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More than 181,000 people, most so-called economic migrants with little chance of being allowed to stay in Europe, attempted to cross the central Mediterranean last year from Libya, Africas nearest stretch of coast to Italy. About 4,500 died or disappeared.

Hundreds already have taken to the sea this month, braving the winter weather. In the latest reminder of the journeys perils, more than 100 people were missing off Libyas coast over the weekend after a migrant boat sunk.

Some European leaders are warning of a fresh migration crisis when sea waters warm again and more people choose to put their lives in the hands of smugglers.

Come next spring, the number of people crossing over the Mediterranean will reach record levels, Malta Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, whose country holds the European Unions presidency, predicted. The choice is trying to do something now, or meeting urgently in April, May and try to do a deal then.

The 28-nation EU already has a controversial deal to stem the flow of migrants from Turkey, which has agreed to try to stop the number of migrants leaving the country and to take back thousands more in exchange for billions of euros to help Syrian refugees in Turkey, visa-free travel for its citizens and fast-track EU membership talks.

Now, the EU wants to adapt this outsourcing pact to the African nations migrants are leaving or jumping off from to reach Europe, despite criticism that the agreement sends asylum seekers back to countries that could be unsafe for them.

The bottom line is that the Turkey deal works. The number of people arriving in the Greek islands, for instance, plunged over the last year despite political wrangling over whether Turkeys government was respecting the conditions to secure visa-free travel in Europes Schengen area, where passport checks are not required.

And EU nations have even fewer scruples about turning away migrants who take the central Mediterranean route to Italy since they mostly are job seekers who would be ineligible for asylum.

Niger, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Mali and Chad are all on the EUs radar, and dealing with them is proving expensive. But the blocs arrangement with Turkey has shown that the best way of stemming migrant flows is to stop people taking to the sea. Libya and Egypt are the main migrant departure points, and pacts with them would probably have the biggest immediate impact.

Muscat wants to build on a deal Italy is trying to reach with Libya by adding EU funds and other support. He also thinks the EUs anti-smuggler naval mission, Operation Sophia, should be extended into Libyan territorial waters to stop people in unsafe boats from reaching open waters.

Easier said than done. The EU has been unable to secure United Nations backing for such a move, and Libya has no central authority with the reach or stability to negotiate a long-term agreement with the Europeans.

The reality of Libya right now is that there is no unified government controlling all parts of the country, and no end of groups willing to upend things if there is an advantage in it for them, Carlo Binda, a Libya expert with Malta-based political and development advisers, Binda Consulting International.

Libyas neighbor Egypt appears a more viable option. Many people have set out from the country bound for Europe in recent months, mainly migrants from the Horn of Africa trying to avoid dangerous Libya and increasingly Egyptians themselves, according to the EUs border agency Frontex.

Despite some instability, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, a former general who led the 2013 military removal of an elected Islamist president, is a man with whom the Europeans feel they can do business. Sissi also wields plenty of influence in Libya.

Egypts economy has been battered by unrest since the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. If there is one thing the worlds biggest trading bloc does well, it is raise funds to pay for its problems.

Egypt is the country with which one could come to some sort of agreement, Maltese Foreign Minister George Vella said. There is stability to a certain extent, and they are interested because even they themselves have got their own problem with migration.

Time is of the essence. The EU has for several years tried to cobble together migration polices while people were dying at sea.

The refugee emergency Europes worst since World War II also has raised tensions among EU member countries. Some countries have erected anti-migrant fences or reintroduced border controls amid deep disagreement over how to manage the challenge.

Things are getting complicated. I would rather face the music now, Muscat said.

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Crisis Warnings Sound as EU Gears Up For New Migrant Wave

By James McauleyThe Washington Post

CALAIS, France He was walking alone, to a place that no longer exists.

These days, Baz - a 25-year-old Afghan who has been in Calais for 20 months, he said could use a place to sleep. Not so long ago, he had one: a tent in the "Jungle" encampment, where nearly 10,000 migrants and refugees from the Middle East and East Africa languished for months, even years, in hopes of eventually reaching Britain, a short 20 miles across the English Channel.

