Of course, even those who may be lying about asylum are looking for an infinitely better life than the one they have left behind. From Lampedusa it seems easy to imagine schemes to distribute this vast and continual wave of people equitably and harmoniously across the continent. But anybody who knows even just Italy should know better than this. Aside from the tiny number of earlier and better-off migrants, most people who arrive will eventually find themselves sleeping outside the train station in Milan or in a car park in Ravenna. The lucky ones will end up working for gangs or trying to sell imitation luxury goods on the bridges of Venice or down the side streets of Naples. Whenever they see a policeman or the flash of a police car’s lights they will hurriedly gather up their counterfeit bags or wheel away their tray of imitation-brand sunglasses and hurry from the scene. They may be more protected, free and safe than they were at home, but their future can hardly be said to be bright.

And Lampedusa is only one small island. During recent years boats full of migrants have also come ashore on the islands nearest to Lampedusa, including Malta and Sicily. In 2014 alone – the year before the migrant crisis ‘began’ – 170,000 people arrived this way. Officials talk of solving the problem by filling Libya’s recent government vacuum. But they forget that the flow of migrants continued even during the period when European governments (including the French) were paying bribes to Gaddafi. And they forget that the boats do not only head out from Libya, but also launch from Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria. What is more, this is in any case only one route. Over to the west of the Mediterranean is another route entirely, going up from Morocco and into Spain. Migrants have flowed across this narrowest gap between Africa and Europe, the Straits of Gibraltar, for decades. And despite Morocco having the best relations of any North African government with any European country – and therefore the best chance of doing deals to stop the smugglers – the migration to Spain has not been stopped. Indeed, during the early 1990s the movement of migrants through this route proved to be a harbinger of what was to come. In those days the going rate for the people-smugglers to traverse 10 miles of sea was $600. Then as now boats set off on a daily basis and the bodies of those who didn’t make it (often because the smugglers make migrants swim the last portion of the journey) washed up on the beaches of Spain.