1. North African autocracies that controlled the Arab Muslims of the region are collapsing. Since then, a wave of a human mass is forcing –not requesting- entrance into Europe. Primarily the crowd that likes to claim refugee status is exploiting the Italian island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean to gain access to “Europe”. The consequences are creating a problem not only for Italy but also for the EU.

First, Italy uses a number of very Italian techniques to cope with the direct challenge. Naturally, the genuine Lampedusans, by now outnumbered by entrants, are loudly demanding relief. The more so since the guests are not necessarily orderly and show an inclination to use violence –such as torching their housing- to force their transfer to the mainland. There they expect to receive permits to stay which in turn allow them to invade the rest of the EU.

In most cases, the demand for relocation on the mainland is met. Thereafter a temporary permit is issued. That paper allows the holder to travel in Europe. In practical terms, the document is an invitation to go underground in a rich country of the “North” that allocates welfare generously. Information regarding the numbers is, being rather embarrassing, not readily available. Here an indirect indicator. It has recently surfaced that 40% of aliens entering Switzerland, which are refused refugee status, simply disappear. Where they are in the underground is anyone’s guess. This suggests that Europe’s problem with illegal and undocumented entrants is on its way to achieve American proportions. Dealing with the problem effectively is blocked because it is not PC-conform to discuss the matter in public.

Somehow, the obvious and dissuasive solution is rejected by Rome and the rest of the challenged entities. That would be to drag the boats back to North African waters or to the edge of the three, respectively twelve mile limit. Complaints get louder that the Schengen Treaty –it allows border crossings in Europe without controls- are being undermined by allowing informally the migrants to drift “North”. There are even films showing breakouts from Italian detention while the guards of the facility remain inactive. Admittedly, in the case of denied landing followed by immediate repatriation, complaints would become loud alleging human rights violations. The phenomena of masses forcing their way into successful societies are new in modern Western experience. The laws and the practice of the enforcement of regulations that deal with settlement, as well as the welfare services, are the products of an earlier time and do not correspond to new realities. The terms of the adjusted popular response are, yet, unclear. The only certainty is that the current practice of solving the problem by ignoring it while hoping against hope that somehow the inflow will stop instead of growing, are unlikely continue without a response.

 

2. An upshot of the last world war, the Holocaust and the Communist enslavement of central and Eastern Europe has brought about an international agreement that a right to refuge exists. (The writer happens to be one of the beneficiaries of the practice.) The concept made the moral obligation to extend protection into an act that actually limits national sovereignty. What the convention means is that the persecuted (for their politics, religion, race, that is for demanding what constitute elementary rights in free societies) must be given refuge if they make it to the shores of a “safe country”.

From North Africa, the earlier trickle of refugees is now growing into a major flow. Prior to the ongoing upheaval, the autocracies there have done much to prevent illegal emigration to Europe. Not only the locals were hindered by these measures; they also stifled the growing industry of contraband in humans that sold sub-Saharan Africans a passage to Europe. The rulers that controlled countries such as Tunisia and especially Libya had the police instruments to hinder the migration.

These autocracies found the role of acting as Europe’s first line of border defense to be convertible to their own advantage. For one thing, under innocuous titles, their services as Europe’s “deputies” were well remunerated. Furthermore, the threat that, if peeved, they might let the migrants pass the country and board ships for Europe, netted political concessions. These were mainly symbolic acts of appreciation by foreign leaders such as Berlusconi embraces. Additionally, they lent respectability and usefulness to characters such as Gaddafi. Now these leaders are gone or limited by their uphill battles to survive. That means that the “coast is clear”. Thereby the restrictive passage to Europe is eased. The region’s system and its not entirely understood achievement of the “good life”, promises rewards to those that manage to enter it. These motives are not always the pursuit of “opportunity” but the easy life and the advantages of a developed system of welfare. Even if the genuinely persecuted enjoy a largely uncontested right to protection, it is by no means clear whether the general an honorable principle has a legitimate application in frequently repeated concrete cases. To begin with, the people that are now “climbing over the fence” are clearly economic migrants. Wanting to escape the poverty and the bad system a birth society imposes upon all of its members is understandable. However, a badly functioning system does not equal systematic maltreatment by government or some other informal organization designed to deprive persons of life and liberty. Put differently, economic conditions are a comprehensible motive to resettle. Nevertheless, that desire does not amount to a right and immigration. Legitimately, refuge remains, a privilege extended only to the victims of persecution.

Acting as though this would not be the case demonstrates the lack of will to enforce existing laws and to uphold the dictate of reason given the limited possibilities to accommodate the masses of another continent. Continuing a policy that is a combination of inaction, neglect and denial, is not a long-term option. Without effective counter measures, the strategy of looking away will not only fail to deplete the inflow. Assuredly, permissiveness will make the tide rise. After all, even the parameters of living permanently on public support is, once communicated home, an individual success story. It provokes not only envy but stimulates the desire to follow suit in the pursuit of personal advantage. Today thousands come. Tomorrow it will be tens of thousands. What will happen if the move of hundreds of thousands duplicates, under modern conditions, the “migration of peoples”? 

 

3. Mistaken judgments and an inclination to flee a problem by hiding in the bushes of inaction that are located in the forest of confusion, pretend to be policy. The image leads to an analogy from another area.

Piracy is (again) rising from a high base. As long as the identified mother ships of buccaneers are not sunk, the trend will continue in a way that will make one wish that the curve would represent the stock market. A problem is that pirates are handled like “starving” thieves or “kids” out for fun. Capturing and locking them up, unlikely, as that might be, amounts to no safe solution either. The time is coming when pirates will demand as a bonus to their ransom – keep in mind that the trend is up- the release of captives. We may learn that in general, those incarcerated for certain crimes such as terrorism, are the cause of new attacks to free detained “freedom fighters”.

Here, too, under examination, what is pandered as policy is unmasked to be unadulterated confusion.