The solution is to fix all the sh*ts they have in developing countries and LDCs. People will not leave their home countries if they are content and able to make a decent living. Assistance for livelihood, job trainings, capacity building, education improvement, those are some things the developed countries (the supposed destinations) can do to prevent overflowing immigration.

It so happens that my thesis was about immigration policy in 'Fortress Europe' and the research I made was quite enlightening. It's not only the the EU are drowned in regulations from Directives to recommendations, but the nationalist sentiment is indeed getting stronger during the last two decades following the fall of the Iron Curtain. Extreme right movements, Le Pen and his merrymen, for instance. Their power, no matter how big or small, remain significant for years to come.

Well it should be obvious immigration isn't the answer.
Those countries have serious problems, and moving some of the people out isn't going to fix them.

And it's not so much that wealth needs to be distributed more evenly either. In many cases it's retarded politics that have trashed the economies or made it unsafe for people to live.

Of course if you try to fix anything the people say it's the West meddling and trying to police the world or exploit people and neo-colonialism and all that.

I suppose there is no solution.

Rusty old boats, overloaded with refugees dressed in rags, floundering about in the waves. A common picture in the news from Europe these days. There is such a huge disparity in wealth between the EU and Africa, that many will risk all to try and sneak in to the first world in order to make a decent life, or at least a life, for themselves and their children. Not all make it of course. Many drown when their boats sink, or die from exposure or dehydration. Many are interned and deported back to their point of origin.

This is not the only place where the division of wealth is so great that people take great risks to cross boundaries. The US / Mexico border is another major example.

It brings the question to mind, what is to be done? How can people be helped, and more specifically how many can be helped? One wants to say, well, all of them. The vast majority of economic refugee had no say in the geopolitical maneuvering, natural disasters, or corrupt government practices that put them in the plight that they are in. They just want a life.

But what are the practicalities? I’m going to skate perilously close to the abyss of political incorrectness, and even the “R” word here, to explore some scenarios.

Muslim minorities number close to ten percent in some European countries today. There have been culture clashes on many fronts. In Holland, a filmmaker was murdered for making a movie critical of Islam. A politician in the same country had her life threatened, and went into hiding, for similar reasons. Oppressive practices toward women, accepted in North Africa, have collided head on with the liberal culture of Western Europe. Would a wholesale transfer of populations, and culture, be successful?

In never ending conflict in central Africa, as many as five million may have died from conflict and also from resulting starvation, in the D.R. Congo and neighboring countries. If President Obama offered some relief by accepting up to one million of the most tragic cases, and resettled them in, let’s say, California or Florida……how would they fare? Some in those countries believe in witchcraft, and that sometimes young children are possessed by demons, and consequently must be (and are) killed. What I am saying is that culture clash would feature highly in this scenario.

And how about those left behind? If immigration laws were relaxed, it is likely that the most educated and competent would find the most successful transition. That would mean a drain of professionals from countries that desperately need them. This is already happening in Africa: many who find training as nurses or paramedicals make straight for Europe.

The broader question is: how much, if any, should established societies change in order to accept newcomers? And how much, if any, should immigrants be expected to change their values and beliefs in order to make the transition to a new life? How much migration should be accepted at all? Unless there is a broader distribution of wealth in the world, one way or another, I think these are questions that will not go away. It’s either migration or ever more elaborate fences.

It would be great to all live as one, in an enlightened world community. But how to get from here to there, with the fewest number of casualties?