A german rescue ship last week forced its way into the port of lampedusa leading to the prompt arrest of the captain migrants seeking entry to the us also face dangers including cramped and unhygienic conditions in Holding Camps along the southern border with mexico trapped refugees rescue forbidden thats our title this week on quadriga and here are our guests ana Maria Alvarez from costa rica is a refugee activist and founder of the migration hub she says we dont combat irregular migrants by letting them die while crossing borders we do it by offering safe and regulated top ways and fair migratory policies both for the country and for those migrating. Works at the home both university and shes an expert on migration issues she says humanitarian rhetoric alone doesnt make humanitarian policy. U. S. And e. U. Migration policies are more similar than we may think. And its a pleasure to welcome other laming after the program he works for the daily newspaper to target spiegel and he says we will only achieve a humane european refugee policy if citizens sent europe has had to tighten its borders in order to prevent right wing populist from gaining the upper hand so let me start out by asking you about the numbers that were seeing as i mentioned this is in fact the biggest wave of refugees worldwide on record since the 2nd world war why is that must we expect this trend in fact to continue rising its indeed the case that the refugee influx to europe has been unprecedented since world war 2 but the reasons are very diverse we see people fleeing from war but also people searching for opportunities in europe so. Theres on the one hand the intensification of war and conflict in the middle east and hardships in south america that lead to large movements of people but theres also economic developments in africa that lead to an increase in the number of migrants arriving from there and also crossing the mediterranean through libya. Those who advocate tighter borders often see refugees as people who are making an economic choice basically looking for a better life those who advocate doing more to open borders to receive them typically see refugees as victims for example of conflict environmental disaster and so on weve just heard its a lot more complicated than that what does that mean for policy well actually just sort of correctly right i mean we have to make of this was a refugee who is an Asylum Seeker and was actually looking for a canonical opportunity is right so we have to distinguish that in the 1st place and yes of course especially when when when when we talk about whats happening in the mediterranean and people fleeing out especially from leave you know these days i mean just i guess was just to right the strike happened and killed 4040 people in a migrant camp in libya so so of course its just right so what it means for policy means that many countries have signed up and has committed to this Global Compact recently which is basically to safeguard and try to try to prevent people from dying from the c. M. Actually creating more safe pathways for my us to come all of us lead countries like australia and United States were to want schools whose sign up is a Global Company for example a a solution of course not but its a commitment from this companies to strengthen and actually basically to take care of the pathways of migrants and when theyre migrating both as you pointed out with your Opening Statement time migrant sentiment essentially zina phobia often has become a driving force for right wing populism in europe but if you look at this distance statistics rich europe has taken in only 16 percent of the total number of people who are fleeing its actually poor african and middle Eastern Countries that have taken in the vast bulk of migrants worldwide is that fair. It might not be fair i know and i mean youre completely correct i mean the syrian. Migrants from syria they basically are in turkey in jordan and in the book i think 6 millions of us have millions of them on these 3 countries combined so if you compared to these 3 countries europe as a bloc has not taken in a lot but there is a buck to it but it is you have to reconcile the humanitarian imperative to help those people with the acceptance of the local people and it seems to be lacking huge part of acceptance of as you mentioned in the no question the 1st part of the question and. You get this as a consequence of this the rise of a lot of basically right wing populism in europe that the that is the consequence of a noble open border policy so its not a question of fairness its a question of how many could be reconciled with the societies and the states in europe so then as you implied in your Opening Statement there is a lot of humanitarians rhetoric in europe but you are essentially saying that the practice is Something Else the fact is there is a strong body of migration law in place we have rules and systems and processes for how to deal with the flow of migrants but obviously that system is broken or we wouldnt be having this conversation yes so the body of law does not reflect the political reality and this is something that i want to come back to which is making the connection between the influx of refugees and right wing populism is not that clear right the countries that are most opposed to it in europe namely poland and hungary theres a those of the countries that have the least influx of refugees in europe right so they they. Base there and refugee rhetoric on sort of a threat perception around refugees right and this is this is the thing that we have to tackle i dont think people are opposed to the humanitarian idea of taking in refugees i think what they are afraid of is the unregulated uncontrolled way that refugees are entering so by saying that we should not save people from the mediterranean because that will fuel right wing support i dont think is the real narrative the narrative is to bring people over to europe safely and have them vetted have them background checked and be humanitarian also in the size of