be done about it?
Prime minister Tony Abbott is now making a clarion call to Europe, where crisis meetings have taken place following the deaths of over 800 migrants in the Mediterranean this week. The only way to stop deaths at sea, he told reporters this week, “is in fact, to stop the boats”.
Building a camp – a decent camp – and putting all those attempting illegal entry in it does not satisfy either side of the immigration debate. But at least it could be tolerated by both sides and might stop the bodies floating in on every tide. To use an unhappy metaphor, it would keep the floodgates closed by showing that taking ship with a people smuggler is not a successful strategy to get to the West. To work this policy would require both sides to acknowledge very clearly that doing this for now implies absolutely nothing about what the permanent policy on refugees and/or migrants should be.
There are several rich Islamic nations on this planet. Please tell me why are they not stepping in? Why is this Europe’s problem? And I’ve got nothing against economic migrants, just as long as I’m not financing hand outs for them.
Abbott is correct. Pretty much all of Europe’s navies need to be patrolling the North African and Turkish coastline 24/7 and simply shut down this miserable trade much like the slave trade was shut down, intercepting them before they get out of sight of the shore ideally. Board them, then arrest, or better yet summarily execute the crew after finger printing them for ID purposes, then tow the boats to the nearest port and land the hapless retched migrants. Time to stop pussyfooting around.
“Building a camp – a decent camp – and putting all those attempting illegal entry in it does not satisfy either side of the immigration debate. But at least it could be tolerated by both sides and might stop the bodies floating in on every tide. To use an unhappy metaphor, it would keep the floodgates closed by showing that taking ship with a people smuggler is not a successful strategy to get to the West.”
I think you’re wrong here.
Now, before I go further, let me clearly state that I am *pro-unlimited immigration* (short of serious criminal history) and say get rid of the welfare state before you close the border.
But – if you’re going to ‘stop’ immigration, you’re not going to be able to do it half way. That ‘decent camp’ will still look better than staying home to a huge number of people. And, in the camp, there’s always a *chance* to get out.
To stop immigration, like stopping drug use, you’re going to have to harden your hearts, open your wallets, and tow those boats back. And, really, anything short of *opening fire* on them is going to fail. East Germany stopped illegal im/emigration in the only way possible – they built a wall, topped it with barbed wire, and opened fire on anyone crossing. Hardly anyone slips through the South/North Korean border, but the NK border with China (two very totalitarian countries) is still very porous.
I don’t think you should, but you’re not going to have a chance in hell at making a dent if you don’t.
What if you’re locking people in a burning building to prevent them from drowning in the lake outside?
But – if you’re going to ‘stop’ immigration, you’re not going to be able to do it half way. That ‘decent camp’ will still look better than staying home to a huge number of people. And, in the camp, there’s always a *chance* to get out.
Up to a point, Lord Copper. The question is – where to put the camp ?
For a long time, i have been urging West Falkland as the ideal spot. It has a population of less than 200 – little scope for NIMBYism – but space for several million asylum seekers. It is cold, windswept and unlikely to be attractive to folk coming from warm climates, where most asylum seekers hail from. There is unlimited scope for hard manual labour – roadbuilding etc – to keep asylum seekers amused in return for their rations. And it is an unlikely place to escape from in a coracle or rubber dinghy.
It is however much more attractive than being raped, murdered, tortured etc. Hence genuine asylum seekers should not be deterred by a bit of cold weather, rain, sleet etc, nor by the prospect of living in a metal shack or concrete hut. Economic migrants, not so much. Once they are parked in West Falkland, asylum seekers would of course be free to move to any other country that was willing to take them as economic migrants.
It may be represented that this is a bit harsh. But having examined my conscience, it seems to me that if I were in the situation of having to try to save myself and/or my family from genuine persecution, or even death, I would jump at the chance of a metal hut on West Falkland, and be grateful to whoever provided it.
@Natalie: What do you do when the camp (inevitably) becomes full? Build another? And another, ad infinitum?
I agree that while genuine refugees (as opposed to job-seekers) are in a terrible situation, the fact remains that a would-be host nation has to weigh the extended cost of accepting refugees of another country (with a different culture, a different faith, a different perspective) before allowing them to resettle. And when I say “cost”, I’m not just referring to the cost of housing and feeding refugees, but the social cost of assimilation (or rather, their likely refusal to assimilate, given their country of origin).
Britain is already battling this problem, where demands for Shari’a law escalate within Muslim communities each day, and social matters like clothing- and dietary codes clash with the indigenous culture. (The United States, always a nation of immigrants and long a favored destination for refugees, has more or less been spared the more egregious consequences simply because of its vast size, but lamentably, we’re catching up fast.)
In all sorts of ways, we in the West are being held hostage by our traditionally-tolerant and sympathetic culture, and are always being shamed by others into “doing the right thing”. Well, unfortunately, the “right thing” doesn’t always lead to acceptable societal outcomes for the host country, and it’s time we took a clinical analysis of those outcomes against the manipulative pictures of dead babies washing ashore on beaches — which, by the way, is precisely what Australia does, and laudably so. It may sound cruel and heartless to turn away the wretched, but sometimes the greater good must take precedence.
The unpleasant fact is that while we may lament the circumstances (root causes, if you like) which create such misery (civil war in Syria, genocide in Africa), we also need to accept that we cannot change much of it. Compassion is laudable, but it has its limits; and I would suggest that we in the West need to impose those limits now rather than later.
Not too bad as an interim measure, but the long-term solution may involve the European powers re-colonizing the more hell-holeish African countries and governing them temporarily while (this time!) instilling some tradition of good government. Look to Botswana as a model.
Or, to take the European tendency to seize responsibility into account, rotsa ruck and pray for a depopulating plague in Africa.
But if the burning building is next to Turkey, that is a safe country, no one is locked in the building, they have the right of asylum in Turkey. The flames aren’t that hot that they need to go from Turkey to Greece, to Serbia to Hungary to Austria to Germany.
