The Russian invasion of Ukraine has produced Europe’s gravest refugee crisis arguably since the Second World War. The Ukrainian disaster shares some similarities with other European migrant emergencies. The Third World’s illegal masses consistently burst into Spain, Italy, and France. They also endeavor to walk in, mostly via Greece and the Balkans.
That was particularly the highway of choice a few years ago when more than one million migrants from the Middle East and Central Asia poured into Europe at the invitation of Germany’s then chancellor, Angela Merkel. She consulted neither Brussels nor any other capitals before destabilizing not only her nation but also the south-eastern part of the continent.