African migrants - what is to be done?

[LadyinCement]

I see in the news that millions are trying to cross the Med to reach Europe. I visit Italy frequently to visit family and it is no exaggeration - there are huge groups of young men hanging about with no status and no purpose. They are lying about in parks/by the sea all day. At one major station I had to pass armed guards linking arms at the barriers as otherwise the men try to board the trains to ride round. They receive an amount of money every day and accommodation, but there is no hope of work - Italy has very high unemployment. Of course they want to reach Germany/Sweden/Britain and don't want to be in Italy at all.

What is the solution? Europe cannot possibly absorb vast numbers, especially lone young men.

I think refugee's who are actually fleeing persecution and war are telling people that life in Europe is better. Economic migrants who have borrowed tens of thousands of dollars to come to the west are also telling their family's and friends life is great and they'll pay them back soon and they have a great job. When their actually living in a shed somewhere and working for less than minimum wage if their lucky and will never be able to pay the money back. They are ashamed to admit the truth.

Mass population shifts are inevitably destabilising for both the migrants and the receiving/host countries. Who would not want to escape war or famine?

Sadly, the path finders are precisely the people who are most needed at home to build their countries out of poverty. So the humanitarian help would be better if delivered in Africa or Syria for reconstruction, rather than by charity in Europe. Somehow the message needs to be sent that the streets in Europe are not paved with gold and kindly employers. But it is definitely true that all of Europe and the developed world cannot leave it to Italy and Greece. The whole continent needs to cooperate for the best outcome, at home and overseas.

The whole continent needs to come together to secure its borders. Every Naval vessel in the EU should be in the Mediterranean stopping the boats full of migrants and towing them back to their point of origin and then destroying them. What are countries like Libya and Morocco going to do to stop us nothing because they cant. Anyone found to be here illegally should be deported or detained until such a time as they decide to leave. Once people realise that they are wasting their money and risking their lives for nothing the flow will stop.
Politicians need to have the moral courage to put their own people first. I can guarantee that if Europe's politicians did that the overwhelming majority of their people would support them. Would the Chinese and Japanese stop selling us TV's and washing machines, nope. Would the Saudi's stop selling us oil, nope. Would Donald Trump care, nope. All they would lose is their self appointed position as the worlds moral arbiter.
There you go job done.

An interesting programme on Radio 4 this week:

The Briefing Room - Why is there still a migrant crisis in Europe?

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08yqb9p

This year almost 100,000 people have arrived in Italy by boat - and more than 2,000 have died trying.

The Italians say they can’t cope, but it's a problem which has now been going on for years - so why has nobody solved it?

In this week's programme David Aaronovitch asks who are the migrants, where are they coming from, how do they get to Europe and what needs to be done to stop more people dying.

CONTRIBUTORS

Joel Millman, UN's International Organisation for Migration

Tuesday Reitano, Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime

Mattia Toaldo, European Council on Foreign Relations

Elizabeth Collett, Migration Policy Institute Europe

SomethingOnce: yes! I came on to recommend that Radio 4 programme. Instead of being the usual 'let's put two people with opposing views in a studio and have a heated debate', it was a calm and factual discussion of what is actually happening, and how and why people get from Africa to Italy.

One interesting point made was that the policy of returning migrants trying to get to Greece back to Turkey has been successful in hugely cutting the numbers making that particular journey.

Found this thread really interesting after breaking my heart watching a Ross Kemp programme in Libya. Clearly because the country has fallen apart and there's actually no jobs in Libya either, many have turned to trafficking to feed their families. The people at the top are making more money out of desperate migrants than they know what to do with.

It all seemed so unbelievably hopeless, many were being towed back to Libya and put in detention centres and with no way of getting home. I don't know what the answer is but to ensure people have more opportunities in their home countries, but with current governments, overpopulation, global warming I don't see it happening.

Scotland certainly needs more immigration in places, I think the problem is that it's not equally spread over the country.

The new yorker article on here was so eye opening, thankyou to who posted it. I'm working my way through the rest.

ClarkWgriswold
The NHS is on its knees because it is underfunded. Not because of migrants.
Stop it off!

The EU-turkey deal hasn't actually happened though. Not one person has been returned. It's been held up in the courts and in the meantime people are being left in limbo, often on the Greek islands, in dire conditions that are now being called the worst refugee camps in the world.

