Various people in the US have proposed that current illegal immigrants should be granted residency under some sort of amnesty scheme. This has been ridiculed by many right thinking people who claim that it would simply lead to greater floods of migrants. Well these right thinking people are not, as their critics claim, simply spreading lies to fan racist flames. They happen to be correct.
The proof is to be discovered across the Atlantic where Spain (and Italy) had an amnesty last year. Guess what? Spain has now got a record number of migrants coming in to the Canaries - and apparently to its N African enclaves. This despite the government trying to sound tough:
Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said in a speech to Spanish ambassadors: "We remind the countries of origin of these immigrants arriving on our shores these past weeks that we are not going to tolerate it any longer. We will no longer accept the non-respect of signed bilateral and multilateral agreements, and we are going to act firmly. I repeat: let it be perfectly clear that all those who enter Spain in an irregular way, sooner or later, will leave Spain."
The BBC has an in depth article about the problem and links to other fascinating pieces including one where the EU promises to do soemthing to help (hold a conference in a suitable 5* hotel in the Canaries would be my guess). Other states, such as the French in the person of Sarko, have been rather keen to say "we told you so", while offering verbal support:
The controversial French minister has been criticised for his increasingly tough stance on immigration, and he used his Brussels speech to criticise recent decisions in Spain and Italy to ‘regularise’ black market workers.
“These countries should have asked for the support of other EU countries before doing this,” he said.
“Otherwise what is the point of the Schengen agreement [which removes internal borders].”
He said that it was no surprise that Italy and Spain were now being inundated by floods of illegal immigrants, although he stressed that he backed their calls for help from other EU countries.
So does the US really want to have the same thing happen with its millions of Mexians?
To be fair it should be noted that the EU's Common Fisheries Policy hasn't helped the matter - I noted the decline in African fish stocks due to EU fishing nearly two years ago and the EU Referendum blog noted the increase in immigration amd how this may relate to fish stocks in May this year (a piece well worth reading).
So here is the two step process to massive uncontrolled immigration. One have policies which help screw up the economies of the (neighbouring) countries where migrants come from. Two have amnesties so that migrants already here can stay.
The irony of course is that the most rapacious fishing fleet is - guess what - Spanish. If the EU really wanted to solve the problem it could probably do little better than sink every single Spanish fishing boat - ideally in W African waters where they would screw up industrial fishing nets but probably not affect the smaller local ones.
Anyone think that the EU's help is going to involve any of that? no me neither.
Blog Home : September 2006 : Permalink