Migrants fleeing Islamic regimes flood Europe

Migrants are seeking refuge in Europe in record numbers. This year, more than 360,000 have come to Germany—far from the southern borders of the European Union. And 160,000 made their way to Greece, including nearly 2,500 migrants on a ferry that picked up others found on various Greek islands close to the Turkish coast last week.

Most migrants are Middle Easterners or Africans fleeing violent and oppressive Islamic regimes or terrorism, victims of ongoing war and desperate poverty.

Macedonia, like neighboring Greece, has become a major transit route for migrants heading to more prosperous EU countries. Almost 39,000 migrants, mainly Syrians, passed through the Balkan country last month, twice as many as in the previous month. This week, Macedonia declared a state of emergency on its borders and deployed additional troops to block thousands more migrants from entering. Tear gas and rubber bullets forced migrants away from entry points and stranded thousands on Thursday at the Greek frontier near the Macedonian town of Gevgelija. Migrants had hoped to take trains from there to Serbia and finally to EU-member state Hungary.

As many as 5,000 people—forming the largest migrant camp in Europe—are now amassing at the northern French port of Calais, just across the English Channel from Britain. Calais’ appeal is not of its own making: It is the French entrance to the undersea Channel tunnel. Reports have increased in past weeks of desperate migrants leaping onto trucks in a bid to reach the U.K. as stowaways. Some have pleaded for help from British tourists waiting to drive home through the “Chunnel.” Video footage has shown the lax security and ease with which interlopers can scale barriers at the port.

As Calais’ migrant numbers increase, diplomatic tensions have simmered this summer. Britain and France squabbled over whether France (the way-station) or Britain (the destination) should bear the cost of policing and processing the migrants in an area which has become a European Rio Grande Valley. But last week, the British and French governments announced new security procedures to guard the tunnel’s French entrance by setting up a joint police command. Britain will contribute $11.2 million to a strategy that includes monitoring those who traffic migrants to Europe as well as helping the asylum-seekers themselves.

Many migrants will be sent home. Even after such perilous journeys spanning multiple countries, Britain still sees asylum-seekers and migrants through the lens of international “first country of asylum” standards. Practically, this means migrants must appeal for protection or status in the first “safe” nation they arrive in—rather than shuttling from Mediterranean Greece, Italy, or Turkey to a preferable destination further north, like France or England. Those in Calais have crossed several safe nations,

Critics note the Franco-British initiative puts policing ahead of humanitarian assistance. But it may ease months of contention over Calais’ burgeoning “jungle” and how to protect the port and tunnel.

British Home Secretary Theresa May and French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve made visits to the tunnel last week to promote their plan for increased guards, 13 foot security fences, more surveillance cameras, along with floodlighting and infrared detection technology. But they recognized that migrant and trafficking patterns may now shift. Due to border security buildup, Calais and the tunnel to England may become a riskier bid, just as increased security on the southern U.S. border also causes patterns of attempted illegal entry to change.

Some migrants in Calais are Christians. The BBC’s recently filmed a Sunday evening broadcast of its program “Songs of Praise” at the Calais migrant camp church. Eritrean and Ethiopian Orthodox Christians cobbled together St Michael’s, as it is known, with various bits and pieces of construction material.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.