Invasion of Europe news….
Also heating up is the exchange of words between the so-called rescue ships and the EU’s migration authority. EU agencies accuse NGO migrant rescue boats of creating a “pull factor” which only encourages more people to try to reach Europe in anything that floats.
There are a bunch of news stories today and yesterday about the increase in numbers of African migrants trying to get to Europe from launch-pad-Libya (we should call it Hillary’s invasion of Europe!).
Here is one at CNN:
Calm seas, desperate migrants and ruthless human traffickers all played a role in a record-breaking weekend of maritime rescues in the Mediterranean Sea between Italy and Libya.
But even as the rescue vessels race against time to save lives, another battle is brewing with accusations from the European Union’s border control agency Frontex against nongovernmental organizations like Doctors Without Borders and the Mobile Offshore Aid Station, or MOAS, that run so-called charity rescue ships. Frontex says the charity rescue vessels create a pull factor for migrants and traffickers; the NGOs say they are out there in the absence of an EU strategy to save lives at sea and a lack of initiative to provide a safe corridor option for migration and asylum.
On Sunday evening in Italy, the Italian Coast Guard estimated the number of those rescued since Friday was approaching 7,000, though that number will surely grow as a steady stream of rubber dinghies and rickety wooden fishing vessels were still being spotted off the coast of Libya.
[….]
In a press release, MOAS co-founder and director Regina Catrambone agreed. “Every day people continue to risk their lives while we, as civil society, stand witness. We must continue to call on European governments to act so that people, such as those rescued by us today, do not die, not in Libya nor in the Mediterranean Sea.”
Much more here.
For those who think this doesn’t affect you in America, it does. We have an extensive archive on the fact that we have been taking some of the illegal migrants who reach the island nation of Malta to your towns as refugees. Here is one recent post.
Our ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive is here.