migrants that we want to bring in not just saying we just shut it off in order to you know drain the right wing rhetoric thats not what we should do i think this is also not. The solution to this pressure because it is based on a threat perception rather than on reality in my opinion i want to come back to you mother i know you wanted to respond to that but lets just take a brief look at the situation in the mediterranean mediterranean and particularly a look at just how dysfunctional the practice there has become it was illustrated in the past few weeks when we saw a crisis that essentially pitted the captain of a german refugee ship against italys populist leader. Its nice interior minister i must tell you so be me nicknamed capitana the oasis not to his love of the sea but to his strict policy on refugees. She only of the hunt is a real captain german refugee a couple of a creator many consider her a hero she weeks ago she took 53 refugees and pulled the sea washed free and brought them to italy despite being nice and she finally decided on a saturday night to enter the course on a small italian island of lampedusa. We declared a state of necessity because of the psychological situation and this from an attorney condition has been worsening so much that i cannot guarantee the safety of the rescue people. The captain was under arrest for several days for entering the force here legally because she watched recurring ticks with the Border Patrol but. Knew things she should spend years behind bars. First there were no says it was a criminal who were like. This couple of a case to appear right over a criminal. So martha whos right. The captain ms wreckage or or 70 the captain is right i mean you have to save lifes point theres no discussion about it and theres no but to it theres nothing else thats a humanitarian improves if you kind of let people die who are neat so theres nothing to add for it. Having said that. There is the dilemma we are facing the dilemma is you dont want to encourage people to go on a on a on an adventurous trip that might kill you so by saving lives youre sometimes just sending messages to 2 people who are coming so this is the dilemma you cannot escape just easily and saying i want to blend out the consequences of it you have to save life that there is no but it but there is something that your courage in people to go on this i want to take that point to the other guest in just a minute let me just ask you one other thing that goes back to your Opening Statement and the idea that we may have to tighten borders in order to prevent right wing populous from gaining the upper hand in fact actions like south vietnamese tightening the borders of italy in many ways feed to the kind of xena phobia that celine just described rather than actually reducing it. Its hard to say what is 1st of all the 2nd and what is the consequence of what i mean its really seems to be an example that i mean the legal north where shes the party chief of he is again the legal note is up in the polls i think is now a support rate of 35 percent italians this is terrifying even even salvini is making all these speeches maybe hes fueling it but maybe hes just reflecting a sentiment that isnt it really in italy as you mentioned in the 1st place was one of the countries that most refugees came in from the mediterranean and they had a huge influx of immigrants so this is a very very complicated. Connection between what causes what there is clearly xenophobic sentiments inviting populism the test be fight you have to fight these eggs in a 4 big antiforeigner sentiments on the other hand you have to reflect. That there is no consensus in the societies in europe about how many migrants could be could be coming from tree so let me come back to this question of incentives and disincentives because that in fact was in your Opening Statement im very that you said we wont combat illegal migration by letting people die at the borders is that in fact what you think so vini is doing trying to disincentive on people to come and clearly you dont think it works in that case of migration of course. I dont i dont think anybodys illegal but absolutely i mean what we should not fall into again this and they have a particular agenda and they have been using i mean the United States calling in. And countries where they dont have that many refugees are coming its an agenda and we need to find a way how we how can we deal with the Civil Society and tell them not to fall into these agenda which is. The success and basically what we should be working on and what we should be doing is to kind of bring by the dignity to migrants which weve been using in the past 3 years for political agendas so so of course hes not right and i am so so the problem here is that the more with falling under discussion whether the watch did the right thing or not of course it is theres no point out of this right i mean but the process that is going to continue out of fear i dont think that he is going to stop there because i mean theyre going to continue coming and whos going to be out there whos going to respect. Their personal liability and then and there are any stations to go and continue rescuing for in sample there is a boat a german boat called un to who was just released actually i think this week after 2 years of being kept by the Italian Government so they couldnt go out to operate in the winter my that theyre running sea for 2 years and if we would be supporting somebody should be decertified stations were actually doing the most of these said and act of humanity so let me just. Announced one thing i mean if you look its not just italy from finland to greece from the netherlands to denmark to fronts all these countries there have been a backlash after 2050 backers from from governments saying they took over the the rhetoric of wiping populism we need to secure our borders we need stricter policies and so on and so on because the pressure from all the societies were just growing on these governments so they do you have any sympathy for italys