Harsh realities confront soft intentions

Submitted by Sully (United States), May 31, 2006 at 10:13

Quite naturally almost all of us want to be nice to poor migrants who, after all, merely desire for their children those things we desire for our own. And very few of us indeed want to be the unyielding border guard who turns back the madonna and child into the desert, or the ship captain who turns away a boatload of people.

But there is an unyielding economic logic behind migrations. As long as some boats survive to make it to the promised land and their passengers are not promptly returned to whence they came, more boats will be outfitted and more passengers will hazard their lives. Every boat must be intercepted, and every passenger must be returned to their point of origin. Similarly, in a desert it is all the more important that borders be seen as impenetrable, since the most humane solution is to discourage people from going out into the desert in hopes of penetrating the border in the first place.

That said, there are two sorts of tribes in the world at each point of time. There are those committed to survival, and those resigned to submersion or extinction. We in the U.S. have the luxury of observing from a distance as Europe makes it's decision.

One thing only is certain, a tribe not willing to defend it's right to survive does not deserve to survive.

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