And if Turkey is not safe, then Greece is. It might not be nice, but it is safe.
Methodological individualism is the only proper analysis for an asylum claim, look at the individual, and see if their circumstances meet the criteria.
Camps are all very well as interim solutions, but the existing ones are largely forgotten places of squalor. Long term I think there is a better way – charter cities with genuinely open borders to migrants and refugees where they can realise their human potential in safety.
“What if you’re locking people in a burning building to prevent them from drowning in the lake outside?”
They MIGHT be MORE inclined to IMMEDIATELY extinguish the fire, and stamp out it’s embers, on their own?
I second the motions from the Person from Porlock and from Harry Powell. The 2 proposals can be merged as follows, and please note that this is a very rough 1st draft:
* seize, by military force, the ports where the boats are coming from;
* ask the residents to vote on the country (not necessarily European, but few non-European countries would be eligible, and Russia is not one of them) that should re-colonize them; (NB: any country can also decline to be on the ballot if they feel that they cannot take up the burden)
* all the laws in effect in the chosen country will take effect in the colonized city; a city council might be elected, but this will only have the power to repeal laws, not to enact new laws;
* the upper ranks of the civil service, army, and police will be taken over by people from the “colonial power”, to be gradually replaced by local people;
* there will be free trade with the colonial power, and the EU if the colonial power is in the EU, but no migration of people either way;
* all taxes imposed on the colonized city will remain within the city, except for the salaries of the officers from the colonial power, who will however reside in the city anyway.
Something that i am not sure about, is whether there should be periodic elections to potentially change the colonial power. I am strongly inclined to grant that option, but there are problems with laws potentially changing at every election. I guess this problem can be ironed out, somehow.
An interview with a Turkish boat captain in the Daily Mail suggests that boat captains used to take people to Greece, but now there are more coastguards and boat captains either get their boats confiscated or themselves jailed. This has led to organisers putting asylum seekers into dinghys at night, which is more dangerous. It sounds like a plausible mechanism for stronger border controls leading to more danger.
If, as Mr Ed says, they have the right of asylum in Turkey, I find myself confused about the desperation to get to Greece.
Snorri Godhi, your proposal won’t find any takers for either role. The Charter City idea might be good, but it’s far off. Ditto getting rid of welfare as a pull factor, mentioned earlier. I am all for that but most people hate the idea. I was talking about what is practical politics now.
PS: what to do when a colonized city becomes too full to accept new people?
Colonize the places from where people move to the colonized city; rinse and repeat.
In extreme cases, the neo-colonial approach can be applied to entire countries. Iraq would have been a candidate, immediately after Saddam’s overthrow. The prospect of being chosen as a colonial power might also have swelled the ranks of the coalition of the willing.
China is full of “ghost cities”. Fill them up with refugees.
Kim du Toit, you write, “…Build another? And another, ad infinitum?” When Tony Abbott’s “stop the boats” proposals were just an election promise many people, mostly but not all of them left wing, said that it was ridiculous to suppose that anything would overcome the will of these desperate people to reach Australia. But in the end they turned out to be susceptible to incentives like anyone else.
This is possibly one of the hardest issues for a modern civilisation to deal with. This is not a matter of distribution or building or caring, it is a matter of being level-headed (or if you prefer, hard-hearted). If Europe can absorb tens of thousands or immigrants each year, the question is where does that flow end? Do the incoming people ever go ‘home’? Do the residents of each country — many of which contain legally entered immigrants already — have a duty to take in more people? Do the ones who arrive populate the ghettos, or parts of cities that become ghettos? They certainly won’t live next door to the likes of Cameron and whoever gets to run Labour. The burden will fall on the ordinary citizen of this country.
I used to live in Rotherham, and maybe a few dozen more immigrants there won’t change much other than extend the welfare and police services more than they could cope with in the past, but I am glad I am no longer there to see it. The arrival of thousands of young men will only tear open the wounds already felt in many of our former industrial towns.
I believe there is a proper way of applying for legal entry to each western country. Rushing the border in a mass, particularly when the people are from ‘economically depressed’ countries rather than war zones (though I accept there is a fine distinction in some cases between the two) isn’t the way. While the convention is to state “I am looking for work” it carefully dodges the fact that there isn’t the work, and there will be less of it if more come. A relative of mine teaches some 400 teenagers in a number of classes, and he understands that they all aren’t going to get jobs: we just don’t need lots of people to do the manual work that we once did, and even burger joints only need so many people to serve fries. To go back to what happens in rotherham, a lot of the pakistani-born males drive taxis, but again there is only so much demand for taxis. Yes, of course there’s work for people to teach all these newcomers English, but I doubt that is the object of the exercise.
I am desperately sorry many of these refugees come from shitty countries, though apparently not quite so shitty as they can pay for some sort of rough and dangerous transport to get to Europe. But I would prefer them to stay and make their own world better, not bring their problems north. My preferences don’t count though, and I have absolutely no doubt it will be a long time before it is ever part of any mainstream manifesto. Certainly the media enjoys the drama of it all even if they won’t look beyond the heart-rending and equally audience-pulling sight of dead bodies on beaches.
In my book there is only one answer. With regret, the ones who try to get here have to be helped by gathering them up and safely returning them to north Africa, and for those who arrive by land the borders need to be strengthened. Many of those who want the work (and the benefits, as I doubt the weather attracts them) have to be turned back with as much kindness as we can afford. There is no easy answer, but the arrival of so many people with nothing here for them — unless we arise taxes for those who do work — will slowly affect the way the west goes about its daily life. Having no-go areas in towns and cities is worrying, but more worrying is when trouble spills out of those areas. As always, our elite won’t immediately face it but even they will start to see trouble and even, oh the horror of it, find fewer people voting for them as more people hold their hand out.
