"They are not refugees, they are all illegal immigrants" is the phrase most often pronounced as a kind of mantra by several anti-immigration politicians, mostly by the Lega and in general by critics of migration as we talk about disembarking.
Indeed, it is often difficult - even for those who wanted to make an analysis of the phenomenon without prejudice or partial attitudes - to clear such a phenomenon, when the boats arrive on our shores with hundreds of migrants.
What is certain is that behind the "disembarked", who risk their lives to reach Europe, there are stories of despair. Yet the political cynicism compels us to keep a sort of thermometer of anguish, forcing us to measure human despair, as if it were possible to have a standard of comparison for distinguishing between those who are more desperate than others, among those who deserve more rights and those who are less deserving, and thus to send them back. The difference, however, exists between those, for example, who fled from the war (potential asylum seekers), and those who fled poverty (illegal immigrants).
On this same issue, there has often been a debate on the management of disembarking. Recently, the debate on abandoning the Mare Nostrum operation, which was to save many lives in the Mediterranean, for Triton, an operation that has two-thirds less money compared to Mare Nostrum and intends to make European coasts safer, but it won't engage in the coasts from which migrants depart.
The limit imposed by Triton is 30 miles from the Italian coast. This is very little, if one focuses only on our navel. It will not serve much if we do not look at the starting point. In short, it seems legitimate to express skepticism about the new European initiative.
Noteworthy, however, is the initiative taken by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior. We learn from an Ansa note that in the upcoming days, the Spanish will establish offices to assist asylum and international protection to the Spanish borders in Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco. The initiative aims at better control of migratory pressure to best meet the requirements taken into account by the European system.
A laudable initiative, as it has not been possible to overcome Dublin III and establish a European Agency for asylum and immigration working outside the territory of the EU. At least for the Moroccan coast, we try to do what is realistic, politically speaking, and several national and international organizations concerned with the phenomenon, are still loud and clear for many years now.
Therefore, there's a need to activate humanitarian corridors in the southern Mediterranean, in countries that have become a necessary step to get to Europe. Second, use of existing offices in the territory, such as UHNCR, for example, to provide an opportunity for these people to go to office on site to present the application for international protection.
The words of the Minister Alfano, which he clearly expressed yesterday at the G6, go in the same direction: "We must build and create refugee camps in Africa, where those who feel they have the right to asylum may submit the request. From there they can also be dispatched in all the countries of Europe. "
A clear call to Europe: working together to address the many people landing on the Italian coast, but not only. In doing so, it could limit the number of indistinct migration flows, and could give the people in question the right to reach the host country safely, thus escaping the hands of the traffickers of despair.
In this way, not only we hope the death toll in sea would decrease, but it will also eliminate any excuse to consider them all illegal immigrants. Spain is trying to break free of the alibi by taking concrete actions to the issue of asylum, while the rest of Europe is still waiting for Europe.
