Illegal Emigrants Essay in Today

There's an interesting feature essay in today's "Today" newspaper, covering the issue of illegal immigration into Spain (unfortunately not available online). The essay comes down hard on the human traffickers who are behind the whole operation, seeming to take the view that if only both the public and the government came up in arms against these "Mafia", things would be much better. Maybe so - but my view is that whilst human traffickers certainly play a big role in the whole fiasco, they are by no means central to it, and taking them out of the equation will only solve the short-term problems. I remember a time when there was a great amount of excitement on my street (at least amongst the youth population), because people had discovered a "hole" into Europe via Ireland - you got entry into Ireland relatively easily, stayed in some cheap hotel overnight, then took a train (at least this was how it was explained) into Europe. Before that, my friend Sabally tells me, in their day (this was in the 80s), they traveled across the Sahara desert.... My point: there will always be ways to get in, which might be illegal, but which people will exploit nevertheless.

Trying to stop people from leaving by closing as many holes as possible will have as much effect as the worldwide war on drugs has (where there are users, there will be a drug supply), to use a much over-used analogy. What we want to do is make conditions at home so good people want to stay here instead: now that would be a permanent fix...