Kobani may have been his “homeland”, but for the last three years he has been living in Turkey. The family was even paying rent for a flat, with money sent by family in Canada. They applied for asylum in Canada and were refused (living in Turkey, they were considered to have already reached a safe place), so they were trying to reach Canada illegally via the EU.
Yes this is a tragedy, and that boy had done nothing to deserve his fate. But his father was not a legitimate asylum seeker (not anymore anyway), he was an economic migrant. He gambled his son’s life on his chance at financial improvement, and lost.
Personally, I’ve got nothing against economic migrants, as long as they intend and are capable of providing for themselves, and don’t expect to live off my earnings. But these facts tend to qualify the emotional manipulation of the today’s media imagery.
Natalie: i meant to comment on the Australian solution as well. Basically i approve of it, but is it applicable to the Med?
As others have pointed out, there is the issue of where to put the migrants.
I also note that it would be a challenge for Australia to capture cities in Indonesia, given the ratio of their populations; while it should be easy for France or Britain, perhaps even Italy, to capture a few Libyan port cities.
Another thing to note is that decisions about what to do are much easier to take in Australia than in some EU countries usually governed by coalitions, let alone in the EU as a whole.
the Literate Platypus:
What does it have to do with Islam?
Because that’s where the welfare is?
What Greytop and Mary said.
Ports don’t need to be captured as Astraya has proved with no departures.
The attempt by the BBC/Guardian to maintain the pretense that third world migrants are anything but a burden even as one country after another tries to get rid of them has been mildly amusing.
Perhaps one day we will all be able to enjoy the prosperity of our most enriched communities, like Tower Hamlets for example.
Kobani, you say? That town where Turkey closed the border and allowed ISIS to massacre the Kurds? Before turning our attention to immigrants, why don’t we solve half the problem by making Turkey a pariah nation until the army steps in and gets rid of that dickhead they have in charge?
My dad came up with a solution for migrants coming from Libya: pay the strongmen in the Libyan ports to stop the boats. The main issue with this is the methods of the strongmen on stopping the boats would leave a lot to be desired, but stop them they would.
There is no reason for Muslims from Syria to leave Turkey and come to Europe.
And there is no reason for Muslims from North Africa to cross the sea and come to Europe – most of the nations of North Africa are not at war, some are but most are not.
The logical course of action is for Syrians who go to Turkey to stay there.
And the logical course of action for people in danger in countries at war in North Africa is for them to go to nations in North Africa that are not at war.
So what is going on?
Why are people dying to come into Europe?
They are being encouraged (yes encouraged) to come by some of the governments of the E.U. (for example Italy, France and especially Germany).
These governments have said “if you get here you can stay – you will not be sent back to Turkey or wherever”.
The “liberal” elite have blood-on-their-hands.
They are encouraging these people to die trying to get into Europe.
Yet rather than hang their heads in shame – the elite are using every means (including waving dead children about) in order to further their agenda.
It appears to be the deliberate intention of the elite to destroy Europe – to make Europe an extension of North Africa and the Middle East.
As the elite control the education system and much of the media, it is hard to believe that anything can be done about this.
The far left agenda of using the “Third World” to exterminate the “capitalist” West seems to proceeding according to plan.
Indeed with the active cooperation of such people as the “conservative” Chancellor of Germany.
It is unfortunate, but I doubt anything can be done about it.
After all any questions (such as “why are these Syrians being encouraged to leave Turkey?”) will be met by waving a dead child about – and people being denounced for their “lack of compassion”, by the very people who encouraged the death of that child.
I never found the idea of charter cities convincing. There needs to be an existing economy for immigrants to participate in. Otherwise its just a massive refugee camp.
Lee Moore, you have made the most rational and human proposition to this manufactured crisis so far.
Mary explained very well what it is the reality for the majority of these immigrants. The few under really dire circumstances went to Turkey first for economic, religious, and cultural affinity. Europe is a second step encouraged by the same anti-Western elite to which we have entrusted with the protection of our freedom.
Muslims and the left destroy everything they touch and then say “It’s your problem”. No it is not. I don’t want any more Muslims in my country. Let them go to Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Hondurans, El Salvador, Nicaragua (you get the picture) or the 57 varieties of Muslim shitholes.
I will take the Christians and others after carefully considering.
This whole crap reminds be of the late 18th and early 19th century when every single European country paid the Muslims to stop stealing their ships and kidnapping their sailors. The newly formed US would not pay this jizya rubbish, created our first Navy, went to the Med Sea and kicked the shit out of the Muslim Pirate Nations. That ended it forever. Europe hasn’t changed one bit. It is still full of way too many eloi.
Much, much worse is happening in Syria and Iraq, where till recently the West had complete military control. We chose to abandon Iraq to its fate and have looked the other way in Syria.
For every dead child on a European beach there are thousands dead there.
If we really cared – rather than engaged in moral posturing – we would pish ISIL out of Iraq and set up a safe enclave in a Syrian port. After all, the Russians are fighting there for far less noble reasons.
In the 1800s the British were able to send 20,000 soldiers to the Sudan and destroy the Mahdis, who were the ISIL of the time and 60,000 strong. But they had the will to do so.
Today we have none. Just cheap moralizing.
Four cases of asylum.
1. The Vietnamese Boat People*, who fled Ho’s murderous regime in whatever they could find that might conceivably float.
2. The Cuban refugees**, who have fled Castro’s murderous regime in such things as rubber rafts or even boards held together with rope, to cross 90 miles of open ocean to Florida. Many drowned. Many re-captured and executed or thrown into Castro’s dreadful prisons. Surprisingly many made it to Florida; they didn’t come for welfare handouts. They didn’t even come for work. They came for physical survival.
3. Jews***, attempting to flee the Nazis. Infamously, the ship MS St. Louis, carrying Jewish refugees, was turned away from the United States and Canada.
