In late July, when roughly 72,000 migrants stormed the tiny Spanish enclave in North Africa, Ceuta (thanks to which I finally learned to pronounce ‘Say-OO-ta’), Spain was quick to announce that nearly all the rampaging foreigners had returned to Morocco within days. Since, even the European Parliament has classed the mass breach of the territory’s borders as an ‘invasion’.

Yet why did tens of thousands of young men abruptly reconsider their plans to throw themselves on the mercy of the Spanish state? Did they suddenly realise their ad-free subscription to Duolingo had lapsed? Did they experience belated moral qualms about attempting to burden strangers with responsibility for their lives and livelihoods?

Most of the invaders went home because they were hot, hungry and thirsty. They’d nowhere to sleep and little shelter from the sun. Terrified local shopkeepers locked their doors; they couldn’t buy a bocadillo or Fanta naranja. The understandable response? OK, never mind. Screw this. In 2012, a Salvadoran fisherman survived 438 days adrift at sea. But for most people, even one day of being famished, parched and sweltering is enough to throw in the towel on a dubious venture.

The next question is obvious. Why did anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 uninvited summer visitors to Ceuta – most statistics related to immigration are rubbish – nevertheless remain behind? The answer is equally obvious: NGOs. The likes of the Red Cross arrived in force – with cases of bottled water, tinned tuna, bread, milk and free tents, soon pitched across the territory’s once-comely beaches, which were transformed into open sewers. Yet a short stroll away, Morocco has food, water and shelter. NGOs passing out daily rations to migrants in Ceuta – sorry for the animalistic simile, though our much-missed Rod Liddle would never have apologised – is like feeding foxes in London.

Despite the ferocious resentment of residents, most of whom desperately want this sizeable mob of mooches to go home, local authorities have been busy putting together further incentives to stay. A whole official encampment has been constructed to sustain an unwanted population longer term. Unfortunately, the camp is still not capacious enough to accommodate all the arrivals hunkering down in an enclave of only 84,000 people. Thus last Friday, the mostly Moroccan newcomers stampeded the route to the new camp. Shots in the air, teargas, 150 cops, the works: a riot. And Ceuta’s beaches are still reeking, jam-packed third-world slums.

The lessons are several. When foreigners break into your country, instantly satisfying all their physical needs consolidates the incursion and asks for more of the same. (Duh.) Here, have some water, are you hungry or cold, do you need any medical care or a mobile? Governments are nakedly incentivising the violation of their own borders. The do-gooders who soon descended on Ceuta didn’t manage to arrive en masse for a couple of days, a period of discomfort just long enough to encourage at least 60,000 young men who were chancing their arms to go home. So: no one’s saying shoot them or let them die. Still, in defiance of the knee-jerk ‘humanitarian’ impulse, make illegal immigration physically disagreeable.

Next, withdraw all taxpayer funds from NGOs. If these charities are ‘non-govern-mental’, then government should not be on the hook for their ostensible good works. Furthermore, aiding and abetting illegal immigration should also be illegal, even by philanthropists. Printing and distributing pamphlets in multiple languages about how to play the immigration system, ‘#Refugees Welcome’ NGOs are effectively people traffickers. Sanctimonious Samaritans are aggressively assisting intruders who aim to impose themselves on the benefactors’ own compatriots. Make facilitating the violation of our borders an arrestable offence – and that includes coaching migrants on what lies to tell in interviews. Some NGOs actively support adults with receding hairlines who are posing as children in UK courts. The ‘children’ do this so they may gain illegitimate access to council accommodation and are more likely to secure a right to remain.

No one is saying shoot people or let them die – but make illegal immigration physically disagreeable

Most importantly, end asylum. The system is an archaic remnant of a bygone post-war era with smaller populations, little affordable international transportation and no smartphones. Earlier this month, a Home Office whistleblower estimated the proportion of legitimate asylum claims – refugees genuinely fleeing persecution – as ‘at best’ 1 per cent, which sounds about right.

The scams are legion. ‘I’m gay and at risk of persecution’ but the guy they had sex with also seems to have had sex with the last 200 applicants. Or: ‘I’m Christian as of five minutes ago.’ Or: ‘I had a risky relationship with the daughter of the prime minister along with the entire male population of Pakistan.’

What relationship does a host country court with would-be citizens when the first procedure which applicants go through invites contempt? When they’ve pulled the wool over officialdom’s eyes and accessed resources that their own countries would never in a million years provide to foreigners who broke the law and had the chutzpa to do so with hands out? Both successful and failed-yet-undeported ‘asylum seekers’ have good reason to surmise that locals are weak, gullible and dim, with unlimited funds open to exploitation. And on the receiving end, does any country benefit from attracting liars and opportunists?

The answer is not to tighten the system but to scrap it. Ideally, the US, Canada, Down Under, the UK and the rest of Europe would co-ordinate a blanket renunciation of a protocol that’s become a farce. Make accepting applications for refuge a choice, not a treaty obligation the moment any alien sets a toe on your territory. Small boats? Nobody gets asylum: no more small boats.

Yeah, yeah, many soft-hearted westerners would simper like Joe Biden, ‘That’s not who we are!’ But nothing would stop non-automatic-asylum countries from offering sanctuary to particular deserving groups, voluntarily accepting true refugees from, say, Ukraine or Hong Kong.

We could still issue transactional economic visas, preferably for the highly skilled likely to be net contributors. Otherwise, having in most cases radically transformed their demographic character in only a few decades, by now pretty much all western countries have already prepaid their charitable dues and then some for the rest of time.