Migrant crisis

[FriendlyFire]

That's strange though. Because I've heard people are paying ~10,000 Euros to people traffickers. I find it hard to believe that an airplane ticket would be that expensive.

Visa overstayers have no access to any kind of refugee assistance ?
It would be a hell of a lot safer then via risky boat travel even if they had to go through border security. Though border security will be checking everyone from coming in from war torn Syria, Lybria and Afghanistan.

 

[Agent327]

Visa overstayers have no access to any kind of refugee assistance ?

Why would they? A visa is a temporay stay permit (after which the visa user is expected to leave). There's no connection with asylum requests.

The thing being, the EU counties really don't want these people. But may be willing to accept them, should they manage to get there on their own. So they aren't going to make it easy for the people to get there.

Which would be the main reason for the current migrant crisis. Migrants have been coming for decades. We just don't like seeing them drown. Hence 'crisis'. If only they would be so kind as to drown out of sight of any media...

At any rate, I just read on the news this morning that only Spain is treating these people as should: as asylum seekers who need to go through the motions.

 

[Borachio]

Visa overstayers have no access to any kind of refugee assistance ?
It would be a hell of a lot safer then via risky boat travel even if they had to go through border security. Though border security will be checking everyone from coming in from war torn Syria, Lybria and Afghanistan.

I imagine a lot of economic migrants do outstay their visas. They can either go "off grid" and leave themselves open to exploitation by unscrupulous employers. Or they can try for refugee status. And sit in an immigration centre (I'm beginning to sound like a broken record) doing nothing for years on end, until finally repatriated.

 

[Tahuti]

From Libya where flights are all grounded?

Also a lot of passports are pretty difficult to board flights with especially if Customs of the destination country does stuff at the origin. Flights to Australia for instance are nearly impossible on a Sri Lanka or Afghanistan or Iran passport simply because of the likelihood that people from those countries will seek asylum on arrival. (Funny this never gets mentioned as a prime causative factor behind people attempting dangerous boat trips)

The Refugee Convention doesn't give rights to seek asylum until you actually arrive. I'd be very surprised if it were simple for people from refugee-producing countries to just hop a flight to the EU.

You could go to Tunisia and take a plane from there instead. Or Egypt.

Anyway, I do wish to thank for you for explaining it. The issue's a lot clearer now.

So basically open borders for anyone as long you can afford plane tickets? Could as well take a lump sum of cash to fast forward people through the asylum seeking/immigration process no questions asked as well, it just seems a very cold hearted policy to me. Just make sure you have the cash on you and the border guards will be perfectly fine with you using a normal commercial ferry or car or whatever. It's not like there's a lack of safe boats or that land and sea travel is very dangerous. Would be nice for westerners to travel the world and move residences between countries without having all the visa stuff to bother with though.

For social cohesion's sake, migration to the EU countries should be limited. However, you might want to attract those immigrants who are likely to adapt well and have the stuff it takes to be an asset to their new fatherland. If you limit migration to those who can afford plane tickets, you both have an easy way to limit migration as well a way to mitigate the risk of refusing migrants who could prove to be an asset.

 

[Camikaze]

Hence you get the off-shore prisons which are beyond the reach of Australian courts..

The thing is, it's impossible for the Commonwealth to put itself beyond the reach of Australian courts - judicial review lies against every officer of the Commonwealth. So what we have instead is continuously shifting legislation which desperately seeks to frustrate one of the most fundamental constitutional rights (and access to it).

Hmm.. Well, I had been under the impression that the new Australian model has been leading to success.

Do you think the same issues would arise if they tried this in the Mediterranean?

Just to echo what Arwon is saying, Australia's policy is a highly immoral travesty in flagrant breach of international obligations, which will leave an indelible stain on our history. The treatment of asylum seekers by the current government is downright sociopathic - they pride themselves on how cruel they can be.

I've been watching a lot of Julian Burnside speeches lately, but here's a quick one in which the 'drowning excuse' is thoroughly rebutted. Burnside''s argument on the topic starts at about 7:20:

Link to video.

