'Elite' EU border guards sent to Europe's crisis spots are powerless to stop migrants
They are an elite cadre of EU immigration guards sent to police border hotspots with hi-tech surveillance equipment. But officers in the multi-million pound Rapid Border Intervention Team are in fact powerless to turn migrants away or send them back to their home countries, a report reveals today.
The team was sent to Greece in November to help control the surge of migrants heading for continental Europe through the Turkish border – including many heading for the UK.
Members of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee visited the border to see the 175-strong RABIT team there in action. Their report said: ‘They cannot act to intercept migrants until they have already crossed the border into Greece, and they cannot send them back.’
Officers are unable to stop migrants before the border as they operate from within the EU, on the Greek side.
The team, part of EU border agency Frontex, lacks the powers to send immigrants back unless they can prove where they came from. But many destroy their documents, making it impossible to establish their home country.
The committee’s report said: ‘The Frontex operation is not performing a significantly different role from that played by the Greek authorities, other than providing increased personnel and provision of technical assistance in the form of cameras, helicopters and so forth.’ The cost of the RABIT team was put at £4.15million by the time it left Greece in March.
Eurosceptic Tory MP Douglas Carswell described the situation as ‘absurd’, adding: ‘Despite the cost of Frontex and its fancy insignia and uniforms all they are doing is apprehending people who have entered the EU illegally and then not removing them.’
Around half of all illegal migrants trying to enter the EU do so along the 124-mile land border between Turkey and Greece. At the end of 2010, around 350 migrants were trying to cross it every day, around one in three heading for the UK.
The MPs’ report said it was the ‘main loophole’ for immigrants trying to get into Europe. It said border controls in Turkey needed to be strengthened before it is allowed to join the EU.
Turkish accession to the EU is supported by both Labour and the Coalition Government but has been stalled by opposition from other countries, such as France.
Estimates of the number of migrants likely to come to Europe from Turkey if it joined range between half a million and 4.4million.
Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz said: ‘The UK Government and its EU partners must do everything they can to assist Turkey in tightening its border controls.’
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
1. Statement before the House subcommittee on immigration on the HALT Act (Testimony)
2. The U.S. Needs a Way to “Score” Immigration Bills (Blog)
3. Three Bright Spots in an Otherwise Dull Senate Hearing (Blog)
4. All College Student (F-1) Visa Fraud Comes in Three Parts (Blog)
5. The Grassroot Latino Concern About Immigration (Blog)
6. Case History: DHS, In Effect, Grants 2.5 Citizenships to One Illegal Alien (Blog)
Background
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
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