L'Immigration par Barques

Hello, everyone. Two years ago, I was in Algeria and I spoke to a man who had lost his son. In fact, his son had tried to cross to Spain with some friends, and then the boat capsized not far from the Spanish coast. The guys were almost there. And what happened is that some of them managed to swim to the coast, others drowned. For some of them, the Spanish found the bodies. For others, they never found anything. So the man I was talking to was one of those people whose son was missing, one of those people whose body had not been found. So when I spoke to him, the man was. You know, he was very. He was destroyed inside in some way. He was having a hard time dealing with this situation. But at the same time, he held on to a terrifying hope. You know, he went to Spain. He spoke to the people who were with his son, the survivors. He spoke to the police, he spoke to the rescuers who were there that night. And in fact, he kept a. He kept a hope. What he meant was that he was telling me that he was sure that his son was alive somewhere and that his son had. Perhaps he was making up scenarios. That is to say, for him, his son had perhaps managed to reach the coast, and perhaps he was somewhere rebuilding his life, that he didn't want to give any sign of life because he was afraid that they might track him down or locate him or whatever. You know, he was. He was actually trying to rationalize this feeling that he had, this feeling that people have when they lose someone but don't have the body. You know, it can happen in. I've experienced this myself. It can happen in accidents, it can happen in fires for various reasons. There are various reasons why you part with someone alive and then one day you learn that they're dead, but you don't have the opportunity to see the body. At that point, it doesn't really sink in. And that really touched me. I mean, beyond the. Beyond the. Beyond the. How should I say? Beyond the history of immigration. I'm not talking to you about immigration and stuff like that today. I'm really talking on a human level. On a human level, I found it extremely, extremely difficult to see people drowning, parents suffering. So since I make videos in Arabic, I decided to start by making a series of videos on the topic to try to tell people not to leave somewhere. And then also, since I know people who are in education, I thought, why not try to prepare a presentation, go to schools? You know, it's not really part of the culture in Algeria to do these things, but I thought maybe I could Try to do some prevention, make some kind of presentation, go and share it in schools, or teach people how to share it, or people who have questions and all that. And then I started by making a first video. And the theme of my video was that there was no point in leaving because in any case, your chances of integration or regularization in Europe are exactly zero. That means that I told them in my video, look, it's not. Even if you make the crossing, assuming you arrive alive, you'll still have a hard time regularizing your situation from scratch because you arrive naked, wet, and you don't have a single piece of paper on you. You don't think that Europeans are going to give you a residence permit and then, ah, let you live on their continent. That's how I started. What happened is that my video was seen a few times and practically within four hours. The same day, in any case, the same day, a guy came along and made a video and talked about his own experience. He said, roughly speaking, look at the responsible side of the intervention. Anyway, ah, but I, I salute his sense of truth. But despite everything, I found his intervention irresponsible, and I continue to find it irresponsible. He said that he was talking about his personal experience. He said that basically I was talking nonsense. I mean, he crossed the Mediterranean by boat, he arrived in Europe and he was regularized, and he showed his papers in the video. So that's what ultimately meant that all my energy to fight against this phenomenon was stopped dead in its tracks. It meant that I contacted the guy, I spoke with him, I spoke with people he knew, and in fact, he wasn't talking about bombing. It was true, what he had done was true. It meant that he crossed by boat and he was regularized relatively easily. Which means that, in fact, you have to know that this way of regularizing people who arrive by these means constitutes, if you like, an invitation to others to take the risk and try it too. So in terms of immigration, who does it attract most often it attracts people who are not extremely, how can I say, who are not extremely presentable. From an administrative point of view, it means that there are several ways to immigrate. In our societies, we are familiar with this phenomenon. Lots of people dream of leaving. And the key, the royal way to leave, if you like, is for those who leave from their country of origin with an immigration visa. That's the royal way, but it's very difficult. Accessible, but extremely difficult, and it concerns a minority of people. The other option, which is considered a bit of a desperate option, but which also works is to get a tourist visa and leave and never return. It's very difficult because once the tourist visa expires, at that moment you become what's called an illegal immigrant. Well, in France you have practically more rights than a local, apparently. But despite everything, in still very difficult because there are people who have spent 10 or 15 years in