Dark side of migration exposed as more die in pursuit of European dream

The inability of global institutions to deal with the problem was shown in tragic clarity off the shores of Greece in mid-June. A boat carrying hundreds of dreamers heading across the Mediterranean sank – amid what looked like prolonged inaction from coastguards – a people-trafficking voyage that ended in a huge loss of life.

Only 104 of the estimated 750 people, mainly from Pakistan, Egypt, Syria and Palestine, were rescued.

The incident became a crisis between the European Union and the United Nations. The Greek account of the sinking was questioned by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica called it a humanitarian tragedy and one born of a failure to "help people in danger".

Read more: Europe's symphony of sympathy does little to stop migrant drownings

Pakistan has called for an international investigation into the causes of the drowning and the circumstances of the disappearance of hundreds of people, mostly from its Punjab province.

The tragedy also revealed something about the economics of the human trafficking trade. Each person on the ill-fated boat paid around $8,000 dollars for the voyage.

Multiple tragedies

In the same week that the migrant boat sank, so did a submersible with five wealthy people on board who paid $250,000 each to view the wreckage of the Titanic.

The high-price tourist trip to the remains of the famous liner received significant media attention. It included rolling news, analysis and commentary, with some networks even putting astrologers on the air in their attempt to find it.

Such coverage came in contrast with that of the sinking of the heavily-laden African fishing boat off the coast of Greece. And even more so with the near-total lack of attention given to the tens of thousands of people who died in the Mediterranean under the same circumstances beforehand.

Former US President Barack Obama criticised the apparent double standards in the media's handling of the two human tragedies, regardless of the differences between poverty and wealth.

The IOM believes the tragedy in the Mediterranean is likely to be repeated more and more, as the causes of migration grow in number and severity – from full-blown wars and armed conflicts to climate change, and the economic, political, and social crises in many of Europe's neighbours to the south and east.

The number of people displaced by war in Sudan and East African and Sahel countries will double, with new migrations expected from South Asia, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan – all such migrants are taking the Mediterranean as a route to Europe, aided by criminal networks and corruption in a number of countries in the region.

Crisis in Europe

Whatever happens next, however, many more people are expected to join this dangerous flow toward the promise of Europe, marking a crisis of significant magnitude.

There's a deep row among the countries immediately exposed to arrivals – Greece, Italy, France, and Spain –  the frontline of defence against the movement of people up from the south, and much of the rest of the EU, the more northerly countries which remain as some of the main final destinations for people crossing the Mediterranean.

Italy says it has taken in 90,000 irregular migrants since the start of the year and has had no clear support from the EU in terms of sharing the migrants with the rest of the bloc as their cases are processed. Rome believes its centres in Lampedusa, Sardinia and Sicily in the south of the country can no longer receive more migrants.

A Franco-Italian summit in Paris on 21 June failed to reach a breakthrough on migration.  French newspapers reported that President Emmanuel Macron compared the right-wing Italian prime minister, Georgia Meloni, to his rival in the recent presidential election, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French far-right.

Meloni accuses the former European colonialism of the Middle East and North Africa of being responsible for bringing in "honeybee-like" migration, an analogy to which the Algerian-born French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, responded by saying Meloni "is exploiting the tragedy of others for electoral gain."

Italy and the EU last week promised Tunisia €950 million in aid, including €150 million urgently, to help it overcome its financial difficulties in exchange for restricting clandestine migration from its shores to Italy.

Read more: Saudi loan buys Tunisia's collapsing economy time, but reforms still necessary

Nonetheless, Tunisia's President Kais Saied was reluctant to act as Europe's policeman, to the surprise of the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the Italian prime minister.

A worsening dilemma

Analysis of irregular migration, published on the EU website, shows that Italy has received migrants from nine of the 15 African countries from where migrants have come, fleeing from wars and conflicts. Insecurity, poverty, climate change, and political conditions are the direct causes of irregular migration.

Caminando Fronteras, a Spanish organisation, said that 11,000 people had drowned in the Mediterranean between 2014 and 2021 while attempting to reach Spain's shores.

According to Frontex — the agency managing Europe's external borders — attempts at illegal migration into Europe have increased at a significant pace in the past year, despite all attempts to improve the control of land and sea borders between the two banks of the Mediterranean.

Italy was the European country most affected by the influx of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, with an increase of 300% since the start of 2023, due to unstable conditions in nearby Tunisia and Libya.

Spain said it took in 31,000 illegal immigrants in 2022 compared with 42,000 in 2021, a 26% decrease, thanks to close cooperation with Moroccan authorities.

