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So heres an interesting thing. Footage so striking that even the BBC has run with it. This is the film of a migrant boat landing on a beach in the south of Spain. In recent years for a whole variety of reasons, Spain has avoided the worst of the migrant crisis. Perhaps thats why these images have broken through where the daily images from Italy this summer have not.

Anyway, its hard to think of a more vivid encapsulation of the ongoing suicide of our continent than this one. If you believe Angela Merkel, the European Commission and most of our political class, the people storming that Spanish beach are doctors, engineers and physicists fleeing the terrible civil war in Morocco, and just desperate to lend their skills to our continent.

The reality (as I recently described at book length) is somewhat different from that dream. These young men from a range of sub-Saharan African countries have come to Europe for a hundred different reasons and they will stay in Europe. Most will try to move northwards. And along the way the only employment most of them will find will be working with illegal gangs made up of people from their countries of origin.

Meanwhile, those people on the beach in Spain can happily stand for all the rest of Europe. They want to have a nice time, the sun is still shining and its all just a bit of a bummer that another boatload of people would illegally break into your continent while youre working on your tan. But someone else will deal with them, wont they? Except they wont. Its a myth, like the idea that it doesnt matter because its just one more boat and the continent can easily take in this boat. Like the ones before it. And the endless boats to come.

Elsewhere the Italian authorities have been making more discoveries about the collusion between the smugglers networks and some of the NGOs operating in the Mediterranean. All just another story in the strange suicide of our continent.

My own view is that the effects of a borderless continent (borderless at its external borders where anyone can just get on a boat and arrive as well as borderless within) are already being felt. A lot of the public know this, but there just arent enough people in power who want to admit to it, let alone tackle it. And so for a while to come our politicians will continue to try to find a way around the consequences of their evasions, half-truths and untruths. They will continue to witter on about diversity, for instance as though we just need more and more of the stuff and that it is just an endless good in itself.

On which note, whatever else you may say about the latest gang of child-rapists to have been sentenced in the UK (this time in Newcastle) nobody could claim that it was boringly mono-cultural. The Newcastle rape-gang included men not just from Pakistan and Bangladesh but also from Iraq, India, Iran and Turkey. Whichis a fine demonstration of the diversity which our continent has welcomed in and a model of the integration which our society is trying to make possible.

Read this article:
The reality of Europe's migrant crisis - Spectator.co.uk (blog)

Approximately 21 million around the globe are victims of modern slavery, a number that has grown significantly over the last year as a result of the escalating migrant crisis in Europe, reveals an annual study from global risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft.

According to the Modern Slavery Index (MSI) now in its second year modern slavery risks have risen in nearly three quarters of the 28 member states of the European Union. The five EU countries posing the highest risk are Romania, Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Bulgaria key points of entry into the region for migrants who are extremely vulnerable to exploitation.

The research, which assesses 198 countries on the strength of their laws, the effectiveness of their enforcement and the severity of violations, shows drops in the scores for 20 countries across the bloc.

The slavery situation in Romania is deemed as deteriorating faster than any country globally, with it falling 56 places in the ranking to 66th highest risk. Romania and Italy (ranked 133rd), which fell 16 places, have the worst reported violations in the EU, including severe forms of forced labor, such as servitude and trafficking.

The International Organization for Migration estimates that over 100,000 migrants have entered Europe by sea in 2017; 85 percent of which have landed in Italy. Arrivals in Greece (129th) have fallen dramatically since the 2016 signing of the EU-Turkey Refugee Agreement, but the country, which dropped 17 places in the index, is host to significant numbers of migrants and remains a key destination for human trafficking.

According to Verisk Maplecroft, the presence of these vulnerable migrant populations in the primary countries of arrival is a key contributor for increases in slavery across multiple sectors in the region, such as agriculture, construction and services.

Due to the geographic shift in migrant sea arrivals, the report suggests that the risk of modern slavery is likely to worsen in Italy over the next year, with agriculture being a major sector of concern.

The migrant crisis has increased the risk of slavery incidents appearing in company supply chains across Europe, said Sam Haynes, Senior Human Rights Analyst at Verisk Maplecroft. It is no longer just the traditional sourcing hotspots in the emerging economies that businesses should pay attention to when risk assessing their suppliers and the commodities they source.

