The Guardian view on rising illegal immigration

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/04/guardian-view-rising-illegal-immigration

Version 0 of 1.

The barriers which keep the global poor out of the rich world are buckling. More and more men and women are throwing themselves at the fences which developed countries have erected to keep them out, risking death by drowning in their efforts to reach more fortunate shores, or sending their children across borders on their own in the hope that somebody on the other side will take pity.

Literally buckling, as in Ceuta, where hundreds storm the razor-wire barricades to get into the Spanish enclave from the African side, hoping and expecting to be able then to carry on to Europe proper. Literally drowning, as overcrowded and unseaworthy boats founder in the Mediterranean, with some saved by the Italian navy, but many lost at sea. Boats go down, too, in the long passage between Indonesia and Australia, where Australian warships have the dismal task of transporting those intercepted or rescued to offshore detention centres which Canberra has persuaded, or bribed, its neighbours to set up.

Along the Rio Grande, where there were many deaths in the past, there is now a different picture. Buses wait near the great wall built to stop migrants – a wall which has largely failed in its purpose. They take migrant families to various southern cities. This is not a free pass. The migrant families who make it across the border are released with orders to report to immigration offices. They can still be deported. Rumours that the orders were in effect permission to stay, and, in particular, that unaccompanied children were automatically getting entry permits, led to a huge increase in child migrants. But once this false impression is dispelled, the effect should be to reduce the dangers of the migrant trail.

Barack Obama had earlier pleaded with Central American leaders to help him find solutions “that prevent smugglers from making money on families that feel desperate”. In Australia the immigration minister Scott Morrison said on Monday that the UN refugee conventions are being used as “a tool by people smugglers to basically run death voyages”. This was a typically overheated statement from a government that has taken a very hard line on immigration. People smugglers are everywhere the villains of the piece. Rightly so, up to a point, since most are gangsters who care little or nothing for the families whose savings they grab for a service – getting them to a better country – they often fail to deliver. But that does not mean people smugglers are the cause of a flow they facilitate but do not create.

The truth is that there is no villain. There is instead a dilemma, admittedly a truly difficult one, which most destination countries have failed to fully address. For all kinds of reasons, both political and economic, developed societies cannot take in as many migrants as would come were there no impediment. Nor, if they could, would that be a good solution for the sending societies, which would risk being hollowed out in certain age and skill categories. Even where societies have broken down, like Syria, refuge is a complicated matter. The people best equipped to flee such societies, one scholar has noted, are their elites, the very people needed to put them back together again. There is therefore a case for temporary refuge, up to the point where reconstruction becomes a possibility. This needs careful rules, carefully administered. What is true in that special instance is even more true of the mass of would-be migrants from the poor world.

They can’t all stay, so the filtering should be fair and thorough, which means more resources than most countries have been ready to deploy. We need a system at home which cuts the risks that migrants are taking. By one estimate, 20,000 have died trying to get to Europe over the last 20 years. It makes sense that it should be easier for people to come in, so as to avoid such tragedies. But it should also be possible to send them home, if their case for staying, fairly tested, is not strong. That seems to be the direction in which the Americans are now going. Better an administrative headache than to have such deaths on our conscience.