Immigration now has become a hot potato both for Europe and USA. There is a growing tendency for right wing governments coming into power in Europe because of their anti-immigration policies.
The problem these countries are facing not legal immigration but illegal immigration. These migrants at great risk to their lives are coming to USA and Europe. They are coming from Syria, Somalia, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Pakistan and West Africa.
It is very difficult to know who are genuine refugees, genuine asylum seekers, economic migrants, illegal migrants or ISIS and Al Qaeda fighters trying to infiltrate Europe using false documents. This is major dilemma for the European Countries especially, Italy, Greece , France, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Sweden and Netherlands.
A refugee is someone fleeing war, persecution, or natural disaster. Refugee status is defined in international law, which requires states to protect refugees and not send anyone to a place where they risk being persecuted or seriously harmed. States hold primary responsibility for the protection of refugees. The UN counted 21.3 million refugees worldwide at the end of 2015.
“Asylum” refers to the legal permission to stay somewhere as a refugee, which brings rights and benefits. Not every asylum seeker will ultimately be recognized as a refugee, but every refugee is initially an asylum seeker.
The only way to stem this massive flow of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East to tackle the problem at its source, which is to neutralise the human traffickers and their agents in their countries of origin. To destroy their boats used by the traffickers to sail the migrants to Europe.
Germany reported the largest total number of immigrants (1 029.9 thousand) in 2016, followed by the United Kingdom (589.0 thousand), Spain (414.7 thousand), France (378.1 thousand) and Italy (300.8 thousand). Germany also reported the highest number of emigrants in 2016 (533.8 thousand), followed by the United Kingdom (340.4 thousand), Spain (327.3 thousand), France (309.8 thousand), Poland (236.4 thousand) and Romania (207.6 thousand).
A total of 21 of the EU Member States reported more immigration than emigration in 2016, but in Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Romania the number of emigrants outnumbered the number of immigrants.
The migrants are not going to the rich Middle East Countries because they know they will not get the security, employment, health and social benefits they are getting and will get in the Europeans countries. The only way out for them is to enter Europe legally and not illegally,
The recent solution worked out by the European Union to establish disembarkation centres outside the EU to process the application of migrants, where only genuine refugees and asylum seekers will be allowed to enter Europe.
Baldev Sharma
Rayners Lane, Harrow
