Lets talk about immigration

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Lets talk about immigration

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croup coughfield: Apr 8, 2020; Can't post for 89 days!

lets get em boys

# ? May 22, 2023 13:33

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# ? May 9, 2024 02:55

Filthy Hans: Jun 27, 2008; by Fluffdaddy
(and can't post for 10 years!)

Zodium posted:

also if you live outside denmark for too long, you count as non-white.

no Dane ever called me whitey

# ? May 22, 2023 15:06

lobster shirt: Jun 14, 2021

remember when the us and australia agreed to swap refugees to resettle, seemingly based on the theory that americans wouldn't go as psycho at papuans and australians would feel less rage about central americans?

# ? May 22, 2023 16:55

Prescott: May 16, 2023; I’m reading the Bible so I can teach the zombies about Heaven.

lobster shirt posted:

remember when the us and australia agreed to swap refugees to resettle, seemingly based on the theory that americans wouldn't go as psycho at papuans and australians would feel less rage about central americans?

That�s called race realism, OP

# ? May 22, 2023 17:32

FreeRangeHexagon: Apr 17, 2022

lobster shirt posted:

remember when the us and australia agreed to swap refugees to resettle, seemingly based on the theory that americans wouldn't go as psycho at papuans and australians would feel less rage about central americans?

didn't Trump nix it because of "local milk people"? I remember that very specific phrase

# ? May 22, 2023 19:50

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

Zodium posted:

also if you live outside denmark for too long, you count as non-white.

wtf

https://storbritannien.um.dk/en/travel-and-residence/danish-nationality/danish-nationals-born-abroad

# ? May 22, 2023 21:09

lobster shirt: Jun 14, 2021

FreeRangeHexagon posted:

didn't Trump nix it because of "local milk people"? I remember that very specific phrase

no he was just complaining about it in a phone call with the pm of australia at the time but we still did hte deal. struck by obama of course.

# ? May 25, 2023 03:54

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

Lol, when Serbia joined the EU one of the stipulations was they had to give up Yugoslavian immigration policies which were friendly to immigration from Africa/Asia.

# ? May 30, 2023 15:36

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

https://twitter.com/niilash1/status/1665276057409273857?cxt=HHwWgoC-7Ynwn5wuAAAA

# ? Jun 5, 2023 03:00

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

what about immigration, op?

# ? Jun 5, 2023 03:19

Weka: May 5, 2019; That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.

Glad to learn NZ is about half the size of India.

# ? Jun 5, 2023 22:39

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

https://newrepublic.com/post/173247/florida-republicans-admit-made-big-mistake-anti-immigrant-law

quote:

Florida Republicans passed a bill criminalizing the transport of undocumented people into Florida, requiring hospitals to ask about immigration status on intake forms, invalidating out of state driver�s licenses or other forms of government ID issued to undocumented people, and preventing local governments from issuing identification cards to undocumented people.

Now, after sparking backlash among thousands of immigrants (who make up a great deal of Florida�s economy), some Florida Republicans are trying to backpedal and do damage control.

Opps

# ? Jun 7, 2023 23:23

POWELL CURES KIDS: Aug 26, 2016

the classic fascist mistake of forgetting to exploit a minority before you destroy it

# ? Jun 7, 2023 23:46

Nocturtle: Mar 17, 2007

500 migrants en route to Europe dead in a single boat accident this past week, overall migrant deaths are generally increasing:

quote:

Over 500 migrants drowned near Greece: Fortress Europe and the refugee crisis
Thomas Scripps
16 June 2023

More than 500 migrants fleeing war, environmental disaster, poverty, and oppression are dead or missing after their ship sank south-west of Greece in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Among them are between 30-100 children.

An estimated 750 people crammed into a fishing vessel at Tobruk in Libya on June 10, setting sail for days without adequate food or water, hundreds at a time packed on the open top deck.

Only 78 bodies have been recovered. The majority of the dead are likely still trapped in the hold at the bottom of one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean. Just 104 survivors have been rescued, with the search called off Friday night.
...
Numbers have soared in the last decade. Roughly 60 million were forcibly displaced globally in 2014, at the beginning of the �migrant crisis� in Europe. At that time, tragedies including several off the coast of Lampedusa between 2013-15�in which more than 1,000 people including children drowned�and the image of two-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up dead on a Turkish beach, produced widespread outrage and a feeling this barbarism could not continue.

