All night - all year - I hear the patrol boat of the Guardia Civil, rumbling along the coast, back and forth, ceaselessly, over and over. The heavy diesel engine tells me Spain is on its guard. The refugees from African poverty are on their way. Several times a week the Guardia Civil rescues overloaded fishing boats with hopeful immigrants, 50 – 60 – 70 at a time, often pregnant women among them. Spain returns them all, except the pregnant women. Their children are allowed to be born Spanish citizens. Ever more pregnant women arrive.
Spain is both hospitable and tough on illegal immigrants. Most are now returned, by agreement with the governments of neighbouring African countries. But Africa is full of people who are full of hope. So is the Middle East. And South Asia. The poor majority of the world is looking for a better life.
This is not to raise a scare. Just understand that we cannot treat some of them as worthy of asylum because of political persecution, while the rest have to go back - or stay where they are. The worthy asylum seeker is an illusion of the current political majority in many European countries. The arrivals are practically all worthy of political asylum because of the conditions in their home countries. We just cannot take them all in. Our criteria are too open-ended to allow a fair screening to take place.
We need to accept that we have to treat them equally, and stop accepting any fairy tale told by those who happen to arrive. A Swedish immigration official described his practice in a TV interview today when asked how he evaluated his applicants: “You have to trust a human being.” As a humanitarian philosophy this is wonderful. As public policy – need I say more? There is no carrying capacity in all of Europe to keep all comers afloat on our welfare. It is their countries that have to be reformed, not ours.
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