Europe will see a huge increase in Africans migrating to its shores in the next few years if Brussels fails to protect the borders, according to Austrian military intelligence.
Analysis by the Austrian Army Intelligence Office (HNnA) shows population growth and rising unemployment in Africa will add an extra 15 million people to the continent’s “workforce surplus” by 2020.
Unless the European Union (EU) makes changes to its asylum policy and increases aid payments to the most affected countries in Africa, an army of young people who are unable to find jobs at home will be tempted to migrate to Europe for a better life, the HNaA warns.
A report by the agency, seen by Bild, says Brussels should take measures to properly secure Europe’s external borders, and improve deals with African nations which enable failed asylum seekers to be sent back to their country of origin.
Faced with the massive influx of people it predicts will attempt the journey to Europe in the coming years, “the EU’s handling of economic migrants will change significantly”, the intelligence report notes.
It states that the decisive way in which Europe can prevent future waves of mass migration from Africa, such as its likely to see in coming years, is to use foreign aid to develop the economies of migrants’ countries of origin.
Without this taking place, the HNaA warns that “further migrations are foreseeable, especially from Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia.”
However, foreign aid is shown to increase levels of migration, with studies finding that when third world countries become richer, far more people migrate as they are newly able to afford the journey.
A report drawing on more than 1,000 national censuses over five decades found that when a poor country becomes richer, its emigration rate soars. Only when it becomes a middle-income nation, with a similar level of prosperity to Albania or Armenia, does extra wealth mean less migration.
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