Only when we solve the issue of millions living in poverty whose basic human rights are often ignored will migration become more manageable, writes John Dardis
When Ireland assumed the EU presidency on January 1st, the draft EU constitution was the issue which grabbed the headlines. However, the EU deadline for harmonising asylum and immigration policies is 2004, and these issues are among the most serious facing governments across Europe.
From most governments we are seeing more knee-jerk reactions than real attempts to solve the issue. They deal more with the symptoms, preoccupied with "getting the numbers down" and "keeping people out at all costs" than with any attempt to solve underlying causes.
A photo from last year highlights the dilemma. It shows a body - washed up on a beach in the south of Spain - of a migrant who had died trying to reach Europe. Nearby on the same beach is a couple sunbathing, obviously on holiday. This photo encapsulates our situation. We are in a Europe which is wealthy, organised, industrialised. Yet to the south are millions of people living in poverty and whose basic human rights are often ignored or abused.
As long as this situation remains we should not be surprised that people want to move to Europe by legal or illegal means. Only when we solve that inequality will the migration issue become more manageable.
Governments say that this is too long-term. Their basic solution has been to tighten border controls. Yet these, while helping to some extent, are not a solution. Tighter borders just drive the problem underground and result in black market economy, growth of trafficking and smuggling of people and exploitation.
Ireland now has the presidency of the EU and has a chance to set a new tone in how the EU deals with asylum and immigration. We should emphasise:
- That tackling root causes of migration is the only long-term way forward. This means, for example, increasing overseas development aid significantly and abolishing unfair trade barriers. We also need to be committed to stopping human rights abuses.
- That coherent channels for legal migration are needed rather than the current ad-hoc system. We need to give temporary work visas for migrant workers and regularise on a temporary basis those already here.
- That asylum-seekers who need protection should not be turned away. There is a real danger that border controls are now so tight that those in real need of protection will be sent back or that when they arrive they will be held in prison-like conditions in detention centres while their claims are processed, a process that can take more than six months.
- That real harmonisation of the asylum system across EU member-states is needed if asylum-seekers are to get a fair hearing no matter where they lodge their claim. The deadline for harmonisation is this year, under our presidency, but it is not going well. There are so many exceptions and opt-out clauses that what we are ending up with is not a harmonised asylum system at all.
- That politicians have the duty to lead public opinion rather than complain that the agenda is set by the far right. Public awareness and education are key if people are to understand and support the asylum system.
Many non-governmental organisations in Brussels feel pessimistic about the current negotiations and how they have been going. Even if it is too late to change asylum legislation already drafted and some of which is already agreed at EU level, perhaps Ireland can set a new direction for the years ahead, with wider and deeper thinking about the real issues underlying asylum and immigration. That would be a very real achievement.
Under the Irish presidency, 10 new countries accede to the EU on May 1st. Nine of those will become the effective border with the EU to the east, with Malta being a border to the south. On a recent visit to one of these countries I was shocked to see a three-year-old girl behind bars in a detention centre. Her "crime" was that her parents had entered the country illegally.
Accession countries, under EU pressure, are resorting to more and more strict measures to control migration. But in 21st-century Europe can we find a better solution than imprisoning three-year-old children?
If the problem of the 20th century was east-west, capitalism versus communism, then the problem of the 21st century is surely north-south and the related issues of migration and asylum.
Many of us thought that the capitalist-communist standoff was here to stay and that nothing would change. We thought the Berlin Wall was working and that societies behind that wall would not change. We were wrong.
Often today there is fatalism about real change in Africa, about changing the inequality between developed and developing world. And there is a belief in Europe that the "Fortress Europe" approach is working. This, too, is wrong. With serious political will and good policies this situation can be changed.
It is possible to envisage and work for a Europe which does not have to be a fortress, spending billions of euro each year to keep migrants and refugees out. Can the Irish presidency make that one of its goals?