The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    What was the matter with Raul?

    By Flavius on Wed, 09/09/2015 - 1:16am |

    One Monday morning he looked exhausted. He had been an economist in Havana now he was starting over as an accountant in San Juan. Avery good one. But today he looked as if he should just go home.

    It was I was told, like this. On Friday afternoon he'd  left the office, for Eastern Airlines to Miami. Where his brother, a local gambler , met him and drove them to Key West.

    Saturday morning they picked up the leaky boat they had obtained somehow and sailed for Cuba.I forget the embarkation spot, not Mariel. En route they took on more and more water.(They were an economist and a gambler. Not sailors) Five miles from the coast the US Coast Guard hailed them. And offered to take them on board before it was too late. "Wait here" Raul ,or his brother said. They went into the port where 30 of their relatives jumped aboard , about 25 more than would have been a normal load if the boat was sea-worthy. Which it wasn't.

    What it was ,was 5 miles worthy.

    They made it to the coast guard.as night fell. And their boat.

    By noon on Sunday they'd gotten ashore on Key West. And by 8pm  Raul's brother had gotten him back to Miami and the last plane to San Juan. Where he was asleep at his desk Monday morning. 

    I've been thinking about Raul as I've watched the news this past week.

    What should a rational refugee policy be?.

    First; stop them from getting on boats.End of story..

    But for those who do that anyway rescue them immediately if they need it.. Civilized human beings don't let other human beings drown. We learned that a long time ago.

    What next ? Provide  the absolute minimum in basic shelter and  life- sustaining conditions . Tents and barracks, dining halls for which they themselves provide the man power.They'd be for all intents and purposes imprisoned in concentration camps. Except with good medical staff. Dr. Mengele need not apply.If illnesses spread from the camps to the surrounding communities there'll be retribution.

    But otherwise their messages back home should say "it's terrible".

     Until they are willing to leave. Then: a golden bridge. Comfortable transportation and  ten thousand dollars-per family : half for the departing refugee family as it gets on the plane and the other half for the host country .

    What not to do?  For starts don't suggest that 800,000 of them can go to Germany. Just an inducement to get on a leaky raft.

    Why not make the concentration camps welcoming? One reason of course  because that would be an inducement to those left behind in the home country. But also the conditions in the camps  shouldn't be better than in the towns outside the wire..They( the refugees) will be hated at best. And if the indigenous people actually envy the refugees that would be a recipe for violence by those outside the wire against those within.

    Got a better idea?

     

     

     

    Comments

    Got a better Idea? No, but I do suggest that a plan to deal with the settlement and care of hundreds of thousands of people driven to refugee status is not the same as a plan to deal with the refugee problem. Nor do I see a humane way to deal with the migrant problem so up front in our current electoral politics, a problem with powerful forces pushing the migrants yet those forces are much more benign than the life or death decisions made by so many war refugees. Maybe we should identify who is causing the wars and bomb them. Has that been tried yet? Might work, might not.

    Today in my in-box is a one day free access to Financial Times. One of the headline articles claims to be an in-depth study of the European refugee crisis. There are many sub-articles. I have only skimmed the headlines at this point. Most appear to be descriptive of how the problem developed. One was suggesting a mandatory allotment of refugees to the different EU countries but I doubt it mandates the nature of their care and feeding.

     I hope the link will works, there may be some or much of interest but I doubt there is a workable plan offered that has any chance of being adopted.

    http://www.ft.com/intl/migration?ftcamp=engage/email/paywall_freeze/dayo...


    by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 09/09/2015 - 9:57am

    .

    Could you elaborate on your second sentence: where you distinguish

     

    No, but I do suggest that a plan to deal with the settlement and care of hundreds of thousands of people driven to refugee status is not the same as a plan to deal with the refugee problem

    I see that one of the "plans" in your link is a subsidy of  6K  euros for each refugee accepted.That sum is about equal to the $5,000 I propose.. There may be some  underpopulated "stan" for which that sort of payment would tilt the scale.

    But what won't work IMHO  is relying on humane impulses  to solve the problem. Rather , I guess  it's only a matter ot time till we  hear of refugee camps attacked by the local population..

     


    by Flavius on Wed, 09/09/2015 - 12:52pm

    What I meant was that that there is a chicken-egg situation in which we know what comes first. Horrible situations [mostly wars] are creating refugees and as ,ong as refugees are being created there will need be ways to deal with them and the dealing with them does not [necessarily] affect the creation of more unless maybe we make their places of hoped for refuge worse than the place they want to escape from. 


    by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 09/09/2015 - 1:40pm