But Europe�s governments have acted to ensure that it has. After a fall in the number of migrants recorded missing or dead in the Mediterranean from its peak of 5,136 in 2016, the figure has been rising again since a 2020 low of 1,449. The first quarter of this year was the deadliest since 2017.
...

I remember the incredible outraged reaction to the pictures of Alan Kurdi. However the dangers migrants face have only gotten worse since then. There's a lot of contemporary articles pointing out all the various ways European nations have made legal immigration harder, directly leading to these regular tragedies.

# ? Jun 18, 2023 11:50

Death By The Blues: Oct 30, 2011

Kind of feel like the near future plan regardless of how resistant these countries now are to it, is that immigrants from countries in the global south who are going to suffer from ecological collapse will wind up settling into parts of Eastern Europe like Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine (post war if that happens).

They may not like it now but between the exodus of their own youth and rich leaving and so much of their population being older, they will need people there and Western Europe, NA or Australia will not take in these POC. They would prefer to have the rich upper middle class people already fleeing from Ukraine cause they are white. I was talking to an immigration lawyer and basically Canada has opened the gates for them while stonewalling any POC.

That story is horrifying but Europe will not care, they will only allow in the ones who are "educated" rich and accustomed to "western values" and will tell them just stay in the rural parts of Eastern Europe and develop a new culture and identity there.

# ? Jun 18, 2023 12:05

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

Death By The Blues posted:

I was talking to an immigration lawyer and basically Canada has opened the gates for them while stonewalling any POC.

That's been the case since the start of the war. Ukrainian skipped ahead to the front of the line, and without any of the hemming and hawing that comes with accepting brown ones. I also read a story about an Ukrainian refugee moving back because this country has 0 social safety nets, and basically no public infrastructure.

# ? Jun 21, 2023 19:23

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

Nocturtle posted:

500 migrants en route to Europe dead in a single boat accident this past week, overall migrant deaths are generally increasing:

I remember the incredible outraged reaction to the pictures of Alan Kurdi. However the dangers migrants face have only gotten worse since then. There's a lot of contemporary articles pointing out all the various ways European nations have made legal immigration harder, directly leading to these regular tragedies.

I barely saw any stories about this, guess you can't give much attention to this when there are a bunch of rich morons who risked their lives for no reason lost at sea.

# ? Jun 21, 2023 19:25

Weka: May 5, 2019; That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.

Is this the one the Greek coast guard seemingly capsized on purpose by zigzagging while towing it?

# ? Jun 24, 2023 12:31

Nocturtle: Mar 17, 2007

Weka posted:

Is this the one the Greek coast guard seemingly capsized on purpose by zigzagging while towing it?

I think the event your referencing happened back in 2014. This is a much more recent case of the coast guard brutally treating migrants, just within the past month.

On this subject a BBC investigation suggests the coast guards were lying about the events leading up to this most recent migrant ship sinking and could have helped before it happened:

quote:

Greece boat disaster: BBC investigation casts doubt on coastguard's claims
Published
5 days ago

By Nick Beake, Europe correspondent & Kostas Kallergis, senior Europe producer
BBC News in Kalamata
The BBC has obtained evidence casting doubt on the Greek coastguard's account of Wednesday's migrant shipwreck in which hundreds are feared to have died.

Analysis of the movement of other ships in the area suggests the overcrowded fishing vessel was not moving for at least seven hours before it capsized.

The coastguard still claims that during these hours the boat was on a course to Italy and not in need of rescue.

Greek authorities have not yet responded to the BBC's findings.

At least 78 people are known to have died, but the UN says up to 500 are still missing.

The UN has called for an investigation into Greece's handling of the disaster, amid claims more action should have been taken earlier to initiate a full-scale rescue attempt.
...

Lying about extremely basic and verifiable facts.

# ? Jun 24, 2023 14:15

PoundSand: Jul 30, 2021; Also proficient with kites

Death By The Blues posted:

That story is horrifying but Europe will not care, they will only allow in the ones who are "educated" rich and accustomed to "western values" and will tell them just stay in the rural parts of Eastern Europe and develop a new culture and identity there.

