Yes, There Really is a Simple, Low-Cost and Humanitarian Solution to the European Immigration Crisis

The European Immigration Crisis

The headlines from Europe are becoming ever more dire.  African and Middle East immigrants are drowning by the hundreds in the Mediterranean.  Smugglers are murdering the men and selling women into sex slavery.  Yes, this is a humanitarian crisis.  But it has escalated to its current state because  Westerners see immigrants not as fully-formed humans like themselves, but rather as sheep.

 Changing the European mindset is not as easy as it may seem because paternalism is so deeply embedded in the consciousness of Westerners.  These migrants may be poor and desperate for a better life, but they're neither suicidal nor stupid.  When bombs are falling on a Syrian town and the invading army is shooting everything in sight, civilians flee -- all of them.  This becomes a genuine refugee crisis. Anything short of certain death is a decision.  Some people choose to leave their homelands in order to follow dreams that have been concocted from rumors they have heard or drawn from imported movies and television sit-coms, which paint Europe as the promised land.  But most people stay put. In short, when hundreds of thousands of Africans and Middle Easterners pay their life-savings to smugglers from countries that are not at war, it is because they're following a dream.

These immigrants are not paying smugglers to take them to Japan or China because these countries have not woven a post-colonialist fantasy about their countries being nirvana with porous borders. 

The problem Europe has with immigrants is the same one America faces.  And that is dishonesty. If large numbers of migrants weren't being hired for their cheap labor, they wouldn't come.  The real problem is that cheap labor in the developed world is as addictive as crack cocaine.  But as with drug addiction, everyone is in denial. 

If Westerners don't want the cultural and economic strains caused by boat-loads of foreign migrants, then hire some local advertising agencies, probably the same ones that market Coca Cola and Marlboro cigarettes in these countries, because they're good at what they do. Broadcast news reports in the local languages of the regions that people are emigrating from.   Shatter that dream.  Announce that jobs will not await them.  Their wives and children might be sold into slavery, or there's a good chance they'll drown. If this is indeed the situation and not just media hype, then show them. Remember,  you're dealing with human beings not sheep.  If bombs are not falling on their village, eventhough life isn't quite what they would like for it to be at home, they'll shelve their European fantasies and create other, safer options for their lives.  But if Europeans get a silent thrill from wanting the developing world to believe that they really are Papa, then the European Union must shoulder that costly burden and stop grumbling about it.

RELATED POST:  America's Addiction to Cheap Labor: What Both Sides of the Immigration Debate Overlook