Sir, - Congratulations on your paper's week-long series on human trafficking, both legal and illegal. Susan George, in her book The Debt Boomerang (Pluto Press, 1992), forecast the beginnings of the mass movement of people from the South to the North that Europe and Ireland are now experiencing. Indeed, many would say that migration is fast becoming one of the main sources of international tension.
As usual, Northern governments did not recognise the factors that were setting off these movements: a falling birth rate in Europe and underdevelopment in the South. This movement is hastened by the globalisation of trade and capital transfers.
Now, the response of the European Union leadership is to blame traffickers and view present migration through the lenses of security. The absence of new, humane and common immigration policies has handed people's right to emigrate to high-street recruiting agencies and illegal traffickers.
In your Editorial of March 13th you noted that the gap between rich and poor states is widening. The causes of this widening gap are not being addressed effectively in any international forum. This leaves one to wonder if it is not more convenient for the rich North to accept a creeping worldwide apartheid as the norm.
European political leaders are confronted with either raising the retirement age to 75 or taking in immigrants to fill the job vacancies and bolster the pension and welfare system. They know that immigration will be the solution. But when are they going to publicly admit that immigrant workers are people who have the same aspirations as the European poor who left these shores in the past?
You are correct in stating that if the front door of Europe is closed to those hoping for a decent life the back door will be used. Hopefully, that is not what Europe wants! - Yours, etc.
Bobby Gilmore SSC, Dalgan Park, Navan, Co Meath.