I just did the math. The traffickers generally charge around $2,000, a phenomenal sum for people from southern Africa. Then they cram them onto boats and rafts and send them off. Without food, life jackets, water or sufficient fuel, nor a compass nor anybody who knows how to run a boat. Under the broiling sun, no shade, crammed so tight they cannot move, the women and children locked in the diesel-fume -filled hold, the first to drown if a rogue wave hits, or if the boat leaks.
Europe, but especially poor Italy, tries to save them now. To pluck them from the sea alive.
The pregnant women are airlifted to hospitals. The traumatized are given psychological support. The wounded are treated. Then they get to land and large numbers of volunteers and the non-profits they run greet them, house, them, feed and clothe them, do their laundry, teach them Italian, teach them skills like driving a truck, tailoring, hospitality work. Most of this happens in Palermo, where the asylum seekers usually end up, near their townspeople who also found it too difficult to make their way to more prosperous northern lands like Norway, Germany and France, where many of them who did make were turned back to their port of entry, Sicily, due to the law called the Amsterdam law written to push them back. All of the above, the medical care, the rescues, the diving for corpses, the identification of corpses, the burial plots, the coffins, the flowers for the caskets, the transportation to Sicilian towns who find room to bury them, the stuffed animals for the kids, the blankets and towels, the hot showers aboard the rescue ships, even the volunteer operations on sea and on land, all cost money. All drain poor Sicily. But the people there can be proud of themselves, proud of their loving actions toward people who have it worse than they do. Brava,Sicilia.
Meanwhile the Islamist terrorists and bands of criminals profit mightily from this suffering.
Europe, but especially poor Italy, tries to save them now. To pluck them from the sea alive.
The pregnant women are airlifted to hospitals. The traumatized are given psychological support. The wounded are treated. Then they get to land and large numbers of volunteers and the non-profits they run greet them, house, them, feed and clothe them, do their laundry, teach them Italian, teach them skills like driving a truck, tailoring, hospitality work. Most of this happens in Palermo, where the asylum seekers usually end up, near their townspeople who also found it too difficult to make their way to more prosperous northern lands like Norway, Germany and France, where many of them who did make were turned back to their port of entry, Sicily, due to the law called the Amsterdam law written to push them back. All of the above, the medical care, the rescues, the diving for corpses, the identification of corpses, the burial plots, the coffins, the flowers for the caskets, the transportation to Sicilian towns who find room to bury them, the stuffed animals for the kids, the blankets and towels, the hot showers aboard the rescue ships, even the volunteer operations on sea and on land, all cost money. All drain poor Sicily. But the people there can be proud of themselves, proud of their loving actions toward people who have it worse than they do. Brava,Sicilia.
Meanwhile the Islamist terrorists and bands of criminals profit mightily from this suffering.