Philadelphia and small boats

IMMIGRATION. Every problem has a solution. Nearly.

Actor Tom Hanks playing the character Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia.

In the 1993 movie Philadelphia, actor Tom Hanks is given two impossible tasks.

First, as the actor Tom Hanks, his task is to fulfil the movie’s goal of demonstrating that AIDS ought not to be a valid ground of dismissal from a position of employment, and whether he succeeds in that impossible task is very much open to debate, for, if the film had any effect in preventing the dismissal of employees on the ground that they suffered from AIDS, it may have had no effect in preventing their dismissal on other grounds that carefully circumvent any mention of the syndrome.

Second, as the character Andrew Beckett, he’s to file a brief in court for his law firm, which goes missing from a computer hard drive. He finally manages against the odds to get the brief filed in time and beat the statute of limitations, but his powers of self-control are stretched to the utmost in his so doing, whilst he mutters in the film a phrase that had already pervaded my mind as I sat in the cinema watching him (which is why I can so clearly recall it 30 years later): “Every problem has a solution.”

To be fair, the phrase in my own mind at the time was “No problem is insoluble,” but you’ll agree that they amount to the same thing. Same thing or no, is it true?

Previous essays on this blog have propounded a, for some, naïve view and, for others, a view that may be called “aspirational” that, with grace, enlightenment, understanding and compassion, solutions abound to the problems the world faces. The problems that face the world are therefore not the problems as they present themselves, but rather the absence of such human qualities. And their absence is explicable by the all-pervading presence of self-interest. If only self-interest could be banished from existence, all problems would be soluble. And that is a stance that can be viewed as aspirational, or, indeed, as naïve.

If Tom Hanks succeeded in his impossible task of persuading society that AIDS is no ground for dismissal, it is arguable that the effect of that was simply to shift grounds for dismissal into another quarter. Two years after the film’s release, anti-retroviral drugs would render the film’s whole message outdated in western society. In time, U = U would enter common parlance, by which undetectable means untransmissible, so that unprotected sex becomes an accepted norm, and instances of STDs skyrocket. Where a problem is not solved but simply shifted, self-interest will always raise its head and simply create a new problem.

“Look after number one” can be conceived of as a principle and, just like any principle, it has the potential to clash and come unstuck when confronted with another, equally valid and just as immutable, counter-principle.

So, let us turn to another problem: small boats.

How do we deal with small boats? First, the crass answers. If small boats sink, we can prevent them sinking. Seal their bottoms with tar. Build them more substantially to withstand the crashing waves of the English Channel. Give refugees reduced-fare or free tickets on cross-Channel ferries. Offer to fly refugees in from Rwanda, instead of promising to fly them back there. All these measures would have the potential for preventing drownings in the English Channel. But they would all pretty much clash with British government policy which, under the democratic election manifesto principle, would have it that British policy is moulded around the will of its electorate. And the will of its electorate is moulded around their self-interest. It’s an undeniable facet of democracy, and it is in fact one of democracy’s prime failings, because in a world that is so very inter-connected, democracy as it lives and breathes in any one given nation tends by definition to rule out the interests of those with no right of vote within the democracy, and therefore disregards the problems of the world outside the nation in question.

To this, there is no solution. Or, is there?

The solution currently seemingly pursued is to allow small boats’ occupants to drown and thereby dissuade them from venturing onto the high seas in the first place. In the 17th century, we used to execute pirates who ventured onto the high seas, in the hope it would dissuade them, too. But it didn’t; it just made them arm themselves more heavily. Half of them were sailing under a queen’s banner, anyway.

Coupled to this is a policy that aims at preventing humanitarian organisations from succouring to the distress of those who are drowning on the high seas. This is the equivalent of shooting at the Red Cross as they attempt to bandage the wounds of soldiers on a battlefield. That happens too.

