----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "'niem.migr' NIEM.migr@xxxxxxxxx [niem_rj]" <niem_rj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: niem_rj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, October 8, 2015 6:05 AM
Subject: [NIEM] Don't blame the smugglers: the real migration industry
http://heindehaas.blogspot.com.br/2015/09/dont-blame-smugglers-real-migration.html
23 September 2015
Don't blame the smugglers: the real migration industry
The billions spent on the militarisation of border controls over the past years
have been a waste of taxpayers' money. As we are able to witness during the
current 'refugee crisis', increasing border controls have not stopped asylum
seekers and other migrants from crossing borders. As experience and research
has made abundantly clear, they have mainly (1) diverted migration to other
crossing points, (2) made migrants more dependent on smuggling, and (3)
increased the costs and risks of crossing borders.
The fact is that 25 years of militarising border controls in Europe have only
worsened the problems they proclaim to prevent. As a very useful graph (see
below) drawn by the prominent migration researcher Jørgen Carling illustrates,
the EU has been caught up in a vicious circle in which increasing number of
border deaths lead to calls to 'combat' smuggling and increase border
patrolling, which forces refugees and other migrants to use more dangerous
routes using smugglers' services. Longer and more dangerous routes means more
people who get injured or die while crossing borders, which then leads to
public outrage and calls for even more stringent border controls.
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Source/author: Jorgen Carling |
In the current panic about the issue, it is often forgotten that so-called
'boat migration' across the Mediterranean is a 25-year old phenomenon that
started when Spain and Italy introduced (Schengen) visas for North Africans.
Before that, Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians could travel freely back and
forth to work or go on holiday. And so they did in significant numbers.
However, this migration was largely circular. Most migrants and visitors would
go back after a while, to be close to family and friends, because life back
home is less expensive, and because they could easily re-migrate. This
experience exemplifies that open migration doors tend to be revolving doors.
With the introduction of Schengen visas in 1991, free entry into Spain and
Italy was blocked, and North Africans who could not obtain visas started to
cross the Mediterranean illegally in pateras, small fisher boats. This was
initially a small-scale, relatively innocent operation run by local fishermen.
When Spain started to install sophisticated, quasi-miltary border control
systems along the Strait of Gibraltar, smuggling professionalised and migrants
started to fan out over an increasingly diverse array of crossing points on the
long Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines. The diversification of crossing
points continued over the 2000s, in which migrants started to cross not only
from Morocco and Tunisia, but also Algeria, Libya to Italy and Spain, and from
the West African coast towards the Canary Islands.
While in the 1990s most people crossing were young Moroccans, Algerians and
Tunisians attracted by employment opportunities in southern Europe, over the
2000s an increasing number of sub-Saharan migrants and refugees have joined
this boat migration. The major upsurge in numbers over the last few years is
mainly the result of an increasing number of Syrians joining this
trans-Mediterranean boat migration. Over 2014 and 2015, increased maritime
border patrolling in the Mediterranean is one of the causes (alongside the
worsening of conditions in Syria and neighbouring countries) of the
reorientation of migration routes towards Turkey, the Balkans and Central
Europe.
So, these policies have been completely self-defeating. While politicians and
the media routine blame 'smugglers' for the suffering and dying at Europe's
borders, this diverts the attention away from the fact that smuggling is a
reaction to the militarisation of border controls, not the cause of irregular
migration. Ironically, policies to 'combat' smuggling and irregular migration
are bound to fail because they are among the very causes of the phenomenon they
claim to 'fight'.
It is therefore nonsense to blame smugglers for irregular migration and the
suffering of migrants and refugees. This diverts the attention away from the
structural causes of this phenomenon, and the governments' responsibility in
creating conditions under which smuggling can thrive in the first place.
Smugglers basically run a business, a need for which has been created by the
militarisation of border controls, and migrants use their services in order to
cross borders without getting caught. Of course, in the media stories abound of
smugglers deceiving migrants, and such stories are certainly true, but there is
good research (for instance by Ilse van Liempt and Julien Brachet) showing that
smugglers are basically service providers who have an interest of staying in
business and therefore generally care about their reputation and have an
interest in delivering.
Certainly, smugglers can be ruthless and regularly deceive migrants, but it
should not be forgotten that smugglers deliver a service asylum seekers and
migrants are willing to pay for. Without smugglers, it is likely that many more
people would have died crossing borders. For many refugees and migrants,
smugglers are a necessary evil. For some, smugglers can be heroes. For
instance, Al Jazeera quoted African refugees in Sudan who saw smugglers as
freedom facilitators, because they enabled their escape toward safer countries.
The irony is that European countries have created huge market for the smuggling
business by multi-billion investments of taxpayers' money in border controls.
There is no end to this cat-and-mouse game, in which smugglers constantly adapt
their itineraries and smuggling techniques.
