Little kids are still dying while their families try to move as refugees or asylum seekers; nothing about this is humane.
Little kids are still dying while their families try to move as refugees or asylum seekers; nothing about this is humane.
O ne of the most famous modern photographs is of a dead two-year-old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi taken by a Turkish photographer of the Dogan News Agency in 2015. Kurdi’s family was fleeing the civil war in Syria and hoping to make it to Europe and then to British Columbia to be joined by family there. The image of Kurdi still has the potential to shock. The red shirt and sneakers he wore are so evocative of boyhood, they would have been picked by an artist trying to depict “boy” as an abstraction. The image was put on magazine and newspaper covers around the world. It was turned into a huge mural that appeared next to the European Central Bank. Kurdi’s mother gave a speech to U.K. viewers of Channel 4, as an alternative to the Queen’s Christmas message.
For a brief moment in time, the emotions the photograph elicited from the world had the effect of concentrating authorities on the refugee flows out of Syria. Kurdi was one of more than 3,600 people who died in the eastern Mediterranean that year. Eventually, Europe struck a deal with Turkey that stopped the bulk of the criminal gangs operating between the Turkish and Greek coasts. Four people smugglers were arrested in connection with the illegal journey. But the problem in Europe shifted westward to the waters between Libya and Italy, where it remains. In recent weeks, Europe has been getting a surge of migrants that is overwhelming the island of Lampedusa off the coast of Italy. Six thousand Italians live there; 7,000 migrants have arrived there in a two-day period.
Young boys are still dying while their families try to move as refugees or asylum claimants. In the United States, the migrant surge is concentrated on Eagle Pass, Texas. A three-year-old boy died this week as his family tried to cross the Rio Grande with the large wave of asylum seekers.
Not every tragedy can be addressed by policy, nor can every tragedy be attributed to policy. I remember arguments about Alan Kurdi and whether stiffer American intervention would have saved him, or simply created drowned Alawite boys.
But I find it hard not to blame the death of that three-year-old boy in the Rio Grande on the White House. Even this last week, the administration continues to send out contradictory messages. On the one hand, there will be stepped-up enforcement. But maybe not if you come with children; then, you might get flown to Westchester airport after all. Also, we’re extending an extraordinary and legally stretched “temporary status” to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, effectively inviting the human wave, and announcing a season of opportunity for human traffickers and smugglers.
In the end, it’s very, very simple. Fudging, stretching, or abusing legal definitions, even with the highest humanitarian motives, often has the perverse effect of plunging more people into criminality, or into a world dominated by criminals. It puts more kids into bodies of water they cannot hope to navigate. This is the malign neglect of the law.
Clear and comprehensible laws, fairly and consistently enforced, will have the effect of calming the waters. It will put people onto the path that fits their circumstances and deny human smugglers their opportunities. Make the immigration system orderly, and you’ve gone a long way toward making it humane.