State media throughout Latin America routinely trash Yanqui neo-imperialism and arrogance. The Middle East is one big anti-American megaphone that constantly ridicules Western decadence as the antithesis of Islamic decorum. So why, then, do millions risk their lives to get into America, Europe and other Western nations by hook or by crook?
Northern and central Italy are not on the southern Mediterranean. But somehow thousands of refugees from Africa, Asia and the Middle East are everywhere here — as is true of much of the European Union. Some sleep on park benches. Many peddle knockoff electronic goods and counterfeit watches. Angry Italians shoo away refugee beggars from tour groups.
The Greek islands near the coast of Turkey are likewise flooded this summer with dispossessed refugees from countries such as Afghanistan and Syria. Apparently a bankrupt Greek government lacks the resources to patrol its vast coastline. Some beleaguered Greeks assume that thousands of boat people and homeless refugees will eventually leave their makeshift camps and head northward to the wealthier homelands of Greece’s Northern European creditors.
A similar rush has overwhelmed America’s southern border. In the last two years, tens of thousands of Central American and Mexican citizens have sensed that the Obama administration has suspended border enforcement. Illegal entry into the United States won’t result in punishment but instead in an array of social services unimaginable in much of Latin America.
So, what explains this constant rush of the world’s poor families into the West? And why aren’t China, Russia, Iran and Cuba, for example, flooded with illegal entrants?
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