A modest proposal to solve the migrant crisis
28 January 2016, 06:43 PM
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A modest proposal to solve the migrant crisis
By David Aaronovitch in The Times today
If every sensible suggestion for tackling Europe’s refugee problem is ruled out, the only option left is truly radical
‘This simply can’t continue.” Thus spoke an unnamed diplomat in Brussels this week, but it could have been anyone really. Up to 50,000 migrants will have made the sea crossing between Turkey and Greece this month. When we get to spring... well, you can imagine.
So let’s cut through the double-talk and pass-the-parcel that disfigures this discussion. Because I do have a proposal about how to solve the migrant problem and, by the time you finish reading this column, in your heart you’ll know I’m right.
Let me take you through the current options. The signal disaster that triggered this mass migration is the war in Syria. If we were to stop that war and order was to be restored, then most of the migration would stop and many thousands of Syrians would return home. To do that by military means would involve a force of a hundred thousand or more personnel, an occupation lasting several years, a lot of money and the certainty of allied casualties. Well, that’s out for starters, isn’t it?
We could keep trying to end the war through a mixture of diplomacy and bombing. But Assad won’t go, the various rebel groups won’t stop fighting unless he gives up power, and we in Europe have little influence on the process. Some people think the answer is to “let Assad and the Russians win”, but even if we could do that, the result would almost certainly be more refugees heading for Europe. So let’s rule that out, too.
The war, then, will continue. So option three is to look after the human consequences. Angela Merkel has allowed over 800,000 folk into Germany who she argues will be a boon to the economy. The Swedes, too, have taken a huge number relative to their size.
But what felt essential to many after last summer’s dreadful flotsam has now become very unpopular. The scheme to relocate 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece to the other EU countries has relocated less than 400. Happy, wealthy, tolerant Denmark has voted to confiscate the assets of refugees, not so much to raise money as to deter them from arriving or staying in Denmark. We’ve had the New Year sex attacks in Cologne, a murder near Stockholm, marches in various cities and indignant cries of “no more” from a variety of central European leaders. In rhetorical terms Aylan Kurdi has, inside six months, become a “bunch of migrants in Calais”. So, no more, right?
Yet the war will still be going on, they will still want to come here and we won’t let them. How will we stop them?
One anarchic answer is a race to be as horrid as possible to them so they will want to go anywhere else but here. This is the Danish approach. But even if we all become vile the migrants will end up somewhere in Europe, trying to all manner of means to get into other parts. No good.
This brings us to the Iron Curtain option. Get rid of free movement within the EU to prevent migrants getting from Italy and Greece to other, richer member states. Exclude these two countries from Schengen and put up the shutters on the Macedonian-Greek and French-Italian frontiers. Build a gigantic holding camp in Macedonia — conveniently not an EU member — and subsidise the Macs to keep 200,000 there in perpetuity.
Of course, given that 850,000 migrants arrived by sea in Greece last year — plus 150,000 in Italy — this would create a pressure cooker in one of the EU’s weakest states. It wouldn’t be long before Greece just became another Turkey, with people smugglers taking migrants from Patras and Epirus to Brindisi and Dubrovnik. Another option ruled out.
Which is why others say move the Iron Curtain to the sea. Give money to the Turks to add another million to the two million migrants they already host. And help the Greeks to patrol their own waters better. As the Austrian interior minister said this week, Greece has a large navy so why doesn’t it use it?
But the Turks have their own problems. What faith can we have in the notion that they will spend vast sums of money and manpower on stopping refugees leaving their country? Not much, I’d say. When it was their problem we did very little to help, and now it’s our problem.
That leaves us with a radical option. It is an unpalatable one but — all others having failed — it would be irresponsible to rule it out. In fact it was inadvertently referred to this week by the Greek foreign minister. When other EU states were demanding that Greece stop migrants at sea, he suggested that they were in effect asking his navy to sink the migrant vessels. Boarding the boats, he implied, meant that the migrants would end up in Greece anyway. That was what happened to the Italian navy.
