Wave of Immigrants Breaks Against Italian Island’s Shore

Many African immigrants are willing to risk their lives for opportunities in Europe. They come in rickety boats across dangerous waters to the small Italian island of Lampedusa, the gateway through which thousands of immigrants pass en route to the European job market every year. The immigrants arrive on the island's coast in numbers that surpass its population, overwhelming local and regional government efforts to curb the mass migration. And, though officials maintain that the number of illegal immigrants in Italy has actually fallen, the issue remains a sensitive one in the European Union as countries like Germany seek to protect their domestic markets from the flood of foreign laborers. Cooperation has been equally hard to come by in Africa, where European countries have had difficulty enlisting governments to crack down on smuggling. Failing African economies and the attraction of the bright lights of Europe would ensure that despite rough seas and untold deaths, immigrants will continue to cross the Mediterranean – YaleGlobal