That bloggers or lay people who write letters to the editors think that the issue of migration can be solved by stopping traffickers (or NGOs), or that the matter is a question of which fallacious category one falls under (‘economic migrant’ or ‘refugee’), is silly enough. That you have European leaders adopting such logic is utterly depressing if not outright callous.

If there are two fields of grain and the grain in both is harvested and moved to one field, it is obvious some of the birds in the other field will move to the field where most of the grain now is, no matter what scarecrows one puts. There is a law of nature that dictates that this will happen and, hence, that it would be stupid to pretend it will not. Yet many somehow expect that this will not happen with human beings when, to this day, the wealth of the Third World is flowing to our part of the planet.

When European leaders meet to discuss the issue, they normally discuss trafficking and/or who is to share the ‘burden’ (another callous word) without asking the very basic yet fundamental question: why are these people seeking the services of traffickers? The only political leader in Europe who addresses the question, the Pope, is never invited to such summits. If Jeremy Corbyn is hopefully elected in the UK, the leaders who ask the basic question will be two. Maybe this will set the ball rolling.