The bitter fruit of failure on refugees

THE body of a small boy lying dead on tideline of a Turkish beach has become the powerful new image of European failure. Failure to take a united stand against Islamist barbarism, failure to abandon a disastrous policy of multiculturalism and failure to reverse its liberal immigration policies.

The photograph was used by The Independent newspaper in the UK on its front page with the editorial justification that, “It is all too easy to forget the reality of the desperate situation facing many refugees”. This is one of the Left’s empty catchcries and does nothing to address the fundamental causes of the tragedy. The reality is that there will be many more corpses washed up on beaches around the Mediterranean or found rotting in abandoned trucks beside the motorways unless Europe takes tough action to halt the flow of refugees at the source. That can only occur when the global Muslim community examines the doctrinal root causes of Islamist terror and starts defending its own from barbarous co-religionists and when European nations withdraw the pull factors that make them such attractive destinations. Europe has to remove the sugar from the table. That was the gist of the lesson former Indonesian president Bambang Yudhoyono tried to give former prime minister Kevin Rudd — but it went unheeded. Under Rudd and then prime minister Gillard, the disastrous LaborGreen immigration policy saw around 50,000 asylum seekers reach Australia by boat at a cost to taxpayers of more than $10 billion — and more than 1100 lives lost at sea. When the Abbott government and Immigration Minister Scott Morrison tackled the problem and removed the sugar, the immediate problem of people-smuggling to Australia, drownings at sea and an uncontrolled immigration budget blow-outs disappeared. The sugar the Europeans have carelessly left on their table has lured more than 2600 people to their deaths as they’ve tried to cross the Mediterranean into Europe this year alone and more than 350,000 people have landed seeking either sanctuary or just a better life. The obvious solutions to this unfolding catastrophe are an anathema to the Left. Only now are European governments realising that any humanitarian solution must begin in the migrants’ countries of origin. Well-publicised taxpayer-funded Mediterranean cruises aboard rescue vessels, such as the trip Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young took earlier this year, only encourage more people-smuggling enterprises, more economic migrants, greater disruption to organised refugee resettlement programs and inevitably, more deaths at sea. Across the length and breadth of Europe there is now a growing realisation that the soft-Left embrace of multiculturalism has been an abject disaster. In Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, the UK, Spain, Italy and beyond, there has been a significant failure of Islamic migrants to assimilate into the local resident population. Western liberal democracies which welcomed refugees now find they are harbouring cancerous colonies of malcontents. Germany finds itself under duress with more than 700,000 migrants expected to seek refuge in its cities this year. Hungarian police have blocked refugees from boarding trains to Germany at Budapest’s central station and construction is continuing on a 170km razor-wire fence to seal its border with Serbia. European television is dominated by scenes of angry refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and North Africa who are fighting to get to Germany or the UK, where the sugar remains on the table. Tough new laws are being implemented to reduce benefits in countries that once rolled out the red carpet for new arrivals. Among the latest to take a tougher approach is the Netherlands, which has just announced it will stop providing food and shelter to failed asylum-seekers. They should have known better. Around the Middle East countries there are ghettos where nationals from other nations have settled and refused to assimilate. The generations of Palestinians who maintain they are still refugees should have been an object lesson for the West. It is impossible not to be sympathetic to those risking all for a safe life but the international community should be ensuring that the safety refugees seek should be available in their home country. Trying to meet the needs of refugees already adrift — and too often foundering — will only encourage more risk-takers when greater effort should be placed on international action to provide regional stability. As hard as it may be for a parent to be firm with a child, an adult knows when firmness is necessary. The problem with the Left, here and in Europe, is that it lacks the maturity necessary to make adult decisions as simple as taking the sugar off the table.