I think it's what you're getting at with the quotes but even being a high level professional often doesn't help you. My wife has been in the US almost long enough her visa could vote, went to grad school here for her masters and PhD and is a tenured prof at a big state university, she visited family last summer and ended up staying for longer than initially intended because she needed surgery and post care, her extended trip tripped some flags in immigration and when she came through the airport got whisked away into backrooms for several hours without a right to contact anyone. It was terrifying because I was picking her up and last I heard she was on her way through customs and then just radio silenece for 3 hrs, I was worried she had collapsed or something because she was still recovering from a major surgery and tried calling around the airport and absolutely couldn't get any information. The whole process was inhumane, apparently they were threatening to not let her through at all and it's just like why wouldn't you let her keep her husband in the loop or such you've just terrorized a family for seemingly no reason. Not that it would justify the treatment either way but she's not even from a country we would consider dangerous or hostile, it's a close US ally we make a big show of liking/supporting to piss off countries we don't like.

She's fortunately been here long enough she's on her final steps to getting citizenship (through work) so hopefully she'll never have to deal with that poo poo again but it's just exhausting. She's one of the "good" ones, she's been here legally the whole time, financially self sufficient with a stable career in a field we're short on people, owns property (to live in obviously), getting her citizenship through employment sponsorship, checks basically all the boxes economically, legally, demographically for an ideal immigrant candidate and she still gets treated like trash by the system. It's a wonder she puts up with at all to be here.

# ? Jun 24, 2023 16:03

ikanreed: Sep 25, 2009; I honestly I have no idea who cannibal[SIC] is and I do not know why I should know.

syq dude, just syq!

Okay, but without strict immigration laws, how can we enslave people by taking away their documents and threatening to report them?

# ? Jun 24, 2023 16:08

spacemang_spliff: Nov 29, 2014; wide pickle

AnimeIsTrash posted:

I also read a story about an Ukrainian refugee moving back because this country has 0 social safety nets, and basically no public infrastructure.

lmao

# ? Jun 24, 2023 16:11

Weka: May 5, 2019; That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.

Nocturtle posted:

I think the event your referencing happened back in 2014. This is a much more recent case of the coast guard brutally treating migrants, just within the past month.

On this subject a BBC investigation suggests the coast guards were lying about the events leading up to this most recent migrant ship sinking and could have helped before it happened:

Nope it was this one, although they deny it.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/23/europe/greece-migrant-boat-disaster-investigation-intl-cmd/index.html

quote:

One survivor from Syria, whom CNN is identifying as Rami, described how a Greek coast guard vessel approached the trawler multiple times to try to attach a rope to tow the ship, with disastrous results.

�The third time they towed us, the boat swayed to the right and everyone was screaming, people began falling into the sea, and the boat capsized and no one saw anyone anymore,� he said. �Brothers were separated, cousins were separated.�

Another Syrian man, identified as Mostafa, also believes it was the maneuver by the coast guard that caused the disaster. �The Greek captain pulled us too fast, it was extremely fast, this caused our boat to sink,� he said.

# ? Jun 25, 2023 10:35

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Many people come to the U.S. as a result of wars due to either direct U.S. military involvement or military campaigns by surrogates financed and trained by the U.S. For example, many flee repression caused by U.S.-supported death squads in Central America ... People from many countries emigrate to the U.S. because of dire economic situations in their home countries, in many cases caused by U.S. banks and U.S.-led international monetary institutions.

Backward forces use such immigration to bolster their claim that the U.S. is a beacon of freedom. Being forced to leave one�s homeland is most often a result of U.S. transnational corporations and their intensive exploitation abroad, backed up by U.S. foreign and military policy. Many people who immigrate to the U.S. looking for economic survival are refugees from the economic policies of U.S. imperialism and the neocolonial, neoliberal �free trade� exploitation experienced around the world.

Many refugees flee their countries due to right-wing dictatorships and death squads supported and trained by the U.S., such as those in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and elsewhere in Central America.

Many immigrants from the Caribbean are trying to escape the U.S. stranglehold on their home countries. Dominicans, Haitians, Jamaicans, and others play vital roles in many communities in the U.S. Haitian immigrants, from the poorest country in the hemisphere, have experienced U.S. support for dictators and death squads, have witnessed U.S. attempts to subvert and co-opt popular democratic movements, and have been subjected to direct exploitation by U.S., French, and other transnational corporations. Once in the U.S., they face continued impoverishment, health crises, racism, and discrimination.

