Over the last few weeks, the European Union has been torn apart by bitter disagreement over a new crisis: the huge numbers of refugees and migrants who are turning up at Europe’s doorstep. Last month, nearly 50,000 refugees arrived in Greece alone. Migrants wanting to get to the United Kingdom have formed an encampment around the port town of Calais, leading to scare-mongering statements by British politicians and alarmist headlines in tabloid newspapers. Immigration is the number one concern identified by Europeans in opinion polls. European Union member states disagree, sometimes bitterly, about who should take responsibility and what should be done. Here’s what’s happening.
Regional wars are leading refugees to flee
The European Union, like other rich parts of the world, has been a magnet for migrants from poorer and more war-torn places for a long time. Some migrants have wanted to come to Europe to pursue economic opportunities. Others are refugees from war and oppression in their home countries. Many more people want to move to the European Union than the European Union is prepared to accept.
In the very recent past, record numbers of people have tried to get into the European Union through irregular methods. This is in large part the product of regional wars. Southern Europe is relatively close to Syria, which is ravaged by civil war, as well as Libya, where the state has more or less broken down. In 2014, 280,000 people crossed into the EU without permission. Most of them were fleeing Syria, and have sought refugee status. This is nothing in comparison to the numbers that some non-European states have accepted, but it is still enough to cause political crisis.
Thousands of migrants have drowned
The most popular way to get into Europe is now by sea, across the Mediterranean. Two hundred thousand migrants have been rescued in the Mediterranean already this year. Very many would-be migrants are traveling in boats or on rafts, provided by professional people smugglers. Many of these boats and rafts are wildly unsafe, leading to thousands of people drowning or dying from exposure. For a period last year, the EU suspended its rescue operations for ships full of migrants, in the hope that it would discourage people from trying to enter. It didn’t work.
Read the full piece at The Washington Post.
- Publication Type:Other Writing
- Publication Date:08/12/2015