For those without the time to listen, the main points are:

• Politicians seem to like deriding people smugglers whilst still praising people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Gustav Schröder, who are rightly regarded as heroes. There's no doubt that the vast majority of those who are saved by people smugglers are grateful to their people smugglers.
• The policy is 'stop the boats', with the excuse being this is a compassionate policy designed to stop drownings. Yet the fact that success is measured in terms of stopping boats arriving rather than stopping boats setting out indicates how hollow this supposed justification is. Australia's navy has breached Indonesian territorial sovereignty on multiple occasions to force boats back, and somehow this is still considered a success of the 'stop the boats' policy. 'Stop the boats' is clearly just about not letting people reach Australia, rather than preventing the risk of drowning, and the government has consistently refused to say how many asylum seekers have drowned, as such information is characterised as a military operational matter (as an aside, I imagine this is going to become increasingly common in Europe now - people seeking to use drownings as an excuse for their xenophobia).
• In Australia's case, if asylum seekers were to join the 'queue' in Indonesia they'd have to live essentially as fugitives for 20-30 years before being resettled. There's no way people in such a situation are going to be dissuaded from trying the boat method.
• If asylum seekers are 'victims' which we are truly seeking to help by preventing them from drowning, it seems odd that we punish those that manage to survive. If you don't drown, you're detained indefinitely in absurd and degrading conditions which have a good chance of driving you to suicide.

Two additional arguments I've heard him make are:

• Stopping asylum seekers from risking their lives on a perilous boat journey doesn't stop them from being killed. The only reason they take that risk is because they are in danger where they are. All stopping the drownings does is ensure the deaths of these people are more remote from us, so we don't have to care about them as much. "Please stay at home to die, rather than drowning in our sea".
• The very nature of a deterrence policy is that you want to make one alternative worse than the other, in this case, you'd want travelling by boat to Europe to be worse than not doing so. That's not a compassionate policy.

I would also urge anyone with the time or inclination to listen to the following speech to hear how completely off the rails Australia's policy is. It's very compelling listening:

Link to video.

 

[Yeekim]

I suspect if 200m people flee from anywhere all at one, not much any state does will be able to do much of anything to prevent that from happening. Might as well ask what a country will do if an asteroid hits it.

Well, 200m are not gonna flee. 12m might. Suppose 2m of them decide to head for Australia. What should you do?

 

[trader/warrior]

For social cohesion's sake, migration to the EU countries should be limited. However, you might want to attract those immigrants who are likely to adapt well and have the stuff it takes to be an asset to their new fatherland. If you limit migration to those who can afford plane tickets, you both have an easy way to limit migration as well a way to mitigate the risk of refusing migrants who could prove to be an asset.

The people currently being smuggled in horrible conditions are already paying huge sums of money, remember. If this works then most refugees and illegal immigrants should already be the "desireable" ones.

If the government can set the price itself surely that provides much better control than just basing it on airline tickets? If the airlines set up large scale economy flights to fill the demand it would cost a fraction of the amount these people currently pay to get smuggled across the border and I doubt it would have any effect on the "quality" of the migrants coming over.

Alternately the airlines might jack up the prices for the limited seats on flights to the exorbitant amounts people are currently willing to pay for smuggling, probably resulting in a new human smuggling industry, this time even more focused on cost-saving recklessness.

 

[Arwon]

Well, 200m are not gonna flee. 12m might. Suppose 2m of them decide to head for Australia. What should you do?

In that situation (the more likely one is Indonesia ends up in say a prolonged civil war) I don't think the Australian government has much choice in the matter either. 2 million desperate people in boats, assuming they could find that many, what force on earth could stop that? And who would have the moral claim to try? And once people are in a country, you just have to find a way to make them not die, don't you?

Countries much poorer than Australia (Pakistan, Iran, Turkey), Lebanon) manage to house a million or more refugees inside their borders.

More realistically, in 1980 our population was 14.5 million, our refugee quota via the UN sponsored resettlement program was 22,000. A lot of that was filled with people fleeing Vietnam (a country which we've started sending people back to be imprisoned by that same regime now, aren't we just great?). That's roughly the equivalent of 36000 per year today, compared with total population. We're also twice as rich in terms of real GDP per capita growth, so that's double the tax revenue and therefore should be double the quota. We are talking 75,000 per year as a comfortable controlled policy option in non-crisis circumstances.