But in late October, the French government after a devastating sequence of terrorist attacks and the spike in anti-immigrant rhetoric that followed demolished the camp. The migrants there were either transported to "welcome centers" throughout France or simply evicted from the makeshift city that teemed with smugglers and violence.

In any case, the Jungle is gone, and Baz like so many other migrants still here now sleeps on the streets.

The end of the camp was not the end of the migrant crisis in France, and hundreds more have continued to trickle into this working-class city on the shores of northern France, which remains the closest point in continental Europe to Britain. If no longer in the headlines, the problem is no less urgent, aid workers say, insisting that conditions for newcomers have never been worse.

"This!" Baz, who declined to give his surname, said recently, gesturing at the asphalt on a road near the old entrance to the Jungle, far outside of town. "This! This is where you sleep."

"We are literally trying to get drinking water to people. We don't have water, we don't have food and no sanitation," said Clare Moseley, the founder of Care4Calais, an aid organization active throughout France. "There's skin disease, gum disease. It really, really is the absolute basics of life here."

"When we were in the Jungle, we were trying to get clothes to people and even some kinds of social care. It really was a step up from where we are now."

Since the Jungle, major elections have come and gone in France and Britain, whose border with the European Union's Schengen zone begins at the French coast.

In France, despite the victory of the centrist, pro-migrant Emmanuel Macron over the fiercely anti-immigrant Marine Le Pen last month, little has happened to suggest any immediate change in policy toward migrants seeking either temporary residence or asylum.

"The duty of Europe is to offer asylum to those who are persecuted and ask for its protection," Macron's campaign platform read. "In this context, France must take its fair share in the reception of refugees. It must issue permits to all those whom it deems entitled to asylum in its territory."

But last week, Grard Collomb, Macron's interior minister, authorized the transfer of three extra police squadrons to the Calais region. In an interview with the Le Parisien newspaper, Collomb said that the transfer would amount to roughly 150 additional officers and gendarmes.

"Our priority," Collomb said, "is that Calais and Dunkirk do not remain places of fixation and that 'Jungles' do not reconstitute."

In Britain, where Prime Minister Theresa May narrowly survived her own snap election recently, Brexit will still mean Brexit, and strict immigration regulations for migrants and refugees are unlikely to be reconsidered anytime soon.

Unlike many of the migrants now here, Baz is a legal adult. Approximately 150 of the 400 new migrants who have recently arrived in the Calais area are unaccompanied minors, Moseley said.

After the destruction of the Jungle, there is no longer a central gathering place for these younger migrants, who have begun to seek refuge in odd locations throughout the city.

Two of them, for instance, were huddled on a recent evening under a covered drive-in outside a Pizza Hut in central Calais. Customers came in and out, paying the two boys little notice. Pizza deliveries proceeded; cars passing through the nearby roundabout drove by.

"Calais people don't like refugees," said Kiya Rabbira, 16, from Ethiopia, one of these refugees. He was sitting with his friend, Fiiri Nanaki, 15, also from Ethiopia. "They're always calling the police, and they never give us food. They see us sleeping here, and say, 'don't sleep here go.' "

This was never supposed to happen.

In the fall, leading up to the Jungle's demolition, the U.K. government pledged to take in a host of unaccompanied minors. Already nominally committed to the Dublin III agreement, a European Union regulation allowing the resettlement of refugee children in member states where they have family, the government vowed to do more.

Last year, the British Parliament approved an amendment to an immigration bill that also permitted the resettlement of unaccompanied minors with no family in Britain. Sponsored by Alf Dubs, a member of the House of Lords, the "Dubs amendment" harked back to one of the proudest moments in modern British history, when the United Kingdom in convoys known as "Kindertransports" sheltered Jewish children from Nazi persecution in central Europe in the late 1930s.

Dubs, now 84, was one of those children.

In the months since, however, the United Kingdom has reneged on its commitment, largely because the final text of the new amendment mandated no specific number of unaccompanied minors to admit, Dubs said in an interview.

"Unfortunately, we weren't able to tack a number on it, so the government could go back on the amendment," he said. "We simply said they had to do it, never thinking they would cut it short like that."

