A better answer to the migrant crisis

The death toll from the recent capsizing of a boat carrying migrants from Libya across the Mediterranean is now estimated to be at least 920. Last Friday, Labour leader Ed Miliband launched a "stinging attack" on prime minister David Cameron's Libyan policy, reports The Independent.

Miliband claimed that Cameron's hands-off approach after the removal of Colonel Gaddafi had created instability in Libya. The ensuing chaos has led to thousands of north Africans drowning in the Mediterranean as they try to flee the crisis.

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But it's more complex than that we should "be compassionate where possible, tough where necessary". Those with genuine cases for asylum should be processed and granted. However, applications could be assessed within Africa itself, reducing the likelihood of those without a good case going underground and turning up at Calais. Similarly, penalties for illegal economic migration should be higher "only if people understand the consequences of breaking EU law will they cease trying to find work there".

When Singapore cracked down on sham marriages and began deporting illegals immediately, numbers halved in two years. It may seem hard-hearted but "the desperate, miserable flight across the Mediterranean benefits nobody except the traffickers".

The lucrative nature of people smuggling is one reason for its longevity, notes The Economist. The United Nations estimates that the route from Libya to Europe alone is a $170m industry. And even if the situation in Libya were tightened up, new routes would emerge. According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, notes John McDermott in the Financial Times, at least 80% of the people leaving from north Africa have paid smugglers to take them.

And these criminal syndicates have become more professionalised. The EU has vowed to capture and destroy the smugglers' vessels before they can be used, notes The Guardian's Patrick Kingsley. Yet the obvious problem is that smugglers do not maintain a separate, independent harbour of clearly marked vessels: they buy them off fishermen at a few days' notice. So to destroy their potential pool, the EU would need to "raze whole fishing ports".

Is there any better answer? Australia's hardline stance of putting boat people in external detention camps, touted as a possible solution, costs around $2.3bn a year, notes The Economist. A better model would be how the world cooperated to deal with the Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s, where merchant ships were compensated for their rescue efforts and more than one million people were resettled around the world.