EuropaWorld 23/2/2001Do Not Send Us Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning To Be Free

The decrepit cargo freighter that beached on the sandbar of France's Mediterranean shore last week with its frail and bewildered human cargo of almost a thousand Iraqi Kurds has again brought Europe's asylum policies into sharp relief.

Reports that the refugees paid, collectively, some 3 million euros to the traffickers who arranged this dismal voyage only add to the problems of the French and European authorities who cannot afford to let this case become a precedent for the organised mass trafficking of human misery.

Clearly the refugees should be given a humanitarian welcome. They are fleeing a regime acknowledged to pose a humanitarian risk to the Kurdish population. Indeed, at almost the same moment that the freighter's human cargo was being washed or carried ashore, British and US planes were bombing Iraqi installations believed to be a threat to patrols in the 'no-fly' zones set up over north and south Iraq for expressly humanitarian purposes.

According to provisional figures issued recently by the United Nations Refugee agency, UNHCR, Iraqis constituted the second largest group of those seeking asylum in Europe in 2000 - a total of almost 35,000 or some 8.5% of all asylum seekers.

Criminal gangs operating in Turkey and Iraq have been blamed. For them it is good business. Persecuted members of the Kurd population see Europe as the promised land offering jobs, better living standards but above all freedom to live a life free of a potential policeman's knock on the door, if nothing worse. They will pay large sums for a chance of freedom, a new start in life. To be sure the gangs will already have made plans for another operation. And why use a lorry which can only carry 30 when any old rust bucket of a ship can carry a thousand, maybe two thousand next time?

What should Europe's response be to these challenges? The people of our continent for all their historic professions of liberalism have nevertheless a tendency to exhibit xenophobic, if not overtly racist patterns of behaviour from time to time and especially in relation to refugees. Historically Europe has exported refugees to other continents, notably the United States. Our refugee and asylum laws are tougher than almost anywhere else. We live, to judge by the popular press, in quasi fear of being overwhelmed by an alien tide.

But of course this is prejudice which the facts do not support. Quite apart from the anecdotal observation that refugees in a new land are collectively responsible for more new businesses and scientific advances and for more sheer hard work in less glamorous but equally vital occupations than are the native population, the numbers of those seeking asylum are so small that one wonders at the fuss.

UNHCR figures suggest that the number of those seeking asylum in the European Union in the year 2000 - including all the so-called 'bogus' asylum seekers - was approximately one person for every one thousand citizens. Put another way it suggests that if the population of the European Union were stable - which broadly is the case - then even if all asylum seekers were waved through immigration with a smile the population would only grow at the rate of one tenth of one percent per year. Hardly something about which to get very exercised, and probably insufficient even to sustain Europe's own demand for labour - a point made only this week by the UN's Human Rights Commissioner, Mary Robinson.

It is true that this average figure conceals major divergences; within the European Union for instance, Belgium entertained asylum applications equivalent to 4.2 per thousand of its population, while Portugal recorded the lowest number of applications at 0.02 per thousand.

The UK, despite the general perception that it is the Europe asylum seeker's honeypot, receives only the seventh largest number of applications: Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland and , of course, Belgium all receiving more applications in relation to their population size.

What is certain is that there are few people who willingly leave their homes, families and countries simply to seek 'a better life.' The vast majority feel compelled to leave for more uncomfortable reasons, namely that they no longer feel that the jurisdiction under which they live offers them and their children basic rights, liberties and protection. The list of countries from which people seek asylum in Europe is a dismal but predictable catalogue not of the world's poorest countries but of those afflicted by ethnic or religious persecution, by armed conflict, repression and other turbulence - Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Russia, China.

Speaking last month in Stockholm, UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan took Europe to task for its refugee policies suggesting that Europe was not adequately fulfilling its moral duty so far as refugees were concerned and moreover was possibly not even meeting the terms of the 1951 Refugee Convention. The response was predictable: Europe's asylum policies are tight - but they are also right.

There is now competition all along Europe's Mediterranean coast and elsewhere to deter those seeking to arrive on Europe's beaches for reasons other than an annual holiday. From Spain to Greece the patrol boats hunt the traffickers and their frightened cargoes of human wretchedness. The tight policy is being tightened. Those that arrive - like the freighter borne Kurds - are treated by the authorities to a reception designed expressly to be at the same time inhospitable and acerbic. As if a family risking their all on a last and perilous throw of the dice is to be put off by reports about the quality of the sandwiches, the inadequacy of the arrangements for domestic hot water and the incivilities of the local guardians of liberty.

The reality is that Europe does not know what to do. Existing policies are failing. The rules are being tightened because doing something, anything, is better than facing the awfulness of the challenges.

But until the international community can better guarantee their local security, desperate families will continue to sell their heirlooms to greedy and sinister individuals, will continue to be exploited by unscrupulous clandestine employers. The further xenophobic persecution of such individuals by European governments, egged on by their own xenophobic electorates, is shameful and should stop.