3500 migrants a year drowning in the Med is unacceptable. It's action time!

That's somewhat like the John Birch Society's solution to mass starvation in dilapidated countries...quit giving them food. Don't send foreign aid or bags of rice. They've already overburdened the ability of the land or their technology to feed themselves, feeding them only allows the population to increase, further over burdening the land. Overpopulation and ignorance creates and intensifies the starvation and suffering of the next drought, the next flood, the next ethnic cleansing war, the next degenerate tyrant, the next plague of locusts, the next uncontrollable disease.

Failing countries are not going to reform quickly, odds are they won't reform at all.

There are quite enough people in the world, no more are needed. There are no good outcomes from overpopulation, it only lowers the quality of life.

 

SamSam - I fully agree thanks.

 

Its not just that they overburden the land
they will cut ALL the trees down and NEVER plant new ones
There have been THOUSANDS of well meaning people that have spent MILLIONS of Dollars teaching and training over decades AND STILL they don't get it.
Come and live here - I grew up with them.
Forget it - it is a lost cause - you are wasting your time.
Africa and this "middle east" stuff - they will NEVER get it

 

Many immigrants fleeing their country because they have nothing to eat. But many, many of them, flee because the rulers of his country pursues them. Many fled, not because their country is overpopulated but because they do not belong to the tribe or clan of the dominant ethnicity or because they are murdered by extremists.

 

If our neighbour is a child molestor, we wont buy his tomatoes
yet we buy gold and oil from dictators and extremists
extremists can only exist with money that comes from us
follow the money and you will see the real crooks are our rich neighbours
and you can start with the owners of the International Money Funds and World Banks

 

Someone designed a "new world order" and began applying around 20 March 2003. That began to cause many of the immigrants / refugees who today do not know where to put.
Indeed, it is very true, follow the money.

 

Dear Sir,

As much as I would love to help prevent the loss of life, sadly it is impossible right now. The only solutions to work are political.

First the situation in Turkey. You do not seem to understand that every overladen boat that leaves Turkey does so with the full knowledge and tacit approval of the turkish authorities. Why this is so is besides the matter but rest assure that Turkey as a state has the means to enforce zero departures of migrants from its shores if it whishes. If you doubt this please read about the size and prerogatives of the turkish army.

The second problem is the migrants state of mind. There is a collective frenezy to live in the western and northern EU (nobody wants to end up in former Eastern Europe even if it‘s the EU countries). This is seen as a kind of paradise. As long as this belive continues and as long as this parts of the EU accept migrants there will be no stop to imigration and the drownings. A migrant that wants to go to Germany does not think about loss of life. That he can have at home for cheap so the risk of crossing is considered small. Take the sirians for example. Most of them are men between 20 and 40 years old. In Siria they would have to fight for one side or another (they are all desertors or potential desertors the moment they crossed the border). The chance of drowning means nothing, a place in a boat means a ride to paradise. If they have the money they will go regardless what you or I say.

Successful interdiction programs have been and are still run. For example right now nobody crosses from Africa to the Canaries Islands. We have Marrocans crossing into Norway from Russia close to the arctic cycle but no crossings to the Canaries. This is because this last years the spanish coastguard and the respective agencies from african countries successfully run a joint program that inspects and returns potential migrants so right now nobody tries it anymore. Before that the death toll was similary high or higher (percentage not actual numbers).

What you can do is lobby your government to pressure the turkish government about enforcing migrants movements restrictions, or to solve the sirian crisis one way or another. It is however my opinion that the second will not solve the problem. It will allow Turkey to forcefully return all sirian refugees to Siria and allow the EU to put a stop to immigration, but without returning all refugies now in the EU back to their homelands the immigration will not stop. And this the EU will not do, and you will see dead refugees on CNN as long as this mindset of migration lasts. The first has some chance to success, this meaning that it will lower the death toll until the migrants find another country that allows them to go to sea.

