Yep the med is a massive human tragedy (In fact I would say the war driving much of the migration was the real tragedy).
Maritime law (SOLAS) says that you are REQUIRED to render aid at sea and are REQUIRED to land the people you rescue at the first suitable port at which you make landfall, seems simple enough on that level, and probably works most of the time without major political pain when it is something like pulling a crew off a sinking fishing boat.
Trouble is if you deliberately go out to do this thing when it is stupidly overloaded boats full of undocumented migrants (And that should be applauded, saving lives, generally a good thing!), then you get into the whole refugees/economic migrants political shitstorm (The difference between the two groups being something political types should really learn about before commenting on such matters).
Migration (in the general sense of 'not like us') is an easy political target for point scoring with enough voters to make it a political imperative, but only because you are talking about 'Them' not some individual story, it becomes a much harder sell for most people (even the ones in the voting block that makes this a political issue) once you start looking at individual cases.
Anyway, waaay off topic.
Regards, Dan.