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THE EU migrant crisis will rage on for decades, one of the most senior officials in Brussels admitted yesterday.

His comments came as tensions mounted on the border between Italy and Austria over the continuous flood of illegals pouring into Europe from north Africa.

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The Sun reported yesterday that the Austrian army has mobilised tanks and troops towards the Brenner Pass.

Vienna has said it is sending four Pandur armoured personnel carriers and has 750 soldiers on standby at a barracks close to nearby Innsbruck airport.

Italian anti-immigration group Northern League plans to stage a demo at the Pass tomorrow to demand Italy closes all ports to migrants.

European Commission vice president Frans Timmermans said that many so-called refugees arriving in the bloc are really economic migrants seeking a better life.

In his warning to EU leaders, the Dutch official said: We know many of the people arriving in Italy, when scrutinised, do not have the right to international protection because they dont flee from war of persecution.

They seek a better life, which is a noble pursuit, but it does not grant them the right to stay in the European Union.

I will tell you this; this migration issue will not go away, not today, not tomorrow, not next year, not for a decade, not for two decades.

This is a global phenomenon that will be with us for generations.

Locals in the Alpine flashpoint of Brenner Pass are also feeling the strain with one bar owner in Gries am Brenner, just over the border in Austria, telling The Sun: It is worrying.

The numbers coming over from north Africa are striking. I just dont understand where all these people are going to go.

Rex Features

We are only a small country of eight million and we are already crowded.

If these people are fleeing war or famine then maybe I could understand, but when you see them they are mainly young men on their own.

They are economic migrants and they are happy to work for less than locals and they get hired while locals lose their jobs.

The other thing you have to think about is the security.

You just dont know where these people are from or who they are.

Look at the attacks we have had in Europe the past few years and it has emerged some terrorists arrived in Europe claiming to be refugees.

Reuters

Austria is not alone in looking to tighten its borders. Neighbouring Switzerland, which also shares a frontier with Italy, is also beefing up its crossing points.

Figures show 85,183 migrants have made it to Italy in 2017 up from 71,279 in the first six months of 2016. The number reaching Spain from Africa has risen from 1,352 to 6,464 over the same periods.

The Brenner Pass has been a focal point for conflict for thousands of years.

Germanic tribes used it to invade Roman territories, the Austrian Empire used it as a trade route, and in 1940 Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini sealed their Pact of Steel there.

Alamy

And after an unprecedented wave of migrants arriving in Europe from north Africa this year, the area finds itself at the forefront of world affairs once again.

Officials in Italy have accused the Austrian authorities of overreacting and have summoned the ambassador for a dressing down at the Interior Ministry in Rome.

However those over the border in Austria are worried about the possible influx of migrants heading their way. And with elections due in the autumn, immigration is a crunch issue.

LIBYAN security forces have been filmed in a gun battle with a gang of people smugglers.

In dramatic footage, migrants can be seen ducking for cover as bullets fly. Afterwards, dozens of people were seen scrambling to safety from sinking dinghies on to a Libyan navy patrol boat. The footage emerged as officials revealed more than 100,000 migrants have made their way across the Med from North Africa to Italy. Charities have been accus- ed of providing a taxi service for asylum seekers.

AP:Associated Press

Yesterday at the Brenner Pass crossing itself there was a steady stream of tourist traffic and trucks flowing in both directions.

There were no checks taking place as both Italy and Austria are part of the EUs Schengen free movement of people agreement.

One off-duty Italian squaddie told The Sun: We have always worked well with the Austrians on migration so there is no need for all this posturing.

Alamy

It raises tensions with the locals on both sides who worry about tourists being put off from visiting. The best thing would be for them to calm down and just let things go back to the way they were this time last week.

But Austrias Defence Minister Peter Doskozil has said he expects border controls will be introduced very soon with the flow of migrants shows no sign of easing. However, Rome has warned that would breach EU rules.

One official said: We would take a very dim view if Vienna did anything to restrict free movement of people between the two countries.

Reuters

Restrictions were introduced across Europe in 2015 and 2016 after similar surges in migrant numbers.

Last year Austria had 31,750 requests for asylum a 79 per cent rise on the previous year. The number is expected to go up again.

One Italian border officer told us he sees about 20 people a day trying to get across to Austria. He added: Over a year it adds up.

Reuters

In his warning yesterday, Mr Timmermans said it would make a world of difference if every member state lived up to their commitments to help Italy.

