On Europe's 70 m.p.h. smuggling route Not sure if this policy has been sparked by the large numbers of North Africans coming from the south or by the Albanian "skafisti" pictured above coming across the Adriatic. A few years ago, when chased at sea, the skafisti would throw a few of their human cargo overboard & the Italians would then have to rescue them--allowing the boat to get away--kind of like those old Russian tales where they throw one of the passengers out of the sleigh and into the snow in order to delay the pursuing wolf pack. Anyway, as a result, the Italians quit trying to intercept them enroute--instead they tried to catch the people as they came ashore and then went after the boats on the return trip back to Albania. The Albanians used a lot of 18-20 year old kids as boat drivers--fearless at that age. Like the Mexican border, most of the passengers are just guys trying to get somewhere to get a job--but there's always a mix of drugs & criminals & human trafficking & potentially terrorist collateral cargo. The problem if you open fire as they're coming in, instead of a criminal, you could hit some poor kidnapped girl being trafficked or some slob who just wants to get a job to support his family back in Bumscrewistan--may be wrong, but doesn't deserve to be shot. Anyway, used to be able to go to the beaches near Durres & Vlore to watch'em load up in the evenings--no life jackets, but normally a plastic bag to keep passenger clothes dry & sometimes blankets--they'd put 20-40 in big zodiac looking boats & head out faster than anything the Albs, Greeks, or Italians had to catch them. The short term answer is increased enforcement on the Albanian shore--easy to spot the smugglers, but lots of inefficiency & corruption there--the long term solution is to remove the incentive for illegal immigration thru better economies at the point of origin or a guest worker program or ??