LAMPEDUSA, Italy — The small harbor in Lampedusa is crowded with a fleet of dilapidated wooden and metal smuggler's boats, some half-submerged. Discarded life jackets, filthy clothes and plastic water bottles float in the sea.
It's the debris of thousands of migrants who recently arrived on the shores of this small Italian island. Lampedusa is the closest piece of European territory to North Africa, so many migrants who make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean land there first. It is the gateway to Europe.
