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by taway_1212
3343 days ago
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I agree, EU dropped the ball on this in a major way. From what I've read, Italy (which has been flooded with illegal African immigrants for at least 10 years now) has been calling for addressing the problem, but the EU response was far from enough. |
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People absolutely would not be sent out to open sea in little rafts, if the traffickers and their cargo wouldn't know that if they just manage to float the cargo out of Libyan territorial waters, a large percentage will be picked up and therefore guaranteed entry to EU by bringing them to shore in Italy. This enables them to sell the trips. Those who drown are simply deadweight loss but as long as the proportion is not so large that it would diminish the sale of trips, it won't matter.
Whatever is the operation on sea, it won't help because the business is based on the EU asylum mechanism: once someone is picked up at sea, they cannot be returned to the nearby shore (Libya or whatever) from where they left. And once on EU ground, they'll be free to stay by applying for asylum. Italy is not hugely interested because the people know that there are no jobs in Italy, so they move on towards Germany, Sweden or trying to enter Britain through Calais or such.
It's a hard problem to solve. Most ideas seem to be about coming up with a new Gaddafi, to make a deal with him similarly to the Erdogan deal. This is not very nice either.