4. Individual defectors from totalitarian, death-minded regimes. The occasional Russian (U.S.S.R.), East German, Eastern European…the ones we hear about usually bring some sort of info as the price of asylum, so perhaps shouldn’t be counted. I think (not sure) that at some point (at least) the U.S. would accept ordinary asylum-seekers from the U.S.S.R. if they had sponsorship from an American citizen who would guarantee whatever guarantees were required, and if, of course, there was no evidence that they would be any sort of threat to the U.S. or her people.
What is my point? I’m not sure — just mulling things over. Perhaps it is that there is not one monolithic bloc of only-sort-of-“asylum seekers.” And after all, if a person felt himself (and possibly loved ones) in mortal danger from the likes of Saddam, Uday, Qusay, or the Ayatollahs, or the Saudis, or the illustrious Kims or the Chinese regime (Falun Gong followers for instance) — are they any more “expendable” than Vietnamese, Cubans, Jews?
Of course, one is after all some sort of libertarian, and one understands quite well the individual’s inalienable right to his own life, to his self-determination, to his property. However sorry one feels for the guy on his doorstep who is at death’s door from starvation, dehydration (having walked 200 miles across the desert, without water, to get there), and various missing limbs — one is not “duty”-bound to help him. And in fact, there might be a very good reason not to. For instance, the visitor is a known killer.
(Which would be one example illustrating why it doesn’t do to cast blame incautiously.)
So I am not arguing that any country has a “duty” to grant asylum to anyone.
In fact I’m not arguing anything. Just trying to figure out where are the boundary lines between categories, if separable categories there be.
I wouldn’t have any problem at accepting, say, Somalis who come here, live peaceably, don’t mind working for a living at whatever they can find, and embrace the better parts at least of American political and social beliefs and customs. Unfortunately, we seem to have let in a bunch with no such intent. (I won’t rant at this time about the Saudis’ importing Wahhabiism via any and all means, including buying chairs at Harvard. In any case, that would be O/T.)
. . .
*Vietnamese Boat People. From The Foot of All Knowledge, article ‘ Vietnamese_boat_people ‘:
**Cuban refugees. Again the Great Foot, article & section ‘ Cuba#Immigration_and_emigration ‘footnote numbers omitted:
***Jewish refugees. Wikipedia, ‘ MS_St._Louis ‘:
I actually have an amount of experience having worked immigration detention back around 99-2005.
Spent thousands of hours talking to various detainees, indeed one of the blokes i used to play chess with a chap who lost his wife and kids in a sinking, nice enough bloke, terrible personal tragedy.
To point out a few things.
1: We were receiving people from the middle east in Australia prior to 9/11, the numbers were ramping up steeply as the pipeline became known as a certain way of reaching a first world country.
2: The mix of people changed from originally mostly Hazaras (persecuted by the Taliban) to every chancer who could raise $10,000 for the trip.
3: (generalisation here, but 10% are bad people and the other 50 or so% will go along with it)All are as nice as pie until you say “no”. Then you can expect threats, violence, unashamed use of children to force their wants. You seriously have no idea some of the things which will happen the moment you try and impose a “system” which doesnt suit them. There will be active and ongoing violence every time a way of enforcing saying “no” is tried.
4: One story is a tragedy, 1,000,000 is an invasion.
And lastly what ceiling do you want to set on numbers.
Unless that question is answered honestly and the citizens of a country endorse it you are effectively allowing the “Commonwealth” of a country to be used to subsidize its replacement population.
This will end in blood and fire and well meaning people will wonder how it happened.
That wee lad was the same age as my youngest. This situation is utterly intolerable.
The way I see it the current migrants crisis is rather serving to expose the absurdity of how Western governments are run. Government, wrote Bastiat, is the great fiction where everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else. The migrant crisis revolves around a fear that the “everybody” becomes so large, so needy and so demanding that the system of, as Bastiat put it, legalised plunder, collapses completely. The tax consumers of Britain believe they have a claim on the wealth of the nation‘s tax producers and they don’t want to share.
What exactly is the problem with letting all and sundry come here? Well they might want to use the NHS which was paid for by our hard won legalised plunder. So abolish the NHS – problem solved. They might want to use state schools. So abolish state schooling. They might want to claim benefits. So abolish the welfare state. They might want to take “our” jobs. So dismantle state barriers to entry and illegalize all forms of protectionism – then jobs will be plentiful for those willing to do even a modest amount of work. They might be criminals or terrorists. So institute real punishments for real crimes and give citizens the right to self defense.
All of the “problems” these migrants supposedly would cause are preexisting and easily fixed. The migrant crises simply brings the absurdity of Western kleptocracy into sharp focus by allowing us to see what its terrifying, desperate endgame looks like. The response to this awakening should be to recognise the whole corrupt edifice for what it is and tear it down. Instead we’re so desperate to keep our broken idol that we’re willing to see children wash up on the shores of Europe.
For shame.
I think JV has an excellent point but… it isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Thinks like the NHS are so entrenched in the hearts of Brits that it is a serious, mult-generational thing to dismantle.
At the heart, as others here have hinted or said about the “crisis” is the appalling conflation and confusion of who is who. Words like refugee, asylum seeker and migrant are used almost interchangeably by most of the media these days. Unless you have can distinguish there is no chance of a rational policy.
OK. An asylum seeker is someone seeking a safe haven because of a specific and personal threat. Various Soviet dissidents would fit this bill. The Afghan interpreters the British Army employed would fit this bill.
A refugee is someone fleeing a more generalized menace. Jews fleeing Germany in the ’30s or the Boat People of Vietnam fit this bill.
A migrant is someone who wants to move abroad for whatever other reason. Such as my brother’s girlfriend (Japanese) who wants to live in the UK and build a business and is being forced to pay through the nose for it and leap through ludicrous hoops to do this. This is ridiculous. She has a PhD from a UK uni and wants to self-employed. She doesn’t even want to take a job but to be self-employed in her own business (she makes awesome glassware) and she doesn’t want citizenship. She didn’t arrive in the back of a truck of pineapples. She arrived several years ago in the UK to study and speaks fluent English, has a remarkable skill, wants to graft (not graft) and… I can’t bear this sort of thing. She’ll get it but it will be pricey and she has to play her cards right. She is far from alone even amongst just people I have known. That is the hidden crisis. If you are at all middle-class, qualified, capable but not EEA then it’s tough. Very tough.