Increasing populations of immigrants from countries in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe have come to the U.S. in recent years, fleeing economic oppression, war, decreasing living standards, lack of opportunity, famine, and genocide.

# ? Jun 25, 2023 10:44

Weka: May 5, 2019; That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.

Yeah I had about half a second of hope watching Meloni speak during the election when she said the way to end immigration is to stop loving up Africa. Predictably she's slotted right in with EU foreign policy unfortunately.

# ? Jun 25, 2023 11:37

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Zodium posted:

also if you live outside denmark for too long, you count as non-white.

nothing less racist than taking away citizenships, based not on race, but on a lack of connection to the culture of the country you claim citizenship in.

# ? Jun 25, 2023 12:01

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

Nocturtle posted:

I think the event your referencing happened back in 2014. This is a much more recent case of the coast guard brutally treating migrants, just within the past month.

On this subject a BBC investigation suggests the coast guards were lying about the events leading up to this most recent migrant ship sinking and could have helped before it happened:

Lying about extremely basic and verifiable facts.

They happen all the time, also I was reminded about the captain who got arrested because she rescued drowning immigrants.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/07/01/hero-or-pirate-arrest-german-captain-who-rescued-migrants-divides-europe/

# ? Jun 27, 2023 15:29

Nocturtle: Mar 17, 2007

That's true, the most recent boat disaster that killed 500 people was only one especially bad incident of what have become regular occurrences. That captain being arrested reminds me of a US priest being arrested for feeding the homeless, as in both cases the transgression was helping the wrong type of people.

Not directly related I've wanted to bring up the situation with migrants being sent to NYC but haven't known what to link specifically because it's a giant ongoing fiasco. The most recent development has been that the number of asylum seekers and migrants in NYC shelters now exceeds the entire homeless population (about 50000 each). A lot of the reporting has been very critical of the "migrant crisis" and unsurprisingly the New York Post has been regularly inflammatory, here's one recent example:

This could become a major driver of anti-immigration sentiment. Adams has been predictably useless and has been trying to send migrants to other jurisdictions, there are court challenges etc.

As it turns out a number of migrant children were placed in my kids' public school classrooms this past school year. They only spoke Spanish and these are nominally English-speaking classrooms, but fortunately the teachers knew Spanish and could accommodate them. All the children have been very friendly with each other despite there often being a language barrier which was nice. It's not fun to think of these kids being a political hot potato.

# ? Jun 27, 2023 18:53

Mr SuperAwesome: Apr 6, 2011; im from the bad post police, and i'm afraid i have bad news

AnimeIsTrash posted:

Lol, when Serbia joined the EU one of the stipulations was they had to give up Yugoslavian immigration policies which were friendly to immigration from Africa/Asia.

serbia is not in the EU op

# ? Jun 27, 2023 19:46

Turtle Sandbox: Dec 31, 2007; by Fluffdaddy

speng31b posted:

joe biden is bad and americans are demons

90% of Americans support murdering migrants in the border, 50% of them just publicly pretend not to so you don't know they are monsters.

# ? Jun 27, 2023 21:39

Turtle Sandbox: Dec 31, 2007; by Fluffdaddy

Al! posted:

im a no borders and 1-step path to citizenship guy. sorry border freaks but there's literally no reason to keep people out of the united states who have been forced out of their home countries by the united states

We will never have a unified humanity with borders, border supporters just worry they will lose the easily exploited other.

# ? Jun 27, 2023 21:42

POWELL CURES KIDS: Aug 26, 2016

Turtle Sandbox posted:

90% of Americans support murdering migrants in the border, 50% of them just publicly pretend not to so you don't know they are monsters.

the 90% figure only reflects those americans who support allowing migrants to die in concentration camps, not those advocating for "free range" murder. politifact rates this claim pants on fire

# ? Jun 27, 2023 21:53

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

recently read this very depressing story about abuse of migrants at the Spain-Morocco border:

quote:

Since last summer, on the 24th of every month, Marisa Amaro and Maite Echarte have driven up to the fence around the Spanish enclave of Melilla on Morocco�s northern coast to tie bunches of flowers onto the steel mesh outside the Barrio Chino border crossing. Amaro and Echarte, who work assisting asylum seekers in Melilla, are usually alone there. The crossing itself has been closed since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, but recently people have also stopped trying to climb over. When I accompanied them earlier this year, Amaro nodded at the three parallel barriers stretching off into the distance � two six-metre-high fences with a shorter fence in between. On the Moroccan side there is also a tall earthen berm, a trench and a three-metre-high outer fence lined with coiled concertina wire. �Es una barbaridad,� she muttered.

