Europe’s Options on Mediterranean Immigrants: Bad and Worse

[Valin]

The Feed:

Oct.31 2014

 

What do you do when hundreds of thousands of immigrants start to flee north to your country from collapsing states and murderous gangs, taking life-threatening risks to do so? America isn’t the only nation facing this dilemma today—so is Italy, and to some extent all of Europe. As an editorial in the Financial Times explained yesterday:

 

Italy has been particularly stretched by its laudable desire to deal humanely with the flow. Following the deaths of 366 people in 2013 when their boat capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the Italian navy has run a search-and-rescue operation called Mare Nostrum, which focuses on saving lives. It has rescued more than 100,000 to date. [...]

 

Next month…Brussels will introduce Operation Triton, its own humanitarian naval operation around Italian shores, under the aegis of Frontex, the union’s border agency.

 

This is, however, more of a band aid than a solution. Only a minority of EU member states will contribute. Some, such as Britain, argue that such operations are counterproductive, encouraging the refugee flow because migrants know they will be rescued.

Europe’s debate about Mediterranean migration shares many features with the conflicted U.S. response to its recent border crisis, but is further complicated by the Schengen Zone rules. Once a refugee reaches Italy, there is no border control with, say, France—but France can’t control Italy’s refugee policy.

 

More broadly, the Europeans are dealing with the same array of ugly choices facing all accessible, developed countries today.....................(Snip)