As well as the obvious pull of life in a more affluent society, geopolitical factors play a key role in the level of illegal immigration, and recent years have seen a significant increase in migrants trying to enter Europe and the United States.
Conflict, climate change, food shortages and political factors are all significant and in some cases increasing reasons for migration. While the war in Syria was a key driver in the European refugee crisis in 2015, since 2021 the fall of Afghanistan and tensions between Western Europe and Belarus have led to increased flows of migrants and a corresponding increase in migrant smuggling.
The borders between Belarus, Poland and Lithuania have seen a ten-fold increase since 2020, mainly due to the Belarussian government’s efforts to weaponise the flow of migrants, primarily from Iraq, as an asymmetric attack on Western Europe. There are several established routes for people smuggling into Europe.
According to Frontex, while the number of people crossing to Europe by the Eastern Mediterranean route has dropped significantly from its 2019 height, the West African route into the Canary Islands and the main Central Mediterranean route from North Africa to Italy have increased significantly over the same period. Second only to the Central Mediterranean route, migration through the Western Balkans has been resurgent after a dip following the 2015 crisis, with a Frontex estimate of a 124% increase in border crossings and over 55,000 crossings in the first half of 2022 alone.
Although the trafficking of people across the Mediterranean in boats does not impact the logistics industry directly, once in Europe the vast majority of trafficked migrants continue their journey to destination countries such as Germany, Sweden or the UK by land, often as stowaways in heavy freight vehicles.
The UK remains a destination country for migrants from all over the world. In 2021 detected arrivals by boat exploded to more than 28,000, three times the 9,000 detected arrivals by goods vehicle or container. Recent statistics from Frontex also show an 87% increase in Channel crossing for the first half of 2022. Arrivals by lorries or containers still average around 8,500 per annum since 2014 though, and it seems likely that a higher proportion of migrants arriving by vehicle go undetected than those crossing by boat.
As well as organised smuggling attempts migrants also break into trailers around the ports of Northern France and Belgium, and so-called “axle hangers” cling to the underneath of trucks to make the crossing. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime reports that 97% of illegal immigrants to the US enter over the Mexican border, where the people smuggling industry is worth an estimated $6.6 billion a year, but the penalties for people smuggling are much less severe than those for drug trafficking. Between January and May of this year 523,000 migrants have been prevented from crossing, although the number of successful crossings is unknown.
Poor socio-economic and security conditions are long-term drivers of migration from South and Central America into the US, with an average of 407,000 migrants leaving three Central American states alone each year. The year 2021 saw a 228% increase in people smuggling incidents in Mexico, with a notable increase of refugees from Haiti. With worsening inflation and cost of living rises, the number of people attempting to cross into the US is only likely to increase.
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