Hundreds of destitute migrants from Africa and the Middle East died in two shipwrecks this month while attempting to reach the shores of Italy. In the meantime, wealthy Chinese, Indians, Russians and South Africans continue to glide serenely to their favored European destinations as they flee their increasingly unstable countries.
Nations damaged by the euro crisis — Cyprus, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Portugal, Spain — seem to have entered a race to sell the right to reside in Europe. Malta offers the cheapest path to eventual citizenship: just €260,000. The small conditions — no criminal record, for instance — are hardly onerous. Even U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne promised, while visiting Beijing last week, to expedite visas for China's businessmen and tourists, and to open all doors to Chinese students.
This eager courtship by Western politicians and businessmen of deep-pocketed and well-educated foreigners can mislead one into thinking that globalization encourages free and open movements of peoples. In actuality, the shutters are coming down, and walls are going up, everywhere.