Suppose for a moment you lived in an unstable African state. You might one day receive a threat from a ‘warlord’ or drugs cartel or terror group. You round up your family, grab a few possessions, kick the pets out onto the street and run. Where are you going?

Most wealthy and privileged people would head for the airport, wouldn’t they? A couple of suitcases, a fistfull of currency for a hurriedly purchased air ticket to ‘anywhere the next flight is going to,’ and a passport is all you need.

If you are a citizen of that state from which you now wish to flee and you don’t have a passport, what are you going to do? No passport at the airport and they won’t let you on the plane… international law says so. It’s only a hundred dollars to the next State so money isn’t the problem. The Government stole your passport, or some thief stole it, or it expired and you didn’t renew it, or it was burnt with the rest of your belongings when your house was burnt down – which is why you have to flee.

It’s a kind of Catch 22. If you are in trouble and you have nothing, you can’t get on the plane. If life is normal and you just need a holiday…you can get on the plane.

Many people and politicians are wondering why people are taking a one in six risk of drowning and fleeing by unsuitable boat. They think the problem is the cause of their flight and the people smugglers who ‘help’ them and the failed State fighting itself.

And yet there are working International Airports even in Libya. Why do not those fleeing the country take a plane?

The answer is of course this passport law. Understandably air lines don’t want passenger lists with a lot of question marks. USA airlines are providing passenger lists to the NSA before the plane even lands in the USA.

Yet with thefts of passports and help from those able to alter passports illegally, obtaining a new passport is not impossible. It might be enough to get someone on the plane even if they are detained on landing. They can then claim political asylum and sit out a few months in a detention camp. At least the food and bed is free.

The majority of emmigrants don’t have passports though and no means to get one. That is why they are taking their children and climbing into rubber boats that wouldn’t make it across a river, let alone a sea.

Clearly the problem is being created by the inability of emmigrants to get through an air or sea port. The air port staff at the check in desks are performing the task of ‘border control’ on behalf of governments. The question has to be ‘is this right?’

It’s wrong to believe too much in the a document like a passport. Even with passports, people are passengers on planes who have hidden their identity. These are the individuals most likely to have criminal backgrounds and or intent and they will be allowed to enter the country ‘for a holiday’ without being challenged.

If a person reaches the check out and falls on their knees in tears with a baby in their arms, begging to be allowed to leave the country as men with guns followed them there – should their be a compassionate process to allow them to get on the plane?

I would suggest their should. An asylum application is an international right and it matters little in which country it is made. What I mean is why can’t you be in Libya and apply for asylum in Europe? Why can’t you be in Calais and apply for asylum in the United Kingdom? Why can’t their be Embassy Offices in every airport and staff to process ’emergency’ applications? Every application for asylum is someone’s emergency even if it isn’t the airline’s or the Abassador’s. Why can’t an Emergeny Asylum Application allow a person or family to pass through a border control?

At present there is an argument that ‘undocumented passengers’ should not be allowed on planes for security reasons. They might be international terrorists pretending to be asylum seekers. That is true although, as already described, terrorists are going to pose as holiday makers or business staff before they pretend to be seeking asylum. Even then, if you wanted to be sure that a person or family were not carrying a bomb onto a plane; you send them through ‘security’ as you do every passenger. If you want enhanced security checks – a strip search for instance – and luggage examined in fine detail – then do it.

If you had a long enough queue of asylum seekers at an airport, you could start chartering aircraft for them or use military aircraft.

In my view there is an alarming lack of a strategy, certainly in Europe, that adresses immigration, front on.

You might have thought that there would have been agreement as to how many applicants should be allowed to work and for how long, and a quota arrangement allocating people to countries. Processing applicants for asylum could be achieved in any European or neighbouring country – providing the government staff have wi-fi!

Thinking globally should be second nature to the international men and women who take up positions of government whether in Europe or the United States of America. Both have different immigration demands but the basics are the same.

President Trumps response to build a wall on the Mexican border is the same as Italy’s prime minister who stops rescue boats entering Italian ports. Both strategies are looking at the tail end of the problem rather than the front.

The front view is that there is no humane process in place to accept or reject asylum seekers.

Both Union’s could seek the support of the United Nation’s Refugee Council active player’s in a global strategy or relocation.

People in distress clearly must and will pick up a suitcase and run. People in search of economic benefits will do the same but these will not pass the asylum questions – hopefully! So if populations are willing to leave all they have, governments should have strategies to deal with them with compassion and fairness.

Because it is not just war and rogue governments that cause populations to move en mass. Factors such as climate change – floods, flames and famine – should also be in the mass migration plans of the emergency planners.

Sea level changes alone will become a cause of massive movements of populations in the next decades to come. Volcanic activity and earth movements will destroy cities as they have done in the past and people will evacuate islands and vulnerable seismic locations and new deserts in large numbers.

It’s a huge problem for which non-government agencies should not be leaned on too hard to ‘sort out’.

A good place to start however in the present is to change the question at airports from ‘can I see your passport?’ to ‘how can I help you?’ The rest is common sense.