Maybe I seem cynical to you but I am not. I understand you want to do something good but you have to understand that your values and your mindset differs greatly from that of the migrants and governments involved and even that your perception of "good" is only a limited and oppinionated position. What western people see as "right" is not "right" for the whole world. A tousand years ago leading science and culture was in Bagdad and Cairo. Two hundred years ago it was in London and Paris. Today it is in the so called "first world". Maybe in another hundred years it will be in China, or Russia, or South America or even Africa. The fact is that 3500 human lifes a year is insignificant, a drop in a ocean. More people die every day from hunger, disease and ignorance in any of the great "first world" countries.

 

I don't like getting involved in political discussions but feel the need to comment.

To put out a fire you don't attack the top of the flame, you attack the base. Migrants swimming for dear life are the outcome, not the cause. Migrants are mostly those fleeing oppression or war, and economic migrants, the former group are largely coming from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, fleeing state sponsored violence or sponsored religious fuelled violence. The need to oppose these forces creates additional violence and social hardship which as with all wars, leads to innocent people fleeing the war zone. The common denominator is 'state sponsored' and the common denominator sponsor is a certain nation with massive oil revenue who have funded the Pakistan IS for decades fuelling the mujahideen, taliban and now ISIS, the strife in Yemen etc.. as well as sponsoring a massive programme of worldwide radicalisation (small r) of muslim nations. Copy cat organisations have also appeared.

Cut out the state sponsorship and the middle east region would start to settle, migration would reduce and many who fled would return. People don't want to flee their birth lands, they are forced to. Wind in the radicalisation and we'll have a calmer future. Do neither of these and we're on the slippery slope... and we know what that means.

Economic migrants have to conform to immigration requirements, if they don't send them home.

 

Years ago Sam Kinison comically proposed sending U-Hauls to Ethopia rather than food, and if you think about it when dealing with refugees we are dealing with people who have basically taken that advice.

The problem is the Mediterranean may be called a "sea" rather than an "ocean" but it's still one darn big puddle that makes the 90 miles from Cuba look almost like the Rio Grande.

If Kinison were still with us maybe he'd say they needed to start some youth boating clubs to teach sailing to a whole generation, which of course would be silly as well as impractical.

The ugly truth is there is no solution. I mean look at these two sorts of solutions:

Police the world and deal with all the bad people? That isn't gonna happen, especially since it often seems that the willingness to do so is inversely proportional to the competence of those wanting to try!

It was said earlier that the way to prevent these boat lifts is to sink them yourselves, which just isn't gonna happen either and, just to point out the problem with logic, humans being often irrational creatures, however imaginative, I would suggest that they'd still try to flee just the same, and in great numbers.

I'm just glad no one suggested handing every boat load a bunch of AKs and sending them home....

There are and have been just too many kleptocracies and the like. An abundance of proverbial rotten apples helping make all the fruit that could have been eaten from the bag moldy too.

And among some of those that might have been able to help there has been an astonishing amount of Nitwittery undermining or even preventing them doing any good.

If that makes me seem like a pessimist ... well, that's fine with me.

 

I actually agree with much of what's being said here. I'm listening and willing to participate if someone has a good idea for affecting the political situation in the Middle East. Meanwhile, though, I continue to believe a response to the immediate loss of life is called for. A first step has been taken by rescuers, government and private. But a next step needs to be crafted. Arguing about who to blame is an impediment to doing anything concrete.

 

I support prosecution of smugglers, but arrests should be targeted using criteria based on who is endangering people. Arresting migrants for trying to leave Turkey is the wrong approach. That's what Cuba, North Korea, East Germany, & the USSR used to do / are doing. However, if safety rules apply to everyone, they apply to migrants, too. In some states in the US it is a legal infraction to overload a boat.

How about the Refugee Safety Advisory Group?

 

If established, please give them not only the authority to advice but also to intervene firm in cases like the fake life jackets issue . .

 

I duck out at this stage as we slip into fantasy land.

 

You mean like talking about official scantling rules for improvised boatbuilding techniques?

Imagine how much some government would have to spend just to write a chapter on papyrus (or other reed) craft covered in pitch or epoxy or what have you?

 

Yes! Thank you, Angelique, I think that would be an excellent starting point. Let me research a couple things related to that, and then I'll say more. That's really my idea, and I haven't said it very well. We just need to say clearly that we, the maritime community, want you, Turkey, to enforce the standards that we expect of anyone providing a product or service to boaters headed for open water.