In recent months migration has been hot topic in Europe.
The horrendous mass drownings of would-be migrants trying to reach Italy or Greece; the rise of anti-immigration political parties; the pressure on housing and welfare and health services and concerns around social integration and/ or criminality have kept the topic in the headlines.
It is difficult not to feel sympathy with those desperate to get to Europe to escape poverty, war and oppression, but it is also clear that the massive influx of people is adding to the burden on already over stretched budgets.
The true number of illegal migrants and asylum seekers coming into Europe is impossible to quantify accurately. The official EU estimate for 2011, the latest available, is that 1.7 million people came to the member states, and that the UK was the most popular destination, attracting nearly one in three migrants, many of whom made their way through other European countries to get here.
There are pros and cons to migration and complex arguments are regularly rehearsed by academics, campaigners and politicians, but such discussions mean very little when people are increasingly voting for the French National Front or the overtly neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party in Greece.
When we see the Mediterranean turning into a grisly graveyard then it is clear that there is a real problem that needs to be dealt with. Yet, last week an EU leaders’ summit rebuffed calls by southern European governments to take urgent action; instead they kicked the problem into the long grass. The Prime Minister of Malta described this decision as “surreal”.
EU leaders are caught between a rock and a hard place, with one side demanding action to block and deport migrants and to refuse benefits to new arrivals, and the other calling for open borders and generous assistance given to all. A writer in the left-wing Guardian newspaper recently called the EU “barbaric” for trying to resist mass immigration.
The source of most illegal and refugee migration to Europe is North Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East including Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. A common factor is the influence of radical Islam, either the imposition of fundamentalist doctrine on secular Muslim societies, Sunni against Shia sectarian violence, or the violent persecution of non-Muslims.
If there is barbarity at play it is in the mass executions, the subjugation of women, the persecution of homosexuals, the stoning to death of young lovers and the mutilation of non-conformists that occurs under Islamic regimes.
People seeking to escape the scourge of fundamentalist Islam prick the conscience of Europeans living with the legacy of the flight from totalitarian communism and fascism, and the plight of those who could not escape.
At the back of the modern Islamic surges lie the oil-rich Gulf States. Saudi Arabia alone takes in about $10 billion a day in oil revenues. Much of this money is spent on supercars, palaces and also local infrastructure development, but plenty finds its way into the promotion of Islam, either through official policy or via wealthy individuals.
It was Saudi money that got Al Queda up and running. Money from the Gulf States funds the building of Mosques for hard-line preachers in secular and moderate Muslim societies and across the Muslim world old power struggles are kept stoked by Arabian funding.
Yet despite having more money than they know what to do with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States repeatedly fail to play a meaningful role in the world or in the human crisis on their doorstep.
This month Saudi Arabia refused the offer of a seat on the UN Security Council, in protest at the UN’s reluctance to intervene militarily in Syria. The Saudis are backing the Syrian rebels in what is in effect a new chapter in a long-running internecine Islamic dispute. Despite massive military spending, Saudi Arabia prefers to have others do the dirty work for them.
Saudi Arabia’s contribution to the Syrian refugee crisis has been to rent apartments in Lebanon. Noticeably they have not offered refugees homes and substance in Saudi Arabia.
As desperate people drown in their hundreds trying to get to Europe, the leaders of the Islamic states buy up private jets to take them to their multi-million pound homes in London and France. As European nations struggle with their consciences, electorates and resources, the wealthy Arab states enforce draconian regulations on their own people, while shirking international responsibilities.
There are difficult questions regarding the West’s past a present role in these regions, but that does not absolve the Gulf States of their duty.
There is hard and urgent work needed from European governments, but equally there is the need for international pressure to be put on the Sheiks to shoulder their share of the burden and to help bring peace and prosperity to their spheres of influence.