DUBLIN (AP) – Most migrants who live illegally in the European Union fly to the 28-nation bloc on valid visas and simply overstay their welcome. But for the poorest and most desperate travelers of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, the journey often takes months by sea or land, with payments to trafficking gangs.
Frontex, the EU agency that helps member nations detect migrants on the bloc’s frontiers, documents the flow of illegal immigration on principal smuggling routes. These keep evolving in response to every government initiative.
Ewa Moncure, spokeswoman for the Warsaw-based agency, compares efforts to quell immigration on any particular route to “squeezing a balloon.”
“You tighten a law in one country, another route swells up elsewhere,” she says.
Here are the main four smuggling routes listed in order of popularity in 2014 as recorded by Frontex. Each lists the total number of migrants detected in destination EU countries last year, the change from 2013, and the top three nationalities of migrants.