There are two ways to tackle serious social problems: evading them by linguistic trickery, or confronting them openly and honestly. One is easy, though it merely postpones the day of reckoning. The other is difficult, but it alone holds out the promise of a solution.
Europe has a problem of illegal mass immigration, much of it in the guise of unfounded asylum claims. Europe can either address it directly, or just legalise and relabel it. The new Demos/openDemocracy report on migration, People Flow, embraces wholeheartedly the easy, evasive, relabelling route. Mass migration from the developing world to Europe cannot be stopped, it argues, so it should be taken out of the hands of the illegal people-trafficking industry, legalised and facilitated, in order to “harness the positive effects of people movement.” The report seeks to “replace the illusion of control with the concept of flow management.”
From this premise, the report makes many vaguely sensible suggestions for legalising and promoting mass migration. Its proposals imply the “free movement of migrants in and out of Europe”. This, of course, is an open door policy implying mass immigration without limits – a process that would enormously increase mass immigration to Europe from the poor countries of the world, and transform Europe beyond recognition.
