Mare Nostrum Late last year two boatloads of illegal immigrants capsized and sank in the Mediterranean Sea between North Africa and Italy, killing more than 350 would-be migrants. The two tragic incidents, coming in close succession, caused huge public relations problems for the Italian government. No one in Italy had requested that those desperate migrants pay extortionate sums to human traffickers and attempt the crossing in overcrowded rickety boats. The Italians never asked for them to come! Nevertheless, “world opinion” blamed the Italian government for its negligence when all those asylum-seekers died. In response, as is needless to say, the government caved, against the will of the Italian people no doubt, and launched Operation Mare Nostrum (“Our Sea” in Latin), whereby the Italian Navy was tasked with rescuing every single migrant who attempted to make it to Italian shores. Rescued refugees were brought to port, fed, clothed, and housed until their “asylum” applications were processed by the relevant EU agencies. Not surprisingly, the new policy resulted in a huge surge of migrants attempting to make the crossing from Libya or Tunisia to Italy. According to the latest estimates, at least 113,000 refugees have landed in Italy since last October, which is a much higher rate of migration than any I have seen since Ive been following the situation in the Med seven or eight years ago. The Italian government has been complaining to the European Union and petitioning for help with Mare Nostrum ever since the operation began. The European Commission kept promising more financial help, but whatever eventually arrived never quite made up for Italy’s increased expenditures. At the same time the EU repeatedly reminded Italy, Spain, and Greece that the primary responsibility for dealing with migrants lay with the countries at the “point of entry” — that is, they were mostly on their own. In its latest appeals, the Italian government pointed out that Mare Nostrum was costing the Italian Navy €9 million a month ($11.8 million), out of a total naval budget of €9.2 million. This level of expenditure is clearly unsustainable, and the Italians put the EU on notice that they were going to shut down Mare Nostrum unless Brussels did something. The most recent Italian complaints (and threats) must have been convincing, because on Wednesday EU Interior Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström announced that Mare Nostrum would be folded into Frontex, the EU border agency, and become “Frontex Plus”. See the link attached below for more information on that. Whether this will be more than a cosmetic change, and actually free Italy from some of the burden of mass migration from Africa, remains to be seen. The raw figures for Italian spending on Mare Nostrum are disturbingly high. €9 million per month over the last ten months comes to roughly €90 million ($118 million). That’s about €800 ($1050) per surviving refugee. And those are just the costs to the Italian Navy. After the navy unloads the refugees from its landing craft, the culture-enrichers must be housed, fed, clothed, and provided with asylum lawyers, all at the taxpayers’ expense. But there’s more. Take a close look at the photo at the pictures attached. These photos show boatloads of refugees sometime after they were pulled off the rickety traffickers’ boats and before they were landed safely at a migrants’ processing center. Each migrant has been issued with a life vest, courtesy of the Italian taxpayer. How much of the €90 million was expended to purchase and distribute those vests? But there’s more: take a look at the white suit on the Italian sailor herding the migrants to their new home. That’s a protective suit, designed to ward off possible Ebola infection, among other things. Judging by their appearance, those refugees are East Africans, probably from the Horn of Africa. Somalia and Eritrea are their probable point of origin. At the moment the Ebola outbreak has not reached those locales. Kenya, however — which is just next door to Somalia — is considered by WHO to be at extreme risk of Ebola, so the Italian authorities are right to be concerned. I have no doubt that they are aware of the possibility that, somewhere among all those boatloads of culture-enrichers, an incubator for the Ebola virus is headed for Italian soil. How much does guarding against such infection cost? Each immigrant has to be quarantined and tested for Ebola and other pathogens endemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Therapeutic and/or prophylactic medicines must be dispensed. Follow-up treatments must be assayed, lab results tabulated, and detailed records kept. When the migrant is finally cleared, he must be housed in more permanent digs, registered for welfare, and issued a monthly stipend, until the moment comes when he can finally jump the border and make his way to Calais, Berlin, or Malmö. How much does all of this cost? I have yet to see any real estimates of the expense of maintaining these African refugees after their arrival at Lampedusa or Sicily. But it must cost far, far more than the €800 the navy spends to deposit each enrichment unit on Italian soil. And you think this has nothing to do with the USA? But it does. Every bit of it. This is an invasion into the EU. As much as what happens on our southern border. And it matters! Even if the individual migrants don’t think it is, it is what its effect is – an invasion. Once upon a time, invaders were met with . . . oh, never mind. The larger issue here, which no one in the mainstream wants to talk about, is why the US and EU are incentivizing the wrong actions and bad behaviors. Why have our leaders collectively, and suicidally decided that the US and EU must become the world’s poorhouse? Why has it been decided that the tax dollars of honest, hardworking citizens MUST be redistributed to a group of people, who, barring a very few outliers have very little to offer the US and EU other than further dilution of the labor pool and the resultant suppression of wages for the native working citizens? Why is this the direction that the US and EU have decided upon rather than incentivizing these peoples to stay in their own countries and work to improve them from within? What could be more “diverse” than encouraging the natives of developing countries to build more modern societies in their homelands? Interesting times? More like insane times. It’s really getting too stupid for words. When it all blows up I imagine the boats will be full of Euro and US political refugees going in the opposite direction. Ready to convert to Allah snackbar for refuge, no doubt. ansa.it/english/news/2014/08/26/italy-must-not-face-migrant-crisis-alone-says-un-update_d890c461-92d1-41fd-a369-69e2afb5644f.html ansa.it/english/news/2014/08/25/make-mare-nostrum-a-multinational-mission-says-navy-chief_01982956-9f3f-471b-ba6e-384173206f88.html eubusiness/news-eu/italy-immigration.xi5 ansa.it/english/news/2014/08/27/mare-nostrum-to-be-replaced-by-frontex-plus-says-alfano_d6e818d6-4405-406c-b3bb-47ab65ec3539.html
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 19:11:13 +0000
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