Refugees Seeking Asylum in Europe Rising
Sept. 21 -- Shukri Sindi still remembers the time when, in the dead of a moonless Iraqi night, he and his nine siblings struggled into their clothes and left home for the Turkish border.
Home was the town of Zakho in Iraq, where the Sindis lived along with several Christian and Muslim families.
But the Sindis were Kurds, and as the rumors of Kurdish civilians being gassed grew stronger and more urgent, the Sindis fled to a refugee camp in Turkey where the next few years were spent in wretched conditions.
In 1994, the Sindis were allowed to emigrate to the United States where Shukri is now pursuing a career in architecture after spending years in a camp where a pencil and paper were luxuries. The family has now saved enough to buy a home.
Sindi is one of millions fleeing economic and political oppression around the world.
Europe has seen one of the most dramatic increases in illegal immigrants and people seeking asylum. British authorities say 61 illegal immigrants were caught trying to enter the country in 1991. That number jumped to 16,000 last year.
Based on arrests and asylum applications across Europe, governments estimate some 700,000 people a year are using clandestine means to enter Western Europe.
Lucrative Business
Refugees from Iraq, China, Bangladesh, Nepal and India are increasingly making their way to Europe. The new wave of immigration hitting Europe in recent years is often fueled by a multibillion-dollar-a-year business of human traffickers.
In June, British customs officials found the bodies of 58 Chinese who had died of suffocation in the back of a truck on a cross-Channel ferry from Belgium to Dover.
The 58 Chinese immigrants were the cargo of the Snakeheads, a Chinese criminal group that offers to take villagers to the West — for a price — and once they have reached their destinations, often put them to work in sweatshops.
The Snakeheads is just one of the many Mafia groups, syndicates, scafistas and gangs grabbing a piece of the thriving trade, estimated to be $20 billion a year by Britain’s National Criminal Intelligence Service.
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