INVASION OF EUROPE: Border Crossing Migrants Strain Europe

Tensions Rise Between Countries as Asylum Seekers Exploit Patchwork of Rules

The Syrian family waited on the station platform under the cover of darkness. Just as the train to Germany was about to depart, they slipped through the doors, taking advantage of nightfall to avoid Italian police.

Migrants gathered in May at a makeshift camp in Calais, 
northern France, from which many have attempted to slip 
across the English Channel and enter the U.K. AP

Whether they would make it to their destination was a question. Just over the mountainous border in Austria, police are working to catch the scores of migrants who attempt the same and return them to Italy. Most of them will try to cross again.

The situation is a microcosm of the European Union’s fraught migration policy, where a patchwork of immigration rules, different levels of tolerance for asylum seekers and economic prospects encourage migrants to scramble to reach the most hospitable countries.

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The result is increasing tensions among neighbors throughout the continent, as migrants attempt to sneak onto trucks in France’s Calais to head to the U.K., or Germany sends police to the Serbian border to try to stop crossing from the east.

Some in Italy bristle at the idea they aren’t doing enough. “We do our best ... but these migrants manage to cross anyway,” said Giovanni Pinto, head of immigration and border control at Italy’s Interior Ministry.

MIGRANTS ON THE MOVE: INTERACTIVE

A surge in arrivals—102,000 have landed in Greece and Italy by sea so far this year, and hundreds have died in the Mediterranean crossing—has prodded the EU to search for solutions. But so far progress has been limited.

European countries put off until after the summer any decision on a plan to relocate thousands of migrants throughout the union, EU officials said Monday, amid bickering over how many people each country should take.

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