How Europe Outsources Suffering as Migrants Drown

The article makes no mention of the moral hazard created by these “rescue” operations.

These rafts aren’t attempting to cross the mediteranean sea. Smugglers load them with migrants, and drop them just off the territorial waters of Libya with a radio to call for help. If somehow they are not spotted, they die. These smugglers count on the complicity of pro-migration NGO ships to pick them up and bring them to Europe (the “rescue” step). This is a completely irresponsible game that NGO are playing and that is costing lives.

What the European navies are doing (and that this opinion is blaming) is to break this moral hazard by handing the migrants back to Libyan coast guards who will bring them back to Libya.

Beside the issue with human trafficking, I still wonder why the issue should be about Italy only. Europe is unable to take a stand on migratory issues, and Italy alone should bear all the burden.

The situation in northern Africa is horrible; is that Italy's only and sole responsibility? It's easy to blame my country, but it seems harder to help us. We'd be happy to host more people if we could share the burden. Old treaties don't work for this kind of humanitarian emergency.

I don't agree with the whole premise of the article at all. Europe doesn't have a moral (or legal) responsibility to save everyone from disaster. What policy changes in both New Zealand and Australia have demonstrated well is that clearly blocking all illegal ship crossings has twofold benefits: human traffickers will no longer try to ship people in barely working ships reducing both the amount of funneled immigrants as well putting less people in danger of drowning out at sea.