ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION CAUSING STRAIN ACROSS THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT

Another weekend, another two thousand immigrants rescued by Italian sailors and coastguards in the Mediterranean. On August 11th the San Giusto, an amphibious transport vessel, landed 1,698 people in Reggio Calabria, a city in southern Italy. The day before, a naval patrol vessel and a frigate disembarked 364 people at ports in eastern Sicily.

The number of people arriving in Italy by sea this year may already exceed to 100,000. By the end of July approximately 93,000 migrants had been rescued. The previous record for an entire year was set in 2011 when around 60,000 people reached Italian shores at the height of the Arab Spring. Even so, the Italians need help. 

Thanks partly to the Dublin regulation, which says that the first European Union state where a migrant arrives, his finger prints are stored or an asylum claim is made, is responsible for the claimant, Italy is one of the five EU countries that get 70% of all asylum applications (Germany, Sweden, France and Britain are the others). Ministers have repeatedly and fruitlessly sought EU involvement in dealing with the Mediterranean influx.

Undocumented migrants are not usually assisted by the Greek coastguards, unless their boat capsizes. The UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, has voiced concern about “pushbacks”, the coastguards’ practice of towing migrant boats back into Turkish territorial waters. Twelve people died in January when a boat carrying 28 migrants overturned while being towed at high speed by a coastguard vessel.

“These informal forced returns to Turkey are in violation of international human-rights legislation,” says a UNHCR official in Athens. Around 100 such pushbacks happened in the past nine months, according to the UNHCR. The Greek merchant marine ministry denies they take place.

Those who make it to Greece risk being detained in a closed camp to await deportation. Some 6,000 migrants are held in half a dozen camps. Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity, recently reported untreated cases of scabies and hepatitis among inmates. Hundreds more are held in filthy, overcrowded cells at police stations. This year the 18-month limit on detention for migrants was extended indefinitely.

Peripheral countries are where many illegal migrants first touch European soil. This week more than 1,200 illegal migrants crossed the sea from Morocco to Spain within two days. But Spain or Greece is often not where they stay. Their ultimate destination is usually further north.

Many head for France. Last year the country ranked third, after Germany and America, among rich countries for the amount of asylum applications it received (this number includes people arriving by plane and train). Immigration has become an increasingly sensitive subject as a result. “There are fears of uncontrolled immigration, of invasion,”

No one knows how many undocumented migrants live in France. An estimate of 200,000-400,000 bandied about six or seven years ago is not improbable. Last year the authorities had before them almost 66,000 requests for asylum and granted asylum or other protection to fewer than 11,500. Refused asylum-seekers often stay on illegally, or try to make their way to another country.