Even the EUs biggest economies are not immune to the rise in slavery risk. Germany and the UK have seen slight negative shifts in their scores, taking them just over the low risk threshold into the medium risk category of the index. New data has revealed gaps in the UKs labor inspectorate, while Germany has experienced an uptick in recorded trafficking and servitude violations.

Outside the EU, Turkey experienced the worlds second largest drop in the Modern Slavery Index, falling from 110th to 58th most at risk and slipping into the high risk category. The influx of 100,000s of refugees from the Syrian civil war, combined with Turkeys restrictive work permit system, has led to thousands becoming party of the informal workforce. Policing labor violations is also no longer a priority for the government, which is focused on the political crackdown, further adding to the risk.

US MSI performance was also mediocre with a medium risk ranking of 135, dangerously close to the high risk threshold. The ranking is partially due to a recent crackdown on undocumented migrants coming to the US.

Hardline strategies such as deportation and immigration bans, however, do not offer effective or sustainable solutions for curbing forced labor and human trafficking. According to Alexandra Channer, Principal Human Rights Analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, eliminating modern slavery will require going to the root of the problem and addressing the drivers of illegal immigration. Failure to do so could further aggravate the problem.

Policies that increase the costs of trafficking, such as tighter enforcement of deportation rules and restricting the protections offered by sanctuary cities, will push undocumented migrants further into the hands of the criminal gangs involved in border trafficking and the procurement of undocumented workers, Channer told Quartz ahead of the 2017 MSI release.

Migrants will be ever more dependent on trafficking networks for survival and fewer will report entrapment and labor abuses to the authorities for fear of deportation. Increases in such violations pose a risk to companies sourcing goods from the US, especially from the agricultural sector, as well as within the services industry.

In Asia, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand the regions manufacturing hubs all landed in the Modern Slavery Indexs extreme or high risk categories. Thailand and India both demonstrated significant improvement, thanks to increases in the enforcement of slavery related laws, but slavery still remains a significant problem. In India, severe forms of slavery are common in construction, brick kilns, garment production, manufacturing and farming; while in Thailand, the worst abuses still frequently occur in sectors such as manufacturing, agriculture, fishing and rubber production.

Intensive government activity will be required in India and Thailand if these green shoots of progress are to turn into a positive trajectory, said Hannah Broscombe, Asia Supply Chain Analyst at Verisk Maplecroft.

China, ranked 21st in the index, remains firmly entrenched among the worst performing countries in the extreme risk category. North Korea, Syria, South Sudan, Yemen, DR Congo, Sudan, Iran, Libya, Eritrea and Turkmenistan are rated by the Modern Slavery Index as posing the highest risk of all countries measured.

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Report: Migrant Crisis Escalating European Modern Slavery Risk - Sustainable Brands

GETTY

In a hard-hitting plea socialist leader Gianni Pittella called on EU leaders to start taking the situation in his home country more seriously or it could grow to threaten the whole future of the bloc.

He said Eastern European countries point blank refusal to take in refugees under the clubs quota scheme was unacceptable and backed calls to strip them of their Brussels funding.

And the Italian MEP, president of the Socialist and Democrat grouping in the EU parliament, warned that unless the migration issue is sorted it will simply harden divisions and rip the bloc apart.

The EU has been grown into chaos by the recent upsurge in arrivals to Italy, which has exposed stark differences within the different member states over how to deal with mass migration.

Eastern European countries like Hungary and Poland have predictably refused to take in any asylum seekers, but Rome has been alarmed at the extent to which it has also been abandoned to its fate by key players like France and Germany.

With newly elected Emmanuel Macron keen to strike a tough tone on migration as he looks to win over supporters of Marine Le Pen, and Angela Merkel facing her own election battle in September, little help has been on offer.

GETTY

Austrian, meanwhile, even threatened to deploy its armed forces to the Alpine border with Italy in order to seal it off if there was a fresh jump in the number of arrivals over the summer.