Gods, she even has a mild Sunderland accent nowadays.
Laird, how would they get to the Chinese ghost cities? It’s a bit of a long walk!
I suppose they want to get to Europe because the whole of the Middle East is full of running tensions (how’s that Saudi/Yemen war going?), AND Europe has lots of welfare policies, And because their second language is probably a European one, like French or the lingua franca English.
As for a solution- the Australian solution only works because of our geography. I think Europe might be too porous for it to work. Don’t send them here! Christmas Island is full! No room in the manger! (Easter Island needs people!)
Building a camp – a decent camp – and putting all those attempting illegal entry in it does not satisfy either side of the immigration debate. But at least it could be tolerated by both sides and might stop the bodies floating in on every tide.
When I first started in detention the compounds were open, there were very few restrictions on movement (we did police single men entering the family blocks for obvious reasons) and the place was free movement 24/7. The fencing was tennis court style mesh topped with 3 strands of barbed wire.
4 years later when I left there were internal fencing, prison style external fences and the place was effectively run by a standover gang made up of failed Iranian asylum seekers.
And thats with a 90% success rate (after never ending appeals). The standover gangs victimized everyone else and brutally oppressed minority groups.
I was at Curtin when the assault on the blind man took place, this was USUAL behavior from people claiming to be fleeing oppression.
Russell Skelton, a journalist with the Melbourne AGE reported in an article entitled “No Escape from Persecution”, 10 May 2002, that when a young Iranian Mandaean girl attempted to serve food in the Woomera detention centre in December 2001, a contingent of Muslims rioted violently. The young girl was abused as having no right to handle the food of Muslims. The authorities placed her in isolation for her own protection. Other violent incidents include the stoning of a group of Christians in Woomera detention centre in August 2001 that left one Iranian Christian man, who had been attacked for wearing a cross, blinded in one eye.
In another incident, a blind Iranian Mandaean man was ambushed, beaten up, defecated upon, and then locked in a toilet. In Curtin detention centre it has been reported to Amnesty International that Mandaeans are regularly prevented from using the laundry because the Muslim majority regard them as “unclean”. Recently in Woomera detention centre the dormitory blocks occupied by the Mandaeans and Christians were burnt down by hostile rioters. According to Russell Skelton’s article in the Melbourne AGE, Khosrow Chohaili, the President of the Mandean Association in Sydney, said that most Mandaeans who flee to Australia to escape persecution in Iran find they are unable to gain refugee status as the Australian government says that Mandaeans are not persecuted in Iran. This is in spite of the fact that Mandaeans are persecuted in the detention camps on Australian soil, and that the persecution is so severe that in Woomera detention centre the Mandaeans and Christians are forced to meet together in secret, while in Curtin detention centre the authorities have advised that Mandaean and Christian services (including baptisms) be severely restricted in order to keep the peace.
Julie near Chicago: In all of the cases you list, the people fleeing to the US were, on the whole, positively predisposed towards us, and disliked the politics they were fleeing. Unfortunately, today, that’s not always the case. The Muslim refugees flooding Europe are not abandoning Islam, they are merely fleeing the results of Islam. I’m sure many are perfectly peaceful people as individuals, but they still adhere to a poisonous ideology that they will pass on to their children. The burning cars of the suburbs of Paris are not torched by the Muslim immigrants who came from Algeria etc. in the ’50s and ’60s, but by their grandkids and great-grandkids.
Libertarians, like all small-l liberals, believe that religions should be treated equally, which is an admirable principle. Unfortunately, it leads to the error of thinking that all religions are the same. They aren’t. The clearly-stated, official goal of Islam is a worldwide theocratic dictatorship. The fact that many “moderate” Muslims don’t agree is irrelevant. No doubt in 1917 there were Bolsheviks who didn’t want to set up GULAGs, either. Consciously or not, Islam as a whole is running a scam on the Western world: it’s exporting its religious totalitarianism with not just terrorists, but with “peaceful” Muslims who create communities in which the terrorists operate, and who will give birth to future generations of terrorists and their supporters.
It’s a huge conundrum, because few in the West want to turn away refugees. Fewer still want a worldwide, generations-long, civilization war with Islam. Unfortunately, one has begun, whether we want it or not….
PapayaSF: Yes, I agree with you, with the minor quibble that quite a few libertarians think all religions s/b treated alike, that is, cast into the outer darkness; and with the observation that there do exist at least a few libertarians (and conservatives too — maybe more conservatives than libertarians, at least going by the Internet and at least in the U.S.) who understand that today’s Islam seems to hang onto the “religious” bits because that helps serve the political aim of a global empire.
And it is a conundrum for the reasons you state.
It is a question of trying to separate the goats from the warthogs, I guess: The people who genuinely need asylum are targeted in their home countries either because they are personally inconvenient for the regime or someone in it (e.g., certain inconvenient Russian journalists), or because they are members of a targeted group: the Jews, the kulaks, the intellectuals, the Jews-Christians-Hindus-Buddhists-other-infidels or even just the citizenry in general: “The purpose of terror is terror.” To them most of us would like to “give succour,” in Natalie’s phrase, although there’s a big libertarian problem for a country to do that, given our principle of not forcing our our own countrymen to participate in actions against their will — not even humanitarian ones.
The warthogs are the ones who come seeking bennies: Natalie’s “migrants.” And, I would add, the ones who immigrate to wherever with Trouble in Mind. Both of whom apparently expect us to give them the run of the household, Or Else.
