The EU welcomes and assists illegal Muslim immigration. Why?

By Jerry Gordon, NER

Illegal migrants in overloaded boat in Mediterranean

The EU is in the midst of another refugee crisis in the Straits that separates Sicily from North Africa. The flash point of the humanitarian crisis is the Island of Lampedusa 297 kilometers offshore of Tripoli, Libya. 168 kilometers north of Lampedusa is the Island Republic of Malta which is also in the crosshairs of this crisis. Refugees from the Jihadist conflicts throughout the Middle East, North and Sub Sahara Africa, even South Asia packed into a flotilla of overloaded vessels make a bee-line for this Italian landfall with less than 5,000 full time residents, where heretofore they received a welcome. Off shore of Lampedusa is a flotilla of EU coast guard vessels on rotating duty alert for distress calls escorting floundering vessels to port on the Italian Island and hence to Sicily and the Italian mainland. Unfortunately, these days Italian and EU coast guard vessels search for the bodies of illegal migrants washed overboard.

The illegal refugee crisis in the Mediterranean reached a new peak last week when thousands of illegal ‘migrants’ attempted the perilous journey. They were seeking refuge and access to  generous welfare and absorption benefits from the EU. In one tragic instance an overloaded 66 foot fishing vessel capsized on Sunday, April 19^th when  migrants rushed to  one side of the deck hailing a commercial vessel responding their distress call. The result was over 700 downed, less than 49 survived and 28 bodies have been pulled from the water so far. Another ship disaster last week claimed 400 lives off Tripoli. The picket line of Italian and other EU coast guard vessels were pressed into service endeavoring to recover the remains. Last week, an estimated 8,500 made the crossing on questionable vessels arranged by human traffickers. In 2014 more than 1,600 died during turbulent crossings. So far this year more than 900 lives have been lost. Frontex datashows that migration across the Mediterranean in 2014 peaked to a level more than twice as high as its previous peak in 2011. 170,760 migrants crossed the Mediterranean in 2014, compared with 64,300 in 2011, 15,900 in 2012, and 40,000 in 2013.

Sunday night Italian President Renzi and Maltese PM Muscat requested an emergency EU Summit to address these deadly illegal migrant ship disasters. It was quickly added to the agenda of the EU Foreign Ministers meeting today in Luxembourg. According to a USA Today report Renzi said, “How can it be that we daily are witnessing a tragedy?” Muscat seconded Renzi calling “it the “biggest human tragedy of the last few years.” The illegal migration problem was discussed at the Informal meeting of the Foreign Affairs Ministers of the EU and the Southern Mediterranean countries held in Barcelona on April 13th to discuss the future of the European Neighborhood Policy.

However, there was a new development. In one illegal crossing, 12 Christians from Nigeria and Ghana were thrown overboard from a sinking raft by Muslim compatriots, because they couldn’t recite the Shahada – the profession of faith or other Qur’anic verses. The perpetrators were arrested by Italian police. Onshore, ISIS followers in Libya beheaded 30 Ethiopian Orthodox Christians seeking to make the illegal passage across the Mediterranean, yet another outrage. That sparked anger  from the Obama Administration which appears unable to do anything about it.  However, in the 20 months remaining of President Obama’s final term in office the priority is engagement with Iran  over its nuclear program via the P5+1 process hoping to deprive the Islamic regime of nuclear weapons. That priority leaves a legacy for his successor  to deal with a welter of international crises.

Danish psychologist Nicolai Sennels in a 10 NewsDK  blog post today noted the scandal of EU cooperation with North African human traffickers:

Last weekend the EU coast guard transported 8,500 people from North Africa to Italy alone. EU says that it “saves” the “refugees” (many of them turn out to be jihadis or fake refugees) from the dangerous travel across the Mediterranean. However, it is the EU that lures millions to do this potentially deadly trip by promising Western welfare to those willing to take the chance. The EU should either start offering free transport from Africa to Europe or start sending all refugees back to local camps. I advise the latter option, and not just because it would make us able to give safety to more people for the same amount of money – which is more compassionate. But also because it would dissuade people from taking the deadly chance. Thereby nobody would die in the attempt to reach EU shores. That is how Australia does it – and since Australia introduced this policy, the amount of drowned boat-refugees decreased to zero.

