Stranded Africans symbol of Europe migrant dilemma

[Menydh]

Stranded Africans symbol of Europe migrant dilemma

Reuters
July 22, 2006

A boatload of desperate Africans rescued off Malta has become a symbol of Europe's immigration dilemma, with the Spanish fishermen who saved them hailed as heroes as countries haggled over who should take them.

After days of diplomatic negotiations, a group of around 50 migrants, most of them Eritreans, left Malta on board two Spanish military planes. They had arrived on the Mediterranean island earlier on Friday aboard the Francisco y Catalina which had saved them from a rickety boat on July 14.

The Africans, many Eritreans who said they were fleeing the danger of war, berthed in Malta on Friday afternoon. They will be largely divided up among Spain, Malta, Italy, Andorra.

In Spain, the fishing boat's crew has been praised for saving the migrants.

"What they did shows the sort of men they are," Pepi Irles, wife of the boat's captain, told reporters from the family home in Alicante, southern Spain.

The Spanish government said it would award the crew a merit medal for saving 51 lives. Yet it had also tried to ensure it received as few of the migrants as possible.

A poll by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociologicas showed 38 percent of Spaniards see immigration as the country's biggest problem, ahead of crime, terrorism, and the economy.

A huge foreign influx into Spain, a country previously unaccustomed to migrants, has swollen its population by 10 percent since 2000. The Socialist government launched an amnesty for illegal migrants in 2005 but this year has been struggling to stem a flow of Africans arriving in the Canary Islands in small boats.


[source]

[Savage]

Fishermen as I know them, are often honest and decent men maintaining hard and dangerous labour in small boats at open sea. They are rarely very wealthy either. At sea, we know, a golden rule is to save anyone in need, even africans.




And if their boat had been identified by the refugees, and our fishermen had not rescued them, they could have been in deep trouble if those blacks were picked up by another boat.

The first fishermen could have been prosecuted for not doing their duty at sea, which also is rescuing people in need. They may have faced monatary ruin, social condemnation, and prison.

So if our fishermen not were armed with proper equipment to sink the refugeeship with men and rats, I cannot see they really had any choice.

It also depends on who onboard that were aware of the boat, if only one man on watch knew, if could have passed as "unseen", but if two men knew, the situation would be quite different.

We can be quite sure there are "unseen" refugeeboats in "emergency", passing as "unseen", their story only known to fishes of the dark deeps.

According to gruesome american movies I have seen, an useful method for fishermen to sink refugeeboats, may be the combinated use of emergency rockets and flammeable liquids. But such should of course not occure on European territory!

[Menydh]

You are right. There are written international sea laws, as well as non-written gallantry codes at seas. Both apply in this case.

The matter does not lie in the rescuing of those immigrants but in the fact that it is the laws on firm ground which encourage them to attempt to sneak into Europe.

[Savage]

In Norway those unfortunately perhaps would have got asylum on humanitary reasons.
These are often stronger on ressources than their cousins, so they manage to escape.

There are however areas in Eritra where they could live in peace, or in neigboring areas, the reason they travel so far, is they know this is heaven to them, and they do not ask if they are welcome or not.

So we do not have to be too sentimental about these intruders. Greed or and ambitions are the motor of those that travels that far. Or adventure. In any case nothing new, we already got all that, and needs no more exotic variations, neither of crime, drugs, gangs, veneral diseases, unemployed, prisoners, popstars or pets.


So, EU/UN must establish permanent refugee camps for refugees in Africa, the investemensts may be sky high, not nothing compared to the hell of getting them here.

And these must be set to work, so any project would do, as long as they must work for the feed. Important to learn social behavior.

And Afica needs water ...plenty water...and woods, so the projects and industries is given.

Things like the Sahara Waterpipe Project as enclosed, would do. Factories and plants producing agronomical products.

Also such projects from recycling old car tires and other solutions from all over the world into eartsurface mats,
and establish greenhouses,
experimentive powerprojects, waves on the Westcoast, solar power in the inland...

Eu must get UN in on on it, so we have a decent place to send and receive refugees, so there were no more execuse.

All this is possible, and the hearth of Sahara may be penetrated within 5 years if EU wanted, and green within a mans age. And it will occure, believe it or not.

[Ederico]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

You are right. There are written international sea laws, as well as non-written gallantry codes at seas. Both apply in this case.

The matter does not lie in the rescuing of those immigrants but in the fact that it is the laws on firm ground which encourage them to attempt to sneak into Europe.

International legislation is outmoded and not updated in relation to the current phenomenon. A case in point is legislation in relation to refugees, written in the 1950s when the levels and dynamics of migration were far from the current ones. Plus, some idiots had the brilliant idea of removing the requirement that refugees seek refuge in the closest stable territory, or that receiving States had the right to deport on account of failure to do so.

This makes it very convenient to expect illegal immigrants to seek "refuge" when the one and only motivation is economic migration, all the while when from the right to illegally immigrate (sic!) for reasons of persecution, liberal (social liberals or neo-liberals alike) lobbies and politicians are demolishing such a notion and are transferring the same right (sic!) to illegal economic migrants. This can only have the worse effects for Europe, and not less for Africa (or the Third World in general).

This without entering into the merit of international law in relation to Search & Rescue et cetera.