It�s still not clear how many people were killed at Barrio Chino on 24 June 2022. The Spanish and Moroccan authorities admit to 23; NGOs put the tally at 37, but the real number may be higher. As many as 77 people, most of them young men who had fled their homes in Sudan and South Sudan, are still missing. Amnesty International calls these �forced disappearances�, since the migrants were last seen in the custody of Spanish and Moroccan security forces. No autopsies have been performed on the bodies, and there has been no official investigation, so it�s impossible to be sure what caused the death of any particular individual: the beatings delivered by police, the multiple tear gas canisters fired into an enclosed space, the crush of bodies, the neglect and exposure of the injured for hours afterwards, or some combination of all these things.

Enough video evidence has emerged, however, and enough survivors have testified to journalists and human rights organisations, that we are in a position to reconstruct what happened. In the weeks before the massacre, the local police had grown increasingly hostile to the community of sub-Saharan migrants gathered around the city of Nador, from where they hoped to cross into Melilla, which has one of Africa�s two land borders with the European Union. (The other surrounds Ceuta, also a Spanish territory, 270 miles to the west along the Mediterranean coast.) Landlords and hotels in Nador, which is eight miles south of Melilla, refused to rent rooms to the migrants, so they camped on the slopes of Mount Gurugu, just outside town. Periodic police raids have been part of life in these camps for years, but they became markedly more aggressive last June. By the middle of the month the raids were taking place daily. Hundreds of officers attacked the camps, firing tear gas canisters, destroying shelters, seizing food and property, beating and arresting anyone they could find. On 23 June, police announced that the migrants had 24 hours to leave the mountain. Requesting asylum through legal channels wasn�t an option: Sudanese and sub-Saharan Africans stand out in Morocco, and the police don�t let them get close enough to official border crossings even to try.

The next morning, between 1500 and two thousand migrants marched from Mount Gurugu into Beni Ansar, on the other side of the Barrio Chino crossing from Melilla. The Moroccan security forces could see them coming � it would have been impossible not to � but made no attempt to stop them. Video shot that morning shows police vans driving away as the crowd approached. It was only when the migrants reached the border fence that the police moved in from behind and began launching tear gas canisters and throwing smoke bombs. More police came from the other direction, blocking all exits. The only possible means of escape was over the border fence, a section of which collapsed as dozens rushed to scale it.

Many found themselves contained in a fenced-off area about a hundred metres square, now full of smoke and tear gas. �People were suffocating and dying,� one man later told the BBC. �They couldn�t breathe.� The panic escalated when Moroccan forces entered the enclosure, causing a stampede towards a gate that the migrants had managed to break open. Leaked video shows dozens of migrants piled together, many of them motionless, the rest struggling. Some made it over to the Spanish side and kept going, trekking two miles to Melilla�s official shelter for migrants, just across the highway from the public golf course. Amaro watched them coming. Those who could walk, she said, were carrying those who could not. In the end, 133 people succeeded in filing asylum claims. But most didn�t get past the fence. Spanish forces shot at them with rubber bullets as they climbed down, then kept them corralled between the barrier and the highway. A local photojournalist filmed Moroccan police crossing to the Spanish side and methodically escorting migrants back to the territory under their control. Officers of the Guardia Civil would ultimately hand 470 people who had reached the Spanish side of the fence over to their Moroccan counterparts. Some of them were bleeding and obviously injured.

Such �devoluciones en caliente� (�hot returns�) are a violation of the principle of non-refoulement, a fundamental norm of international law that prohibits states from returning asylum seekers to a country in which they face persecution. Moroccan police moved the men back to the enclosure. The beatings were methodical. �They would hit you to see if you were dead,� one survivor recalled. �If you were not dead they would hit you more.� There were ambulances at the scene, but they appear to have been used only to carry off the dead. The injured were left lying in the sun for hours and offered no assistance. Finally, around five hundred migrants were herded onto buses and driven for hours to cities hundreds of miles to the south and west, where they were abandoned to their own devices. At least one of them, a man from Darfur named Abdel Nasir Mohamed Ahmed, died on the way.

