People smuggling is the low-risk, high-profit business of illegally moving people from one country to another often in their desperate attempts to escape poverty, a natural disaster, conflict or political instability. Thousands of illegal immigrants die each year in transit to their destinations as a result of the indifferent or deliberate actions of smugglers. As these facts show, it's an increasingly organized and deadly business.
- People smuggling is distinct from human trafficking. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), smuggling involves the procurement for financial or other material benefit of illegal entry of a person into a state of which that person isn't a national or resident whereas human trafficking is the acquisition of people by improper means such as force, fraud or deception.
- According to the 2009 UNDP Human Development Report, there are an estimated 50 million irregular international migrants in the world, a significant number of whom paid for assistance to illegally cross borders.
- The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that in the first nine months of 2014, at least 4,077 migrants died while being smuggled abroad. This is 70 per cent higher than the recorded deaths for the whole of 2013.
- The IOM reports these figures still fail to capture the true number of fatalities, due to disappearances and the difficulty of reporting and confirming deaths.
- In 2014, 75 per cent of migrant deaths occurred in the Mediterranean region. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says at least 207,000 people crossed this region in the beginning of that year.
- According to a January 2015 article in The Guardian, more than 45,000 migrants risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean to reach Italy and Malta in 2013, and 700 died doing so. The number of dead more than quadrupled in 2014 to 3,224.
- People smuggling can occur by air, sea or land, says UNODC. The majority of smuggling deaths occur at sea, although deaths also occur while crossing deserts, while stranded in transit and from the malicious and abusive treatment of the smugglers.
- Based on figures provided by the UN Refugee Agency, the world's four deadliest sea crossings in 2014 were the Mediterranean Sea with 3,419 deaths, the Bay of Bengal with 540 deaths, the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea with 242 deaths, and the Caribbean Sea with 71 deaths.
- According to INTERPOL, people smuggling takes place on all scales. However, the international dimension of this crime makes it especially attractive and lucrative to organized networks.
- The UNODC website reports that two smuggling routes — East, North and West Africa to Europe, and South America to North America — generate around $6.75 billion a year for criminals operating in these regions.
- There are an estimated three million illegal entries into the United States each year, according to UNODC.
- The fees charged for smuggling migrants can vary widely depending on the point of origin, says a UNODC factsheet. Migrants smuggled across the border between Mexico and the United States pay about $2,000, while migrants from beyond Mexico could pay as much as $10,000.
- According to INTERPOL, people smuggling networks often change their routes and methods in response to legislative and law enforcement activities. The routes used by people smugglers can be simple and direct, or circuitous. The time between departure and arrival may vary from a few days to several months or even years.
- Canada has experienced incidents of large non-commercial vessels of several hundred passengers arranged by smugglers, reports UNODC. One case was the Sun Sea, a vessel that was intercepted off the coast of British Columbia on Aug. 12, 2010 carrying 492 Sri Lankan passengers.
- In 2010, there were 6,550 irregular maritime arrivals in Australia with most migrants by sea arriving at or brought to offshore territories, says the same UNODC report.
— Compiled by Katherine Aldred