The BBC has posted a set of survey responses that show different opinions on migration and integration:
The results show the desire of young people to be highly mobile, with very little difference between developed and developing countries.
Borders will have an increasingly tough time exsiting if the world’s youth desire to move freely. In addition, the survey had some questions about the war for borders. Er, sorry, I mean the war on terror:
And an overwhelming majority, 71%, said that the so-called US war on terror was not making the world a safer place. Just 14% of respondents disagreed.
Ninety-eight percent of Baghdadi respondents said the war on terror was not making the world a safer place.
This negative attitude was echoed in Rio de Janeiro where 92% felt the same.
Perhaps the most telling information is that apparently only people in London refused to answer the question “Would you emigrate to another country to secure a better future?”.
Speaking of securing a better future, the BBC also posted a first-person account of people who try to emigrate for a better life:
“So,” I asked. “Is Europe really that attractive that it’s worth risking your life for?”
“Not at all,” Ndiro shot back. “Why would a man want to leave what he knows for something he doesn’t?
“Why would he want to abandon his family, his wife, or his children, and possibly leave them to starve?
“Why would he turn his back on the land where his blood is buried?”
Then Ndiro answered his own questions.
“The greatest danger a man can face,” he said, “is to wake up to find his children are hungry and he has no food to offer them.
“Measured against that, the hazards of a long sea voyage to Europe are nothing.”
The amazing thing about this first-person reporting style is that it uncovers more about the causes of emigration and dispenses with the common arguments about how to deal with the symptoms. Many economists and historians discuss the effect of economic catastrophe on emigration (the Scottish emigration to America and Australia after the 1830s depression being a good example), so it is nice to see this reporter acknowledge that a change in fishing practices could have more impact on emigration than any border law or control technology:
But now, the fisheries have collapsed.
And instead of struggling and failing to make a living at sea, the fishermen say they are much better off by loading their boats with paying passengers, for a one-way trip for Europe.
And here is the irony.
Waving his hand over the horizon, Pape blamed Europeans for the crisis.
“The only thing that has changed in recent years,” he said, “is the arrival of big foreign trawlers just off shore, that sweep up far more from the sea than the Senegalese fleet has ever done.
“If Europeans take our fish they can take our people too.”
What Pape and Ndiro and others made clear is that higher walls and tougher border controls might look good to voters inside Europe, but they are just irritants to migrants who are prepared to risk their lives, and that any attempt to stem migration will ultimately fail without tackling the reasons that people leave their homes in the first place.
“After all,” said Pape, “how do you stop those whose slogan is Barca ou Barsakh [Barcelona or death]?”
That’s a fresh perspective. Imagine if the money earmarked by the Bush administration to move a bunch of dirt around was spent on economic re-development and environmental protection programs instead of destroying the environment.
In other words, would you rather try to find a cure for a cold or take something for the symptoms that not only is ineffective but does permanent damage to your health?
Serge Dedina, executive director of Wildcoast, a San Diego based coastal conservation group, said the fencing would do nothing to deter illegal immigration and would only worsen the fragile Tijuana Estuary.
“This project is just basically pork barrel and national security hysteria at its worst,” Dedina said.