By Alejandro A. Tagliavini *
What is based on violence ends in violence and destruction. Except for the «mafia bosses», what welfare can arise from the imposition against the will of decent people?
The situation of migrants in the Mediterranean has «deteriorated even more and is cause for great alarm», considers the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe. In a report, she points out that the decisions of the body’s member States, with the main purpose of limiting – by police and military force – arrivals, have contributed to «greater human suffering.»
The document analyzes practices in the last year and a half and notes that the response “to refugees and migrants trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean is one of the most obvious examples of how poor migration policies undermine immigration legislation, human rights and have cost the lives of thousands of human beings”. Shipwrecks in this period total more than 2,600 deaths.
To add insult to injury, restrictions and other violence imposed under the guise of «the pandemic» have had a direct impact on the rights of refugees and migrants, such as the flagrant obstruction of rescue activities by NGOs, along with decisions by delaying disembarkation and the impossibility of assigning safe ports by the authorities.
According to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the authorities of European countries have continued to support the Libyan Coast Guard and more than 20,000 people have been returned to that country between 2019 and 2020 and, in this way, have been exposed to horrible human rights violations that, it is known, occur there.
“Some situations are critical, such as the Aegean and Canary Islands, whose route is particularly deadly [more than 600 deaths in 2020, according to the IOM]. This shows the need for greater European solidarity, as well as more safe and legal routes to access Europe”, the report concludes.
Now why do so many want to reach Europe? If society were free, only those who could find a well-paid job would come, no one would come to a country to end up being a beggar on the street, unless they escaped for reasons of survival. And, if you get a well-paid job, it is because that job is necessary, otherwise you would not be paid well, that is, everyone benefits, the immigrant, the employer, and the society that with this worker will have more and better services.
The «Welfare State», which is financed with resources coercively withdrawn from its citizens through taxation, offers free medical care and education, unemployment insurance and other «advantages» and thus encourages the arrival of foreigners, to the point that some they cross borders just to get free care in hospitals. In this way, the great irony is that as this State violence with which the «Welfare State» is imposed, it gets too many followers, then they are beaten so that there are not so many.
And the worst of the case is that the «Welfare State» is not such, nothing good can come out of violence, but those resources in the hands of citizens would be much more effective in solving social problems. For starters, it would save spending on the proverbial bureaucracy and State inefficiency.
* Senior Advisor at The Cedar Portfolio and Member of the Advisory Council of the Center on Global Prosperity, de Oakland, California
Alejandro A. Tagliavini 
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