In recent days, perhaps 200 African migrants died while trying to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa, which lies just 70 miles off the North African coast. Every year, African migrants also die trying to make the crossing to the Canary Islands, a Spanish possession 62 miles off the African coast. Meanwhile, around 600 African migrants tried to scale the fence at Melilla, along with Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the North African coast. If migrants manage to scale the fence separating those two enclaves from Morocco—and last year 16,000 African migrants tried to do so at Melilla alone (of which 5,000 were successful)—then they are on European soil and can seek asylum.

Whenever migrants drown trying to make the hazardous crossing, either over water to European islands or overland to European enclaves in Africa, human-rights groups wring their hands and immigration activists criticize European governments and their militaries for failing to intervene and rescue the migrants. The pattern, however, continues even as, over the years, thousands if not tens of thousands have perished.

Alas, if the goal is to save the lives of the African migrants, then the biggest enemies to the health and safety of the migrants are well-meaning European politicians, human-rights organizations, and advocates for liberal immigration policies. The problem is incentive: No matter where the illegal alien steps foot, so long as it’s European soil, then he or she has won the jackpot. To treat all European lands as equal for the purposes of immigration, however, is an arbitrary decision, and should not be the basis of law.

There are other models. If the Europeans truly cared about African lives, they might consider Australia’s experience. For years, Australia was a choice destination for illegal migrants. Unscrupulous human traffickers would extort thousands of dollars from migrants who would then board rickety boats in order to reach outlying Australian islands. Once they touched land, they hoped, they would be in Australia and transported safely to the mainland. The Australian government solved the problem by declaring that no automatic right to Australian residence nor freedom of travel for illegal migrants from outlying Australian islands to the mainland. The next step was for Canberra to negotiate agreements with Nauru and Papua New Guinea for the transport of migrants there. That might be OK for those fleeing political persecution—after all, they could be safe as safe in Nauru or Papua New Guinea as they would be in Australia—but it wasn’t so attractive for economic migrants. And, let’s face it, 99 percent of the migrants trying to reach Europe or Australia are economic migrants. Australia also isolated many illegal migrants in camps until they could be processed. It’s quite one thing to reach Ceuta, travel to the European mainland, and then sit back and relax in a Spanish or Italian café on the backs of generous European welfare packages; it’s quite another thing to spend one’s day in a camp in Papua New Guinea, Nauru, or Christmas Island. To reach Australia might still be an objective, but it is an increasingly distant one. There are still disasters, but fewer migrants try to make the perilous journey, and fewer still lose their lives as a result. The willingness of the Australian navy to intercept in international water and divert is admirable and prevents further accidents still.

So back to Europe: If the Europeans want to stop the death of thousands of migrants—and, remember, those killed on the waters of the Atlantic or Mediterranean are only the tip of the iceberg as many lose their lives to terrorists and bandits as they traverse West or Central Africa and the Sahel—then it’s imperative to remove the incentive to gamble with their and their children’s lives. Here, there’s also an interplay between migration and security, for the same networks which help smuggle or insist on protection money from the smugglers are those like al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or criminal networks like the Polisario Front which pose larger threats to regional and perhaps even European security.

If the European Union truly cares about African lives, it’s imperative that they cease rewarding those who reach outlying islands or enclaves. Migrants who reach those territories should remain there, in camps if need be. There should be no right of migration, for example, for non-citizens to move from Ceuta or Melilla across the Mediterranean or illegal immigrants in the Canary Islands across the Atlantic on ferries or commercial flights just because they scaled a fence or stepped foot on a beach.

Reach Melilla? Well, that’s your final destination. Reach Ceuta? Ditto. Arrive in the Canaries? Well, you’ll be interred there for years before an inevitable return to the African mainland. Can’t return to the Central African Republic, Nigeria, or Libya because of political violence? Well, if safety is the concern, then detention camps in Benin, Togo, or Ghana await. It would be far cheaper for the European Union to provide aid to those countries or territories or others like them to maintain camps for illegal migrants than it would be to pay European welfare. In the meantime, the European Union would create a disincentive to make the perilous journey. It is the maintenance of that incentive which causes death. And for those groups which seek to increase rather than decrease the reward for illegal migration, let’s call a spade a spade: They have blood on their hands.

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