Migrants continued to endure profound suffering, with recent events at sea demonstrating a callous disregard for human life and human rights’; calls on the Union and the Member States to make available sufficient human, material and financial resources for operations whose sole purpose is sea rescue; calls on the Union and the Member States to open legal channels for asylum-seekers, in particular by substantially increasing the number of places for resettlement of refugees and granting humanitarian visas, and to develop legal channels for economic immigration;

13. Stresses that the EU should also offer persons who want to come to Europe legal avenues for entering and staying in the EU; points out that at present labour migrants have hardly any means of entering the EU legally other than applying for asylum; calls for a labour immigration corridor to be set up for EU accession candidate countries, which would give citizens of those countries facilitated access to the European labour market; recalls that the ageing of society in Europe calls for decisive action also in the field of migration; believes that the current piecemeal approach of the EU and its Member States to regulating migration ...[+++] should be replaced by the EU Migration Code; calls on the Member States to ratify and implement the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families;

The Directive complements recent policy developments in the field of legal migration, with the Seasonal Workers Directive[6] being the most recent example of the EU opening legal channels for low-skilled labour migration, typically in sectors such as agriculture or tourism.

H. whereas action to combat illegal immigration and trafficking in human beings, the opening up of legal means of immigration, and integration must continue to be priorities for the enlarged EU, and whereas the exploitation of immigrants through illegal employment and inhumane treatment must be severely punished,

H. whereas action to combat illegal immigration and trafficking in human beings, the opening up of legal means of immigration, and integration must continue to be priorities for the enlarged EU, and whereas the exploitation of immigrants through illegal employment and inhumane treatment must be severely punished,

It is simply that as the legal avenues have closed, so the private sector has moved in to exploit the illegal avenues.