A drifting boat?

The death of 73 potential seekers of political asylum on board a drifting boat in the Mediterranean, as reported by some survivors on 20 August, increasingly seems the perverse result of a shift in policies in the field of immigration as implemented both by the European Union and by individual member states.Externalization of frontiers. The fight against clandestine immigration has long been on the agenda of European policy, also because the various countries have failed to reach an agreement on a far-sighted management of legal immigration and because the restrictive measures adopted enjoy the huge support of public opinion. The abolition of internal frontiers has made necessary the reinforcement of external frontiers, thus assigning greater responsibilities to the Mediterranean countries and the new member states of Central and Eastern Europe. The EU has created the FRONTEX agency that coordinates the police forces of member states for the control of frontiers, and allocated huge funds to “seal” the land frontiers to the East and organize more efficient maritime patrols at sea. The process of “externalizing” European frontiers has then been continued by making overtures to and seeking the cooperation of neighbouring countries. Over the last few years bilateral accords for the repatriation of immigrants have been signed with Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Turkey, Ukraine and Belarus, persuading them to take back not only their own citizens but also all the other clandestine immigrants that have passed through their territory. These countries have also received the necessary resources and funds to set up holding centres. According to many testimonies, grave violations of human rights have been ascertained in these camps. Collateral effects. These measures have had disastrous collateral effects, such as the prolongation of the routes – with corresponding increase of the dangers – embarked on by migrants, the growth of the profits of the traffickers of human beings and the further erosion of the right to asylum. For years asylum seekers have been forced to pursue the roads of irregular immigration to reach Europe. It is virtually impossible for them to obtain exit visas in their countries of origin. According to the Dublin accord, asylum seekers should present an application for asylum in the first safe European country they reach. The EURODAC database of fingerprints makes it possible to establish whether an asylum-seeker who has arrived in Germany has already made such an application in Greece or in Italy, from whence asylum-seekers are promptly sent back. European legislation has in fact caused the collapse of asylum systems in many small countries such as Malta and Cyprus, with devastating consequences for refugees; it has even contributed to a situation in which Greece has rejected the asylum applications of thousands of immigrants who had a right to some form of protection. It has also produced the effect of exonerating countries from any responsibility or obligation to come to the assistance of boat people at sea. Web of responsibilities. At the present time there is an ever more complicated web of conflicting responsibilities in the Channel of Sicily as regards the rejection of clandestine immigrants or the rescue of migrants at sea, involving Italy, Malta and the FRONTEX Agency. It is to be hoped that the judicial authorities will ascertain whether the deaths of recent days were the victims of a squalid game of passing the buck. Whatever the case, questions need to be asked about a process of closing the doors to immigrants that arises from the lack of an innovative policy of immigration, in the hope that humanitarian and religious organization, far-sighted politicians at the European and national levels and numerous citizens may grasp this latest tragedy as a chance to reverse the process that is leading to the construction of a “Fortress Europe” based on the violation of the human rights of migrants. If that were to happen, the dream of a “space of freedom, security and justice” that accompanies the development of the European Union would be destroyed for us all: a “space” in defence of which the voice of the Catholic Church has also been raised on various occasions.