Relations between Morocco and Spain have long been fiercely contentious. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Spain fought four wars in the Rif, as the mountainous north of the country is known. It formally occupied slivers of northern and southern Morocco as a colonial protectorate in 1912 (the French took the rest). When Morocco won its independence in 1956, Spain retained Melilla and Ceuta. It held on to Western Sahara � formerly Spanish Sahara � until 1975, when Morocco annexed the territory. A lengthy and brutal war of occupation ensued. Border walls aren�t exclusive to the global North: Morocco has constructed its own highly militarised, 1700-mile-long wall across Western Sahara. In April 2021, Brahim Ghali, leader of the Western Sahara independence movement, flew to Spain to receive medical treatment for Covid. A diplomatic crisis ensued. Morocco withdrew its ambassador and, a few weeks later, made clear its discontent, as well as the leverage it held over its former coloniser, by opening its side of the border with Ceuta. More than eight thousand migrants bypassed the fence along the beach as Moroccan guards stood by.

For migrants near Melilla, the collapse of relations between Spain and Morocco meant a welcome dip in attention from the Moroccan authorities. In the first three months of 2022, there wasn�t a single raid on the camps on Mount Gurugu. But in the third week of March everything changed again. Pedro S�nchez, the Spanish prime minister, abandoned Spain�s long-standing recognition of Western Sahara�s right to self-determination. To the outrage of his leftist coalition partners, he endorsed Morocco�s plan for �autonomy� in Western Sahara under Moroccan sovereignty. A �new era� in Spanish-Moroccan relations commenced. It was soon felt on Mount Gurugu: the police raids resumed in early April.

Mike Davis once described the US-Mexico border wall as a �political stage set�. The same could be said for the other walls that have proliferated around the world over the last thirty years. The show put on in Melilla last June was especially didactic. When the migrants marched to the border fence, police made no effort to stop them, then cut off all possibility of retreat � in the past they had always left a clear escape route. The attack, when it came, was calculated and sustained. Most of the video evidence later made public could only have been shot by Moroccan security forces. Footage was posted to social media, where it was further disseminated by human rights groups and media outlets � as the Moroccan authorities had clearly intended.

The timing was opportune. Five days after the massacre at Barrio Chino, Madrid was scheduled to host a summit of Nato member states. Morocco�s bloody show was all over the Spanish news that week. Apparently it was well received. Less than two weeks later, while lamenting the �recent distressing events� in Melilla, the European Commission announced that it was launching a �renewed partnership� on migration with Morocco. In August, the EU pledged to give Morocco �500 million to �manage� its borders, a 45 per cent increase over the previous funding cycle.

I asked Helena Maleno, founder of the migrants� rights group Caminando Fronteras, what message the bodies piled at Barrio Chino were meant to convey. That�s easy, she said: �If you want us to protect you, this is how far we have to take it.�

And Europe�s answer?

�Yes, yes, phenomenal. Do what you want.�

S�nchez didn�t hesitate to praise the police, both Spanish and Moroccan, and characterised the events in Melilla as an �attack on Spanish borders� by �mafias and criminals�. This is one of the narratives favoured by European governments: casualties at the borders they have militarised are said to be the work of shadowy rings of traffickers; the authorities are merely trying to protect migrants from mistreatment and danger. No matter that smuggling networks are among the principal beneficiaries of border militarisation � their business would hardly be profitable if borders were safe to cross. The fact that all 133 of the survivors who made it past the Guardia Civil and into Melilla were ultimately granted asylum suggests that the authorities didn�t, in the end, believe them to be delinquents. (The wider success rate in Spain is very low, only about 9 per cent in 2021.)

Disregarding a growing body of evidence to the contrary, S�nchez�s interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has continued to insist that the violence last June occurred �principally� in Morocco, or perhaps in some �no man�s land� between the two countries, and only �in a very tangential manner� in Spain. Much of the Spanish media has followed his lead, focusing less on the violence itself than on the question of where precisely the deaths occurred. One Guardia Civil officer conceded that �there may be some whose body is half on one side and half on the other. A person occupies more than a line.� Absurd as this is � Spain�s own cadastral surveys put the entire border post in Spanish territory � the distinction reflects the ongoing effort by wealthy states to outsource control of their borders and distance themselves from the violence that inevitably ensues.

