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Comment by icebraining | Hacker News Reader

I wish I understood why there isn't a move to reinstate border checks in the Schengen area.

But there is a move. In fact, multiple countries have done so, although temporarily: https://euobserver.com/migration/130260

Thing is, border control isn't free; it may not be visible for many of us, but there are a lot of people reliant on the openness of our borders for their daily lives. Imagine having to pass a border check on your way to work - that'd be the reality for many EU citizens nowadays if you were to reintroduce country borders.

And would it really solve the problem? What if those migrants just came by boat anyway? What are we going to do, let'em drown?

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I have nothing.

I sometimes miss having more black-and-white opinions. Real life is hard.

> What if those migrants just came by boat anyway? What are we going to do, let'em drown?

What's wrong with rescuing them and then shipping them back to the coast they sailed off from? If they're on international waters, there are no legal obligations to treat them as asylum seekers.

Is it practical? As far as I know, unless they're citizens, the countries of such coasts aren't obligated to accept them. And it's often not clear where they're actually from. Plus, what if they're from a war zone?

In the case I have in mind (people trying to get from Lybia to Italy), there's no country to speak of in Lybia currently. Even if there were and it wouldn't agree to the EU ship entering their waters, you can always get very near to the water border, inflate another raft for the people and board them on it. They'd have to sail to Lybia by themselves.

The bigger picture is that these situations would very quickly stop happening if the word spread that it's not longer viable as a way to get into the EU.

I wonder if returning them to Libya is actually better than letting them drown.

How will you tell where to ship them if they've discarded their passports?

Ship them to the shore they came from, not their home country. The whole operation could take a couple hours, not weeks/months/years of paper-pushing.

How do you find out where they came from? And is it at all plausible to survey enough of the sea to catch even half of refugees coming in by boat?

Letting them drown is exactly what my (Australian) government did, disgustingly...

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