The Italian navy rescued 3,000 “migrants” aboard more than a dozen boats in the Mediterranean on Saturday. Like hundreds of thousands of others before them, they were taken to Europe for de facto permanent settlement. At the same time, any semblance of border control along the southeastern land route has collapsed. Thousands of migrants stormed across Macedonia’s border also on Saturday, overwhelming security forces who threw stun grenades and used batons in a futile bid to stem their flow. So much for Macedonia declaring a state of emergency on August 20 and announcing that it was sealing its borders.
In July over 50,000 persons from the Middle East and Afghanistan are estimated to have reached Greece’s extended coastline by boat from Turkey. The Turks have done nothing to impede their initial entry from Syria and Iraq, followed by a long transit across Anatolia and departure by sea. The Greeks have been chartering ships to take them from the inundated Aegean islands to Salonika, and facilitated their transit further north.