Vatican, Vatican City - Border migrant controls inadequate, says Jesuit priest Increasing subsidies to European Union (EU) border control Frontex in order to achieve tighter control is not the solution to the problems caused by forced migrants from areas and situations of conflict, said Fr Camillo Ripamonti. Fr Ripamonti is the president of the Astalli Centre, which coordinates Jesuit immigrant initiatives in Italy. He told Vatican Radio that it was a mistake to hand the issue over to an international border control agency after the closure of the Mare Nostrum refugee mission, the aim of which was to save forced migrants from traffickers and protect human lives. Controlling borders and making Europe into a fortress would serve no purpose and would not stem the flow of people arriving or trying to arrive in Europe. This was a new situation, he added, because there had never been conflicts of this magnitude so close to Europe. The migration issue needed to be taken in hand by Europe as a whole, making Europe a welcoming continent that would take on these problems and try to solve them jointly with common policies. Fr Ripamonti urged people to think deeply about the difficult question of humanitarian bridges and how to build them in order to allow people to travel in safety. The Dublin Convention, which prevents people who have arrived in one country from moving around inside the EU, should be re-drafted to guarantee a certain freedom of movement to asylum-seekers and refugees, he said. This freedom should also be based on peoples need to move around the EU and travel to countries in which communities of people of the same origins had already taken root and were therefore viable.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 13:03:00 +0000
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