The Mediterranean genocide is nothing new , over 25,000 people have drowned when they have tried to cross the sea to reach Europe during the last 20 years. European politicians have known about this problem for centuries, yet it is still ongoing. The reason for this is that they simply want it to be like this: they are stuck between being insanely evil or sacrificially merciful, and then they chose a deadly middle-way instead. That’s why Syrian children die in Mare Nostrum: it’s because of politics.

First of all, why do refugees die in the Mediterranean? It’s because they travel with extremely fragile boats provided by smugglers. These crooks usually demand lots of money – often around 1,000 euros and sometimes even as much as 10,000 euros. So why don’t the refugees fly with airplanes? Well, because they aren’t allowed to. As professor Hans Rosling explains in the video above, an EU directive has made sure that airlines must pay the costs of all immigrants who aren’t refugees and therefore are to be deported. Since no airline wants to take the risk of paying these costs, they simply deny all people from developing countries that don’t have a visa, entrance to their planes. And visas aren’t granted to refugees.

This is why all refugees must enter the EU illegally, on dangerous boat rides across the Mediterranean or inside trucks from Turkey to Greece. It’s illegal because there is no single way for them to enter legally. Still, since refugees must be granted asylum according to UN conventions that European countries have signed as well as EU:s own decisions, many who do enter a EU country will be granted asylum, and then suddenly become a legal immigrant. Pretty messed up system, isn’t it?

This means that there is a very simple way to stop the mass drownings in the Mediterranean: allow refugees to fly. It’s cheaper, safer and easier than being smuggled on boats. Of course, this would most likely mean that many more refugees would be able to arrive to Europe – which is great, because Europe needs to do much more to help refugees. Here’s a chart I made based on information from the World Bank and syrianrefugees.eu on how much money the EU has and how mane refugees we receive, compared with Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Egypt:

As you can see, Jordan receives four times as many Syrian refugees than the EU, but they have less than 0.2% of the money the EU possesses. Whoever claims that Europe lacks capacity to receive refugees either is uninformed or is simply lying.

Yet, we do have our fair share of xenophobic activists in Europe who do claim this and don’t want to welcome immigrants and love them as themselves as the Bible commands (Lev 19:33-34). Some have argued that the best way to stop the mass drownings in the Mediterranean is the “Australian model” – that all who arrive to their border illegally should be put in detention and then be deported, even if they are refugees (this is the policy which the amazing Christian Love Makes a Way campaign fights against).

Now, besides violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says in article 14 that all have a right to apply for asylum, and besides being morally monstrous since both Europe and Australia are much richer than their surrounding developing countries, this would most likely not stop refugees trying to get into Europe as the Australian policy has to a large extent “succeeded with”. The reason for this is that Australia doesn’t have a Syria nearby – most refugees that try to get to Kangaroo Land are political and economic refugees rather than people fleeing from war.

So let refugees fly, that’s the most moral, Biblical and rational thing to do.