24.07.2018, Rome.
The difficulties of overcoming the migration crisis in Europe are due not so much to the EU’s inefficient bureaucratic apparatus, but rather to the organized crime in transit countries, which yields huge profits from illegal migration, journalist Raffaello Loreto said in the article “Profit from refugees” published in Novaya Gazeta on July 23.
According to the author, many EU residents associate the current situation with the disorder that the Western Roman Empire could have experienced on the verge of its collapse. However, the disorder stems not only from the inefficient EU bureaucratic apparatus. “The true reason why the migration crisis is so difficult to overcome is that it is entangled with the problem of organized crime in the transit countries (Italy, Greece, Spain), with human and drug trafficking. It is much more complicated than bureaucratic inefficiency,” Loreto stressed.
The author pointed out that 99% of refugees who reach Sicily or are rescued in the Mediterranean are illegal migrants, and they are accommodated in special migration centers. For several months the refugees wait for their documents allowing them to be employed and to move across the Schengen area. According to the rules of the migration centers, refugees can leave the camp during certain hours. In these hours, refugees are contacted by agents who offer them a job. “Sicilian mafia clans actively trade ‘cheap workers’ and use them not only in agriculture but also for committing crimes, taking advantage of the fact that refugees have no documents,” Loreto said.
Citing journalist investigations by The Guardian and Il Fatto Quotidiano, Loreto said that a well-established network of Nigerian mafia is operating in Europe, which enslaves girls from Nigeria using accomplices among migration center officials. Formally, the Nigerian refugees are waiting for their documents staying in a migration center, but in fact, they became sex slaves without names or papers.
Most of the migrants to Europe come from African countries and the Middle East. According to Eurostat, approximately three million refugees entered the EU from the war-struck regions of the Middle East and North Africa in 2014-2016. This triggered the greatest migration crisis in Europe since World War Two.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