this status who have ended up being patriated. So who's going to risk their life? Given that a tourist visa is relatively easy to obtain for a normal person, for a person who is, let's say, normally constituted, who has a job, a few pay slips and all that, it is not very difficult to obtain a tourist visa. Furthermore, since today there is Shingen, all you need is one of the countries in the Schengen area to give you the visa. And there are plenty of them now. There was a time, I remember, I'm almost writing another topic, but very quickly there was France, which was one of the easiest countries to issue visas. In fact, they didn't give them, they sold them. They had a sense of. I don't know if I mentioned it to you. There are embassies, French embassies. So if the French embassies have swallowed up millions by selling visas. Authentic visas. Authentic visas sold by the French embassies, and there were intermediaries everywhere, you give the passport, you give it, you give the cash, no paperwork or anything, and the passport leaves. The French embassy, leaves the French embassy with an authentic visa on it. And the visa is verifiable. People have traveled with it by plane, they arrive at the airport, and it has passed through all the checks, and that's it. But what I'm trying to tell you is that people who. That doesn't exist anymore. But they did this practically in full view of everyone, for a period of time. Come on. I'm not going to tell you any nonsense, but for a period of time, five to 10 years, roughly, it was known, it was, that the French embassy sells, the French embassies sell. Sell visas. And in fact, what happens is that people who travel by this method, who decide to leave in boats, well, these are precisely people who could not fit into the previous category that I just mentioned. And so in general, they. These are people with no professional experience, no studies, no opportunities, because even a university student, for example, what does he do if he really wants to leave at all costs? He just has to want to continue his studies abroad. Then he leaves. He never comes back, you understand? But someone who is forced to leave in a boat is someone who, in General, even in his society of origin is not. Is not integrated. So his chances of being integrated into the host society are zero. But I still found it irresponsible on the part of Westerners to be this way of deceiving these people by giving only some of them proper and formal documents, because then the news will spread and that's it. So there will still be people who will drown. That's. Yeah, that's sad. I wanted to say something else. I wanted to say something else. And then I see that I forgot it. And. Yes, the time when I opened grenades with my teeth is over, you know, that's when I was an enemy. I see that, I see that. I see that. I see. I say I no longer have the memory that I had before. Ah, well, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I think I'm going to stop this video there. I'll give myself 10 seconds if I find my train of thought again. Otherwise I'll stop this video here. Yes. What I was trying to tell you is that if you look at. When I was a teenager, I read a lot. I read a number of authors. Among others, I read a book by Alain Bombard and another by Thor and Hartle. These people as Romans, they left. They went into the water. They were. Thor, her doll went with a small team of a few people on a bamboo raft. Okay? He crossed an ocean on a bamboo raft. He stayed out at sea for about a hundred days. He crossed I don't know how many thousands of kilometers. And Alain Bombard, what he did. What he did was put himself on a Zodiac without an engine, without anything, without food, without anything. Zero. Just the Zodiac. And then, well, he let himself. He let himself go with the flow. And once he did several experiments, and then once there was one of them that was supposed to last, I think, a month, and then it lasted two or two and a half months. So he practically spent two and a half months alone on a Zodiac. What I'm trying to say is that these people didn't drown. They. They didn't die. Ah, I mean, I can't understand. I can't understand from a technical point of view, uh, someone who manages to flee, who wants to leave with the information that is available today, with the means available today. I can't believe that he can't do it, that he can't leave from North Africa to Italy without drowning, without drowning half the people, uh, I mean, from North Africa, you could leave for New York. That would be cool. Do you know what I mean? There they arrive on the other side, half of them are drowned, dead. They threw bodies out to sea and all that. And I almost, you know, when I saw that the Europeans were attracting these people with papers, I almost did it. I almost did it. And since my videos are telling them, don't go, you're stranded, you know what I almost did? I'll tell you. But I didn't do it. I stopped. Ah. I almost made a website to explain to them how to cross safely. That means I almost made a website to show them maps, distances, to teach them how to read a weather map, how to read a navigation chart, how to manage a course, how to plan a crossing, how to load a boat without drowning. I almost did it. Well, that's it. But I didn't do. Might have saved lives, I don't know. But I didn't want to glamorize the fact that it's easy to cross, you know? I didn't want to encourage people to do it either. I don't know. I was lost in that. I was lost. There you go. See you soon.