juliet

I'm not sure how immigration law is ever meant to address the state of Africa. Unless you propose block shifting of entire populations, then all a more liberal regime will achieve is the individual escape of the wealthy, or strong, or cunning, or rebellious.

There is nothing more frustrating for me than regularly being told that I am right-wing because I argue a socialist case against liberals. Nonetheless, I shall chance it again;

Immigration as a solution to poverty and instability in Africa is roughly equivalent to grammar schools as a solution to working-class educational underachievement. The successful individuals will probably benefit, the place they are going may benefit, but the place they are leaving will constantly worsen.

It is true, as you have both pointed out, that we send people back to places which are unpleasant. That's because asylum, specifically, is an individualist system. We don't accept, and I think it's impossible to create a system which works if you accept, that there is a collective right to seek asylum from a place which is unpleasant, it is about each individual's risk.

I guess if you could establish planned genocide, there'd be a collective right for people of the relevant race. But of course we can morally condemn Zimbabwe and then send people back there - for starters for there to be human rights abuses in a country, it must contain abusers as well as the abused, and probably many people in neither category.

The only long-term solution is to get solving the problems at their source. You are quite right to agree with Tony Blair about the plight of Africa, but we don't solve that by letting a lucky few get away from it. We solve it partly with money and material aid, and partly with direct intervention.

Unfortunately, the moment you start suggesting that the strong have a duty to intervene and protect the weak at anything other than an intra-country level, people who would support it start shouting dull slogans about neo-imperialism and the evil USA.

So, you end up at a ridiculous situation when, given clear and present evidence of an ongoing genocide in Africa, the most important thing on the Secretary-General of the UN's agenda for the day is arguing about the technical legality of a war which has already happened. No doubt as soon as people notice that Sudan has oil, they'll decide that we shouldn't get involved.