Will Europe See It Through?

First Steps

It looks as if Europe has taken some significant steps to seal its border from the endless progression of economic migrants making their way to Europe.  It remains to be seen how effective its policing will be of the boats and the vehicular and foot traffic.  

The immediate focus is upon migrants boating up and crossing from Turkey to Greek islands near to Turkey, at which point the migrants land de facto in Europe.  The new policy is stated as follows:

From Sunday morning, any asylum seeker who lands on the holiday islands including Kos, Lesbos and Chios with no longer be able to catch ferries to Athens, but will be swiftly interviewed by asylum officials or judges at new detention camps.

From April 4, once Greek law has begun, deportations to Turkey will begin with leaders hoping within weeks that the process will take no more than days.  Those that appeal their removal will be brought before Greek judges in rapid-fire court hearings, under an operation costing €20 million a month involving 4,000 staff.  [The Telegraph]

We predict that the flow of migrants via Turkey to Europe via Greek islands will cease, rapidly.  It remains to be seen whether the flow from North Africa across the Med, or the vehicle and foot traffic from Eastern Europe will be similarly interdicted.  To date, lax and easy European policy has created the migrant crisis, proving a beacon and magnet for those wanting to better their lives (which is the case for most people on earth).

Only when the borders are shut to volitional migrants can a sustainable genuine refugee programme be put in place and developed.  As one commentator put it, Europe has finally decided to adopt the Australian solution.  Anything less swamps and drowns a genuine refugee programme with a flood of economic migrants.

Yet it is still an open question as to whether Europe has sufficient commitment to such a policy to see it carried out fairly and justly.
 Europe's elites remain wedded to an idealistic, unrealistic humanitarianism that cannot possibly withstand the millions of migrants already heading for Europe.

Europe has arrogantly set itself forward as the Saviour of the world.  Millions upon millions of people have taken Europe at its word.  They have been given false, unrealistic hope.  These duped people have been preyed upon by traffickers who espied a commercial opportunity.  European communities have been disrupted by migrants with unrealistic expectations and thwarted demands.  It's communities have been afflicted by increases criminal activity, the news of which has been suppressed by Eurocrats because it did not comport with their humanitarianist ideology.  It is a mess.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of voices still trumpeting the humanitarianist idolatry, complete with irrelevant appeals to false pity.

 “This is a dark day for the Refugee Convention, a dark day for Europe and a dark day for humanity,” said Amnesty International, adding the deal was “madness” that would only see deported migrants attempting fresh journeys to Europe.

In fact, the evidence is the opposite.  When borders are secured, genuinely secured, deported migrants do not attempt a return journey.  The boats disappear.  The traffickers seek another line of work.  But, one must never let the facts get in the way of a bankrupt ideology, particularly humanitarianism.

It remains to be seen whether the Eurocrats have the clarity of moral vision to maintain the new course they have now agreed upon, and expand it to cover all borders.  In a perverse way, the recent terror attacks in Brussels will likely strengthen their resolution.  But if they had clarity of moral vision, and had been less enamoured with humanitarianist folly, if they had done their fundamental duty for their own citizens and nations to protect their borders in the first place, terrorist atrocities would likely never have occurred.

Humanitarianism has  created the migrant crisis and facilitated terrorism in Europe.  Angela Merkel and the Eurocrats have a lot to answer for.