Two Reasons Why Europe Will Never Solve Its Migration Problem
The arc of human misery on its doorsteps is made worse by evil people like Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group.
Fleeing despair, hoping for Europe.
Photographer: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
They keep coming — and keep dying. Just this week, another 55 migrants trying to reach Europe drowned off the coast of Libya when their rubber dinghy sank. Two days earlier, 33 people died in four different capsizes near the Italian island of Lampedusa. A few days before that, dozens of bodies washed up on a beach near Tripoli. Each of these men, women or children could have told a tale of unimaginable sorrow.
The running tally of migrant drownings for the year so far is 661, according to the International Organization for Migration. That makes about 20,000 such deaths since 2014. And this number only counts fatalities on the central Mediterranean route from Africa to the European Union, not the refugees who perished on the Aegean or other passages.