Editorial: The contrast between the frantic hunt for a missing submersible and the failure to save migrants drowning in the Mediterranean is illuminating
A massive operation is under way to find and save a stricken vessel and its passengers. As time passes, anxious families and friends wait with growing fear. The US coastguard, Canadian armed forces and commercial vessels are all hunting for the Titan submersible, which has gone missing with five aboard on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic in the north Atlantic. The UK’s Ministry of Defence is also monitoring the situation.
It is hard to think of a starker contrast with the response to a fishing boat which sank in the Mediterranean last week with an estimated 750 people, including children, packed onboard. Only about 100 survived, making this one of the deadliest disasters in the Mediterranean. Greece and the EU blame people smugglers, who overcrowd boats and abuse those aboard them. But both have profound questions to answer about their own role in such disasters. Activists say authorities were repeatedly warned of the danger this boat faced, hours before it went down, but failed to act.
It is a policy decision. And sadly, it is a pretty popular one. Rescuing these people would mean that the rescuing country needs to grant them asylum. Doing so would incentivize more refugees to choose this dangerous path as it would be a passage to Europe.
This is one of the reasons why the far right political parties in Italy are so successful. They promise Italians that they would stop this type of immigration.
It’s infuriating. I think that tacitly allowing people to be hurt or die for personal/political gain is one of the worst things a human being can do. And yet so many people - from fascists to liberals- seem to be on board. It’s so normalized. It’s the same at every border. Completely preventable. Completely unnecessary. Insane that “I don’t want those people moving here so let them die instead” is seen as a normal and politically centrist take.
You are right. The social situation with migrants ( mostly MENA ) is so bad that people is infuriating with far-right cause the number of migrants entering by sea is higher than previous government. The people read english and starting to blame european unions and mostly american government to force us to accept migrants cause their ideology. They see far-right government as a sort of a puppet of foreign interest. They say: why you send weapons to ukraine when we have an actual invasion and you help them? I understand that americans have different views, european point of view is starting to become really really different.
I think a lot of people are less “we don’t want those people too move here” but “we want those people to go though proper channels to love here rather than just turning up en masse in boats”.
Disagree. There are no adequate proper channels, and at least in my country those have been narrowed and obstructed and restricted out of existence. The process is deliberately expensive, difficult, overly beaurocratic, and inaccessible for most people - and a lot of countries don’t take disabled folks or very poor people or [insert other indefensible reason]. Governments do that on purpose to prevent people from being able to come ‘legally’ at all. But presenting yourself at a border to request asylum is always legal under international law- that is a proper channel. So countries try to create ways to make that impossible, or very dangerous, or allow bad things to happen to those people, hoping it will dissuade people from coming to exercise their human rights. It doesn’t work, and people die, and we all say “how sad but they had it coming”. They didn’t! As human beings we have a responsibility to help other human beings, even if they broke a rule we made up on purpose to criminalize them and make them seem less deserving of our help. Being personally annoyed at a group of people isn’t a good enough reason to treat them the way most governments have. If they actually wanted people to immigrate “legally” instead, they’d open the borders and staff them adequately and fund programs for people to start their lives.
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It is a policy decision. And sadly, it is a pretty popular one. Rescuing these people would mean that the rescuing country needs to grant them asylum. Doing so would incentivize more refugees to choose this dangerous path as it would be a passage to Europe.
This is one of the reasons why the far right political parties in Italy are so successful. They promise Italians that they would stop this type of immigration.
It’s infuriating. I think that tacitly allowing people to be hurt or die for personal/political gain is one of the worst things a human being can do. And yet so many people - from fascists to liberals- seem to be on board. It’s so normalized. It’s the same at every border. Completely preventable. Completely unnecessary. Insane that “I don’t want those people moving here so let them die instead” is seen as a normal and politically centrist take.
You are right. The social situation with migrants ( mostly MENA ) is so bad that people is infuriating with far-right cause the number of migrants entering by sea is higher than previous government. The people read english and starting to blame european unions and mostly american government to force us to accept migrants cause their ideology. They see far-right government as a sort of a puppet of foreign interest. They say: why you send weapons to ukraine when we have an actual invasion and you help them? I understand that americans have different views, european point of view is starting to become really really different.
I think a lot of people are less “we don’t want those people too move here” but “we want those people to go though proper channels to love here rather than just turning up en masse in boats”.
Disagree. There are no adequate proper channels, and at least in my country those have been narrowed and obstructed and restricted out of existence. The process is deliberately expensive, difficult, overly beaurocratic, and inaccessible for most people - and a lot of countries don’t take disabled folks or very poor people or [insert other indefensible reason]. Governments do that on purpose to prevent people from being able to come ‘legally’ at all. But presenting yourself at a border to request asylum is always legal under international law- that is a proper channel. So countries try to create ways to make that impossible, or very dangerous, or allow bad things to happen to those people, hoping it will dissuade people from coming to exercise their human rights. It doesn’t work, and people die, and we all say “how sad but they had it coming”. They didn’t! As human beings we have a responsibility to help other human beings, even if they broke a rule we made up on purpose to criminalize them and make them seem less deserving of our help. Being personally annoyed at a group of people isn’t a good enough reason to treat them the way most governments have. If they actually wanted people to immigrate “legally” instead, they’d open the borders and staff them adequately and fund programs for people to start their lives.
Edited for typos.