At Politico EU there’s a sort of symposium on African immigration. In it a group of European worthies hold forth with their views on how the countries of Europe can regulate immigration from Africa including foreign aid, overseas development, better border control, and so on. IMO almost all of it is wishful thinking.
They have forgotten what used to be a widely-held foreign policy view. Buffers. It used to be that the countries of North Africa served as buffers against immigration from farther south and that is no longer the case. Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt. Strong governments in those countries regulated immigration from farther south.
Using that line of reasoning the worst thing that ever happened to Italy, Spain, and so on was the overthrow of Qaddaffi. The so-called “Arab Spring” will have repercussions that are likely to endure for decades if not forever.
Before they murdered him, the Europeans were paying Gaddafi to stop the northward migrants, and he was quite successful.
How much would Mexico charge for the same service?
We were in Italy and Spain last summer. Spain, Barcelona at least, seemed to have an orderly public persona. Italy was an effing mess. A complete and total disaster with North Africans causing issues everywhere. Enough for the streets to be populated liberally with automatic weapon toting army types.