Each week the bodies of several Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans are washed up on Spain’s southern beaches. No one knows their names. But in Spain and in Morocco, everyone knows why they died. They tried to swim the few kilometers of the Straits of Gibraltar between Morocco and Spain or they were one of the many who crowded abroad the rickety boats that unscrupulous smugglers run between the two coasts, and which sank. Like the better known Cubans who risk their all for a new life in Florida, they also dream of freedom and prosperity in Europe, and are prepared to risk even their lives for it. In the past five years, at least 3,000 people have perished in the Straits of Gibraltar in their search for a new life.
Fortunately, their number are negligible compared to those who succeed or try less dangerous routes to enter Europe. Last weekend, over 800 people were detained by the Spanish authorities trying to get into Spain — and those are merely the ones who were caught. There are other routes. Tunisians, Algerians and Libyans, together with other sub-Saharan Africans, use the Mafia-controlled route via Sicily; more expensive than via Morocco, but safer and less prone to discovery and arrest at the other end.
The desperate rush is inevitable, given Europe’s high standards of living, its relatively generous welfare for migrants and refugees, together with its porous borders and the willingness of criminal gangs to exploit the situation. Smugglers between Morocco and Spain charge $3,000 a person Hundreds of thousands attempt each year to find a new life within Europe’s frontiers and tens of thousands succeed. They hail from China, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, South America; many come from the Middle East and North Africa — from Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco. Many are not genuine refugees; they are not, like Somalis or Kurds from Iraq, in danger of their lives. They are economic migrants.
What helps them is that despite the attempts by governments to stem the tide, the courts of some European countries believe them. Claim you are subject to persecution in China and you have a good chance of convincing a court in Germany or the UK; claim you are subject to oppression in the US or some other Western country because of the your beliefs or the color of your skin, and no court will believe you, even though it may be entirely true.
Europe has a contradictory attitude toward migrants. It wants cheap labor to clean its streets, to work in its vineyards and olive groves and do all the dirty, low-paid jobs that Europeans no longer are prepared to do. Yet it is unhappy when those willing to do so are dark or black-skinned.
That adds an element of racism and bigotry to an already complex problem. Even established political parties in Europe are not above using the scare of a “barbarian invasion” to get votes. So it is a real mess: policy-makers who believe that immigrant workers are needed to keep the industries going; local labor who believe that their unemployment is due to “foreigners”, political parties happy to encourage xenophobia as the engine for their growth — and desperate refugees willing to take any risk for a better life.
The problem is not likely to go away any time soon.