But consider. Suppose that sinking boats was exactly what we did do? It would be wrong to expect the Greeks to shoulder this burden alone, but if the big EU countries contributed to a military force aimed at preventing trafficking at sea, we could solve this problem in weeks.
The danger to our personnel would be small. The migrants are unarmed and the traffickers carry only small weapons. The numbers of the force (let’s call them the Shore Staff) need not be more than a few thousand. The number of boats that would have to be destroyed would probably be quite small, too, though high in the first few weeks. But once it became clear that the cordon was going to be enforced, the number of those imagining they could break into Europe would fall.
It would be pointless to have a cordon and then to pick the floundering migrants from the sea and take them to Greece. They would have to be left to drown or humanely shot in the water. Inevitably, dreadful pictures would emerge and the international outcry would be considerable. But paradoxically, that very outcry would act as a warning to migrants that they would never reach their destination. And it is quite possible to argue, therefore, that as many might be saved from an accidental watery grave as would fall victim to European gunboats.
Finally, of course, bloody as it is, it would be a course of action free from the hypocrisy that infects most of our responses to what has been, for the past year, the greatest refugee crisis of the postwar era. I modestly submit it to you.
If every sensible suggestion for tackling Europe’s refugee problem is ruled out, the only option left is truly radical
‘This simply can’t continue.” Thus spoke an unnamed diplomat in Brussels this week, but it could have been anyone really. Up to 50,000 migrants will have made the sea crossing between Turkey and Greece this month. When we get to spring... well, you can imagine.
So let’s cut through the double-talk and pass-the-parcel that disfigures this discussion. Because I do have a proposal about how to solve the migrant problem and, by the time you finish reading this column, in your heart you’ll know I’m right.
Let me take you through the current options. The signal disaster that triggered this mass migration is the war in Syria. If we were to stop that war and order was to be restored, then most of the migration would stop and many thousands of Syrians would return home. To do that by military means would involve a force of a hundred thousand or more personnel, an occupation lasting several years, a lot of money and the certainty of allied casualties. Well, that’s out for starters, isn’t it?
We could keep trying to end the war through a mixture of diplomacy and bombing. But Assad won’t go, the various rebel groups won’t stop fighting unless he gives up power, and we in Europe have little influence on the process. Some people think the answer is to “let Assad and the Russians win”, but even if we could do that, the result would almost certainly be more refugees heading for Europe. So let’s rule that out, too.
The war, then, will continue. So option three is to look after the human consequences. Angela Merkel has allowed over 800,000 folk into Germany who she argues will be a boon to the economy. The Swedes, too, have taken a huge number relative to their size.
But what felt essential to many after last summer’s dreadful flotsam has now become very unpopular. The scheme to relocate 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece to the other EU countries has relocated less than 400. Happy, wealthy, tolerant Denmark has voted to confiscate the assets of refugees, not so much to raise money as to deter them from arriving or staying in Denmark. We’ve had the New Year sex attacks in Cologne, a murder near Stockholm, marches in various cities and indignant cries of “no more” from a variety of central European leaders. In rhetorical terms Aylan Kurdi has, inside six months, become a “bunch of migrants in Calais”. So, no more, right?
Yet the war will still be going on, they will still want to come here and we won’t let them. How will we stop them?
One anarchic answer is a race to be as horrid as possible to them so they will want to go anywhere else but here. This is the Danish approach. But even if we all become vile the migrants will end up somewhere in Europe, trying to all manner of means to get into other parts. No good.
This brings us to the Iron Curtain option. Get rid of free movement within the EU to prevent migrants getting from Italy and Greece to other, richer member states. Exclude these two countries from Schengen and put up the shutters on the Macedonian-Greek and French-Italian frontiers. Build a gigantic holding camp in Macedonia — conveniently not an EU member — and subsidise the Macs to keep 200,000 there in perpetuity.
Of course, given that 850,000 migrants arrived by sea in Greece last year — plus 150,000 in Italy — this would create a pressure cooker in one of the EU’s weakest states. It wouldn’t be long before Greece just became another Turkey, with people smugglers taking migrants from Patras and Epirus to Brindisi and Dubrovnik. Another option ruled out.
