When a Belgian court last week sentenced an Albanian gang leader to eight years in prison for smuggling thousands of illegal immigrants into Britain, the judge commented that one conviction was 'like mopping the floor while the tap is running'.
Interpol assesses the traffic in men at an annual US$30 billion. Trafficking people is the most lucrative international commerce after drugs and arms. The US imposed stringent new rules after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, without, apparently, discouraging the flow of migrants, legal and illegal. According to the American Centre for Immigration Studies, there are 8.5 million illegal immigrants in the US. About 500,000 enter the European Union every year.
These statistics prompt the reflection that settler enterprise and acumen would not have created some of today's most dynamic societies, whether Singapore or the US, if legislation had obstructed the 19th century's great movements of humanity. Those settlers were not illegal simply because nations did not then pull up the drawbridge. That phenomenon became most marked only after the universal mantra of globalisation demanded the free traffic across national boundaries of goods and services - everything, in fact, save manpower.
The latest restriction is the 15-member European Union's legislation stipulating eight years in jail for smuggling or hiding illegal migrants. Whether it will curb trading in hope is another matter.
A racketeer disclosed at his trial in China that he charged US$20,000 to smuggle people into Japan and US$45,000 to the US. In Florida, a Chinese Malaysian woman admitted that each client paid between US$50,000 and US$60,000. Kurds pay US$23,000 for safe conduct across the Evros river into Greece. Other rates are quoted for crossing the English Channel, jumping the Rio Grande between Mexico and the US, and for the sea voyage from Cuba to Florida.
The magnitude of the challenge calls for a realistic appraisal based on the realisation that punitive measures alone are no deterrent. As British prime minister Winston Churchill warned in another context, more laws mean more loopholes. Too much legislation breeds contempt for the law.
