By Klaus Brinkbäumer
A boat arrives at the Canary Islands carrying eighty-five illegal African immigrants.
It's 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) from here to the Canary Islands, 1,200 kilometers in these wooden boats called "Cayucos" 1,200 kilometers of treacherous waves and changing currents -- a rough, three to four day journey at sea. More than 11,000 people have reached the other side since Jan. 1, 2006.
The other side is a promised land, a paradise and both the goal and purpose of many desperate lives. For those waiting in Nouadhibou, the other side might be the town of Los Cristianos on the island of Tenerife. It's a place where white people lie roasting themselves pink on the beach, where they drink beer in Irish pubs, play golf, flirt and go out to eat, and where they stroll along the harbor promenade, watching as the boats come in almost daily.
On calm days, 700 Africans people reach the Canary Islands in the span of 24 hours. On stormy days, hundreds drown.
This is the migration Europe fears and has taken measures to prevent. The flight of the African masses began in the 1990s -- and some even travel for years on trucks and buses, on foot and in inflatable boats because they believed that they were entitled to make this journey.
It is the same belief that has driven refugees from Asia's crisis regions to find a new home in Australia and that gives Mexican migrants the confidence to brave the prospect of being hunted down by border guards to cross into the United States. It encourages Eastern Europeans to head westward into the European Union and people to leave any of the world's 24 current crisis regions, often with no idea of where they are going.
And it is the same belief that has always driven mankind to migrate from one place to another.
The history of an eternal search
Human beings naturally seek a place to call home, and yet the lure of adventure draws them into the faraway and the unknown. Man is settled and yet a traveler. He wants peace but wages war, he wants others to refrain from attacking his territory, and yet he drives others out. The history of migration is the history of an eternal search, man's unending search for a place where he can live.
It some cases, it is nothing but a place where he can survive, and in others it is one where he can find a better life.
Man seeks gold, oil and diamonds, but sometimes he seeks nothing more than clean water and rice. He seeks the sea and the sun, but sometimes nothing more than electricity, a school and a strip of land safe from natural disaster. He always seeks peace and security.
Graphic: Strangers in a Strange Land
The history of migration is the history of mankind. If one were to believe what is written in the bible, this history began when Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, making them mankind's first homeless people. From the standpoint of evolution, modern man came into being about 200,000 years ago in Africa and, from there, migrated into the rest of the world -- to Asia, Europe, the Americas and Australia. It may have taken a while, but migrating man eventually reached the more remote regions of the earth, places like the Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean, Hawaii and the North Sea island of Sylt.
It is documented that the Philistines came to Canaan in about 1190 B.C., where they introduced the name "Palestine." It is also documented that many Jews were carried off by the Babylonians in 587 B.C. and later released by Kyros, the King of the Persians, in 538 B.C., and returned to Palestine. What is now modern-day Europe has always been the site of the constant migration of tribes and ethnic groups.
Legend has it that Rome was founded because people were seeking a home. Aeneas, the father of the Eternal City, fled there to escape the flames of Troy. The Celts migrated to northern Italy, the Balkans, northern Spain and Portugal. And the Goths, the Gepids and the Vandals went to southern Russia and the Carpathians.
Migratio gentium
Nowadays the term "migration of peoples" -- or "Völkerwanderung" in German -- touches on sensitive issues for Germans. It comes from the Latin expression "migratio gentium," although the Latin "gens" was more commonly used in connection with the armed members of a tribe, or its army. German nationalists used the German term "Völkerwanderung" to support their claims of the superiority of Germanic tribes. As a result, Germans apply the term to the migrations of Germanic tribes beginning in the 4th century A.D.. The Huns invaded Russia, the Ostrogoths marched into Hungary and Italy, the Visigoths into Italy, France and Spain and the Franks into what later became France. The Langobards, or Lombards, entered northern Italy in 568 A.D. and settled in the region now known as Lombardy.
The Vikings' initial impetus for sailing across the seas was trade. But once they had discovered how affluent the cities of Western Europe were and how easily they could be reached through Europe's many navigable rivers, the Vikings returned to rob their former trading partners.
After the death of the Prophet Mohammed, the Arabs on the other side of the Mediterranean set forth and occupied Palestine and North Africa. The Moors, a Berber people, crossed the Mediterranean to Spain in 711 A.D. It wasn't until 1492, after the fall of Granada, that the Spaniards drove them out of Europe, together with 160,000 Jews. In the same year, Christopher Columbus, his expedition financed by a baptized Spanish Jew, set sail to search for an ocean passage to India and the New World.
Disease, guns and attack dogs eventually killed off most of the original inhabitants of that New World. And when all the Spaniards, Portuguese and English who had emigrated to America needed laborers, they imported slaves from Africa, setting a powerful vortex of resettlement into motion. It was the first forced migration of millions of people.
Sixty-million Europeans emigrated, too. Only they did so voluntarily.
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