@cicerone imposter,
cicerone imposter wrote: A statement of irony. So, what would you have them do? Not escape the violence of their own country? Their attempts to escape violence and death in their own country is a natural aspect of trying to live. What would you have them do? If I were to be in their shoes, I'd probably attempt the same thing they are regardless of the unknown dangers of that trip. A perfect Catch 22.
I think you misunderstand me as criticizing them or putting them down in some way with what I am explaining.
This is also not something that is limited to transnational migrants. People can be sent from one area to another within the same national country by various kinds of threats to their families, including even something as basic as the threat of home eviction.
My point is we have to stop focusing on migrants in their own right and look at how they are being used by others. Ultimately, everyone should be free to migrate and live and participate in the economy/society wherever they can responsibly go; but that freedom/liberty is being ruined by gang members and other organized criminals that are connected through global networks to use people as slaves for migratory jobs that make them vulnerable in various ways.
Part of me says that totally legalizing migration would take some power away from the criminals who exploit migration as a means of perpetrating trafficking crimes, but unless all the crimes that are served by trafficking are legalized, such as prostitution and recreational drugs, then there will still be a motive to harvesting poor people in poor areas of the world and sending them to rich areas where there is big money to be made selling their bodies for sex and as drug containers.
Now, if this leads you to think that legalization of these crimes is the answer, then you have to ask yourself whether the fundamental exploitation of things like recreational drugs and prostitution go away when they are legalized? The answer is no. Drugs are addictive so people can be controlled by addicting them to the drugs and then getting them to commit crimes or take other risks in exchange for supplying their habit.
Likewise with prostitution, until people are voluntarily willing to perform all the sex acts that any paying customer wants free of charge and other 'strings,' there will be a market for prostitution - and the women, men, and children who give into it will often do so because of economic pressures they face from making other choices; or maybe even just because they are too greedy or lazy to settle for harder work that pays less. Whatever the case, these abuses of humans are not going to go away if they are legalized or if borders are abolished, so the issue is what to do about them and whether borders are a useful tool that is worth all the harm and human tragedy they cause otherwise.
In short, can criminals/gangs be discouraged from abusing and exploiting poor people as migrant traffickers if the borders are strengthened enough that they lose hope in trafficking whatever they are trafficking? If so, there could eventually be hope for a world where all people are free to migrate of their own volition, but for that world to exist, organized crime and abuse has to be stopped first, because otherwise they will just always see opportunity in abusing people to make money trafficking contraband between otherwise-separated economies.
