Lustig’s Letter: This immoral government

Robert Lustig eviscerates the UK government over it’s stance on immigrants running the gauntlet of the Med to get to Europe, viz:

The immigration minister, James Brokenshire, had the brass neck to stand in the House of Commons and argue, apparently in all seriousness, that the Italian rescue operation in the Mediterranean has had the “unintended consequence” of risking more migrants’ lives as more and more desperate people try to flee to a place of safety.

Someone needs to take him to one side and explain the difference between causation and correlation. Yes, there are more people risking their lives; no, it’s not because some of them are rescued when their rotting vessels sink beneath them.

Mr Brokenshire clearly can’t be expected to have noticed what’s been happening in places like Syria and Libya, from which many of the migrants come. The idea that perhaps the ever-worsening conditions there have caused even more people to risk their lives clearly hasn’t crossed his tiny little mind.

According to the European Border Agency, more than 180,000 people have arrived in Europe by sea so far this year. The population of the EU is 500 million.

In Jordan, there are more than 600,000 registered refugees from Syria alone (the true figure is probably far higher.) The population of Jordan is 6.5 million.

In Lebanon, Syrian refugees now make up well over a quarter of the country’s total population. So do they shoot refugees at the border — to discourage the others? No, they do not.

Mr Cameron and his colleagues have no such scruples. There are too many people fleeing from terror and violence, they say. If we let some of them drown, others who may have been thinking of trying to flee will decide instead to stay at home to be shot, bombed, starved, tortured or raped.