Immigrants in Europe: the current problems

   Recently, we can hear a lot about African immigrants to Europe.

We watched the film about them, read some articles in Polish magazines and searched on the internet. The most popular ways they were coming to Europe were: first, Canary Islands,than, Strait of Gibraltar and recently- Lampedusa Island. Not all European countries are willing to accept them. Almost 70000 immigrants were recieved by only few countries:. France, the UK, Belgium, Germany and Sweden. We also learned that outside Europe(for example in Saudi Arabia) the entry law is much more strict than in Europe.

  

   When the Mediterranean is calmer, vessels carrying migrants from Africa and the Middle East land on Italy's southern shores almost every day. The UN said that in recent months most migrants were escaping the conflicts in Syria and the Horn of Africa, rather than coming from sub-Saharan Africa.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that more than 1,500 people drowned or went missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe in 2011.

The UN also said that almost 500 people were reported dead or missing at sea during 2012 in attempts to reach Europe and the number of those arriving by sea to Italy this year (2013) until 30 September stood at 30,100,According to Eurostat, the EU statistics agency, Germany had more than 77,000 asylum seekers last year while Italy had under 16,000.

After the debate in Britain about asylum seekers and immigrants as "benefit scroungers", some politicians said that most of those trying to cross the Mediterranean were "economic" migrants rather than political refugees and that they were seeking better social security than they would receive at home.

The main point of the meeting in Luxembourg was to stop the flow rather than liberalising entry rules, by discussing further aid to, for example, Lebanon or Turkey, which are struggling under the burden of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria.

After Polish magazines and:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/08/eu-immigration-policy-lampedusa-tragedy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24380247

Magda 14, Kornelia 14, Gabiela 14, Wiktoria 14, Marcin 14