Ukips Jane Collins urged the EU to copy Australia in turning boats away if it wants to tackle the crisis.

She said: Even Bill Clinton spoke out, saying Germany will not be able to handle the huge numbers of migrants waiting to leave Africa and find a better life overseas and neither can the UK, Austria or Sweden.

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Brussels officials warn EU migrant crisis could rage 'for decades' as tensions mount at the Italian-Austrian border - The Sun

Paris: Paris police moved out 2,500 migrants who had been living rough in the north of the city, officials said, on its latest operation to ease strains caused by a human influx to Europe.

Representational image. AP

The evacuation, which went ahead smoothly, entailed moving out migrants who had been living around an aid centre set up in the Porte de la Chapelle area last November.

The authorities mobilised 60 buses to disperse them to a couple of other locations in the Paris region, mainly school gymnasiums that have become available during the holiday season. Charity groups took part in the operation. Officials had been expecting to move out 1,600 migrants, but according to Francois Ravier, a senior official with the Paris region prefecture, "at least 2,500" people were involved.

"Experience shows that there are always more people than estimated," he said.

Paris became a gathering point for migrants after the closure last October of the notorious "Jungle" near Calais -- a makeshift camp near the Channel coast where thousands lived in the hope of climbing aboard trucks or trains to get into Britain.

Friday's evacuation was the 34th to take place in Paris in the last two years. The previous operation was on May 9, when more than 1,600 migrants were moved out from the same area. Aid workers said around 200 more migrants had been coming into the area every week recently, raising security and hygiene concerns and causing tensions with locals. Europe's migrant influx began in 2015, centering on Greece, where hundreds of thousands of people, many of them fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Afghanistan, crossed from Turkey. The crisis receded in 2016 under an agreement with Turkey to clamp down on illegal border crossings.

However, it revived this year, focusing instead on sea crossings from Libya to Italy, mainly entailing people from sub-Saharan Africa.

On Thursday, EU interior ministers pledged to back a plan to help Italy, which has accepted around 85,000 people since the start of the year and says it is overwhelmed.

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Migrant crisis: Paris Police evict 2500 refugees to ease human influx in Europe - Firstpost

BBC News

Europe migrant crisis: EU blamed for 'soaring' death toll BBC News Amnesty International has blamed "failing EU policies" for the soaring death toll among refugees and migrants in the central Mediterranean. In a report, it said "cynical deals" with Libya consigned thousands to the risk of drowning, rape and torture ... Europe's Smaller But Tougher Migrant CrisisBloomberg Europe's migrant crisis threatens to overwhelm Italy, even as flows to ...Los Angeles Times Brussels forced to spend MILLIONS more on tackling migrant crisis to quell Italian furyExpress.co.uk Wall Street Journal (subscription) -POLITICO.eu all 163 news articles »

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Europe migrant crisis: EU blamed for 'soaring' death toll - BBC News

An illegal Salvadoran migrant couple is seen on railway track with their son during the arrival of the Caravana de Madres Centroamericanas (Caravan of Central American Mothers). Photo by REUTERS/Edgard Garrido/File

Editors Note: In her first Making Sen$e post on the immigration crisis that accompanies tonights Making Sen$e broadcast story on Utica, New York, the town that loves refugees, scholar and refugee worker Hannah Carrese made the case for America returning to a discarded policy of the past: the guest worker bracero program, inaugurated in the 1940s.

In this post, she suggests a solution to what may be the greatest immigration crisis America faces: a tsunami ofrefugees fleeing the violence of failing states in Central America.

Paul Solman, Economics Correspondent

Twenty years ago, when NAFTA was ratified, North Americans could profitably speak about two kinds of migrants: economic migrants and displaced people. The first was a personification of commercemigrants who chose to leave home and travel where there was a demand to which they could supply a solution. The second was the human face of violencerefugees forced to leave their homes to travel to a place where their lives are not threatened. These categories seemed clear in North America in large part because a few years before NAFTA was signed,both the U.S. and Mexico had established robust refugee programs for Central Americansfleeing violent revolutions in their countries.

The real migration problem we face in North America isnt Mexican migrants seeking jobs in the United States. Rather, its Central Americans (and now Venezuelans) fleeing violence in their countries and seeking asylum in Mexico or the U.S.

