Every year, millions of people leave their countries in search of a better life elsewhere. While some people immigrate out of choice, others feel compelled—they’re not leaving because they want a better life, but because they’re literally in danger of dying otherwise. Some are refugees who face so much violence or hardship at home that they would be willing to risk everything on an unauthorized journey across water. Often they are in boats so overcrowded as to not be seaworthy, sailed by smugglers, without lifejackets. Long has their plight been documented by humanitarian groups, and they have also drawn increasing attention from Western governments and media.
Who is a Refugee?
The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (CRSR) is the international treaty which defines the rights that refugees have. A refugee, under the CRSR, is someone who flees their home country because of targeted persecution from their government due to their ethnic group, nationality, religion, or political opinion. Many countries extend the definition to also include someone fleeing because of a war in their home country (even if the combatants are not specifically targeting the person’s social group).
Under the CRSR, which has been signed by the vast majority of countries (with some notable exceptions in Asia), governments are obligated to accept legitimate refugees into their countries and must under no circumstances send a refugee back home to risk death again. Someone who flees their country for economic reasons is not considered a refugee, and the CRSR does not oblige governments to allow economic migrants to stay. However, when a person is facing both poverty and persecution in their home country, it’s often difficult in practice to evaluate their status.
Sea Routes for Irregular Migrants
There are five bodies of water in the world which have been well-travelled seaways for refugees and other irregular migrants (a term I use to refer to anyone who attempts to go to a different country without normal immigration process, and which I use without passing judgement on the legality or morality of their actions) in the 21st century: the Caribbean (Cuba to the USA), the Red Sea (Somalia or Eritrea to Yemen or Saudi Arabia), the Java Sea (Indonesia to Australia), the Andaman Sea (Myanmar to Thailand or Malaysia), and the Mediterranean (Libya to Italy). I will focus on the latter two in this article, because they are traversed by the most migrants. (This is simply due to lack of space, and I am emphatically not saying that Libyan or Rohingya lives are worth more than Cuban lives.)
Mediterranean
The journey across the central Mediterranean from Libya to Italy is the most well-travelled of all the maritime migrant routes. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that some 210,000 migrants attempted this journey in the year 2014. The number spiked after Libya plunged into civil war in 2011. The ongoing civil war in Somalia and the harsh conditions in Eritrea (a single-party dictatorship where the government has been implicated in numerous human rights abuses) have displaced many, and Da’esh (ISIS) coming to power in eastern Syria has not helped matters.
Irregular migrants from all these countries have congregated on the shores of Libya to seek passage to Italy, where smugglers have been willing to oblige them, often for ridiculous rates that the migrants are scarcely able to afford. The New York Times recently reported that the going rate for one ticket ranges from $400-$1500 US; by comparison, the average per-capita income, converted to US dollars, is $3800 in Syria, and $600 in Eritrea. Despite this cost, the smuggling boats are overcrowded and not very reliable—they frequently capsize halfway through leaving the migrants stranded.
In the past, the Italian Navy and Coast Guard were quite proactive at patrolling the migrant routes and rescuing migrants in distress. However, in October 2014, the Italian government stopped the operation. This was both for financial reasons (it was costing them 100 million euros per year) and in the hopes that it would discourage migrants from crossing if they knew they were unlikely to get rescued in the case of a shipwreck. The latter goal was unsuccessful; in April 2015, a series of four shipwrecks happened in one week, resulting in over a thousand deaths. The captain of one of the smuggling boats survived and was immediately arrested. He will stand trial in Italy for reckless homicide.
EU leaders have convened an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis. They pledged, among other things, to step up naval patrols in the Mediterranean, accept refugees legitimately fleeing war or persecution while sending economic migrants back home, and work with African governments to prevent the migrants from leaving Africa at all. Time will tell how useful the new measures will be to resolve the crisis.
Andaman Sea
Refugees crossing the Andaman Sea are usually part of the Rohingya people, a predominantly Islamic ethnic group which lives in the state of Rakhine in western Myanmar and has faced intense oppression. The origins of the Rohingya people are a matter of controversy. While some of them are descended from the Muslim minority which has lived in Myanmar for centuries, others are descended from immigrants from what is now Bangladesh – frequent famines in Bangladesh, plus the genocide during the 1971 war between Pakistan and Bangladesh, have provided ample reasons for Bengalis to migrate to Myanmar.
The Myanma government has denied the entire lot of them citizenship on the grounds that they are “Bengalis” (i.e. implying they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh). The leaders of the Rohingya reply, on the contrary, that a lot of them are descended from the historic Muslim community in Myanmar and that it is utterly deplorable for the government to make every last one of them stateless because of the actions of relatively few. At the end of the day, many Rohingya have had more than enough of their oppressive conditions in Myanmar and have resorted to paying smugglers to sail them elsewhere. Their intended destination is usually Malaysia, which as a Muslim-majority country, is a place where the Rohingya feel they will be better treated. The UN estimates that some 8,000 people attempt this journey every month.
Unfortunately for the refugees, the smugglers often do not completed the journey, and destination countries have been reluctant to accept them. Due to a recent crackdown on human smugglers by the Thai government, some smugglers have taken lifeboats and sailed off on their own to escape capture whenever they spotted the Thai Navy, leaving the migrants stranded on their boats with dwindling supplies. Migrants who survived the journey reported some appalling conditions: some had been beaten by smugglers, and others had starved to death on the way and had their bodies unceremoniously flung overboard. Dehydration, malnutrition, disease, and psychological trauma were all commonly reported.
Until recently, the Thai, Malaysian, and Indonesian navies largely ignored the stranded migrants. As conditions became direr, on May 20 Malaysia and Indonesia pledged to take action to save the survivors, accepting the Rohingya as refugees but repatriating any economic migrants who still had a country to go back to, and cracking down on human smuggling in the region. So far, Thailand’s military regime has remained reluctant to accept any refugees. After weeks of denying responsibility for the crisis, the Myanma government agreed to attend a conference in Bangkok with the Thais, Malaysians, and Indonesians. As of press time, nothing has been agreed to yet.
Responses
So how should irregular migrants be treated? Virtually everyone agrees that those who are drowning or stranded in the water should be rescued and provided with food, water, and health care in the short term. But after that? Many countries say they cannot afford to take a large number of immigrants. Particularly controversial are the economic migrants not facing persecution or war in their home country – why should they have the right to stay, when they essentially cut to the front of the line instead of applying to immigrate the “proper” way?
Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, has a no tolerance policy – irregular migrants caught trying to reach Australia shall be denied access, regardless of whether they have a legitimate refugee claim. While it has managed to prevent migrants from arriving by sea, critics charge him with failing to help legitimate refugees and lumping everyone together as illegal immigrants.
The other extreme—simply allowing anyone who wishes to enter the country to enter—is usually not considered workable.
The American policy on Cuban migrants is essentially a compromise between the two sides – if you can make it to shore without getting caught by the U.S. Coast Guard, you’re allowed to stay, regardless of what reason you’re trying to enter the USA for. If not, that’s back to Cuba for you. This prevents the bulk of the migrants from coming, but still leaves the door open.
There are no easy solutions. Ultimately, the only way the crisis is going to be resolved is for the source countries of the migrants to become less crappy.
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