More than 120 people –men, women, children, whole families– washed up on a beach in Corsica. They were first given shelter in a nearby gymnasium. Then they were hastily moved to a handful of cities in France and locked up. As the authorities had acted without any legal basis, judges soon ruled unlawful the detention or retention of the new arrivals, who were released.

The new arrivals say that they are Kurds, subject to persecution in their homeland; they intend to seek asylum in France. In addition to administrative assistance, they benefit from temporary lodging in hotels, paid for by the Red Cross or the public purse.

In telling this story, I’m concerned that media in Europe have dramatized too much and failed to provide helpful context. Here are my concerns:

  1. As reported, this story will be a boon to the National Front, which views immigration as a problem in need of urgent and forceful action. The contrast could not be greater between the solicitude shown to the new arrivals and the often indifferent treatment by government that ordinary French people encounter. Widely reported references to the offer of free lodging, in hotels, will certainly sound unfair to the many French households that struggle to ecure affordable housing.
  2. This anecdote does injustice to a long and honorable asylum policy. France can be proud of a tradition of granting asylum to persecuted and stateless people from around the world. Rules may not always be applied, or justly applied, but the humanitarian policy deserves admiration. This having been said, asylum is a special case, distinct from immigration in general. Much of the reporting I see in Europe seems to confuse or conflate asylum-seekers with other immigrants. Some of this may be attributable to migrants themselves, who sense that a humanitarian case may be their best argument. But these choices do not, for me, justify reports on the Corsican arrivals’ “claims”, the itinerary of their travels, or inoperative coastline radar (that would have corroborated the new arrivals’ story, or permitted a hypothetical interception).
  3. This story highlights problems with European Union asylum policies, problems that call out for creative solutions but that linger due to insufficient awareness. In the European Union, uniform rules require a migrant to seek asylum in the EU country that he or she first entered. Although many migrants intend to travel to the UK or to Germany, many first enter the EU in Greece or in Italy. These southern countries find themselves subject to a strong migrant influx and tend to adopt expeditive policies. One reason why the Corsican story received attention is that arrival in Europe on a French shore is rare.