A friend of mine was venting about Mike Bloomberg spending a billion dollars on a political campaign instead of something productive, and off-the-top-of-his-head spun this idea of buying decommissioned cruise ships to offer (unofficial) American asylum to people trying to navigate the US immigration system. It wasn’t exactly well thought out, but it got me curious about what the logistics and legalities of that would be. (I’m not all that familiar with the contemporary immigration issue, just whatever I’ve skimmed from headlines.)
On the budget side, I was able to find retired cruise ships that seem comparable to the cost of tent cities (according to the NYT, two 500 bed facilities cost the US government nearly 40 million dollars, whereas some ships rated for well more than 500 passengers are less than 10 million). So, maybe the logistics aren’t seeming too crazy.
If there was some benefactor willing to fund and crew ships (in partnership with NGOs or whatever) as a place for people to safely live while pursuing or appealing an asylum case, would it actually make any kind of practical sense? Obviously it wouldn’t be a standard cruise ship-style crew, but beyond the basic ship functioning, you could have on-site doctors, lawyers, case workers, and teachers for children who may be aboard for months or longer.
And surely this lifestyle wouldn’t be appealing to everyone, but when the alternative is returning to a country that you fled for your life, I imagine it could be a better alternative than a tent city or being turned away without a hearing.
I guess my biggest questions (that I couldn’t figure out through Google) are:
Whether an American company/charity/private citizen could legally bring aboard anyone they wanted in a Mexican port regardless of their immigration status or citizenship, so long as they never intend to berth in the United States.
Also, whether being aboard an American vessel offered any direct benefit for asylum seekers.
Whether there is a substantial number of people whose asylum claims could be reasonably verified by NGOs to make a project like this at all worthwhile. Even if the American government denies people official asylum, the prospect of a reasonably safe ocean-going life might still be preferable to returning to their home country, and (at the discretion of whoever runs the boat) I could imagine people joining the crew as a way stay there.
Obviously, there’s a lot of details to pick apart here (you could easily end up with floating refugee cities denied entry into ports becoming its own humanitarian crisis), and there are also clear limits on scale here, so maybe it could only alleviate a fraction of the problem. But the kernel of the idea was interesting enough that I wondered what other people might have to say about it.
40 million is probably not just the construction cost. I suspect most of it is staff - security, food prep, medical, even plumbing, etc. Same requirements for a ship. Ships need maintenance - they don’t automatically stay afloat, nor clean, nor does the plumbing never fail. Assuming you’re talking going out into the ocean, then there’s the operating costs of a full ship - fuel, mechanics, repairs to engines, etc. Those ships need to put into port for periodic maintenance. There’s a reason a cruise costs serious money, and it’s not all entertainment costs.
IIRC some of the crews of good will ships in the Mediterranean are being threatened with arrest if they bring their rescued refugees into port - you can’t dock with random foreigners on board, any more than you can fly in or walk across the border, and people abetting this face serious charges. Off the top of my head, I suspect it would cost more to put people on mothballed cruise ships than in tents.
The cost to bring out of moth balls a retired American Cruise ship would be Very High. I would guess that that 10 million price on laid up ships was salvage price. The only one I can think of would be the SS United States. And just to get it recertified would be in the hunderds of millions. She was laid up in the 70s I believe.
The only restrictions to allowing anyone aboard a US flagged ship in a foreign port would be the restrictions imposed by the host country. If the ship were to arrive in a US port non US citizens would be restricted to the ship. The ship would either anchor in the prot bay or tied up at a dock. Either would require shore services and this would be very expensive.
Being on a American vessel would yield little benefit. Except you would be under closer watch.
If the ship is kept under American registry joining the crew to keep cost down would have problem. Not being American Citizens would require a green card.
Refurbishing a ship, manning the ship, supplying a ship with provisions, and paying docking fees would make the project more expensive than building and supplying a shore base facility.
This is a pretty big issue actually - US flagged ships are subject to American labor and other laws, and for a ship to be flagged as a US ship it has to have been built in a US shipyard. So you can’t actually recommission a ship to flag it as a US ship unless it was built in a US shipyard originally. And you’re going to have to pay all ship crew US wages and comply with US safety standards, which is more expensive than on a typical cruise ship.
Since a US flagged ship has to comply with US laws, I suspect that it won’t be able to keep passengers aboard indefinitely without clearing them through immigration. Regular cruise ships only carry travelers temporarily and have a starting and ending port, they don’t just hang out at sea forever. I couldn’t find anything with this on a quick google search, but I’m pretty sure it’s the kind of thing that would lead to a bad time.
Also docking a ship packed with people who don’t have proper travel documents and want to relocate to a new country is going to become very difficult once authorities find out what your ships are doing. I think you’re going to find yourself turned away at most ports, at least after the first month or two. And resupply without going into a port is tricky, since AFAIK most cruise ships are built to have maintenance and major supply done at port facilities, not by smaller boats docking with them. This would increase maintenance costs and times tremendously, and I’m not sure how long a cruise ship can stay at sea without going to port.