But weve collapsed the distinction between economic migrants and displaced people in recent years. Many on the left contend that the inability to feed ones familythe deep poverty that we once thought producedonlyeconomic migrationkills just the same as a barrel bomb. Many on the right see migrants, even those recognized as refugees, as economic opportunists, benefiting from strong labor markets, supposedly generous entitlement programs and lax border controls in rich Western democracies. But this collapsing of categories, on the right and left, has not served the world well. We see now the awful human costs of an international legal order that does not, will not, guide and modulate human migration.

In addition to opening a door to regulated, cyclical migration from Mexico, that is, the United States should seek to reestablish another old orderthese categories of economic migration and forced migration. We should begin by recognizing this fact:During the past five years, Mexico-U.S. migration has actually operated in reverse. More Mexicans are returning south to Mexico than are coming north to the U.S.

The southward movement of Mexican nationals makes clear that the real migration problem we face in North America isnt Mexican migrants seeking jobs in the United States. Rather, its Central Americans (and now Venezuelans) fleeing violence in their countries and seeking asylum in Mexico or the U.S. Twenty-two thousand of these Central Americans are expected to apply for refugee status in Mexico during 2017, up from just over a thousand in 2012.

A mural at Mexico Citys Casa Refugiados (Refugee House) depicts Central American asylum seekers gazing across the Suchiate River toward Mexico. Photo by Hannah Carrese

Mexico is not prepared to handle this influx of asylum seekers. Migrant shelters in Mexico are already overflowing. In Puebla, the Red Cross and various Catholic churches are opening new shelters to house increasing numbers of Central Americans who have taken trains to and through this central Mexican state. In Mexico City, asylum seekers from Central America and from Africa are being placed in increasingly marginal housing. This spring, a Somali refugee told me, Never in my life have I seen such a place as this, and I was inDadaab a complex in Kenya that forms the worlds largest refugee camp for 25 years.

We should expect many of these asylum seekers to show up at the U.S. border during the next decade, much as asylum seekers have flocked to Europe during this decade.

We should expect many of these asylum seekers to show up at the U.S. border during the next decade, much as asylum seekers have flocked to Europe during this decade. It is in our self-interest to recognize that displaced people are unlikeeconomic migrants in that they do not choose to migratethey are forced out by violence from which their governments cannot protect them. If we want to keep these displaced people from seeking safety in North America, in the U.S. and Mexico, we must proactively helpcountries in South and Central America to develop better governments and economies.

President Obama gestured toward these problems after thousands of Central American children came alone to our southern border in 2014. But his policies were reactive: He allowedmore Central Americans to be recognized as refugees in the U.S. and directed U.S. officials to make asylum determinations in Central America before asylum seekers made the dangerous trek through Mexico. Truly confronting North Americas Central American migration crisis requires new strategy.

A man stares into the window of the Mexico City building that houses Mexicos Commission for the Aid of Refugees (COMAR). Photo by Hannah Carrese

The U.S. is properly wary of involvement in Central America: Our government provoked the violent revolutions that produced mass displacement in the region during the 1980s. But our circumstances are not entirely different now. The gangs now terrorizing El Salvador and Honduras formed in the U.S. and were exported to Central America by Salvadorans and Hondurans deported from the U.S. in the 1990s and 2000s. Ourfailures of the 20th century should help guide our policy in the 21st.

Instead of influencing national politics in Central America, our aid and advice should be intensely local: 24-hour courts and youth centers and community policing in high-violence neighborhoods. A 2013 survey found that in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, crime victimization is lower and public perception of security is higher in communities where USAID has done this kind of intensive development work. We should emphasize programs introducing young people who, in Latin America, display a record lack of interest in political participation and leadership to politics as a means for change.

If we want to keep these displaced people from seeking safety in North America, in the U.S. and Mexico, we must proactively help countries in South and Central America to develop better governments and economies.

Instead of secret regime-toppling, our open aim should be institution-building. An institution with which we might start is CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Patterned after NAFTA, it seeks to create partnerships between the United States and Central American countries that are poor in part because they are too small to function on their own in a global economy. Economistsand the World Bank and the World Trade Organizationseem to agree that free trade can be a powerful tool for poverty relief. And lifting people from poverty has been linked to reductions in cyclical violence. This is worth a try in Central America.

