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While often described in the past tense, the migrant crisis is far from being resolved, with a meeting of EU interior ministers on Thursday anxious to prepare the continent for increased pressure on its land and maritime borders as the weather improves, the Financial Times reports.
Despite numbers having declined from their 2015 high due to a multi-billion euro deal with the Turks to stop them from letting migrants cross freely into Greece and the Italians taking action against NGO "rescue" ships acting as a "taxi service" for Libya-based people-smugglers, the numbers crossing the Mediterranean still stood at 172,301 in 2017.
The EU has done a poor job of mitigating the associated security risks, with its own "rescue" efforts failing to coordinate effectively with police authorities and pass on information about new arrivals, due to "ethical" considerations and data protection rules.
Comment: In other words, the EU is screwed. And Europeans have to look no further than the EU bureaucracy and their own spineless leaders for creating this insoluble problem in the first place. Thanks to their reckless decision making and passivity, they have sown the seeds of their own nations' destruction. No, the migrants won't "take over" and institute sharia law or anything like that, but society will continue to polarize and fracture along ideological lines until there is nothing but chaos - a total lack of national unity. Social problems will escalate, crime will skyrocket. And "there's nothing we can do about it". There's always the chance it isn't too late, but that would require some real leaders. Good luck with that.