Which is why others say move the Iron Curtain to the sea. Give money to the Turks to add another million to the two million migrants they already host. And help the Greeks to patrol their own waters better. As the Austrian interior minister said this week, Greece has a large navy so why doesn’t it use it?
But the Turks have their own problems. What faith can we have in the notion that they will spend vast sums of money and manpower on stopping refugees leaving their country? Not much, I’d say. When it was their problem we did very little to help, and now it’s our problem.
That leaves us with a radical option. It is an unpalatable one but — all others having failed — it would be irresponsible to rule it out. In fact it was inadvertently referred to this week by the Greek foreign minister. When other EU states were demanding that Greece stop migrants at sea, he suggested that they were in effect asking his navy to sink the migrant vessels. Boarding the boats, he implied, meant that the migrants would end up in Greece anyway. That was what happened to the Italian navy.
But consider. Suppose that sinking boats was exactly what we did do? It would be wrong to expect the Greeks to shoulder this burden alone, but if the big EU countries contributed to a military force aimed at preventing trafficking at sea, we could solve this problem in weeks.
The danger to our personnel would be small. The migrants are unarmed and the traffickers carry only small weapons. The numbers of the force (let’s call them the Shore Staff) need not be more than a few thousand. The number of boats that would have to be destroyed would probably be quite small, too, though high in the first few weeks. But once it became clear that the cordon was going to be enforced, the number of those imagining they could break into Europe would fall.
It would be pointless to have a cordon and then to pick the floundering migrants from the sea and take them to Greece. They would have to be left to drown or humanely shot in the water. Inevitably, dreadful pictures would emerge and the international outcry would be considerable. But paradoxically, that very outcry would act as a warning to migrants that they would never reach their destination. And it is quite possible to argue, therefore, that as many might be saved from an accidental watery grave as would fall victim to European gunboats.
Finally, of course, bloody as it is, it would be a course of action free from the hypocrisy that infects most of our responses to what has been, for the past year, the greatest refugee crisis of the postwar era. I modestly submit it to you.
28 January 2016, 07:04 PM
#2
only 1 flaw in that, the ones that are in europe already would kick up merry fvck, suicide bombings would increase as would shootings and racial hatred great idea if you want to start ww3 in our own countries
Last edited by madscoob; 28 January 2016 at 07:05 PM.
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29 January 2016, 12:17 PM
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****ing hell, now I've seen it all. 
Kinda reminds me of this though.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xGMWZJlA0QA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Kinda reminds me of this though.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xGMWZJlA0QA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Last edited by neil-h; 29 January 2016 at 12:23 PM.
29 January 2016, 01:42 PM
#12
Guys, get over your "outrage", obviously the journalist is playing devils advocate. However he does have a point, but instead of blowing up the migrant vessels, patrol the shores and tow them back to the shore they came from. Stop the people traffickers from exploiting this life endangering method of getting to Europe.
Last edited by jonc; 29 January 2016 at 01:43 PM.
29 January 2016, 01:49 PM
#13
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I would love to believe you
but where in the text is the evidence for that assertion
I see the following
"That leaves us with a radical option. It is an unpalatable one but — all others having failed — it would be irresponsible to rule it out. In fact it was inadvertently referred to this week by the Greek foreign minister. "
where do you see him say he is playing devils advocate
or are you assuming he is
but where in the text is the evidence for that assertion
I see the following
"That leaves us with a radical option. It is an unpalatable one but — all others having failed — it would be irresponsible to rule it out. In fact it was inadvertently referred to this week by the Greek foreign minister. "
where do you see him say he is playing devils advocate
or are you assuming he is
29 January 2016, 02:14 PM
#14
Oh come on! It doesn't take a genius to see what he is doing; putting forward a controversial piece to get a bit of a discussion going. You think the Times would publish such an article, that we should sink migrant vessels and allow them to drown and shoot dead surviving migrants if it weren't the case! If you need to him to state that he is playing devils advocate when it's clearly obvious, well then......
Last edited by jonc; 29 January 2016 at 02:16 PM.
