Illegal immigration into the EU is at the highest level seen since the continent’s 2015-2016 migrant crisis, having ballooned as member states are also struggling to cope with huge influxes of refugees displaced by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
There were 308,000 “irregular entries” detected across the external borders of European Union nations in this year’s first 11 months, up 68% from the same period in 2021, according to a report earlier this month by Frontex, the bloc’s border agency. With one month still to go, inflows were already higher than any full-year total since 2016.
As noted by Breitbart News, which reported on the migration figures earlier on Saturday, the surge in illegal immigration got little public attention this year because Europeans were focused on the Ukraine crisis. The Frontex statistics don’t include the millions of Ukrainian refugees who flooded into EU nations amid the fighting in their country.
There were nearly 7.9 million Ukrainian refugees recorded across Europe as of last week, according to UN data. Some of the largest totals were received in Poland, Germany and Czechia. Russia received the largest number of Ukrainian refugees, at 2.85 million, Statista reported earlier this month.
While legitimate refugees aren’t counted as “irregular entries,” many of the foreigners flooding into Western Europe are economic migrants. For instance, the largest share of migrants crossing the English Channel to seek asylum in the UK are from Albania, which isn’t at war.
The Western Balkan and Central Mediterranean routes have the most migrant traffic this year, according to Frontex. There were 27,000 irregular border crossings into EU states in November alone. The agency said it’s providing more than 2,100 officers to help countries cope with “heavy migratory pressure and other challenges at their borders.”