You’re right, the libertarian “pox on them all” attitude is not very helpful these days, when the only major religious threat to liberty comes from one particular religion. I am totally OK with taking genuine refugees who are Jewish, Christian, or pretty much anything other than Muslim, as long as the numbers are limited. I am particularly flabbergasted by the UK and European tendency to take Muslims who are refugees because they are considered too radical in their own countries. That’s almost unparalleled political insanity. It’s as if, in the 1930s, England had offered asylum to Nazis who had to leave Germany for being too extreme.
The well meaning attitudes of many westerners is going to be repaid with a crushing burden that will destroy almost everything they have built. In essence these traits are those of a peoples who cannot face reality and cope by denying what in their face. By the time these traits have exhausted themselves the only path will be one of survival, it is the route to civil conflict. Although I am older I now see it happening in my lifetime, assuming I have an average span. A grim prospect.
The people “fleeing” to Australia are not in any great danger, probably in none at all. They are in search of welfare, which their already arrived countrymen assure them is available and plentiful. They have to pay a lot of money to smugglers to get around the world, passing through many countries on route. They are not the poor, dispossessed that the bleeding hearts make them out as. They should be treated as criminals as they have no lawful claim to entry.
As Richard North at EUReferendum.com has pointed out several times the reason refugees can claim these rights starts with the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Refugees (and the 1967 Protocol)and further enhanced by the EU charter of fundamental rights article 18;
Article 18
Right to asylum
The right to asylum shall be guaranteed with due respect for the rules of the Geneva Convention of 28
July 1951 and the Protocol of 31 January 1967 relating to the status of refugees and in accordance with
the Treaty establishing the European Community.
They come because they have the right to do so.
Repealing said conventions etc is the only way to start to actually address the situation.
I am pleased this is not my problem to solve.
Jaded Voluntarist sets out my usual, principled position. And NickM’s story of the Japanese woman (a story that resonates because of the similar experiences of my friends, family-members and acquaintances in the USA and the UK), makes clear the practical reality of this position, and its opposite.
And then I read frollickingmole:
This makes me fear that JV’s position is not only politically unachievable (which is no reason to abandon a principled belief: you fight for what you believe in) but also unworkable and unsuccessful even if achieved, and therefore also wrong.
Wherein lies the flaw? Surely in the expectation that most incomers, in the absence of the welfare-draw, would be honest, productive, peaceable and law abiding citizens: frollickingmole’s account indicates a strong likelihood that many would not, and nor would they engage in individualised criminality, but would band together into aggressive rampaging mobs.
What to do about this? I don’t know. I think I am reexamining my principles on immigration in a rather profound way. I do know this: my reaction to frollickingmole’s story is that all those part of the mob that abused that woman should have been instantly and forcibly returned whence they came, personal consequences to them be damned. I would not accept any claims of impossibility: our ship (or plane) would land at the Libyan/Syrian airport, and they would be turned off it at bayonet-point.
But if I feel this so strongly, can I maintain my objection to government immigration controls intended to prevent it reaching this stage?
This needs more thought.
NickM, that’s a very good distinction of asylum-seekers, refugees, and “migrants.” Thanks for the clarification, much needed.
Bloody UK should be happy to have the young lady. …grumble…
. . .
frollickingmole: What you have quoted, and backed up with your own testimony, is enough to make any human person want to flush the lot of them.
Slovakia is willing to take in Syrian refugees… Christian ones only. Seems reasonable.
My opinion is that aggressive rampaging mobs happen when thuggish people are certain they will not get met with overwhelming force. So the solution is be reasonable when people are reasonable, and meet unreasonable violent people with uncompromising force. If a state cannot even do that, what fucking use is it? What possible legitimacy does it have?
If there is a single benefit to this crisis is that to all but the blind the EU political class is clearly absolutely ******* useless. How hard is it! Proper naval patrols, offshore refugee camps, etc. If they read Samizdata they would know what to do.
Should we be surprised that they attacked a blind man in the Australian refugee camp.
After all, Mohamed himself ordered the murder of a blind poet who criticized him. And when a female poet – who was pregnant – criticized the murder of the blind man, the great prophet had her killed too.
Islam is a cocktail of the world’s most odious pathologies. I have come to think that religious Muslims should be stopped at the border unless they forsake their faith.
Slovakia has the right idea.
I think the problems caused by pre-judging people on the basis of broad categories (e.g. Muslim) are probably larger than the problems they would alleviate. Better to hold individuals accountable for their own behaviour once they are here than to deny them entry based on what your think their labeling indicates they might do.
After thinking some more on what I wrote it occurs to me that the “problems” open borders would cause in Britain could be construed as a feature rather than a bug. Open borders would cause the collapse of the NHS and the welfare state? Great! Let’s take every refugee, asylum seeker and economic migrant we can get our hands on. Open the borders wide right now. Watch the guardianistas squirm as they try to argue for border controls in a desperate bid to save their precious state.
JV, your idea fails the ‘what would happen in libertaria’ test.
In an anarcho-capitalist country everything is private. No roads, no parks, no access to justice, no free air. In such a world immigration is not possible without the express unanimous permission of a significant number of private persons. For a country with a significant amount of goods to which access is not restricted (roads, parks, also NHS in the UK) immigration controls are a very blunt but not unreasonable proxy for the anarcho-capitalist solution to the ‘problem’ of immigration. (I would of course prefer the anarcho-capitalist solution).
When it all gets too much the leftists will show their true colours and scramble to put immigration controls in place – everything to avoid a free market solution!
I should have added the rather crucial ‘for free’ at the end of this (or rather, without the owner’s permission).
Peter not all libertarians subscribe to the Hoppean “invited migrants only” model. Some think the state has no business telling free people where they can and can’t go. I used to be in favour of such restrictions but I’ve revised my opinion. If be lying of I said that pictures of that wee laddies body in the surf didn’t form part of my decision making process.
In any case, most migrants of any stripe would be able to rustle up an invitation from those who went before so it strikes me as mostly a non-issue.
