The desperate, brave faces of Europe’s secret crisis
WE ARE ignoring a European crisis that is going to change all our lives irreversibly and for ever. It is the huge, tragic surge of African migrants across the Mediterranean.
Once inside the borderless European Union, these newcomers can and will settle anywhere. There is no law or power that can stop them.
I first became aware of this when I went to Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa. I had gone to tease Spain for moaning about Gibraltar, while it had its own Gibraltar in Morocco.
But much more serious was the virtual siege of Ceuta (and its nearby twin, Melilla) by migrants, immense numbers of them, crowding up against the 20ft fences which are all that separate this little piece of Spain from Africa.
They climbed. They swam round or paddled past the barricade in makeshift rafts. It was impossible to stop all of them getting through. They walk thousands of miles from all the many famines, massacres and civil wars (often started by us) which beset that tragic continent. Following the building of an effective fence between Greece and Turkey, migrants from Asia and the Middle East who used to come through Greece are now also coming to Europe by sea alongside countless Africans. This problem has grown much worse since we madly overthrew Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi (who tried to stop the refugees) and turned that country into a failed state with no control over its own coastline.
Official figures, probably severe underestimates, say 31,000 crossed from Africa to Europe in 2013. Some 42,000 have tried to reach Italy alone this year. Hundreds drown in the attempt.
It reminds me of how the USMexican border used to be 20 years ago, when they simply could not cope with the multitudes of economic migrants hurrying across the muddy dribble that is the Rio Grande. For in summer, the Mediterranean, like the Rio Grande, is no real barrier. If they can reach the north coast of Africa, they can reach Italy, Greece or Spain. And then they can get to Calais.
That vast illegal migration from Mexico helped to transform the USA into the bilingual, multicultural nation it has since become. Something similar may be in store for Europe.
Actually I admire the migrants’ bravery and determination. Nobody can blame them for wanting to leave their blasted war zones. Nobody, in turn, could blame the nations of Europe if they said they could not cope with them (for they cannot) and took serious steps to stop them coming.
As it is, the political leaders of the Continent prefer not to face the problem at all, leaving the worst-affected states to do what they can and hoping the problem will go away, while it gets bigger all the time. It would be a good start if we admitted that this is actually happening.