As a result Italy has been forced to take things into its own hands, with Rome threatening to shut its ports to migrant boats and targeting NGO rescue vessels it accuses of colluding with people smugglers to aid illegal migration.

Mr Pittella said that despite warnings from the Italian government, most EU member state continue to ignore the situation and said the political will to act on migration had disappeared with the front page headlines.

Writing for EUobserver, he warned: Hundreds of thousands of migrants that have been rescued by the Italian navy and are now waiting in reception centres or being housed by local authorities, many of which are stretched to their limits."

We are reaching another tipping point

Gianni Pittella

He told EU leaders: Ultimately, if we do not adapt the rules and structures of our migration policy, so that all member states share responsibility and have an interest in addressing the issue, then divisions will harden between those that face the brunt of the crisis and those who ignore it.

We are reaching another tipping point. If we continue with the failed approach of the last two years then this could become a systemic crisis that threatens the EU itself.

Mr Pittella said it was simply not acceptable that EU leaders have put off a special summit on the issue of migration until the Autumn, saying it shows they are not taking the problem seriously.

And he called for radical reform including a centralised European asylum policy that allocates refugees, but also so-called economic migrants, in a fair and transparent way.

Such a system would make the relocation system permanent, with sanctions for member states that refuse to take their fair share of refugees but would be vociferously opposed especially by Eastern Europe.

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The Italian MEP wrote: Demographic changes, continuing instability in the Middle East and North Africa, and long-term issues such as poverty and climate change mean that large-scale migration to Europe is going to be a fact for decades to come.

We are a continent of 500 million people and one of the richest regions of the planet the arrival of a few hundred thousand refugees and migrants is manageable if we organise ourselves effectively.

It is clear this is the only viable option, yet certain national governments are still actively undermining any attempts to fix the system.

This is most evident in Hungary, where prime minister Victor Orban is demonising migrants and the EU to try and bolster his flagging poll numbers. We cannot allow this to continue.

More than 100,000 people have arrived in Italy already this year, with EU leaders and officials saying that the vast majority are economic migrants who will not qualify for asylum.

Eurocrats and leaders including Angela Merkel have promised to speed up the rate of deportations to tackle the crisis, whilst plans are also being floated for the establishment of EU camps within Libya.

See more here:
Migrant crisis - Italian MEP warns refugee arrivals threaten EU's ... - Express.co.uk

BBC News

Migrant crisis: Spain arrivals triple compared with 2016 BBC News Three times as many migrants have arrived in Spain so far this year compared to the same period in 2016, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says. It means the number of sea arrivals in Spain - at 8,385 - could overtake Greece, which has ... and more »

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Migrant crisis: Spain arrivals triple compared with 2016 - BBC News

Three Spanish civil guards and dozens of police officers were left injured as they tried to stop the arrival of an estimated 1,000 sub-Saharans migrants.

The violent clashes came as migrants attempted to storm the borders of Spain's two enclaves in northern Africa, Ceuta and Melilla.

It comes a day after more than 100 migrants ran through one gate in the fence usually used as a border control.

REUTERS

And on Tuesday, dozens of sub-Saharan immigrants launched an assault on the border perimeter separating the autonomous city of Ceuta from Morocco at 6 am.

On this occasion, Moroccan authorities ensured that only around 300 immigrants managed to reach the border fence, where they were stopped by agents of the Civil Guard.

The Civil Guard Command of Ceuta reported large groups of sub-Saharan migrants throwing rocks and sticks in frustration in a bid to cross the border.

Getty Images

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Aid workers help migrants up the shore after making the crossing from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos on November 16, 2015 in Sikaminias, Greece

REUTERS

They were also reportedly armed with rudimentary spears and sharp objects.

The fresh attempt comes just 24 hours after 187 migrants reached Spanish territory following a rush across the border.

EPA

Many migrants try to enter Spain as a means of reaching other parts of Europe.

Arrivals through Ceuta and Melilla, as well as the number of migrants attempting to cross into Spain by sea from North Africa has risen this year, although the route between Libya and Italy remains the most popular.

Read more here:
MIGRANT CRISIS: 1000 storm Spanish border fence in second day of chaos - Express.co.uk