“I’d be lying if”
Sorry on a smartphone and the black on blue mobile version is unreadable…
There already are plenty of refugee camps. In places like Jordan. Refugees choose to leave the camps in order to find black economy work there or make their way west. For once David Cameron appears to be taking a reasonable course of action. Robust border control to discourage mass migration (which Angela Merkel stupidly stoked) and working with the UN administered camps to take refugees directly. This gives control over who comes in and under what conditions, taking in refugees rather than economic migrants abusing the Geneva convention.
Why would Merkel encourage mass migration? There are many reasons I can think of. Like a lot of EU level issues they can become a vehicle for a wide range of wishes that all point in the same direction. Taking in migrants will improve Merkel’s standing with regards to nasty words from Greeks, and having made an immigrant girl cry on tv. The rise of Alternative for Germany might be a reason as well and taking the same approach as Labour did (rubbing the right’s nose in diversity) would seem a likely response. Fear of the falling German population might be something to do with it too. In which case Merkel, just like so many in this political maelstrom, would be abusing the refugee convention in order to disguise migrant workers as refugees. It is easier to shame someone speaking against an influx of refugees than someone speaking against an influx of migrant workers.
I’m also sure it is no coincedence that the EU has decided that next year it wants to evaluate the Dublin regulations.
On a very basic point I don’t think refugees should be allowed to gain citizenship. I think that, as much as welfare, is what encourages bogus asylum seekers. The Geneva convention seeks to encourage naturalisation but doesn’t require it AFAIK.
I rather liked this idea:
http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2015/09/give-all-refugees-a-free-ticket-to-brussels/
“several rich Islamic nations” consider this a total benefit for them.
They export, or are relieved from importing, a mass of troublemakers and deadbeats.
The immigrants become Europe’s troublemakers and deadbeats, imposing huge economic and social costs on Africa and Islam’s traditional enemies and current rivals.
And the ones who don’t fail send Euros to the mideast and Africa, to be battened on by local fixers and merchants.
Why on earth would the exporting countries want to stop this? I’m surprised that they haven’t chartered cruise ships to carry passengers free of charge to European ports.
We don’t want to stop it either, because that requires us to say no to someone who will cry. Our cultures evaluate one drowned child more highly than they do millions of our own citizens enslaved to feed invaders who won’t even go to work when they get here. Why should they? We won’t even not give the invaders money and free everything. If you put sugar on the floor, the ants will come.
Why on earth would ANYONE who could get here stay in the third world?
The Green March and the Camp of the Saints are our future, because we choose.
The southern countries along the med will start sinking boats. I just hope they sink them in Africa and not mid-ocean.
And on that cheery note, why don’t you guys start pushing Gorgeous George for PM? Why should we Yanks have all the fun with reality-TV candidates?
Mary, but the incidents related by the frollickingmole took place in a detention camp. It is unlikely such incidents could take place under normal conditions for immigrants as per JV’s AnCap (anarcho-capitalist = no government, everything is private, etc.) scenario – because under his scenario there would simply be no need for such detention camps. Also, what Perry said about self-defense, but that’s part of the AnCap setting anyway.
I really liked JV’s first comment, as it very much reflects my view of the matter. Unfortunately, we are not living in an AnCap world. But, it doesn’t mean that we can’t use that model to analyze the current situation and make logical extrapolations – such as: the main issue with the difference between the AnCap model and the current one is what is known as ‘public spaces’, which has already been mentioned above. In the absence of such spaces, the whole immigration issue becomes entirely a private matter, and effectively a non-issue. However, if said public spaces do exist and are (technically speaking) jointly owned by the entire population of a country, and if the vast majority of that country opposes the use of said public spaces by people who are not citizens or tourists or diplomats etc., then in practice the issue of technical ownership of these spaces becomes largely irrelevant.
Yes, immigration is good for the economy, it is for the most part good culturally, and in several other ways. But still, I should not be able to force on my neighbors what I think is good for them or even for all of us – just as I can’t force my racist shop owner to see the light, stop being racist and begin serving black customers, because it is probably much better for him from a purely business point of view, not to mention socially etc. All I can do is try to convince him, or in worst case, boycott him. Same with immigration, I think.
I am truly sorry that some innocent 3-year-old died. I really am.
Now, to cases.
These people are not ‘your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . . .’ Many/ most of them are middle-class, with plenty of resources. Making this journey is not cheap.
Many/most of them are looking to be dropped ready-made, at little or no social or economic cost to them, into a safe, secure developed economy, where they can immediately start reaping the benefits without having invested any of the societal capital required to organize and maintain such a society. And they will not, generally speaking, contribute anything positive to support that society – as we se throughout Europe, where the return of large ghettoes is becoming a reality and serious social costs and unrest are on the rise.
These people don’t want to be German, or Norwegian, or English – they want to set up their ways of life in Germany, or Norway, or England, and have the locals pay for them to do so, and then they want to impose their ways of life on their hosts. It’s no secret – they’re shouting it from the rooftops, we only have to listen.
And they know full-well how to take advantage of enlightened Western attitudes, with heartrending tales of suffering and despair – look at what’s happening to Our Poor Chillunz! Note, however, as the frollickingmole also observes, how quickly they turn to violence when their desires are thwarted.
My reserves of sympathy are rapidly running dry. These are not asylum seekers, but an economic and social invasion force in approximately equal parts. As another has suggested, if they truly are fleeing oppression, let’s see how many keep coming when Norway makes it clear that their inprocessing facilities will be located in the Lofoten Islands, and the UK sets up facilities on Tristan da Cunha.
The elitocrats of the EC have created this irresistible magnet, and the people will now have to pay the price for it, on many levels. It remains to be seen what the total bill will be. I like the suggestion of bussing them to Brussels and Strasbourg in large numbers – let’s see how the EC elite likes having to deal with the problem they created face-to-face. And I very much fear that giving them blankets and beds now will inevitably end in having to give them bayonets and tear-gas later, if we want to keep our society the way we like it.
