2,500 illegal immigrants a week from

North Africa flooding into Europe

through Italy

EU border protection agency says most coming from Arab

Spring uprisings

As many as 2,500 illegal immigrants a week are flooding into the

continent from North Africa through Italy, the European Union's border
protection agency has revealed.
The official figures, which came from Warsaw based Frontex, show that
for the first three months of this year 33,000 people entered Europe
illegally with 22,600 coming through Italy.
Most of those were economic migrants from Tunisia and sub-Sahran
Africa who had fled countries that had been hit by popular uprisings in
what was dubbed the Arab Spring.

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Mass arrivals: Many North African immigrants have been arriving in Italy via the island
of Lampedusa

Many of them came through the rocky Italian outcrop of Lampedusa on

rickety fishing boats pushing the island's limited resources to the limit
with numbers at one point being double that of the 5,000 local
inhabitants.
The figures were revealed in Athens by Frontex deputy director Gil Arias
Fernandez during a visit to Greece which up until this year was the main
entry point for illegal immigrants into Europe.
Mr Fernandez said that for the first quarter of this year just 7,200 illegal
entries were registered in Greece - last year for the same period just 147
illegal migrants had been detected trying to enter Italy, compared to
13,085 attempting to get into Greece.
He added that while it was difficult to predict what would happen in the
rest of the year, 'the situation will remain quite dramatic in the central
Mediterranean.'