Melilla, which has been a Spanish possession since 1497, pioneered this trend. If you don�t count the thick stone walls surrounding the old city, there was no barrier there at all until the 1970s and no serious attempt at migration controls until Spain joined the Schengen Zone in 1991, at which point the seven-mile line around the territory and the five miles around Ceuta became the EU�s only land borders on the African continent. The Canadian activist Harsha Walia has argued that it was in these two Spanish colonies that the idea of �Fortress Europe� was born, taking form not only in the increasingly impassable fences but in a thicket of treaties, funding mechanisms and informal agreements by which Morocco, and later other African states, would be induced to make Europe�s priorities their own. Most European trade accords and development or aid endowments now require African countries, even those a long way from the Mediterranean, to accommodate deportees from Europe, toughen their borders and monitor the movements of their own populations. The US, similarly, has outsourced much of its border enforcement to Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

The externalisation of violence is hardly a new tactic in Europe. The political theorist Wendy Brown has written about the role colonial borders played in allowing Europe to understand itself as a civilised polity. Beyond the line �is where civilisation ends, but it is also where the brutishness of the civilised is therefore permitted, where violence may be freely and legitimately exercised�. That violence, as the story of Melilla shows, has a way of leaking back into Europe.

If you follow the border northwards for a little less than two miles from the Barrio Chino crossing, you�ll spot an old fort, its high walls and crenellated towers rising up behind modern fencing and pole-mounted floodlights and cameras. These days, La Pur�sima Concepci�n functions as a holding centre for child and teenage migrants, but it was originally constructed by the Spanish in a frenzy of fort-building in the early 1890s � an early attempt to secure the border that had been established by treaty with Morocco three decades earlier. Other forts were built without incident, but La Pur�sima was adjacent to the tomb of Sidi Ouariach, a 15th-century Muslim holy man who is said to have died fighting the Spanish. In 1893, a force of six thousand local fighters descended on Melilla to prevent the shrine�s desecration, beginning the First War of the Rif, from which a previously unknown young Spanish lieutenant called Miguel Primo de Rivera emerged a hero. Thirty years later, in the aftermath of Spain�s disastrous defeat at Annual, west of Melilla, Primo de Rivera took power in a coup and ruled Spain as dictator for most of the 1920s. The Spanish colonial army that coalesced over the course of that decade, the so-called Army of Africa, fought a war of extermination in northern Morocco that made extensive use of chemical weapons on civilian populations. It also produced the shock troops who formed the core of Franco�s forces during the Spanish Civil War. The coup that launched that conflict, and the 36-year dictatorship that followed, began with a military uprising in Melilla. Fascism in Europe cannot be separated from the violence at its colonial frontiers.

But who still thinks of such unpleasantness now that Melilla is quiet? When I met Marisa Amaro at the migrants� centre, she couldn�t get the gate open at first. It was stuck because she hadn�t been there in weeks � there had been no need. In September, the last of those who had made it to Melilla on 24 June won asylum and left for the mainland. �Not one sub-Saharan has crossed since,� Amaro told me. A year earlier, the centre would have been lively. There were computers inside for people to check their email, plus Spanish classes and legal workshops, football games, music and meals. It was a place for asylum seekers to relax and feel human again. But now, Amaro said, �there�s no one.� Just before Christmas, the Spanish public prosecutor�s office shelved its investigation into the events of 24 June, having found �no evidence� that crimes had been committed. Spanish authorities have reinforced the fence with a sort of inverted metal comb, making it exceedingly difficult to scale. On their side, the Moroccan authorities have dug another trench, and Moroccan police have been arresting sub-Saharan Africans in the streets and patrolling the train and bus stations for anyone with sufficiently dark skin. Nobody can get near the crossing.

