I’m assuming the survivors don’t have 5000 euros, what happens when they can’t pay? Also, what is the point of the fines if the government’s ultimate goal is deportation?

The law that criminalizes undocumented immigration in Italy was passed in 2009. A migrant found to be in violation will face up to 10,000 euros in fines, followed by deportation. If they are unable to pay the fine (which is almost always the case), they face up to six months in jail, followed by deportation.

Around May this year, Members of Dutch Parliament started discussing a similar law for The Netherlands. So far, it hasn’t been approved by I wouldn’t discount it in the next year or so, as political parties heat up on the demagogic pandering towards the elections.

To answer your question as to the ultimate goal, they claim it’s to “discourage” people from immigrating without visas. To give you my personal answer, it’s because undocumented immigrants lives are a “cheap” bargain token they can use to rile up the population. Europe has a long and unaddressed history of racism and colonialism, not to mention the legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade which has never been acknowledged as systemic racism by any European State. This unaddressed history means that, even though Europe loves to pretend that the EU is the champion of human rights, the State views certain lives as less than or even disposable. If 20,000 white European people had died in less than 20 years, media would talk about a humanitarian catastrophe and they’d be discussing the validity of using a word like genocide to refer to the mass deaths. That these deaths are from Brown and Black folk means they are merely an administrative matter that is handled by the border police.

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