position hasnt the e. U. In many ways let italy bear the brunt of the refugee crisis at least in the mediterranean. I mean theres 2 important points that i that i think are worth making in the states. First is i dont think this is a crisis of refugee numbers this is a crisis of refugee accommodation and refugee policy this is why we experience the backlash after 2015 because the e. U. Hasnt been able to practice real solidarity and provide an infrastructure that helps calm trees stem the influx of migrants i dont think its americans themselves wed have to take a hard look not at securing our borders and making sure few are migrants come we have to take a hard look at European Solidarity and how we will manage refugee influxes in the future because this is not a story that is over now this is going to be something that we will deal with in the future and if we just close our eyes and say ok once if we keep the refugees outside of european borders then our problem is solved this is not the case and the 2nd point i want to make is. This idea of this symbolic discussion about saving refugees from the mediterranean and this is why were incentivizing them this is closing our eyes towards the real issues that drive migration the real push factors its not the push factor or the pull factor if we say if. The real push factors our economic our security our Climate Change our Technological Progress and if we keep having those placeholder debates about a few boat saving lives which is a humanitarian imperative which you have said we stop talking about the real issues and this is what we have to fight we have to push these these place a lot of debates away and Start Talking about the real push and pull factors and this is not what we do with this. See whats debated so essentially is saying that this is very much about the fact that once refugees do arrive in europe or in the United States we are not doing enough as you said to accommodate them to integrate them to process their their asylum applications and so it interesting lee enough to that actually was a point that was made by soviet in relation to the sophia missions sophia is a Naval Mission of the e. U. I think an operation since 2015 the idea was to try to stop human smuggling in the mediterranean particularly coming out of libya but elsewhere as well so has complained that the mission has turned into essentially a refugee rescue mission in which the refugees are then simply deposited on italian territory rather than being distributed across the e. U. In accordance with existing e. U. Law does he have a point. I think a few rescued 44000 people on the mediterranean and as i said the humanitarian imperative is always so strong you say you have to rescue these people on the other hand i already described what i would call the dilemma the more the rule you rescue the more people feel they will be rescued i think there is a percentage there is legal migration if there is i mean there clearly they are all and collecting themselves they all of them at the mobiles and talking about how to come to you or because thats what they want and i dont blame them that they want to come but its just how the system works i mean i would love to have a common european refugee policy i would love to have under the mark of the german chancellor try to have it for 4 years every week every month every day she was saying we need that we need a fair quota system and so on and so on and she couldnt get it because europe is not united in refugee policy so this is yes youre right we need one but we dont have what the discussion about incentives and disincentives has played a very big role in the u. S. Debate as well so lets now turn to the situation on the southern border of the United States and take a look at at the problems there refugees are drowning there as well as here as a recent photo show to a very powerful effect. This image has circulated around the world. And his nearly 2 year old daughter angie for lariam which trying to flee when they drowned in the border. They came from el salvador heading for the United States but like so many others they didnt make it. Home in el salvador. Romero clings to belongings and for terms of her son and granddaughter. And the demons that he came and found the last thing he said to me on saturday. Was moment mama i love you they im only please dont worry were fine we didnt say no so it was his last message he just won the latest and that it. Was even if the father and daughter had crossed the river things wouldnt have been easy for them in america under donald trump Boulder Police and right wing militia hunting down immigrants from not in america like never before. Tens of thousands of them being held in the us prisons and camps men women and children hardly anyone is allowed to study. You wouldnt believe the history. Of people. Which are radical and would take him out of the country middle of the room which never happened before is the American Dream no younger if everyone. Annamaria donald trump has long been talking about a crisis at the southern border and in fact the recent numbers appear to be bearing him out why are we seeing what is truly enormous talk of people coming across that border and what is prompting acts of such desperation as Oscar Ramires trying to swim with his toddler daughter nobody would put their song or their daughter in the water if the land would have be more dangerous and also lets lets not forget that Central America special that the. Triangle has a history with the United States over decades even in the last century but recently. We cannot forget of the by the end of last year we saw. People coming together from the North Triangle because the journey of the road was very dangerous for many of them who are fleeing out ever since 2012 we saw a real peak i mean kriesel of migrants particularly the complainants miners so this is the time that the carbon they organize themselves together because the road is very dangerous especially crossing crossing mexico. Theyre having a lot of deals right now do