Europe's Original Sin: What Asylum Policy Says about the EU

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/eu-asylum-policy-reveals-uncomfortable-truths-about-europe-a-992995.html



European asylum policy is a messy compromise that has led to vast suffering on the EU's external borders. But having become used to our prosperity, we wouldn't have it any other way.

Europe's Original Sin: What Asylum Policy Says about the EU
An Essay by Jürgen Dahlkamp
September 22, 2014 – 05:27 PM

It's time to talk about asylum, about our European Union with its execrable policy based on deterrence, fortification and deportation. It's time to talk about the fact that people are starving, drowning and otherwise suffering on their way to our borders. And it's time to address the question as to why these things happen every day: today, tomorrow and the day after that.

It's time, in other words, to talk about the culprits: red wine, the Volkswagen Golf and strawberry cake.

We all like a drop of fine wine every now and then. German President Joachim Gauck, who recently spoke out in favor of a more humane asylum policy, is no different. Before he even became president, he used to drop by Berlin's café NÖ! every now and then for a glass of quality red. VW Golfs, too, are widely appreciated here in Germany. Some 114,200 people bought a new one between January and June; prices for a base model start at €17,325 ($22,285). And strawberry cake? I found myself in the cafeteria on a recent afternoon indulging myself as a way to bridge the gap between lunch and dinner: A small piece of pleasure for the affordable price of €1.20.

But who really needs red wine to live? Or a VW Golf? Or strawberry cake? Nobody. They are certainly not necessary for survival. But that is what we have decided to spend our money on -- instead of sending it to places where people are dying because they don't have enough. Places where people have no future, leading them to flee. It is our red wine, Golfs and cakes against their lives.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Who really needs anything beyond the basics of survival to survive?

There's no bright line to be had - you can applying the 'red wine, VW Golf, and strawberry cake' argument to almost every aspect of modern first world life. Hot water, paint, carpeting, beds, and on and on.

And if those people are 'fleeing' to places where people have more, then aren't they seeking to join in on the strawberry cake and wine? They're not looking to simply recreate their inability to survive in new surroundings - they also want the cake.

We choose, as societies, just how much of our wealth we are going to redistribute, and to whom. Can we spend more on the less fortunate? Sure. But we need to do it in ways that aren't simply 'keep everyone alive today. and again tomorrow. and again the next day, ad inifinitum.' We need to do it in ways that allow the people elsewhere to improve their infrastructure to the point where they can become more and more self-sufficient, so that they aren't constantly 'under our thumbs'. They'll resent us, and rightfully so, if we simply treat them as dependents, and never give them the chance to provide more of their own support. We need to be past neocolonialism just as we're mostly past colonialism.

Help them build the infrastructure they need to generate power, to improve their transportation, to clean their water and grow food even in bad conditions. To grow their own wine and strawberries, bake their own cake. (I'd love to see trials of indoor, climate controlled LED farming run using solar power in poor African communities, to minimize the need for agricultural water and pest control.)