Development and humanitarian aid, basically gifts of money by rich countries to poor countries, are themselves an act of compassion, even if self-interest lurks in the shadows cast as the money is handed over. Even within the comparatively transparent arena of the European Union, money provided to its members can end up being used, say, to promote ruling parties in their national elections, and this is not the purpose of funds channelled to a country like Hungary, especially when the EU seeks to foster open democracy.

However, such aid, when directed at helping nations that are much poorer than Hungary, such as in Africa, for instance, is known from the outset to be destined for the private pockets of elites, who cream off a rightful percentage in exchange for having successfully pleaded for the aid in the first place: a sort of finder’s fee, or commission. When translators are asked if they know someone who can do a certain language combination, many will simply say, “Try Graham Vincent,” for example, and they do, and I do the work, and charge the fee. But no fee goes to the colleague who recommended me, but I will also recommend them from time to time. It’s called professional courtesy, and, perhaps surprisingly, governments manifest little courtesy in comparable circumstances.

When development and humanitarian aid gets syphoned off by government functionaries and diverted towards favoured recipients, it often fails to improve the lot of those poor and forlorn members of the population who are the very ones who venture out onto the Mediterranean Sea and English Channel in the small boats under discussion.

So, new solutions advance themselves in attacking the problem of small boats. One would be to ask governments in Africa not to syphon aid off into their own pockets. I’m fairly certain that this is a solution that is already pursued, but it seems not to be terribly effective. As the aid is handed over, assurances are sought regarding human rights, for instance. The aid gets paid, and the governments to which it is paid redouble their calls to crack down on human rights.

There is a clash of principles. The one, that aid is due by the rich to the poor, and may not be refused. The other, that those who pay aid may not dictate domestic policy in the countries to which it is paid. When Britain’s prime minister David Cameron made human rights a quid pro quo for receipt of aid, there was a universal outcry by Commonwealth nations. Quite right too? Quite wrong too, really: because development is sort of dependent on people having a sense of justice and cooperation, and that will always be lacking in a country that denies human rights. They’re precisely the kinds of countries that people will seek to flee, perchance in small boats.

So, if the government of a nation in receipt of aid diverts that aid to its own personal benefit, would the solution not be to simply make the government that pays the aid also the government that receives it? Well, that is tricky, because that’s what happened in times past when the European nations all set out to conquer Africa. It would be tantamount to declaring that the peoples of Africa are better off under colonial rule than they are when ruled by their own people. Human rights in the colonial era constitute a pretty blank page in the history of colonialism, but there does exist such a thing as benevolent colonialism and it's to be found in places like Puerto Rico. But, it’s not without its issues.

A foreign government over which another government exercise a large degree of control is viewed as a puppet, as a proxy or as simple hegemony. And that has a bad press. Spheres of influence that are essentially spheres of power, imposition and command. The ultimate exercise of such a solution is to wage a war, and that is generally labelled as being no solution. The sea changes in domestic policy as regards human rights and the fight against corruption that can be observed in Ukraine have come about because its president and his party fought an election that essentially said that it would introduce such policies out of a sense of enlightenment, and was backed in that by the electorate, the indirect effect of which was to sever the links of influence that could be exercised by Russia, and that led indirectly to the current war. Not only did that bring to the fore Russia’s own Ukraine policy, but it serves as an admonition to any other nation whose electorate, even if given the chance in a multi-party system, might seek to establish a rule of law that defies outside influence, be it from Russia or anyone else, whilst attracting the most wholesome of development aid.

If one country may not meddle in another country’s affairs, may not exercise influence over it, but is under a duty to provide it with aid, or feels itself bound to do so to stem a flow of small boats, whether in pursuit of humanitarian justice or to pragmatically staunch an influx of unwanted immigrants, then a solution still does proffer itself: increase the level of aid such that, even when some gets creamed off into the pockets of African elites, enough is still left over to benefit those who are its intended beneficiaries. Eventually, in theory, this should have the effect of making the donor poorer than the recipient, and that, if nothing else, should stem the flotillas of small boats.

There may be other solutions, and my ears are open. But, for the time being, Tom Hanks was right: every problem does have a solution.