Mediterranean Migrants.

I while ago we had a thread about immigrants from North Africa coming across in leaky boats, hundreds at a time after paying rather a lot of money to unscrupulous traffickers.

This is still ongoing and I seem to remember reading in the media that the vast majority of people were supposedly coming from war-torn countries or countries suffering deprivation or starvation, with DR Congo, The Central African Republic, Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia being the most often mentioned but, in the news yesterday, reporters spoke to people from Nigeria, Ghana, Botswana and Kenya plus a few from Syria, Iraq and even Afghanistan.

They seem to be paying between £1300 and £1500 to the traffickers in Libya, which to me seems a lot of money so I am wondering where they get the money from in the first place.

The average wage in Ghana for example is apparently £600 per annum and it's £985 in Kenya.

In these two examples savings in those two countries by ordinary people are virtually non-existent and in fact many may not even have bank accounts.

To me it indicates that these are not all desperate people trying to flee persecution and that many are actually economic migrants because the ordinary people in those two countries would find it extremely difficult to raise that kind of money on their respective income.

It seems that this route across the Med, up through the Balkans and onwards to Germany is now the preferred route as it brings thousands into the catchment areas of criminal gangs making fortunes out of this misery.

It follows that eradicating the Libya-based gangs will simply shift the problem elsewhere so there does not seem to be a real answer to this to me.

Anyone else got any ideas? stevmk2

Re: Mediterranean Migrants.

I believe many may be taking out loans with the traffickers, they pay it back at a huge rate of interest and end up working for them as slaves really for many years or even rest of their lives, that is certainly how several earlier migrants I know got here, they came from Nigeria.

Re: Mediterranean Migrants.

To be honest I'd not thought of that Julie but is that widespread do you think?

I've worked in the Middle East and in North Africa and loaning penniless strangers money isn't a wide-spread philosophy I've ever encountered.
It's always cash up front THEN they shaft you, so it must be their own people doing this to them surely?

They would have easy access to the families for more coercion wouldn't they? stevmk2

Re: Mediterranean Migrants.

Some of them will do scams here or wherever and pass on the takings to whoever got them here ................
Have seen the evidence many times reported .....

Re: Mediterranean Migrants.

I think it's more common than we like to think, they hold families hostage to extort the most money out of them.

It certainly seemed to be the case with Nigerian's and yes it was their own people doing it to them, also Chinese seemed to be heavily involved with Nigeria.