There's about 450,000 refugees in the region between here and Afghanistan, and half of them are on the Bangladeshi border with Burma and tbh probably not going anywhere. Resettling the region's refugees currently in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, about 200,000? Double it again, optimistically, for more Tamils and Hazaras and Iranians if you want. Would be pretty easy if we had the political will.

The "WHAT IF EVERYONE IN THE WORLD COMES FLOODING INTO YOUR COUNTRY" slippery slope is a terrible argument against upholding the right to asylum and the Refugee Convention. At the point at which something becomes a truly unstoppable "tide" you don't have much choice in the matter anyway, and in practical terms are left with a forced humanitarian crisis and response regardless of your policies.

 

[Borachio]

How about the Syrian refugees? People who are refugees due to a whole mish-mash of circumstance, some of which could be seen as directly the result of Western action and inaction.

Strangely enough, though, places like the US and UK have only agreed (to the best of my knowledge) to admit fewer than 500 each.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War

Yet neighbouring Lebanon, with a population of 4.5 million, has already admitted over 1 million Syrians. Not that the Lebanese had a lot of choice about it of course. But that's still a major imbalance between what the developed world will accept compared with a 3rd world country like Lebanon. Maybe?

 

[Oruc]

It doesn't seem to have been much of a problem in the UK. Plenty of low skill low wage jobs about.

The biggest growth sector is care of the elderly.

Biggest problem in Europe is care of an aging population, I'd bet.

We have about 20% youth unemployment, we don't need anymore unskilled labourers.
If we honestly have to import hundreds of thousands just to keep the system ticking over then why bother? We're just delaying the inevitable.
Well unless we decide to keep a section of the world in perpetual misery and instability but with enough food that they keep reproducing our workhands and carers.

 

[Yeekim]

/snip/

Hm, I'd like to be convinced. I guess I am.

 

[Domen]

How do we discourage people from trusting themselves to unscrupulous people traffickers in a bid to escape poverty and/or persecution?

Maybe by showing them this video?:


Link to video.

 

[Borachio]

Nope. That won't do it.

That video is directed towards people in rich countries to persuade them not to let any more immigrants in. It's not directed towards persuading poor people to stay where they are.

I agree that, currently, it's the better off people who immigrate, and that this represents a brain drain on poorer countries, only making the matter worse.

What is needed to stop immigration is a radical rethink about the distribution of global wealth. Suggesting that poor people need lifting out of poverty where they stand and that rich people need do nothing else is a non-starter, imo. Poor people do need lifting out of poverty, but rich people really need to curb their wasteful consumption as well, or the resources of the planet are simply going to run out.

The only way to persuade poor people to stay where they are is by convincing them that they'd not be better off somewhere else. And at the moment, the condition of even poor people in the developed world is SO much better than poor people in the underdeveloped world that I think you'd have to be crazy, and cruel, to seriously consider persuading them to stay where they are.

What is needed, I repeat, is a massive redistribution of global wealth. And, of course, that's just not going to happen, is it?

Rich people simply don't give away their wealth. Or not to any significant degree, anyway. Do we?

 

[FriendlyFire]

Yet neighbouring Lebanon, with a population of 4.5 million, has already admitted over 1 million Syrians. Not that the Lebanese had a lot of choice about it of course. But that's still a major imbalance between what the developed world will accept compared with a 3rd world country like Lebanon. Maybe?

Welcome to the middle east since the beginning of time.
Take the best and brightest, assist how many society can afford to take it without serious problems. For the rest they are sent back unfortunately send what every aid that can be afforded such as a food.

Who do you think is paying for assistance to refugees camps in the Middle east ?

 

[Recon Rover]

Maybe by showing them this video?

There is an inference made is this video that by accepting immigrants we are depriving developing countries of their most talented citizens and thus their ability to reduce poverty.

Although this equivocation may at first appear logical, it is made through considerably poor assumptions. Moreover, it ignores the causes that create and cultivate poverty. It’s a rather unethical argument based in false premise.