John Jackson, American Renaissance, June 4, 2019

Independent journalist and documentary filmmaker Lauren Southern has released a new film with the help of director Caolan Robertson and producer George Llewelyn-John. Borderless shows convincingly that the migrant crisis in Europe is not at all as the mainstream media have presented it.

Miss Southern’s team infiltrated Advocates Abroad, a major non-governmental organization based in Greece. It operates in 17 countries and in 2017 alone helped more than 15,000 migrants get into Europe. Thus we hear Ariel Ricker, the head of the organization, admitting that the group coaches migrants to lie in order to get into Europe as refugees. This includes teaching them how to pretend to be part of a persecuted Christian minority, and even advising them to manipulate European interviewers’ sympathy by claiming to need a break from telling their tales of woe. Advocates Abroad shut down its accounts on Facebook and Twitter after this recording was released.

In March, Miss Southern reported that members of her team had posed as sympathetic activists to get incriminating information on another Greece-based NGO, Emergency Response Centre International (ERCI). An executive, Panos Moraitis, described the scale of the group. He estimated that at least 600 or 700 volunteers had helped them rescue 55,000 migrants at sea. On video, Mr. Moraitis claimed that ECRI was interested only in saving lives, but Greek authorities explained that the organization takes €2,000 from each of the 70,000 illegal immigrants it has trafficked since 2015. Mr. Moraitis also admitted that his organization had been involved in laundering €500,000 and implied that other NGOs had handled much greater sums.

Miss Southern was evidently the first journalist to interview human traffickers. In order to do this, she and her team had to smuggle recording equipment through Morocco, where severe restrictions on journalism can lead to jail time for reporters. Miss Southern met with a Senegalese smuggler who explained that he charges between €2,000 and €4,000 per person for passage from Morocco into Spain. Miss Southern notes that many of the migrants were homeowners who sold their houses to raise the money to come to Europe.

Miss Southern concludes that the migrant crisis is “almost entirely a business.” It is organized internationally by criminal syndicates including the Italian Mafia. Executives of some NGOs have been charged with human trafficking and Miss Southern found evidence that smugglers bribe the Moroccan Coast Guard to ignore their activities.

Migrants are a problem at either end of the Mediterranean. A Turkish olive farmer named Melvut Soner estimated that thousands of migrants pass through his village every day on the way to Europe. Some villagers are afraid to go outside because traffickers control the area. “These people are dangerous,” he explained, and says they have killed villagers as well as migrants.

Once they get to Europe, it is the migrants who are violent. Between 100 and 300 people a day arrive at a refugee camp called Moria on the Greek island of Lesbos. Moria was built for between 2,500 and 3,100 people, but now holds an estimated 10 to 11,000. Migrants complain that the camp does not have guards and that they fear for their lives. ISIS fanatics assault and even kill non-Muslims. One migrant pleads for surveillance cameras in the camp to record the attacks.

A doctor with Doctors Without Borders also talks about the violence, but seems deliberately to avoid mentioning that there are groups in the camp who despise each other and are bringing their tribal conflicts to Europe. Instead she focuses on overcrowding and the despair of people with no clear future. Violence does not stop at the camps. Miss Southern notes that 2015 brought a wave of terrorist attacks as well as increases in rape, stabbings, and murder throughout the EU.

One European Parliament member estimates that migrants cost Europe €150 to €200 billion a year, and notes that greater demand for housing and social services makes life harder for poor Europeans. MEP Steven Woolfe notes that a rapid and massive influx inevitably leads to segregated communities and hostility between newcomers and their hosts. Another independent MEP explains that the NGOs that smuggle migrants into Europe are opposed to all borders. An undercover recording shows that NGO workers see smugglers as heroes.

In Wicklow, Ireland, the town’s hotel was turned into a center for migrants. Locals complain that they were never consulted or even told about the change. There has been a huge increase in homelessness in the area, with an estimated 4,000 people waiting for housing. A county councilor worries about the housing crisis but flatly refuses to consider whether migrants have anything to do with it.

There is an interesting interview with Gemma O’Doherty, an investigative journalist formerly with the Irish Independent. She has a history of campaigning for the rights of asylum seekers, but sympathizes with locals. She concludes that “Ireland primarily should be for the Irish people,” and is baffled that after 100 years of national independence, the Irish are giving away their sovereignty. “If you speak out in any way, shape or form against migration in this country you are immediately called a racist, a fascist, a neo-Nazi,” she says. “It’s disgusting.”

Miss O’Doherty agrees with Miss Southern: “This is all being done because there’s big money behind mass immigration into Ireland, as there is across Europe. This is all about money, because these people don’t care about the migrants who come here and end up homeless.”

Miss Southern is well known as a conservative activist, but this film avoids taking an ideological stance, thus making it palatable for many viewers. It never mentions conflict between right and left nor tensions between whites and the Third World. Miss Southern does not call the crisis an invasion, and shows concern about the migrants as well as about Europeans. She interviews several migrants who say that many are given false hopes for an easy life in Europe. After they arrive, many find themselves on the streets and unemployable. Traffickers encourage them to destroy their passports. This makes it hard to deport them, but without papers they can’t get legitimate jobs. Some admit it was a mistake to come to Europe, but without a passport and no income, they are stranded.

Miss Southern’s work has already influenced government action. In 2018, German members of parliament with the AfD party brought criminal charges against NGOs for facilitating illegal immigration, partly crediting her reporting with making them aware of the issue.

Borderless is an excellent documentary. Miss Southern’s team finished filming in February, but chose to release the film “just in time for the European elections in May.” Let us hope that Borderless will inspire further action to crack down on the exploitation of both migrants and Europeans.