Calais is a historic stronghold of the National Front, the far-right, anti-immigrant and populist party that lost the French presidential election but is vying to represent the area in France's upcoming legislative elections. Le Pen, who lost the Elyse Palace to Macron last month, is ultimately running for a seat in Parliament here. She has a decent chance of winning, as she carried the area in both rounds of the presidential election.

In recent years mostly thanks to the Jungle Calais and its environs have developed a particular reputation for a certain xenophobia, with migrants frequently complaining of vigilante reprisals from ordinary citizens. Recently immortalized in the pages of "The End of Eddy," the best-selling novel of the 24-year-old douard Louis, much of northeastern France is a predominantly white and working-class terrain, as resentful of change as it is of the Parisian elite.

In the season of France's upcoming legislative elections, appealing to this demographic appears to be a motivation for Macron's cabinet.

"I had the opportunity to speak with local elected officials," Collomb told Le Parisien. "I heard their concerns, and I want to tell the people of all these territories that they are not forgotten."

But the migrants here often find these promises sinister, mostly in terms of an increased police presence.

"Kicking, dogs, spray," Rabbira said, when asked to describe his encounters with the local police.

"There's a problem with the police here they spray you," Baz said, acting out a forceful kick.

Calais City Hall did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

See original here:
The Calais 'Jungle' is gone, but France's migrant crisis is far from over - Columbia Daily Tribune

Since 2014, more than 1.6 million people have arrived by sea while 13,500 have died on the way

The images from a crisis entering its third year have become shockingly familiar: capsized boats, refugees teargassed in squalid border camps, a Syrian boy's tiny body on an empty beach. PHOTO: AFP

BRUSSELS:New legal action by the European Union against eastern member states for refusing to take their share of refugees shows how the worst migration crisis since World War II still divides the continent.

The images from a crisis entering its third year have become shockingly familiar: capsized boats, refugees teargassed in squalid border camps, a Syrian boys tiny body on an empty beach. Here AFP looks at the numbers that tell a deeper story. The basic facts are stark: Since 2014, more than 1.6 million people have arrived by sea while 13,500 have died on the way.

The numbers also give answers to the important human questions: Where are these people coming from, where are they going, how many have died, and how many will be allowed to stay?

The migration crisis has no official starting point but statistics from the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) offer some chronological yardsticks.

Following gradual yearly increases since 2011, 2014 marked a first turning point with 170,100 people landing on Italian shores and 43,518 on Greek coastlines, up from 42,900 and 11,447 respectively the previous year.

EU-Turkey migrant deal turned Greek islands into prisons

But it was in 2015 that the situation took on dizzying proportions. The IOM registered 1,011,712 arrivals by sea in Europe, including 853,650 on Greek shores, with the peak in arrivals hit in October, and 153,842 on Italys coastline.

The increase was mainly a result of the worsening conflict in Syria alongside deteriorating conditions in Syrian refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Among the arrivals in Greece in 2015, more than half 56.l per cent were Syrian, while 24.3 per cent were from Afghanistan and 10.3 per cent were from Iraq.

Most came to Greece across the Aegean Sea from Turkey. While the EU struggled to forge a collective response and help Greece cope with the influx, most of the migrants trekked along the so-called Balkan route toward wealthy northern European countries like Germany and Sweden.

The arrivals on the Italian coast in 2015 came on the central Mediterranean route, mainly from sub-Saharan African countries: 39,162 Eritreans, 22,237 Nigerians, 12,433 Somalis and 8,932 Sudanese.

There was a sharp drop in migrant arrivals in Greece in 2016, with the IOM registering a total of 363,401 arrivals on Greek and Italian shores, about one-third as many as the previous year.

In Greece, 173,614 arrived by sea, a drop of nearly 80 per cent, reflecting the combined impact of a controversial migrant deal between Turkey and the EU and the nearly total closure of the Balkans route.

The trend is continuing in 2017, with just 7,699 arrivals registered by the IOM in Greece during the first five months of the year.

