No Refuge

So Sina, like tens of thousands of others like her, paid the last of her money to smugglers and boarded a small, over-crowded boat bound for Europe in the hope of claiming asylum. When her boat capsized, as so many boats did, she became one of those refugees that people would see on the news. And for many, images of bodies like hers, drowned at sea or in overcrowded life-boats, struck a nerve. Shock often turned to horror when the images were of the bodies of young children who had drown at sea. People could no longer ignore the plight of asylum seekers and began to demand a response to this crisis. The summer of 2015 marked the beginning of the so-called European refugee crisis. While people had been entering Europe as asylum seekers for a long time, the rate intensified dramatically in 2015 when more than 1.3 million asylum seekers arrived asking for refugee status, tens of thousands more than previous years. .