Rabat said the coastguard had foiled 25,000 clandestine immigration attempts to Spain this year, rescuing some 3,000 people at sea and dismantling 117 human trafficking networks in the first half of the year.

More than 90,000 people have been rescued in the last five years, according to Moroccan data, which said it had granted residency and work rights to 110 nationalities. The Kingdom has been transformed from a transit country to a permanent residence country after settling the status of tens of thousands of Africans and Arabs from countries experiencing insecurity.

Official routes open up – but with conditions

As part of the move against unofficial immigration, several European countries have begun issuing visas to people provided that they have the required qualifications, opening up more official routes.

Germany, Sweden, and Austria are the top labour seekers, as are Ireland, Portugal, and Spain to some extent – "in agriculture, construction, and tourism." The German Ministry of Labour said it needed 400,000 professionals to make up for a shortage of local workers due to retirement.

Sweden has issued 10,000 work visas to facilitate access to these competencies, including facilitating the selection of university students in some disciplines.

The EU has a medium-term shortage of medical personnel, engineers, and scientists. It also needs qualified workers in finance, applied science, technology and artificial intelligence, as well as other future professions.

All of this is needed to help it compete with the US, China, Japan, and even India.

Population decline is one of the biggest risks to the EU in the medium and long term. But any opening-up to the outside increases internal political division and threatens the rise of extreme nationalist parties.

Africa – which could have a population of 2.5 billion by 2050 – is one of the potential solutions to Europe's labour needs, but media stereotyping of immigrants and immigration isn't very encouraging in this direction. There are 850,000 high-level personnel in Europe who are of Maghreb origin.

Brain drain from the south

There is another dimension to the increased use of official immigration. While it may reduce the need for dangerous and unregulated travel via human traffickers, it also draws bright and highly skilled workers from the global south.

It can look, at times, as if the kind of plunder once seen over natural resources is being repeated with human resources, in a theft of minds.

The World Bank said 45% of brain drain to Europe originated from North Africa.

A joint study by Algerian universities and the International Labour Organization in Geneva found that the migration of Moroccans to the European Union has increased in recent years: of the migrants, 45% are Moroccans, 23% Algerians, 20% Tunisians, 7% Libyans, and 4% Mauritanians.

Stephen Smith, a professor of African studies at Duke University, said that "emptying Africa and developing countries of their competencies, helps to address the demographic imbalance in developed countries, but it disrupts development in emerging and developing countries, which may suffer severe shortages of skills and human resources in the future."

Smith noted that immigrants, contrary to common claims, are mostly middle-class and educated and perhaps better in skills than nationals of recipient countries.

The West is aware of its need for educated and selected immigrants.  

Canada's methods stand out. It offers organised, safe, and selective immigration in accordance with a UN charter, which was adopted in Marrakesh in 2018 and ratified by 160 countries. It wants to reduce dangerous, chaotic migration in return for granting better rights to regular immigrants.

Migration between benefits and sufferings

The number of migrants in the world – people living in a country other than that of their birth – is estimated by the UN at around  300 million in 2020.

According to the World Bank, migrant remittances amounted to about $626bn in 2022 – up 5% from the previous year.

Remittances to South Asian countries make up the largest share at about $163bn, followed by Caribbean and Latin American countries at $142bn, and East Asian and the Pacific countries at $134bn.

In the Middle East and North Africa, migration revenues were only $63bn, and in Sub-Saharan Africa, they amounted to $53bn. Unlike other regions, such as South Asia and Latin America, Middle Eastern and North African migrants are mostly educated.

Around 54% of Arab students who head abroad for education abroad don't return home.

Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon, and Syria are among the countries from which most people leave.

Morocco's minister of higher education, scientific research, and innovation, Abdellatif Miraoui, said the Kingdom is now exporting the highest rate of qualified people from the Middle East and North Africa.

He told parliament that half of Morocco's 1,400 doctors who graduate annually go to Europe and other countries, including Canada.

Morocco is facing a shortage of medical personnel that prevents it from reaching universal healthcare; it needs three times as many medical personnel as it currently has.

Limited foresight and political repercussions

Many European countries cannot see further than how bringing in highly qualified foreign workers solves their own problems with an ageing population.

As well as the problems this causes in the countries left behind, there are little-mentioned potential consequences ahead, in the destination nations involved.

The next generation of immigrants may reach positions of power and influence in Europe while clinging to their original cultural identity with all its geographical and historical extensions – a scenario that the extreme right fights because of its impact on the ethnic balance of Europe – factors which have caused wars there in the past.