Migrants turn to capricious Black Sea

CONSTANTA, Romania — While the arrival of exhausted migrants may be common on Mediterranean shores, it’s a rare sight on the Black Sea coastline.

But a string of recent arrivals from Turkey suggests it may be emerging as part of a new “Romanian route” to western Europe.

Shortly before dawn on Wednesday last week, around 150 people, a third of them children, were rescued in the Black Sea — the fifth migrant boat to be intercepted by Romanian authorities since mid-August.

The arrival of some 570 Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans, Iranians and Pakistanis in less than a month remains modest compared to the influx recorded in the Mediterranean.

In 2014, the last year of relative activity, close to 300 migrants crossed the Black Sea to reach Romania.

EU member Romania is not part of the bloc’s passport-free Schengen zone and until now has largely avoided the kind of influx of refugees and migrants seen elsewhere on the continent over the past few years.

The latest developments are being carefully watched in the country.

“This seems to indicate that smugglers are trying to find a route through the Black Sea,” said Krzysztof Borowski, a spokesman for Frontex, the EU’s border force agency.

Smugglers are looking for more affluent migrants to pay the fare for the new route which avoids Greece, where arrivals risk deportation under an agreement between the EU and Ankara, explained Mircea Mocanu, head of the International Organization for Migration Romania.

The crossing between Turkey and Romania can cost between 1,000 and 3,000 euros, he added.

However, he is doubtful there will be in an influx of boats during the colder months: “It is 10 times more difficult to cross the Black Sea than the Mediterranean Sea.”

In Timisoara, close to the border with Hungary, hundreds of migrants are waiting for an opportunity to cross over.

At the immigration center, Tarek, a 19-year-old Syrian, said he had been stopped while trying to reach the border in a car.

He has decided to stay in Romania to become a computer engineer, but he said many of his friends are “ready to do anything” to leave.

“People come and ask: ‘do you want to stay or go? Because I know a way to get to Germany that’s 100 percent safe’,” he said, adding that middlemen get 100 euros for setting up a migrant with a smuggler.

According to Romania’s border police, more than 1,200 people attempting to cross the western border have been arrested since the beginning of the year, compared to 900 in for all of 2016.

The IOM estimates that 80 percent of attempts fail.

For Tarek, is it a bitter conclusion: “A year and a half of my life has been wasted in the hope of joining the promised land.”