Fortress Europe: The Billion Dollar Machine That Keeps Migrants at Bay
When the horrors of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina hit TV screens in the early 1990s, the European public couldn't look the other way. Many countries accepted huge numbers of people fleeing the deadly conflict.
But by the time Kurdish refugees began fleeing Saddam Hussein's regime in 1997 the doors had closed — thanks in large part to the Schengen Agreement. The agreement relaxed border controls between certain European countries and created a single external border — facilitating and regulating free movement for many European citizens, but creating major barriers for migrants trying to get in.
"As internal border controls were removed," states an EU-made video on Schengen's history, "the need to strengthen external border controls became paramount". That policy is clearly overwhelmed by today's realities — with disastrous consequences for millions of refugees and migrants.
In August 2013, a team of 15 European journalists, statisticians and software developers began working on a project to analyze and map reliable, comprehensive data on the deaths of migrants seeking to enter Europe. Their findings are available at themigrantsfiles.com.
This time, through sifting through the published data on EU programs and interviewing EU representatives, refugees and border officials, the Migrants' Files team has tracked some of the funds that flow through public and private hands as Europe struggles to contain the flood of migrants at its borders.
In a two-part VICE News series, we will examine the workings of the billion dollar anti-immigrant machine, following the money. Today, we look at some of the costs "Fortress Europe" imposes on the taxpayers living inside it and the people attempting to breach its walls. In Part 2, we will reveal the private companies influencing Europe's closed-door immigration policy and making millions of dollars in the process.
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