But the lull in Aegean crossings is tenuous as Turkey is increasingly at odds with the EU and has threatened to scrap the migrant deal over European criticism of its crackdown after an attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Italy meanwhile has seen arrivals continue apace, hitting a new record in 2016 with 181,436.

Those arrivals were mainly Nigerians (20.7 percent), Eritreans (11.4 percent) and Guineans (7.4 percent), according to the IOM. Most are not considered potential refugees, but economic migrants who must be returned to their countries of origin.

Children in Greek migrant camps attempting suicide amid rising desperation

So far this year, figures confirm that the central Mediterranean route has once again become, by far, the main channel to Europe.

Italy has registered more than 65,000 arrivals since January, up nearly 20 percent from the same period last year.

While the migration crisis is often portrayed as a crisis facing the EUs roughly 510 million people, smaller countries outside the region have received a far higher proportion of arrivals.

Turkey hosts 3.2 million refugees, Lebanon shelters more than one million and Jordan is home to 660,000 according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The vast majority are Syrians.

The rest is here:
Numbers tell staggering story of EU migrant crisis - The Express Tribune

More than 900 African and Asian migrants including at least 25 minors and seven pregnant women en route to Europe have been rescued by a Libyan Coast Guard patrol, Al-Monitor reports.

A navy spokesman for the embattled North African country, Gen. Ayoub Qassem, stated Saturday that the coast guard seized five inflatable boats and a wooden vessel.

One of the rubber boats was holed and on the point of sinking, Qassem said. While the wooden one did not have a motor.

The potential disaster being averted is a slim silver lining in the otherwise deepening migration and drowning crisis encircling Libyan waters. People smugglers have taken advantage of the disarray in the battle-torn country since 2011, when their dictatorial leader Muammar Qaddafi was killed.

The country has since been without a stable government as various factions fight for authority, but, despite the safety risks the country presents, the vast majority of smuggling routes from Africa pass through Libya.

Last weekend alone, according to the United Nations, more than 50 migrants mostly from sub-Sahara Africa went missing at sea and a further 2,500 were rescued leaving Libya on feeble dinghies. An additional eight were found dead. Two weeks before, the Libyan Coast Guard allegedly shot at a migrant-filled boat -- prompting many to jump overboard, and leading to the deaths of all 34, including children.

UN APPROVES EU SHIPS TO SEIZE ILLEGAL ARMS OFF LIBYA

GERMANY PROVIDING $3.9 MILLION FOR REFUGEES IN LIBYA

And earlier this month, a video emerged appearing to show several Somalis and Ethiopians beaten and starved, crowded and frightened in a concrete room where they are allegedly being held for ransom by criminal Libyan gangs. Some captives claimed to have had their bones broken and teeth pulled out, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said relatives of some had received demands for ransom payments up to $10,000 otherwise their child or relative will be killed.

The IOM and numerous human rights groups have for the past six years repeatedly condemned the treatment of migrants and refugees at the hands of traffickers as they pass through the unruly Libya and into the Mediterranean Sea by often unsafe and mass-filled boats bound for Italy.

Yet despite the international attention directed toward the refugee disaster in the sea and then flooding Europe in recent years, it is in many respects continuing to worsen. IOM claims that the number attempting to cross the Mediterranean this year has risen compared with years past and had already reached more than 60,500 by the end of May with more than 1,500 recorded deaths.

Originally posted here:
Libyan migration crisis: More than 900 rescued as situation worsens - Fox News

By Jeffrey T. Fowler, Ph.D.Faculty Member, School of Security and Global Studies at American Military University

The nations of the European Union and the United States are justifiably concerned about Islamic extremism. At the heart of this dilemma is what has been called a clash of civilizations. While there are certainly many millions of peaceful Muslims in the world, there is also a radical element that seeks to destabilize the EU and ultimately to replace it with a caliphate.

The stated intent of this radical and increasingly powerful minority is the destruction of Western culture in Europe. The causes of the current crisis are rooted in colonial and post-colonial immigration from former colonies into Europe due to war and the continuing instability in the Middle East since 9/11.

One could easily write a large book on European colonialism and its effects. This has been done numerous times. Suffice it to say that in 1914, the European Great Powers ruled a very large part of the world. The colonization of Africa in the 19th and early part of the 20th century was indicative of that trend.

