New wave of migrants puts US and other countries to the test
Danish media are full of reports of “a new kind of migration” and people from “shady countries” seeking to enter the continent via the Southern American border and other routes.
The media reports in the Danish print, TV1 and radio media have been followed up here.
They have been largely confirmed by a new report by The Pew Research Center and the Wall Street Journal which has shown that nearly half of all migrants in 2014 – 55 per cent – had entered Europe through the Southern European border.
The Pew report shows that many of those from countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Somalia who want to migrate into Europe are coming across the Mediterranean, the Balkans and then the land that will become the European Union’s external frontier.
The Pew study has identified the countries from which most of the new arrivals have come to the continent, finding that more than a third (37 per cent) came from Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories (28 per cent) and Syria (27 per cent).
A large proportion of those who arrived in Europe in 2015 were from Central and Eastern Europe, mainly from the former Yugoslavia or Romania – countries who joined the EU after being subjected to brutal conflicts that led to the breakdown of governments and mass migration.
The Pew report also showed that large numbers of people coming from Libya (10 per cent), Somalia (9 per cent) and Iraq (8 per cent) had arrived in the EU following civil war in those countries.
A further 20 per cent came from sub-Saharan Africa.
The Pew report also shows that the main reason for migration to the EU is economic. More than a third (37 per cent) said their main reason for leaving their country was economic. Another 37 per cent had fled violence and wars, while 24 per cent had left from poverty and another 19 per cent simply wanted to travel.
The Pew report also looked at the number of applications from migrants from these countries.
And they were overwhelmingly successful too. Only three per cent of those who applied for asylum in the Czech Republic were turned down in 2015. Two per cent were turned down by Germany, while over a fifth (21 per cent) were turned down in Austria.
The Pew report has shown that in Britain, at least,