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 u. S. Also face dangers including cramped and unhygienic conditions in Holding Camps along the southern border with mexico trapped refugees rescued 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 figure migratory policies both for the country and for those migrating. Works at the university and shes an expert on migration issues she says humanitarian rhetoric go 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 back to the program he works for the daily newspaper their target should be go and he says we will only achieve a humane european refugee policy if you citizens that europe has had to tighten its borders in order to prevent right wing populists 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 and 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 Development in africa that leads 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 a distinction between was a refugium who is an Asylum Seeker and whos 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 a so so of course its just right so what he 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 who sign up is the Global Compact for example e 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 easy to phobia often has become a driving force for right wing populism in europe but if you look at this just to stick to sticks 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 and i mean youre completely correct i mean the syrian. Migrants from syria they basically are in turkey in jordan and in the 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 looking huge part of acceptance of as you mention in your question the 1st part of your question and. Youve witnessed as a consequence of this the rise of a lot of basically right wing populism in europe that the that is the consequence of the 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 and europe so then as you implied in your Opening Statement there is a lot of humanitarian rhetoric in europe but you were 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. They sit there and tie 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 must i know you wanted to respond to them but lets just take a brief look at the situation in the medicare 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 lees interior minister motto your salary me pick name capitano he owes this not to his love of the sea but to his strict policy on refugees. She only other hand is a real captain german refugee camp cape town many consider her here right here weeks ago she took 53 refugees and pulled the sea watch 3 and brought them to italy despite being nice and she finally decided on the saturday night to enter the ports on the small italian island of lampedusa. Redeclare to state of necessity because the psychological situation and the humanitarian condition has been worsening so much that i cannot guarantee you the safety off the rescue people. The captain was under arrest for several days for entering the force illegally because she watched 3 going to it with the Border Patrol but being the things she should spend years behind bars. First there were no he says it was a criminal who were like. This couple of a creator appear right or criminal. So martha was right and the captain mr brackett are 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 and pro to if you cannot let people who are neat so theres nothing to add for it. Having said that. There is a dilemma we are facing the dilemma is you dont want to encourage people to go on a on the main on an adventurous trip that might kill you. So by saving lives to go sometimes just sending messages to 2 people who are coming so theres the dilemma you cannot escape just easily and saying i want to blend out the consequences of it you have to save life if there is no but to it but there is something that youre coaching people to go on this i want to take that point to the other guests 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 salvia endings 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 what what is 1st and what a 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 although 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 really in italy as you mentioned 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 no fall back sentiments inviting populism that has the fight you have to fight these xina for big antiforeign and sentiments on the other hand you have to reflect. That there is no consensus in the societies in europe about home and the migrants could be could be coming from tree so let me come back now to this question of incentives and disincentives because that in fact was in your Opening Statement on the marriott 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 migration of course. I dont i dont think anybodys illegal but absolutely i mean what we should not fall into a dentist and they have a particular agenda and they have been using i mean the United States calling in telling us well and and countries where they dont have that many refugees or are migrants coming its an agenda and we 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 fact that migrants exist 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 uganda who was just released actually i think this week after 2 years of being kept by Italian Government so they couldnt go out to operating them in the Mediterranean Sea for 2 years and we would be supporting somebody should be decertified stations were actually doing the most of these and act of humanity so let me just. Announce something 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 2015 backers from from governments saying they took over the the rhetoric of the populace we need to secure our borders we need stricter policies and so on zone 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 this debate. 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 countries stem the influx of migrants i dont think its a lag and some selves wed have to take a hard look not at securing our borders and making sure few are migrants calm 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 save people 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 both saving lives which is a humanitarian imperative which youve 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 really enough 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. Already described what i would call the dilemma the more the you rescue the more people feel they will be rescued i think there is a present there is even i think if there is i mean there clearly they are all and connecting themself they all of them at the mobiles and talking about how to come to europe 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 the mark of the german chancellor try to have it for 4 years every week every month every day through 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 all the discussion about incentives and disincentives has played a very big role in the us 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 government and his nearly 2 year old daughter leiria 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 because mother brother said romero as clings to belongings and photos of her son and granddaughter. And her demands that. The last thing he said to me on saturday. Was moment mama i love you say im a moment please dont worry were fine we didnt say no so it was his last message just one of the ladies that in fact it. Was even if the father and daughter had crossed the road things wouldnt have been easy for them in america under donald trump Boulder Police and right wing militia hunting down immigrants from latin america like never before tens of thousands of them being held in u. S. Prisons and camps men women and children hardly anyone is allowed to stay. You wouldnt believe over these people. These are people. Youre animals and were taking them out of the coaching at a level of the ring thats never happened before. Is the American Dream no longer for 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 an enormous tide of people coming across that border and what is prompting act of such desperation as also to rob me of us trying to swim with his toddler daughter nobody would put their sauna 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 could i forget of the by the end of last year we saw this kind of 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 and then complain of miners so this is the time to