29 January 2016, 02:47 PM
#16
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Oh come on! It doesn't take a genius to see what he is doing; putting forward a controversial piece to get a bit of a discussion going. You think the Times would publish such an article, that we should sink migrant vessels and allow them to drown and shoot dead surviving migrants if it weren't the case! If you need to him to state that he is playing devils advocate when it's clearly obvious, well then......
and you may be right (I would hope so)
all I am saying - and I have read it a couple of times, I can't see where he even suggests a "devils advocate" stance
otherwise he would not have put all that intellectualizing guff before he gets to his point - why waste time
maybe he is paid by the word
Last edited by hodgy0_2; 29 January 2016 at 02:55 PM.
29 January 2016, 03:58 PM
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All I read is people talking about treating the symptoms rather than the causes of the migrant crisis.
Until we actually get serious about the underlying issues, we'll be faced with these terrible humanitarian and social economic challenges for decades to come
Until we actually get serious about the underlying issues, we'll be faced with these terrible humanitarian and social economic challenges for decades to come
29 January 2016, 03:59 PM
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Untreatable.
29 January 2016, 04:04 PM
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29 January 2016, 04:17 PM
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Actually, I retract that, I was a little hasty in my reply. I ought to have said incurable, like stage four cancer. We can in fact treat the symptoms for a short while, but we can't cut out the cause.
30 January 2016, 11:33 AM
#23
the easy solution is to stop the benefits, ie just say you are more than welcome to come here, but just bear in mind if you have no money to live on, THE ONLY BENEFITS YOU WILL RECIEVE WILL BE THE SAME AS YOU GOT IN YOUR COUNTRY OF BIRTH, all those who are in germany and sweden have only taken that as their second option, in 3 years time with a eu passport they will be over here quicker than andy forrest's scoob go's down the 1/4 mile
30 January 2016, 12:48 PM
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Maybe the government could channel all those scam speeding fines into the international aid fund.
30 January 2016, 06:15 PM
#26
Maybe...they make enough dosh from it
I don't have an answer, I was simply pointing out that the usual liberal/left wing on here, quick to shout down someone else's answer on humanitarian grounds, is actually clueless. As usual.
I don't have an answer, I was simply pointing out that the usual liberal/left wing on here, quick to shout down someone else's answer on humanitarian grounds, is actually clueless. As usual.
Last edited by alcazar; 30 January 2016 at 06:16 PM.
30 January 2016, 07:51 PM
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The same stands with the centre and indeed the right. Everyone has there silly little buzzwords they like to spout but they never seem to have an actual answer.
30 January 2016, 08:19 PM
#28
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Oh come on! It doesn't take a genius to see what he is doing; putting forward a controversial piece to get a bit of a discussion going. You think the Times would publish such an article, that we should sink migrant vessels and allow them to drown and shoot dead surviving migrants if it weren't the case! If you need to him to state that he is playing devils advocate when it's clearly obvious, well then......
I was discussing this over dinner with my (step) father in law
it is apparently a play on a satirical essay/pamphlet by Jonathan Swift in 1706
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
"A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick,"
"This satirical hyperbole mocks heartless attitudes towards the poor, as well as Irish policy in general."
essentially a "proposal" for the copious amounts of new-born babies of the poor (in Ireland) to be used as substitute for chicken for the rich
Last edited by hodgy0_2; 30 January 2016 at 11:43 PM.
01 February 2016, 07:08 PM
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01 February 2016, 10:34 PM
#30
easy way to stop them coming here is -
no benefits (working tax/jobseekers/housing) - If you want to live in the UK, have enough money to support yourself when you come, or have a job/sponsor in place
Zero tolerance on crime - if you are convicted of one crime, you will be deported to the country of your birth. If you can't respect our laws, we don't want you
If they want a 'better life', come here, work hard and pay their way
no benefits (working tax/jobseekers/housing) - If you want to live in the UK, have enough money to support yourself when you come, or have a job/sponsor in place
Zero tolerance on crime - if you are convicted of one crime, you will be deported to the country of your birth. If you can't respect our laws, we don't want you
If they want a 'better life', come here, work hard and pay their way