Immigration is huge issue in Europe

Illegal aliens clambering over fences. Truck drivers fighting off refugees attempting to hitch a ride. Terrified civilians trapped on major highways, surrounded by desperate asylum seekers. Coast guard units on the alert for illegal aliens arriving by sea. Angry exchanges between governments, each blaming the other for failing to control the border. New fences erected where none had been. These are not scenes from the U.S.-Mexico line, but from the European Union. From the English Channel to the Hungarian border with Serbia to coastal waters all along the Mediterranean, the European Union is grappling with a migration crisis unparalleled since the Second World War.

With the creation of the European Union in the 1990s, most member states -- with the notable exception of the UK -- joined the so-called Schengen Area, allowing for the free flow of goods and people within a single market. This has improved the competitiveness and prosperity of Europe, but also means that each of the 26 Schengen nations have effectively ceded control over their borders to their fellow members. For a potential migrant, whether asylum seeker or refugee, this means the task is to find the weakest link to get into the EU, from there going anywhere they want. With some variances, the EU has fairly liberal laws to allow for those who reach European soil to stay indefinitely while seeking temporary or permanent residency.

Under normal circumstances, the EU welcomes a certain number of these migrants, rejuvenating the new labor force for Europe's aging population. The past two to three years, however, have brought a dramatic change to migration patterns.

Civil wars in Libya, Syria, and South Sudan, economic collapses in much of West Africa in the wake of the Ebola crisis, and other crises in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia have driven millions from their homes. While most have found temporary refuge in their regions, especially burdening Morocco, Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan, hundreds of thousands have made their way toward Europe seeking a better life. Even in the midst of recession, Europe is far more attractive than the home countries of these refugees. EU law prohibits airlines, upon significant financial penalties, from allowing passengers without visas, which explains why tens of thousands have risked dangerous voyages across the Mediterranean on small unseaworthy craft, stowing away on cargo ships, or paying traffickers for passage on derelict passenger vessels, deliberately set adrift in the hope of being rescued by EU coast guard units.

Spain and especially Italy are the most frequent destinations for these seaborne refugees -- even the desperate know that Greece offers neither safety nor employment. From these Mediterranean landings, refugees attempt to make their way to Germany, the UK, and other rich EU states, with the most generous welfare benefits, lenient asylum laws, and work opportunities. Other hopeful migrants travel over land, making their way through Turkey, the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa, or Eastern Europe.

Europe's liberalism toward these refugees is fast diminishing, however. Frustrated by the unwillingness of France to restrain the flow of migrants, the UK is adding security to airports, ferry crossings and the tunnel under the English Channel, where thousands have attempted to storm their way into Britain. Recent elections in Denmark made an anti-immigrant party the largest in parliament, with its first legislation a reduction in welfare payments to asylum seekers. In Italy, the government has threatened to forcibly deport thousands of illegal migrants to other EU states, which have so far refused to accept what Rome considers a fair apportionment. Hungary has built a fence along its entire border with Serbia, a frequent corridor for asylum seekers. Other schemes have been proposed by European leaders to address the crisis; one suggestion was to carve out a "safe zone" in Libya to receive deported aliens, as if anywhere in that North African state could be safe.

In the end, there is no substitute for improving conditions in the nations that produce migrants. Just as Mexico has seen its outflow of illegal migrants fall as its economy improves, so too will the conclusion of civil wars in the Middle East and Africa reduce, or even reverse, the flow of the desperate to Europe. Despite its military potential and economic strength, however, there is little will in the EU to intervene, as it did in Bosnia in the 1990s, to end one or more of these humanitarian catastrophes. In the absence of this level of engagement from the EU, U.S. or other major powers, Europe will continue to be the destination in the minds of the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of desperate migrants. Identifying solutions to this problem, and successful implementation, will make solving Greece's economic woes seem an elementary exercise for the EU.

Wayne Bowen received his Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University, and is also an Army veteran. His is a professor and chair of the Department of History at Southeast Missouri State University.