It is obvious that the situation is unsustainable, but as long as our politicians continue to obey the EU and the UN, the human tsunami of refugees seeking the help of European tax payers will continue. According to humanitarian agencies “up to half a million migrants may try to cross the Mediterranean this year – a figure that would dwarf the 170,000 who reached Italy last year.”

According to a report from Express,  North African Human smugglers are  alerting EU authorities  they are sending illegals  people across the Mediterranean:.

Trafficking  gangs ferrying immigrants into the European Union are tipping off officials so  Italian and EU coast guard vessels   can pick up their boats. …

Gangs are so certain their boats will be picked up they’re even putting less fuel in the tank because naval vessels will pick them up, a former UK immigration manager has revealed. …

Of the 270,000 migrants who arrived in Europe illegally last year, more than 220,000 of them came through North Africa.

Many of those attempting the dangerous crossing in overloaded un- seaworthy craft were propelled  by sectarian conflicts in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria involving ISIS, Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, Al Shabaab and Boko Haram. Muslims among these illegal migrants are being welcomed in what the scholar Bat Ye’or called in her book Eurabia: The Euro Arab Axis. Bat Ye’or warned about the consequences of EU bureaucracies engaged in outreach to Muslim countries on the periphery of the Mediterranean via the Barcelona Process of the 1990’s. That led to the establishment of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) in Paris on July 13, 2008 at a meeting of 43 heads of Euro-Mediterranean States. Subsequently, Foreign Ministers of the UfM met in Marseilles in November 2008 and established a headquarters in Barcelona.  In 2010, senior Member States of the UfM aapproved  the Statues and Barcelona Headquarters in accordance with Spanish Law. According to the website of the UfM its vision and mission/mandate are:

The UfM is a multilateral partnership aiming at increasing the potential for regional integration and cohesion among Euro-Mediterranean countries. The Union for the Mediterranean is inspired by the shared political will to revitalize efforts to transform the Mediterranean into an area of peace, democracy, cooperation and prosperity.

The UfM was promoted by former President Nicolas Sarkozy as a means of contending with the problems of rejectionist émigré Muslim communities engaged in internal disturbances  attributable to mass immigration.  Add to that are the contemporary problems of thousands of EU Muslims  traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State to fight and build the self-declared Caliphate. A Caliphate engaged in ethnic cleansing of infidels:  Christians, ancient religious minorities and what are deemed heterodox Muslims.

Fjordman, Norwegian blogger Peder Jensen, author of Defeating Eurabia  said in an email exchange today:

While the Mediterranean is flooded with illegal immigrants, including Islamic Jihadists, the EU elites are creating a Union for the Mediterranean. Europe needs a Union for the Mediterranean just like it needs a beheading. Which is, coincidentally, just what it might get. It is doubtful whether most Europeans want a Union with North Africa and the Middle East, but then the EU elites never cared about what ordinary Europeans think. There is no reason for them to start now.

The Syrian Civil war  displaced nearly 4 million registered refugees.  UN High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) administered camps in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq,   Jordan and Egypt host 3.2 million.  22 countries have agreed  last December to accept 100,000 of the more than 320,000 refugees most at risk in 2016. The UNHCR has requested absorption of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees by major EU countries and even here in the US.

The consequences   of these refugee and illegal migrant flows caused by sectarian Jihad warfare in the Muslim Ummah heartland are ironic.  The Eurabian bureaucracies have in effect acquiesced to the Islamic doctrine of Dar al Hijrah – the land of immigration, a reflection of the Prophet Mohammed’s migration from Medina to Mecca that kick started the first grand Jihad.  That has given rise to calls by  center right parties in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Austria, France , Sweden  and the UK to reject further mass Muslim migration, whether legal or illegal.  This is a reflection of rising concern over Muslim citizens traveling to join the cause of the Islamic State or Al Qaeda only to have some return to commit massacres like the Charlie Hebdo mass shooting and the Hyper Cacher Kosher Supermarket in Paris that killed 17 in January 2015.  As both Sennels and Fjordman have stated, the EU citizens will pay the price of this massive wave of illegal Muslim emigration  across the Mediterranean spawned by Jihad.