For now at least, Morocco and Spain appear to have closed the route north through Melilla. But when one path is blocked, people find another � usually less direct and more dangerous. In recent years, as the fences around Melilla and Ceuta have been reinforced and the Mediterranean militarised, an increasing number of migrants have sought to reach the Canary Islands, also a Spanish possession, in small boats from the African mainland, despite the dangers of the ocean crossing. It�s a far more perilous journey even than the deadly routes across the Mediterranean. In the five years between 2018 and 2022, according to a recent report by Caminando Fronteras, 11,286 people died trying to enter Spanish territory, almost all of them at sea. But this doesn�t include the many who die before they make it to the coast; the UN migration agency believes that two people die in the Sahara for every one who drowns at sea. The reason last June�s events at Barrio Chino caused a scandal wasn�t that so many died there, it was that Spain can�t credibly distance itself from the deaths. That isn�t a problem when the bodies disappear beneath the waves. As Aim� C�saire once wrote, �Europe is indefensible.�

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n08/ben-ehrenreich/short-cuts

# ? Jul 7, 2023 23:44

Nocturtle: Mar 17, 2007

An asylum center surrounded by an impassable series of barriers is a good symbol of how western countries are handling increasing numbers of refugees.

# ? Jul 8, 2023 12:22

ScrubLeague: Feb 11, 2007; Nap Ghost

My opinion is that countries and borders aren't real and immigration is the natural right of every human

# ? Jul 8, 2023 12:43

Cao Ni Ma: May 25, 2010

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/world/europe/dutch-government-collapses.html

Now watch as another european center right coalition magically turns hyper right wing

# ? Jul 8, 2023 12:44

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

Nocturtle posted:

An asylum center surrounded by an impassable series of barriers is a good symbol of how western countries are handling increasing numbers of refugees.

Just read the story about how the British government ordered an asylum centre for unaccompanied children to paint over murals of cartoon characters on the walls because they made it feel too welcoming and not enough like being in prison.

# ? Jul 8, 2023 13:32

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

vyelkin posted:

Just read the story about how the British government ordered an asylum centre for unaccompanied children to paint over murals of cartoon characters on the walls because they made it feel too welcoming and not enough like being in prison.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/202...lcoming-artwork

God drat I hadn't heard about this story but that is grim.

vyelkin posted:

recently read this very depressing story about abuse of migrants at the Spain-Morocco border:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n08/ben-ehrenreich/short-cuts

This was a great article, thanks for sharing.

# ? Jul 8, 2023 18:44

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

An investigation into the migrant vessel that capsized off the Greek shore in June, killing at least 500 people, has just released some findings. That link goes to some of the data with a map and timeline, and here's a link to some journalism about it with extra details.

The short version is: the Greek Coast Guard received multiple warnings that an overloaded vessel was in trouble, intercepted the boat fairly close to the Greek shore, and instead of offering assistance they tried to lead the vessel away from Greece into Italian waters, despite Italian waters being farther away than Greek land, and Italian land being much farther away than that (it's hard to measure the distances but doing a rough job with Google Maps, I estimate they were about 90 km off the Greek coast and about 500+ km from the Italian coast). After an hour of this, the boat's engine died and the Greek Coast Guard ship responded by attaching a rope and trying to tow the boat, which resulted in it capsizing. After capsizing the boat, the Coast Guard ship sailed away, creating a wake that contributed to the capsized boat fully sinking, and then returned to rescue survivors 30 minutes later, after hundreds of people had died.

Other details include the Greek authorities not responding to multiple calls for assistance, not dispatching Coast Guard vessels that were closer and could have provided aid faster, not responding to offers of additional assistance from other EU sources, the Greek ship turning off its installed cameras so they wouldn't record the incident, the Coast Guard personnel confiscating migrants' phones so that there wouldn't be any videos of the incident, and the Coast Guard tampering with survivor statements to try and cover it all up by claiming the boat just sank all on its own.

Not every incident gets such a detailed investigation but this is what the entire Western world's immigration policies look like on the ground: do everything possible to push migrants away from your own borders until they're someone else's problem, and if the result of that is that you murder hundreds of people, cover it up and blame the migrants for their own deaths.

# ? Jul 10, 2023 14:13

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# ? May 9, 2024 02:55

ELTON JOHN: Feb 17, 2014

ScrubLeague posted:

My opinion is that countries and borders aren't real and immigration is the natural right of every human

documents and housing for all

freedom of movement and residence

# ? Jul 10, 2023 14:38

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Lets talk about immigration

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