Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Refugees
In 2015, 4,000 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean Sea as they tried to
reach Europe in inflatable boats. Images of children’s bodies washed up on
the shores of holiday destinations evoked horror and compassion. What a
tragedy. In our comfortable lives on Level 4 in Europe and elsewhere, we
started thinking: How could such a thing happen? Who was to blame?
We soon worked it out. The villains were the cruel and greedy smugglers
who tricked desperate families into handing over 1,000 euros per person for
their places in inflatable death traps. We stopped thinking and comforted
ourselves with images of European rescue boats saving people from the wild
waters.
But why weren’t the refugees traveling to Europe on comfortable planes or
ferry boats instead of traveling over land to Libya or Turkey and then
entrusting their lives to these rickety rubber rafts? After all, all EU member
states were signed up to the Geneva Convention, and it was clear that
refugees from war-torn Syria would be entitled to claim asylum under its
terms. I started to ask this question of journalists, friends, and people involved
in the reception of the asylum seekers, but even the wisest and kindest among
them came up with very strange answers.
Perhaps they could not afford to fly? But we knew that the refugees were
paying 1,000 euros for each place on a rubber dinghy. I went online and
checked and there were plenty of tickets from Turkey to Sweden or from
Libya to London for under 50 euros.

---

Maybe they couldn’t reach the airport? Not true. Many of them were
already in Turkey or Lebanon and could easily get to the airport. And they
can afford a ticket, and the planes are not overbooked. But at the check-in
counter, they are stopped by the airline staff from getting onto the plane.
Why? Because of a European Council Directive from 2001 that tells member
states how to combat illegal immigration. This directive says that every
airline or ferry company that brings a person without proper documents into
Europe must pay all the costs of returning that person to their country of
origin. Of course the directive also says that it doesn’t apply to refugees who
want to come to Europe based on their rights to asylum under the Geneva
Convention, only to illegal immigrants. But that claim is meaningless.
Because how should someone at the check-in desk at an airline be able to
work out in 45 seconds whether someone is a refugee or is not a refugee
according to the Geneva Convention? Something that would take the embassy
at least eight months? It is impossible. So the practical effect of the
reasonable-sounding directive is that commercial airlines will not let anyone
board without a visa. And getting a visa is nearly impossible because the
European embassies in Turkey and Libya do not have the resources to process
the applications. Refugees from Syria, with the theoretical right to enter
Europe under the Geneva Convention, are therefore in practice completely
unable to travel by air and so must come over the sea.
Why, then, must they come in such terrible boats? Actually, EU policy is
behind that as well, because it is EU policy to confiscate the boats when they
arrive. So boats can be used for one trip only. The smugglers could not afford
to send the refugees in safe boats, like the fishing boats that brought 7,220
Jewish refugees from Denmark to Sweden over a few days in 1943, even if
they wanted to.
Our European governments claim to be honoring the Geneva Convention
that entitles a refugee from a severely war-torn country to apply for and
receive asylum. But their immigration policies make a mockery of this claim
in practice and directly create the transport market in which the smugglers
operate. There is nothing secret about this; in fact it takes some pretty blurry
or blocked thinking not to see it.
We have an instinct to find someone to blame, but we rarely look in the
mirror. I think smart and kind people often fail to reach the terrible, guilt-
inducing conclusion that our own immigration policies are responsible for the
drownings of refugees.