For the millions of people who want or need to move, migration has become progressively more difficult, dangerous and expensive. Legal access to preferred destinations is now an option only for the privileged few. The rest are forced into the arms of those able to help them circumvent ever-increasing controls and deterrents. Migrant smuggling––the business of moving people across borders for profit––is reported to be one of the fastest growing and most lucrative forms of organised criminal activity. It is also very flexible, responding quickly to changes in demand and law enforcement pressures. For example, it was private entrepreneurs, not humanitarian agencies, who really made possible the exodus of millions of Syrians over the past several years.
Recent studies indicate that most irregular migrants use the services of smugglers at some point during their journeys: the potential benefits clearly outweigh considerations of cost and risk. For asylum seekers in particular, smugglers are often vital. This is because the laws of asylum require those seeking protection to be outside their country of origin. Countries that are easy for asylum-seekers to reach are often unable or unwilling to provide them with the protection and support they need. Smugglers offer their clients the chance of recalibrating what are almost always very dismal odds. Refugee advocates understand this very well and have been reluctant to support a war on facilitated irregular migration. James C. Hathaway, a leading scholar of refugee and asylum law, has argued that “human smugglers play a critical role in assisting refugees to reach safety.” Similar views to Hathaway’s might be rarely expressed, but they are not uncommon.
In the face of such obvious injustices it is tempting to lionise those who offer a way out. But such attitudes are naïvely sentimental. We know enough about how smuggling works to understand that this is no modern-day, Schindler-like humanitarian enterprise. It’s a bleak and sordid business driven purely by money, often placing lives and wellbeing at serious risk. As the stakes have risen, accounts of violence, abuse and ill treatment have become more frequent. Each year thousands of smuggled migrants drown trying to get into Europe across the Mediterranean: cast adrift on unseaworthy, sometimes crewless vessels once they have paid dearly for their passage. Similar stories are told of those trying to get into Australia from transit points in Indonesia, and into the United States across its vast and inhospitable Southern border.