But hey, at least it’s stopped the Europeans lecturing the US with that air of smug superiority about attempts to reduce the influx of illegal immigrants for Mexico. Not quite such a clear-cut humanitarian issue now, is it?
llater,
llamas
llater,
llamas
Nearly all the comments are good – Staghounds, Mr Black, Alisa, Nick and so on.
As for those American libertarians that Julie points to….
Well lads and lasses let me introduce you to a place called Ulster.
And the practice of “burning out” people who come to your area whom you do not like.
Now as you, my dear anarchists, oppose the existence of governments – what is your problem with such community action?
You surely could not report it the authorities – as you do not believe their should be any.
Or with lynching people?
After all that is non government action against perceived enemies.
And often they are enemies. Who would “burn out” or “lynch” the locals if they had the chance.
At least that was the way of the past – and it may well be the way of the future. People are still being killed after all – even if the media does not report it.
“All that violates the nonaggression principle”.
O.K. but “discrimination” does NOT.
It is no accident that there was no massive influx from Latin America into the United States (in spite of a basically open border in those days) before private “discrimination” was banned – and endless government benefits and “public services” introduced.
There was no mass influx from the Middle East and North Africa into Europe in the 1950s (or before) either – other than by invasion.
The idea that this is about libertarian “free migration” is nonsense.
If people wanted “jobs” they would have come in the 1950s when there was full employment – they would not be flooding into Italy and Spain now (a time of mass unemployment).
And if this is about the libertarian “non aggression principle”……
Why the demands for an end to freedom of speech?
And why the demands for bans on private “discrimination”?
Which is really a ban on Freedom of Association – which must, by definition, include the freedom to not associate.
The society that is being created is not natural.
It is artificially created by government benefits, “public services” and “anti discrimination laws”.
Nor is it stable – it can not last.
Whether it is Greece or Sweden (or anywhere else) this farce is going to end.
And I fear it is going to end in terrible violence.
People are tribal creatures – and tribes are lot older than states.
Oh, by the way, it is not “race” – it is tribe.
Why do you think I started by talking about Ulster.
Former Egyptian Muslim (and now American Christian) Nonie Darwish,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonie_Darwish (see excerpts below),
today posted a column at
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260025/why-did-oil-rich-arab-countries-abandon-muslim-nonie-darwish
addressing the question of “Why Did Oil-Rich Countries Abandon Muslim Refugees.” After a series of observations and questtions, she lists eight reasons for this, including tribalism (my boldface):
Also:
And:
Note also:
. . .
From the Wikipedia article, which is worth reading (footnotes omitted):
The Syrian civil war have been going on for four years. ISIS have been terrorizing people around for almost three years. Why we have a humanitarian catastrophe now? Is this a spontaneous movement as the Arab Spring?
Family of drowned toddler Aylan Kurdi had been given free housing in Turkey for three years, while father’s story is full of holes
‘After thinking some more on what I wrote it occurs to me that the “problems” open borders would cause in Britain could be construed as a feature rather than a bug. Open borders would cause the collapse of the NHS and the welfare state? Great! Let’s take every refugee, asylum seeker and economic migrant we can get our hands on. Open the borders wide right now. Watch the guardianistas squirm as they try to argue for border controls in a desperate bid to save their precious state.’
Is this some sort of libertarian version of ‘destroying a village to save it’? No thanks.
This whole refugee ‘crisis’ convinces me more that the west’s real problem is not the Russians, the Syrians, ISIS, Al Qaeda, China, etc. It’s the loathsome moralising that comes from much of the ruling political, economic and media class and the churches and NGOs that makes the public suckers for emotional blackmail. This leads us to absurdities like now where a dead kid on the front of the newspapers has led to a climate where the only acceptable ‘morality’ appears to be to allow Muslims to migrate en masse to Europe. This is supposedly the ‘moral’ thing to do! Despite the fact that in the long run, it will wreck Europe.
If it is ‘immoral’ to protect the borders, then I say I am an immoralist!
My opinion is that aggressive rampaging mobs happen when thuggish people are certain they will not get met with overwhelming force. So the solution is be reasonable when people are reasonable, and meet unreasonable violent people with uncompromising force. If a state cannot even do that, what fucking use is it? What possible legitimacy does it have?
This matches the detention experience.
When I first started we had 2 managers who i thought were a little harsh. If you smashed a window/fought etc you got a few days in chokie before he would wander down and ask why you did it, then hed usualy either give them short shift or rectify their complaint. But everyone knew what to expect, and centers that were having weekly mass disturbances looked bad.
So what did they do? Sent us the worst 150 from another center who rioted on their first night and used that as an excuse to sack the 2 efficient managers. We then got a revolving door of assclowns who were under instruction to “keep things quiet”, which they chose to do by giving the worst elements in the centers effective control. Instead of months without serious incidents we ended up with them weekly and every time it ended with the company parachuting in another fuckwit who would try to “give” the marauding element stuff to keep them quiet.
Then the day anyone said “no” another riot.
If you dont punish criminal scum you end up with it becoming the norm. I had good people coming to me and telling me they were going to go and smash a window and were doing me the courtesy of letting me know first. Why? “Because thats the only way to get a complaint listened to”.
Alisa, if genuine, then that should be a good thing. Maybe a lot of these people are dhimmies, or secret christians. Assimilation would be easier.
You’d think that some countries, like Japan, which has a declining birthrate, would welcome immigrants, or ‘guest workers’. Maybe someone should offer cosmetic surgery, so all new immigrants ‘look’ Japanese! Problem all solved!
So if ‘the boats’ have stopped, why do they still need to be turned back? If what’s actually meant is that ‘the boats’ are intercepted before reaching Australia, then yeah… no duh.. that’s been happening the whole time and used to be part of the plan — it’s not like they were aiming to actually step onto a beach.