They’re Just “Looking for a Better Life.” Really.
The media is showing heartwarming tales of desperate Moroccan families. Ceuta is living through a full-scale military-style invasion.
Four days a week, I work for free. The fifth post pays the bills.
If you want in, an annual subscription works out to about 30 cents a post and comes with a free signed book, which probably isn’t even the worst deal around.
If you can’t swing it or you aren’t sure if you like me that much, no worries. Free content will resume tomorrow. :)
The CBS News Instagram edit shows a brave Moroccan couple paddling through the surf, two small children in tow. They’ve left the only home they’ve ever known and fought a mighty, treacherous ocean just to reach the safety of Spanish soil. Now they must somehow rebuild with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a dream. It’s the sort of footage that makes a producer reach for the swelling strings.
The New York Times profiled a distraught 21-year-old construction worker who’d made it all the way to Ceuta—a tiny Spanish enclave in North Africa that functions as a gateway to Europe—only to be booted back to Morocco. “If I don’t leave this country,” The Times quoted the would-be immigrant as saying, “there is nothing that will save me.”
The Telegraph interviewed a 14-year-old boy, identified only as Omar, who’d successfully made the 5-mile crossing. “My parents divorced,” Omar explained. “My mother has to raise four children on her own. I want to study, work and build a future for myself and for my family. My mother can’t do everything alone.”
Where are the GoFundMes?
Oddly, the actual, raw footage—every wide-angle clip, every aerial shot, every uncurated phone video—doesn’t support those stories at all.