I think some of the answers lie in funding camps in countries with large numbers of refugees. Like the Lebanon for example. 25% of their population are now mostly Syrian refugees. Conditions are terrible and many push on in desperation. Jordon and Turkey are also hosting many. If funding was provided to improve the conditions there it would stem the flow.

Seeking Asylum shouldn't be just a 'survival of the fittest' game where those who can reach Europe do. There are currently no legal routes to claim asylum here. If the E.U. Would assess claims within the countries with large numbers of refugees then the most vulnerable could be resettled in Europe.

As for addressing the root causes , conflict in Syria, Ethriea, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen. Crushing poverty in west Africa. It seems like an overwhelming task.

It's just incredibly sad. I have actually stopped reading about it. I was feeling terribly guilty that we have so much and that elsewhere in Europe people are being kept in conditions fit for animals. It's completely unacceptable that Italy and Greece have been given should little support in dealing with the influx too.

I can recommend The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier which looks at why these countries are as poor as they are (in a nutshell war, disease, being landlocked and poor governance). He's an economist so looks at it from an economic point of view - if the economy grows, poverty reduces. Interestingly a dependence on natural resources stifles growth as there is no incentive to diversify the economy.

Douglas Murray's book The Strange Death of Europe is also an interesting , thought provoking and current read about the migrant crisis.

Create regional asylum processing centres at key points, turkey, Lebanon, morocco. All refugees and asylumn seekers to present at these regional centres for processing. If the turn up within Europe they are to be sent to one of these centres until their identity can be verified and their documents processed. This will shut down the people smuggling trade almost altogether. It will also prevent the situation you have d scribed above. Alas this will never happen as idiot politicians will think that this will make it easier to make an asylum claim. Of course it would, for those who have a genuine claim which it should do but not physically being in the country will make it harder to stay by virtue of lies about missing documents.

I think the only solution is to send them back to where they came from and cut off all foreign aid, drastic in the short term but it will precipitate change. I am an African and honestly providing false hope for people by allowing immigration is a huge part of the problem.

I wouldn't cut off foreign aid. It provides all lot of help for people in countries experiencing war or natural disasters. Hopefully properly targeted it cant create employment and infrastructure which will prevent people making a dangerous journey to Europe in the first place.

That said Europe also needs to secure its borders and be tough with people and just say "fuck off your not wanted here" because its the truth their not.

Foreign aid needs to go to the right people though not the corrupt governments

Foreign aid and debt relief could be used to reward good governance.

I would accept carefully vetted Christian immigration from the middle east because they are being treated appalling across the region and as Sunni Islam becomes increasingly dark and sinister its only going to get worse. The same is also true for small religious minority's like the Yazidis. That said I'd feel pretty foolish if Yazidi's refugees opened the hell mouth in Stockport and they did turn out to be devil worshippers after all.

I'm Pro-EU and against Brexit and all that... but to whoever says that we should have no borders at all and everyone should be accepted into wealthy countries... sorry, but you're so naive!!! That would not be sustainable.

The false hope of a better life in Europe is what's helping to create this mess. Everyone who has lived in Europe knows that these days (might have been different 200 years ago) a 'good life' in Europe is only possible with education and skills. If you have neither, then life won't be good as working class jobs are evaporating fast because a great many of them can now be automated. European working class people have been complaining about this for years! With driverless cars coming over the next two decades or so, we can probably also say goodbye to taxi drivers or delivery people... what's next? What is it that you can do without any kind of education that a machine can't do?

Many such migrants come to regret emigrating. They may no longer live in huts made of scrap metal, etc. (not all of them are made of mud!)... but at least they had a roof over their heads versus living on the streets in poor old Italy.

The 'economic migrants' who tend to do well are often those who have had a high level of education in their own countries (sometimes university), and they are often accepting jobs well below their level in the developed world – some of which you may classify as 'working class' jobs. Their kids often do remarkably at school, which probably shows that they're not really as 'working class' as they may at first seem.

So if those people do those jobs over here, what is there left to do for the real poor people with no education after we accept them with open arms??

Like someone said up thread.

Africa has an abundance of resources that the Western world are exploiting. Stop all that and Europe would be useless.

Not the migrants fault is it that their country is suffering at the hands of powerful white guys (devils).