If you want to understand what’s going on in the world of migration, one thing you need to do is to read [Hein de Haas’s blog](http://heindehaas.blogspot.co.uk/). His [latest post](http://heindehaas.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/dont-blame-smugglers-real-migration.html?m=0) is a sharp corrective to the people who believe that the smugglers are to blame, that inward migration threatens cost the taxpayers on wealthy nations billions, that the solution to the desperate people from the Middle East or Central America is to build bigger and higher fences and to militarize our borders. As he argues, increased border security simply generates a market for the services of smugglers to evade the new measures, and pushes desperate people to seek even more dangerous routes. This, in turn, leads politicians to pledge more border security, leading the cycle to repeat itself.

Who profits from this? Not migrants or refugees, certainly. The smugglers, a little. And the big contractors and militarized agencies who “defend” the borders, run the detention centres and other facilities a lot. And the people who are paying for all this financially are the citzens of wealthy nations who then get a “solution” that makes the problem worse.

We urgently need to explore alternatives, such as flying refugees to Europe, as [Alexander Betts argued in the New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/25/opinion/let-refugees-fly-to-europe.html?_r=0) the other day.