MyNuW

LONDON - The job markets of a booming European Union, now the largest economy in the world, has fueled a perilous, high-dollar traffic in legal and illegal migrants from Africa and Eastern Europe, and few who make the journey escape without scars.

In this series, MSNBC.com traces some of the stories: the boatloads of terrified Africans who arrive in the Mediterranean outpost of Malta, only to find they are stuck in a no-man’s land; the stark depopulation of the former Soviet republic of Latvia as citizens flock to the Western Europe; and the extraordinary personal journey of Kingsley, a young man who left Cameroon with his parents’ meager savings to find a new life, and economic salvation, in Europe.

The economic underpinnings of migration to Europe are similar to those that spur thousands of illegal immigrants to head to the United States annually. The response, too, has been similar; immigration regularly tops polls as the single biggest issue of concern for Europeans.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18981598/