Bridging North-South divide key to preventing dangerous boat crossings - Yorkshire Post Letters

It is very difficult to create a calm logical response to acts of violence and crude intimidation.

The anti-immigration demonstrations of the last few days on the South coast of England would certainly answer the description of intimidating, as, of course, they were designed to be, but somehow, an answer needs to be found.

The demonstrators themselves have indicated that they do not believe Home Office figures that indicate a dramatic fall in the number of crossings, so that line of rational discussion is clearly not open.

If one wishes to end immigration from the Global South to the Global North, then the only sure, long-term way is to identify the incentive that persuades so many young people to embark on a long, relatively expensive and highly hazardous journey, with nothing more than the vague promise of a better life at the end of it, and to neutralise that incentive.

Historically, the Global North, and European nations in particular, have sustained economic and political empires over many centuries, often supported by overwhelming military force.

Such physical empires have been replaced over the post-war years by economic empires, where many manufactures have shifted production to countries where wages are significantly lower than in Europe, but still selling their products where wages are relatively higher, and people can afford the prices.

In other words, investors (be they individuals or multinational corporations or banks) have significantly increased their stocks of accumulated wealth by the process of transferring 'Labour-value' from the South to the North.

Many global commodities such as oil and steel, and the other necessities for creating national infrastructure, are priced in global markets, and cost the same wherever they are consumed.

This means that low-wage countries which cannot afford to take large taxation revenues from their workers, are therefore unable to build that infrastructure which is so essential to create what we regard as our essential high standard of living.

The people, especially the young adventurous people, of the South recognise this, and want to share in what they perceive to be the direct fruits of their efforts, and the efforts of their forebears.

If we wish to remove the incentive to travel North, then we must redress the economic imbalance which has developed over the last few centuries, but paradoxically, populist politicians advocate even less in the way of overseas aid and reparation to the poor nations of the world than the measly crumbs which we currently and reluctantly afford.

The facts are simple. The richer the North becomes in comparison to the South, the greater will be the incentive to migrate. The only 'solution' is to eliminate that discrepancy, and allow the nations of the South to enjoy economic development in tandem with ourselves.