President Trump made clear in a February address to Congress that the only long-term solution for humanitarian disasters, in many cases, is to create the conditions where displaced persons can safely return home and begin the long, long process of rebuilding. His administration might begin to make good on this idea in Central America,where conditions are not yet so bad as to precipitate the kind of displacement we now see, for example, in Syria.

This, after all, would be an America First policyone thatrecognizes that the United States is not the only American nation and that the people and problems we ignore abroad will, now or in other decades, find us here.

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Column: Let's put 'America First' by averting a Central American ... - PBS NewsHour

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Interior chiefs from Estonia, Belgium and the Netherlands all said Brussels needs to find ways of significantly upping the rate of deportations of economic migrants if it is to survive the latest spike in the continents migration crisis.

Eurocrats are now set to draw up a code of conduct, at the behest of Italy, which will govern how NGOs operating search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean should coordinate their operations with EU member states in the future.

A number of prominent Italian politicians have accused charities of acting as a taxi service for migrants and even communicating with people smuggling gangs to coordinate rescues - allegations aid workers furiously deny.

But arriving at a meeting of EU interior ministers in Estonia this morning several heavy hitters from across the continent hinted that patience with the current situation is now wearing thin, with 10,000 people arriving at Italian ports every day.

Rome has warned its reception facilities are close to collapsing under the strain and has threatened to start turning rescue vessels away from its shores, urging other member states to begin opening up their ports and sharing the burden instead.

Today there was little appetite amongst the remaining EU countries for doing so, but there were suggestions the bloc could start turning migrant boats back to Libya as a way of alleviating the growing pressure on Italy.

EU officials have said that the vast majority of those arriving in Italy from North Africa are not refugees, but "manifestly" economic migrants. French president Emmanuel Macron put the figure at "over 80 per cent" whilst the the UN has said it is around seven in 10.

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Dutch interior minister Stephanus Blok said: We need to work out both a better entrance system but also a better system to bring back people who are not entitled to asylum. It cannot remain as it is now.

Just opening more ports will not solve the problem by itself. We should also discuss the role that African ports should play in this field. We should take the African ports also into account."

His Belgian counterpart, Theo Francken, also suggested a new approach may be necessary stating that the current procedure of bringing everybody to Europe cannot go on in light of the huge numbers being rescued.

Asked if he agreed with a code of conduct for NGOs, he replied: "I'm absolutely pro. I think its very good that we have a code of conduct with the NGOs.

We have to save people but the solution is not in bringing everybody to Europe. That is not the solution, that will only increase the problem.

And grilled on Italys suggestion that other member states open up their ports to migrant boats, he added: I dont think were going to open Belgian ports, no.

We should take the African ports also into account

Dutch asylum minister Stephanus Blok

Estonian interior minister Andrea Anvelt, whose country currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the EU, said European countries need to send a clear message that economic migrants will be deported swiftly.

He said: If we will not send the clear messages that we can return, once more time return policy is the preventive and key word in immigration crises.

So if we send the people back this will be the first and most important preventive measure that theres no reason to come here if you dont have the right.

The key programme is the return policy. How the people who dont have right to international protection can be quickly and efficiently sent back to third countries.

Those are the steps the EU has to take as quickly as possible. Legal migration is a possibility but illegal migration and also economic migration have to be stopped.

War torn Libya, which has two rival governments, is not considered a safe third country by the EU and there are question marks over whether turning boats back is legal under international law.

Getty Images

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Refugees and migrants wait in a small rubber boat to be rescued off Lampedusa, Italy

But EU leaders do want to strike a deal with the internationally recognised administration in Tripoli similar to the one they have with Turkey in an attempt to stem the huge numbers of arrivals.

And they could also try to reach agreements with other North African states, such as Tunisia and Egypt, which may be prepared to take on some of the migration burden in return for huge injections of aid cash.

Under the terms of Brussels pact with Ankara all economic migrants are returned across the Aegean, with one genuine refugee from a Turkish camp being housed for every person sent back.

NGOs and some politicians also fear that the EUs proposed code of conduct, which will be directed by Italy, will effectively be designed to act as a break on their search and rescue operations.

EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos insisted Brussels was not turning against charities, saying it had no problems with their activities in the Mediterranean.

He added: The idea behind this proposal is how to make our relations more functional through a more coordinated way. NGOs are contributing in a complimentary way but in a very substantial way to better do our job on the ground.

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'This can't go on' EU ministers hint they may start turning migrant boats back to Africa - Express.co.uk