So don't blame the smugglers. Blaming smugglers also diverts the attention away
from the vested interests of the military-industrial complex involved in border
controls. Under influence of the growing panic about irregular migration and
the perception that (supposedly uncontrolled) migration is an imminent threat
to Western societies, states have invested massive amounts of taxpayers' money
in border surveillance. Border controlling have become a huge industry, and
businesses involved in building fences and walls, electronic border
surveillance systems, patrolling vessels and vehicles as well as the military
have a vested interest in making the public believe that we are facing an
impending migration invasion and that we therefore need to 'fight' smugglers,
as if we are indeed waging a war.
This reveals the contours of the real migration industry. Arms and technology
companies have reaped the main windfalls from Europe’s delusional 'fight
against illegal migration'. As has been documented by the Migrant Files, four
leading European arms manufacturers (Airbus (formerly EADS), Thales,
Finmeccanica and BAE) and technology firms like Saab, Indra, Siemens and Diehl
are among the prime beneficiaries of EU spending on military-grade technology
supplied by these privately held companies whose R&D programs have been
financed by EU subsidies. The staging of uncontrolled migration as an essential
threat to Western society has also served the military, who have been in search
of a raison d'être after the (imagined or real) 'Communist Threat' evaporated
with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In this way, Europe's immigration policies have created a huge market for the
private companies implementing these policies as well as smugglers. The main
victims are migrants and refugees themselves, through soaring smuggler fees and
an increasing death tolls. But also European taxpayers who have been deceived
and lured into a delusional 'fight against illegal migration' by fear-mongering
nationalistic politicians. While the same politicians fan the flames of
xenophobia by insinuating that refugees will be a huge drain on public funds
and a threat to social cohesion, they waste billions of public funds on border
controls, which have not stopped irregular migration, but created a market for
smuggling and increased the suffering and death toll at Europe's borders - at
least 30,000 people died in their attempt to reach or stay in Europe since
2000.
This has created a multi-billion industry, which has huge commercial interest
in making the public believe that migration is an essential threat and that
border controls will somehow solve this threat. According to a series of
investigations by the Migrant Files, since 2000 refugees and migrants spend
over €1 billion a year to smugglers to reach Europe. European countries pay a
similar amount of taxpayer money to keep them out, a few companies and
smugglers benefiting in the process. Since 2000, the 28 EU member states plus
Norway, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Iceland have deported millions of
people, with a price tag of least 11.3 billion euro. A further billion has been
spent on coordination efforts to control European borders, mainly through
Frontex, Europe's border agency. The real costs are much higher, as these
figures do not include expenditures on regular border controls by individual
member states.
Across the Atlantic, similar same dynamics can be found on the US-Mexican
border, where soaring public expenditure on border controls has fuelled a
military-industrial complex consisting of arms manufacturers, technology firms,
(privatized) migrant detention centres, the military and state bureaucracies
involved in deporting people. In a study entitled Immigration Enforcement in
the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery, published in 2013, the
Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a Washington-based migration think tank,
calculated that the US government spent $187 Billion on Federal Immigration
Enforcement between 1986 and 2012.
To put this in perspective, the same report showed that $18 billion spent in
2012 are 24% higher, then the combined costs on all other principal federal
criminal law enforcement agencies (FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Secret
Service, U.S. Marshals Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives). While these costs are staggering, they have created a huge
parallel market for smugglers (coyotes) helping migrants from Mexico and,
increasingly, Middle America, to defy border controls.
So, instead of blaming smugglers, it is important to be aware governments have
in many ways created their own monster by pouring massive public funds in the
migration control industry. Like the mythological Hydra of Lerna, for which
each head lost was replaced by two more, each time a migration route is blocked
such as through erecting a fence, it will create an ever expanding market for
smugglers helping people to get over, under or around migration barriers. This
has led to an unintended increase in the area that countries have to monitor to
‘combat’ irregular migration to span the entire European external border,
making the phenomenon less, instead of more, controllable.
National politicians arguing that border controls can solve the current
'refugee crisis' are thus selling illusions. The current situation in the
Balkans and Central Europe makes this abundantly clear. As long as violent
conflict persists in countries like Syria, as well as labour demand for
undocumented migrant workers, people will keep on coming, in one way or another.
There is no easy 'solution' to this problem, but it should be clear that the
solutions of the past have been a counterproductive waste of money and have
cause unspeakable suffering. Notwithstanding its limitations, the agreement
reached on 22 September by the European Union member states to share
responsibility by spreading refugees over Europe, is hopefully a first sign
that the public and governments have finally come to realise that, public funds
are better spent on providing concrete support and access to refugee status
determination procedures to asylum seekers as well as supporting the countries
hosting largest numbers of refugees (such as Turkey, Syria and Jordan).
Although many obstacles are still in the way of reaching a truly European
immigration and refugee policy, this hopefully sets an important precedent
towards real solutions, away from the delusional politics of wasting taxpayers
money on the militarisation of borders.
__._,_.___ Enviado por: "niem.migr" <NIEM.migr@xxxxxxxxx>
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