Europe's Latest Solution for the Refugee Shelter Shortage: Cruise Ships
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-24/europe...
bloomberg.comPosted Feb 27, 2016, 1:43 PM UTC
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bloomberg.comThey shouldn't left the microphone on while they were brainstorming. On the other hand there are many hard to access islands in Europe. They did it in Australia and it worked both as an isolated camp and as a deterrent.
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The ID island is also a good idea, but the cruise ship is the ultimate NIMBY solution, since everything can be monitored and people can be moved easily, facilitating the expulsion of migrants who do not meet the refugee standard and the integration of the legitimate refugees
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The two largest cruise ships in the world are the MS Allure of the Seas and the MS Oasis of the Seas. These max out at 6,296 people each. That's nothing compared to an island.
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Cruise ships aren't cheap, and if they get trashed, that's going to be a comparatively-expensive form of housing. The two above ships cost $1.4B (in 2006 dollars) each. That's up to $222,363 per migrant in fixed costs alone, discounting inflation.
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If this is someone's clever idea to fill up a ship with unresisting migrants and then sail it back to their home country and dump them off there a la German "showers", that's not going to work. People have cell phones now, so you can only get the first load to go without complaint, and there isn't enough shipping capacity to hold a substantial chunk of people in that first load.
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and dump them off there a la German "showers"
what
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Make them feel like they are not in danger (of being deported) so they don't revolt.
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The point of calling poison gas rooms showers back in Nazi Germany was that people wouldn't resist entering.
If a ship is going to take people back to their country of origin, you're probably going to have a more-difficult time getting people onboard. If you say "this is housing", it's easier to get a load of people onboard.
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It means tricking people into doing something they would not do by choice, i.e. die by gas.
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Thank you for your well thought and laid out post.
What i get from it is that, if each migrant stays there for the minimum time required to get fingerprints and a fast ID check of four days, each ship could host 1500 new migrants/day.
The price takes account of top-of the line cruises, but even with those standards one year of full load operations could provide ID facilities for
(1500*365)=547.500 migrants, at a cost of 2557€/migrant.
I don't think that would be the goal, but if you fingerprint ID someone who was expelled it could be easier to bring him back to the other side of the Mediterranean sea if he's located on a ship instead of being on the land and having a chance to run.
I think the island and the ship could be two options that could be used together, one for immediate ID and relief for castaways and the other for logistics and more in-depth analysis of the situation.
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People don't usually take their cell phone into the shower.
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The people who aren't on the ship yet aren't in the shower, and they're going to find out what happened pretty quickly.
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I thought that Europe was awash in spare rooms, cash, jobs, and class-room spaces for these people? That is what Angela implied. No?
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I made this thread mainly because of something i heard on a radio show last night.
Basically this guy said that using cruise ships as hotspot facilities could be a possible solution to identify refugees and prevent the escape of unidentified migrants.
The host appeared concerned, but jumped the call without providing concrete reasons about it.
What downsides do you think this approach could have?
And are those overcomed by the advantages of this approach?
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I don't think there are any positives to doing this, beyond simply having room to put people, that outweigh the negatives. It is not a good situation for anybody. It's incredibly expensive, it's potentially incredibly dangerous for the inhabitants, and as someone who happens to live in the small town where the first ship is heading to, it's a silly amount of people to suddenly inject into a small society all at once, especially when the town has already received a lot of people and is significantly expanding reception even outside of having this dumped into our lap against our will.
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While all of the above is true, in the situation i was thinking of the refugees would stay on the cruise ship only for 3-4 days, the time required to get fingerprints and check their ID for previous expulsions or other incompatibilities with the refugee status.
It could also be pointed that not all the passenger should be let go on the same city, but making a trip and distributing 500-600 ID'd refugee appliants per city is better than the current situation in many places (like Lampedusa)
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What downsides do you think this approach could have?
No sane ship owner will allow boaring migrants on their cruise ships, no matter how much the EU might pay them. Croatia's trains which transported immigrants to Hungary came back pretty much demolished and had to be repaired. Now imagine how costly and time-consuming those repairs cold become on a cruise ship, which cost way more than a simple train composition.
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came back pretty much demolished
The hell? What did they do to it?
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Those destroyed ship will take the hit in place of European cities.
If you outright buy the ships or build them you can solve the issue.
Having webcams that monitor the passenger's behaviour could also be used to refuse the refugee status for troublemakers, separating legitimate needy people from unwanted criminals
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That's a great idea.
Another cool idea, would be to land a couple submarines and torpedos to Serbia, so they can patrol international waters. You know, just in case of a "Russia invasion". /s
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Ahhh the powerful serbian navy. Only rivaled by the mighty fleet of Andorra.
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Destinations of said ships include Syria, Afghanistan, and other countries of the Persian Gulf.
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I can already imagine the titles of right-wing newspapers in Italy: "The EU is sending the so called refugees on a luxury cruise at the taxpayers' expense". They'll have a field day.
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Sure they could, but on the other hand they could mark it as a triumph with "instant extradition thanks to immediate castaway identification on floating hotspots"
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Hahaha, I have actually worked as an officer on Island Escape (Ocean Gala now) the ship at this time is pretty much scrap, it is simply very very old by ship standards, however, it is not so simple to just put people on the cruise ship and leave them be, you need a TON of people running all the things in the background, sewage, fresh water generators, fire fighting systems etc. This is simply not realistic
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Cruise ships were used as temporary shelter after the earthquake of Kefalonia in 2014.
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Pirates of the Mediterranean, in cinemas Summer 2016.