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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

A reminder that this story plays out dozens of times every day in the Mediterranean right now.

42,549 irregular border crossings were reported in July 2022 on the Central Mediterranean route [1]. The number of those who drowned will never be known.

Many of these Africans who dare to cross the sea have already travelled for weeks or months and survived the Sahara. They are not celebrated as risktakers, though. Unlike this article, nobody sings odes to the boldness, inventiveness, motivation, honor and leadership qualities of the African migrant. Maybe they should.

[1] https://frontex.europa.eu/media-centre/news/news-release/eu-...

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> Unlike this article, nobody sings odes to the boldness, inventiveness, motivation, honor and leadership qualities of the African migrant. Maybe they should.

It's a bit odd that choice of traits to ascribe to economic migrants, which could be better describe the African entrepreneurs who chose to stay and improve their home community.

Does the same apply to the Cubans in the "Risk Everything" story? Should they have stayed to improve their community?

It's only odd because we project our own biases and values onto them: one is a criminal as far as the western law systems are concerned, another is an entrepreneurial foreigner.

But in reality, both are bold, inventive and motivated. The difference is just the capital - financial, social and educational - each one holds, those who have nothing are simply willing to accept riskier propositions.

Don't for a moment think you you can bootstrap a business in a corrupt African state using nothing but your hands and back, with no education, no connections and no money. Even if you are insanely productive and entrepreneurial, without greasing the right hands you will be picked clean by criminal rings, protection rackets, unscrupulous competitors etc. It's hard for a westerner to relate to a life where rule of law is spotty and tends to cover only major crimes.

>Unlike this article, nobody sings odes to the boldness, inventiveness, motivation, honor and leadership qualities of the African migrant. Maybe they should.

No, they shouldn't. Smuggling migrants into Europe is a business these days. The professional smugglers get paid and can provide transportation at every step of the journey. The most cynical step in this process is creating deliberate distress at sea in order to be picked up by people with "white saviour" mentality who knew in advance in which area the distress would happen and then transport those people from the Libyan coast all the way to Italy or Spain to drop them off there and now make the migrants Europe's problem[1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/far-right-italian-leade...

Not only that, but stopping migrants is also a business model in itself; Europe is paying billions to stop migrants, see e.g. https://www.dw.com/en/how-the-eu-spent-billions-to-halt-migr...

I'm sure a lot of NGOs do.

Do they? Faced with the prevalent right-wing rhetoric where a not uncommon position is that African migrants either deserve to drown or at least should be kept in camps somewhere far away, their Western defenders tend to adopt a defensive posture that focuses on basic human rights but also easily patronizes the migrants.

The "Risk Everything" story glorifies a young Cuban boat refugee's leadership qualities. I certainly can't remember ever reading an article like that about an African refugee written by an European. It's somehow easier for us to see the best of humanity in someone from Cuba than in someone from Niger, even when they both suffered under dictatorship and took extraordinary steps to escape.

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