Under that system, the European powers took raw materials from the underdeveloped parts of the world and sold them finished goods. This clearly rapacious system harmed many emerging nations and discouraged immigration from these colonies to Europe.

This system continued until the end of World War II when it crumbled as more and more colonial entities began to choose independence from their European masters. Once countries in Asia, Africa and other parts of the world were free, immigration to Europe increased as emigrants left poverty and corrupt governments in hopes of finding a better life abroad.

Unfortunately, many immigrants to Europe seeking advancement and a better life lacked the skills necessary to ensure their success in a highly industrialized society. The socialist states of Europe provided the immigrants with the basic life necessities, which only encouraged more immigration. The civil war in Syria and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) spurred the most recent wave of immigrants to the EU.

The main topic of debate on refugee immigration to Europe today is the question of assimilation or deliberate separation? Historically, in both the U.S. and Europe, immigrants sought to assimilate into the host culture while maintaining their cultural and language heritage. Maintaining ones heritage and assimilation into a host culture are not opposing goals.

The threat to Western societies comes from those who immigrate to the EU with no intention of assimilating, those who wish to enforce a deliberate separation from the host culture. This immigrant population (small in number, but ruthless and increasingly powerful) seeks to overthrow the existing host culture and replace it with its own views on ethics, religion and justice that are far removed from Western norms. This is a problem with militant migrants today particularly in the UK, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

With the exception of Switzerland and Hungary, few European countries have taken truly decisive action to quell migrant extremism.

What to do about mass migration and radicalization of some immigrants living in the EU has been debated for years. The Pew Foundation broke down European views on the refugee crisis into a series of five charts.

The Left claims that globalism and cultural relativism teach us that societies must embrace all people. This perspective, as well as the opposing mainly isolationist view, have been extensively debated in Europe. Some Europeans who wish to keep immigration at a high level, even though there are many problems, have been labeled as apologists. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been accused of this position.

Others have been labelled right-wing extremists for taking the opposing view. Some might consider the Polish EU Member of Parliament Janusz Korwin-Mikke, a rightwing extremist. Then there are those who changed their minds on the issue due to events such as British Prime Minister Theresa May. At first she was quite supportive of the Muslim population in Britain. However, the Manchester bombing and the London Bridge attack seem to have changed her mind somewhat. Having been roundly defeated in last weeks snap election, we dont know what her next steps will be, if she manages to retain power.

Recent research by the Pew Research Center suggests that much of the European body politic is not pleased with how the EU has managed the refugee crisis. But there are no easy solutions. There are three primary perspectives on how to solve the problem. As noted above, there is the view of the liberal left, the view of the conservative right, and those who hold to a more moderate stance.

One of the disturbing issues is that the terms nationalism and populism are seen as negatives in the immigration debate. While Europe has a very long history of nation-state conflicts, there is certainly nothing wrong in love of ones country and culture, and wishing to preserve them. Populism is also necessary at times.

In the U.S., the recent presidential election highlighted that perhaps a sizable portion of American voters were simply tired of what they saw as cultural elitist stances by both the Republican and Democratic parties. Populism can disturb the status quo, as weve seen in Senator Bernie Sanders 2016 populist campaign in the U.S. presidential election and the recent victorious campaign by President Emmanuel Macron in France.

Indeed, populism can lead to positive changes either by replacing traditional parties or causing those parties to modify their positions for the public good. Only time will tell how the immigration crisis in the EU will be decided. But if history is any indicator, there will be an end to it one day.

About the Author

Jeffrey T. Fowler, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Security and Global Studies at American Military University. He holds a B.A. in law enforcement from Marshall University, an M.A. in military history from Vermont College of Norwich University and a Ph.D. in business administration with a concentration in criminal justice from Northcentral University. Jeffrey is also a published author, a former New York deputy sheriff and a retired Army Captain, having served over 20 years in the U.S. Army. He teaches both graduate and undergraduate classes on global terrorism.

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There's No Solution in Sight to the Migrant Crisis in the European ... - In Homeland Security