700 die off Italian coast in boat accident.
 

This will not make the international news rooms as these were "worthless migrants".

Thousands are dying every year trying to enter Italy, the island of Lampedusa is being swamped.

From the front page of the NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/wo...=top-news&_r=0

130,000 rescued last year.

The figures are horrific.

MSNBC and CNN have reported this Stateside anyway - but you bring up a salient point - poor immigrants fleeing abject poverty for the hope of a better life taking huge risks and paying hard to get money to folks to set it up and no one has any empathy for them. No real loss probably is what most think. Racism races its ugly head again.

700 die and yes barely a blip on the news. A plane goes down in France and it's 24-7 coverage.

But what is the solution - can't put a fence up in the Mediterranean - but Italy should be put to blame - they should welcome the migrants and put them in humane detention areas and then simply fly or boat them back to their home countries.

Zero tolerance. As of now folks flee in rickety boats with the false idea they will be able to enter the EU and work their way to say France or the UK.

Realy an ugly mess with no easy solution - but imperative that life-saving boats and planes be put on call in case something like this happens and also more surveillance of crafts - yes a terrible tragedy.

Governmental corruption, war and shoddy refugee boat agents are too blame. The boat agents are not interested in the well-being of the passengers as they are money-driven only.

It's a sad situation and will not change in the near future.

I recall reading that former Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi had an agreement with former Libyan strongman Ghadaffi in which Ghadaffi agreed to deter African immigrants from even reaching the Libyan coast. With him overthrown, Libya is in an unruly political state and probably not detering anyone from using their territory.

When will the people on the African continent learn that they should not give their money to shady people smugglers giving them false promises of bringing them illegally into the EU?

If you are fleeing genocide and unrelenting war and violence almost any other option seems a better choice. If most of us were stuck there we would be finding a way to leave too.

Well said nytraveler, it's a no win situation for those people.

Many of those fleeing are leaving a mess created by Britain and America over the past 100 years.

Well.. I saw it on the news here.. so I think at least we can agree it did get a fair amount of coverage( since I live on an island off the west coast of Canada.. not a huge metropolis)..

Very sad.. and I agree life saving boats and patrols should still continue, but perhaps its unfair for everyone to expect Italy to foot all the cost of rescue, then housing , then repatriating thousands of people every year.. Italy is struggling themselves right now aren't they?

Also.. just wondering, do refugees still continue to try and come from Cuba to the States.. or has that slowed down? I know the States does rescue and patrols.. but perhaps the numbers are not the same as the situation where.

Yes folks still come by boat from Cuba to Florida - one reason is that our Congress has said that any Cuban who manages to reach land will automatically be given permission to stay her permanently - no questions asked!

If they are intercepted at sea they are returned to Cuba - still folks die in small rickety boats - Congress should not grant automatic asylum as they do now and that would solve the problem. But now the rewards are too great so many take the risk.

A great many of the people arriving now are fleeing war and terrorism, not poverty. And the very terrorists are heavily involved in the human trafficking, which is a lucrative business for them.

It's almost impossible to separate the people eligible for refugee status from those who are economic immigrants. And it's almost impossible to send them back home, because you don't know where they came from. Do you think they all have passports? I read some years ago that immigrants were advised before getting on the boats to destroy all their documents.

Italy is the only country in Europe that has tried to rescue these people at sea. To hear them blamed for the situation and called "bleeding hearts" and "do-gooders" just underlines how callous the rest of Europe is to the situation. Europe ended support for the Mare Nostrum effort, saying that it was only encouraging the illegal migration. So Mare Nostrum was ended, and what was the result? The people kept coming and the number of deaths in the sea tripled.

I've long thought that the best way to end the illegal migration was to set up centers in north Africa and other regions where a person could apply for legal migrant or refugee status. But that was long ago, and that wouldn't be possible under current conditions. At the moment there's almost nothing that can be done on the sending end, because of the chaotic conditions in Libya and other countries in the pipeline, and also because the traffickers would stop at nothing to protect their turf.

Just a few days ago, an Italian coast guard vessel tried to impound a boat off the Libyan coast (so that it couldn't be used again after its passengers had been rescued). They were fired upon by another boat.

Italy has been arresting the traffickers, which isn't easy, because they pretend to be migrants themselves once they're picked up or reach land. The arrests are causing the new phenomenon of traffickers sending the boat off in the right direction and then heading back to land, leaving the migrants alone on a boat in the middle of the sea. Once they've got their money they don't care what happens. They've even resorted to throwing people overboard to lighten boats.

It's easy to mouth facile solutions. One thing is certain, and that is that most of Europe doesn't give a flying f**k about the fate of these people. I've heard a lot of self-righteous criticism in the past about countries (mostly the UK and the US) that ignored the plight of Jews trying to escape the Holocaust. Well, it's happening again, and who (other than Italy) is stepping forward to address the humanitarian crisis? Millions of people from Syria are now refugees. A similar situation exists in the Horn of Africa, and in Northeastern Nigeria. What's going to be done about it? Those of us who live long enough, or our descendants, will be reading about it in fifty years.

The Anericans turned boatloads of Jews away, but the UK was less callous. Haven't you heard of the Kindertransport

Having just read the above posts, let me ask a question. Don't any of you folks think that maybe some of these poor people might be Christians?

Maybe they are fleeing Africa because they fear for the lives of their families. They flee from the threat of an emerging new society of demented Islamic terrorists who behead and murder those who do not ascribe to their religious view of life as it was over 1000 years ago.

IMHO... It's not just an economic problem that political leaders in Europe will need to solve. It's going to require that our world leaders make some hard political decisions. I fear many of them will be to afraid to address what really needs to be done. It's sad to see a topic like this on Fodors. Foreign travel is supposed to be fun.. Nuff said.

PS... Not high on my bucket list during this decade will be
travel to North Africa and the Middle East.

This is an incredibly complicated question with many hidden agendas and long standing prejudices. Such as under Ghaddifi, Italy was Libya's biggest costumer for oil.

Immigrants have long been a source of cheap labor and a target of demagogues and bigots.

For the person who blamed the US and UK, this is clearly a case of selective amnesia forgetting all those colonial European countries, sometimes with the tacit or outright approval of the Catholic Church or other religious leaders who oppressed, enslaved, or murdered native peoples.

Or internal European politics that have exiled, persecuted, or killed those who were not in the majority. For example The 30 Years War killed 25% of the then German population and it is the rare European country that has not persecuted the Jews.

There is a grand history of history of abuse, neglect, and worse for European countries, if one simply reads their histories.

So all those filled with self-righteous indignation, what have you done to make this situation better?

So all those filled with self-righteous indignation, what have you done to make this situation better?>

As much as you I suspect - nothing.

Why bring persecuted Jews into this - has absolutely zilch to do with it - you could just as well mention Jewish persectuion of indigenous Arabs in Israel and taking Arab lands away for settlements. Totally irrelevant in any case. Just your as usual Zionist zedalousness to bring up anti-Semitism whenever you get the chance.

I find your remarks self-righteous.

I am pretty sure Canada turned away Jewish refugees .. or at least closed doors to accepting them at the time.. very sad.. our country is huge... there was room..

I agree.. very complicated situation.. but it all comes down to people are fleeing, fleeing like we all would try to do in same situation, and they need help.

Socal,

A few days ago on another immigrant boat a fight erupted and 12 of them have been thrown in the sea to drown by the muslim ones because they were christian (the rest of those restisted clinging to one another), this has been the first case of this type happening so far.