Frank Greenall: Bordering on madness

French President Emmanuel Macron (left) meets with Mamoudou Gassama, 22, from Mali, at the presidential Elysee Palace in Paris on May 28. Gassama, living illegally in France, scaled an apartment building to save a 4-year-old child dangling from a fifth-floor balcony. Photo / AP

'To help the needy and show them the way,

Human kindness is overflowing,

And I think it's going to rain today."

So sang Randy Newman in his haunting song written exactly half a century ago.

There are an awesome number of good - very good - people in the world.

Unfortunately, there are also an awful number of absolute bastards.

And for the legions of refugees and displaced peoples on the run from venality, predation and slaughter in their home territories, it's raining every day.

The 2017 figure for displaced people is 68.5 million, comprising 25.4 million refugees, 40 million internally displaced and 3.1 million asylum seekers.

A few weeks ago we had the captivating spectacle of a recent illegal, near penniless African immigrant to France clambering up an exterior wall and snatching a dangling infant to safety from a fourth-floor parapet.

He was naturally immediately nicknamed "Spiderman", acclaimed a hero and became an instant celebrity.

In a matter of days none other than French president Emmanuel Macron had personally decorated him for bravery, legitimised his presence on French soil, and promised him a job as a firefighter.

The selfless escapade of that Malian migrant, Mamoudou Gassama, encapsulated the plight of fellow refugees and illegal immigrants everywhere.

Mamadou only got to where he wanted to be by putting his hide on the line - not with any ulterior motive at the time of his Spiderman feat but, if his initial odyssey from Africa was typical, he would have run a gauntlet bristling with mortal risk to make good his escape to France.

The plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty reads: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

How ironic that the new president of the nation of migrants is now declaring that he will not allow the United States to become a migrant camp.

The even more ironic reality is that the vast majority of the planet's present nation-states are, in essence, migrant camps.

In days of yore, multitude peoples swept relatively freely from territory to territory in conjunction with the vicissitudes of survival imperatives. Hard borders and rigidly-monitored personal documentation like passports to regulate the crossing of national borders are relatively recent phenomena.

So now we have the horrors of children being ripped from families fleeing the depredations of various dysfunctional central and South American nations - just as similar merchants of poverty and brutality drive the slow-motion tragedy underpinning the African exodus across the Mediterranean.

If one allows domestic politics and infrastructure issues dictate that carte blanche immigration is not an option, the vexing quandary then becomes: How many to accept?

Mediterranean governments know that for every migrant they accept, it condemns another to a watery grave. They know every refugee that manages to stagger on to a northern shore is proof positive - for those left behind - that the great escape is do-able. Never mind the grim tally for whom the only pay-off was ignominious extinction.

And every admission is also increased incentive for the mongrel smugglers to continue people-trafficking, cramming their hapless charges into decrepit vessels, ready to play mercenary moral blackmail with the northern nations.

Even in little old Enzed, with its low population density and wealth of resources, we agonise over immigration issues, given we're already struggling to cope with our very own needlessly self-created Third World underclass.

Immigration issues hold conundrums that would defeat the wisdom of Solomon, never mind the judgment of flawed officials. But an ideal world also see the extermination of the absolute bastards driving forced emigration in the first instance.