Isn’t it time Europe was honest with itself about migrants?

We need to radically rethink our approach and do our best to save more lives

Migrants rescued in recent days originated from countries in the Horn of Africa, Subsaharan Africa and West Africa (EPA)

When you hear on the news that “about 400 migrants are feared to have drowned when their boat capsized”, is there not something that jars? Of course there is. It is the hypocrisy wrapped up in the word “feared”. The response of many people listening, I would suspect, is instinctive horror, but laced with indifference. There is certainly no rush to offer resettlement.

The prevailing view seems to be that this new generation of boat people has calculated the risk, and it actually seems not a bad risk. So far this year, 10,000 people have arrived in Italy; 900 are believed to have died. So someone who embarks on a boat, however leaky the hull, however stormy the sea, would seem to have a 90 per cent chance of arriving.

Amnesty International says that deaths have risen 15-fold compared with this time last year, and blames this on the ending of the EU-funded operation Mare Nostrum. But the odds still look good. So long as the promised lands of Europe lie across the water, they will come – and wouldn’t you if you were in their place?

There is, of course, an element of poetic justice in the present exodus to Europe. We – or to be more precise, the British and the French – managed to mess up Libya even more than it was messed up before, by virtue of our well-meant, but miscalculated, intervention. If more Libyans now want to leave their country, and if its borders, both land and sea, are now so poorly guarded that sub-Saharan Africans take that escape route to Europe en masse, who are we to complain? Do we not have an obligation? You could blame “us” too, for the Iraqis, and Afghans, and Syrians attempting to make the journey by whatever route.

And beyond that, there is the more general moral argument that a human life is a human life. Europeans are rich by any standards. We can well afford to help those less fortunate, so why don’t we just get on and do it?

I have heard the ethical obligation articulated repeatedly in recent months, usually from aid and human rights organisations. I have also heard lawyers argue that “we” are the cause of the new boat people in another way.

We have made entry into the EU countries so difficult for those outside – we have compensated for free movement within the EU by building something akin to a fortress against refugees and migrants from elsewhere – that desperate people have no choice but to resort to the people-smugglers. I have even heard today’s people-smugglers compared to the likes of Wallenberg or Schindler, as providing a rescue service for the desperate. The notion that the vast majority of those living in the destination countries might take another view, and that in a democracy their view needs to count, is simply not entertained by such altruistic extremists. Or if it is, it is dismissed as heartless and evidence of Ukip sympathies (or worse).

Well, let me lay my cards on the table and admit (if you have not detected this already): my sympathies for the Mediterranean boat people are limited, as they are for those hiding out in the woods near Calais and trying to stow away through the Tunnel. I can only admire the forbearance of the Italians, who have rescued so many from the sea and housed them at least temporarily. Then again, that forbearance may reflect confidence that the majority have no intention of sticking around. Their preferred destination is northern Europe, and – once they have arrived – EU freedom of movement facilitates just that.

Now perhaps those who complain about the perverse effects of “Fortress Europe” are not completely wrong. Perhaps there should be more legal routes for refugees and others to find safety in Europe, even perhaps just a better life. Maybe there could be some way of “processing” would-be migrants before they set off. At the very least there has to be a practical, Europe-wide resettlement policy – of the kind Italy is currently pleading for.

But it is hard to see how any of these measures could stem the flow or prevent it increasing. Once upon a time there was an agreement with Libya to make departures more difficult; it was not particularly effective, but the chaos in Libya makes even that impossible now. Short of the EU policing the shoreline itself (which is not practical), or instituting a policy of ignoring distress calls (which would be against the International Law of the Sea), the only option that would seem to be left is the Australian solution.

The EU would create some holding territory, where new arrivals were not regarded as having entered Europe until their claim to entry or asylum has been accepted. Those rejected would be summarily deported. But where to? To a war zone? To a country not verifiably theirs? I cannot see the EU approving such an option. There is too much of the judicial fudge exemplified by Guantanamo; too much that conflicts with “European values”. And how far would such a solution really deter?

Two films I have seen recently offer other pointers. The Good Lie is a fictional film based on fugitive child soldiers – “lost boys” from Sudan who spend 13 years in a Kenyan refugee camp before being resettled in the United States, “winning the lottery of life”. Starting afresh is not easy, but all find their niche: in a tribute to American generosity, inclusiveness, optimism – and the US penchant for happy endings.

But I also saw a Danish documentary, Days of Hope, which followed three individual African migrants who managed, by hook or by crook, to reach Europe. Their stories were dismal; even in enlightened Denmark, they drifted at the bottom of the social pile. They were part-embittered, part-resigned, but there was no way back; no money, and only humiliation. At one point, one of the subjects is asked whether he knows of any African migrant to Europe who has returned home a success? There was silence. Perhaps that is the dispiriting message Europe has also to get across.