Refugees and migrants  are crossing into Europe in numbers not seen since after World War Two. They are flowing in from countries in Western & South East Asia and Africa where  there are armed conflicts, harsh living conditions and unemployment is rife. Unable to deal with the causes of the crisis, the authorities in Europe resort to expelling refugees, tightening border controls or closing borders.

The crisis began in 2015, with EU member states receiving over 1.2 million first time asylum applications that year. This was more than double the number received the previous year. The total number of forcibly displaced people worldwide at the end of 2014 was almost 60 million, the highest level since World War Two. Two of the most traversed refugee and migrant routes to Europe are from Libya across the Mediterranean to Italy and from Turkey across the Aegean to Greece and South East Europe. Four countries, Germany, Hungary, Sweden and Austria received two thirds of the applications. More than half the asylum applicants came from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. These countries were either devastated by imperialist invasions in the first decade of this century or in the case of Syria , an ongoing civil war, where the population rose up in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring against the tyrannical dictatorship of Assad. Those refugees and migrants coming from African countries, mainly Eritrea, Somalia, Nigeria and South Sudan, were escaping from civil wars, conflicts with terrorists groups like Isis and from repression, poverty and the effects of climate change. The conditions in the countries from where the migrants are being driven make the distinction between refugee and economic migrant look like an academic exercise.

The majority of refugees in the world are hosted by peripheral countries .Most of the Syrian refugees (more than 4.5 million) are hosted by 5 countries, namely Turkey, Lebanon , Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Apart from a tiny minority, most are barred from working in their host countries. Educational facilities for their children are poor and the majority live below the poverty line. These conditions drive refugees to seek asylum in other countries. Those attempting to travel to the EU encounter the problem of not being able to secure air passage without visas, required in terms of the  articles of the EU Schengen Convention. They have to resort to people traffickers. These traffickers, motivated by acquiring large profits, grossly overload ill- equipped and virtually unseaworthy ships with human cargo. The predictable consequences are the record number of deaths of refugees at sea . In April 2015 five boats carrying 2000 migrants to Europe sank in the Mediterranean with the death toll estimated at more than 1,200 people. These deaths occurred at a time when the Italian navy had to drastically cut down its sea rescue operations, because other EU countries had refused an appeal for more funds. The carnage continues at sea with up to 500 hundred refugees, mainly from Africa drowning in the Mediterranean this April. The EU has again come under attack for scaling down rescue operations. The EU’s attempt to negotiate sharing of refugees within the EU, has even by its own standards failed miserably. In September 2015 it was agreed that the EU share 120,000 refugees over a two year period with four countries, namely The Czech Republic, Romania, Croatia and Slovakia voting against the proposal. Four months after the agreement only 660 refugees have been resettled in the EU. Since January last year, 1.2 million refugees and migrants have landed on the southern shores of Europe.

Having failed to stem the tide of refugees, the EU has turned to Turkey, signing a new agreement with that country in March this year. The plan is to send all asylum seekers in Europe back to Turkey. In exchange, the EU has agreed for each refugee sent back, to accept a refugee from Turkey who has not tried to enter Europe illegally. The UN brands this agreement as illegal, because the asylum applications of refugees have not first been considered in Europe. Secondly, because collective deportations are taking place without regard for the individual rights of refugees. Turkey, even before the agreement, violated international law by deporting Syrian refugees back to Syria.. There are also a number of reports of Turkey shooting refugees at the border. In Greece, the situation is dire in the detention centres the bankrupt government has been forced to open by the EU. Babies in these centres have been deprived of adequate amounts of formula milk. Emboldened by the agreement reached with Turkey, EU leaders are now calling for refugees to be sent back to Libya, a country where there is no government in place and armed militias are attacking one another. Some of these same EU leaders are contemplating EU intervention in the country!

The stream of refugees escaping the bombing of civilian targets in Syria and the military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, cannot be stopped by the EU and Turkey’s refugee policies.  The refugees continue to defy the EU’s closed border policy, making the crossings to Greece and Italy. In spite of the xenophobia whipped up by the EU governments and the far right against refugees, there have been many rallies in EU states against the policies of the EU governments. The demands made at these rallies are for safe passage of refugees from Southern Europe  and their relocation to the rest of the EU. Convoys of aid are being sent to the refugee camps in Europe, where the living conditions are often abysmal. It is this solidarity that needs to be strengthened, to build the unity of the people of Europe, Asia and Africa fighting against the common enemy, global capitalism, which engages in imperialist wars and is responsible for the refugee crisis.