Washed up on the Barbadian shore

Over the past few years, we've become accustomed to stories of African migrants being rescued from the sea near the Canaries, or trying to cross the Mediterranean in small boats, or climbing the fences into Ceuta and Melilla, all to get into the EU. Americans, for some reason, are oblivious to this issue (since everybody wants to come here, and nobody wants to go to Europe, it seems). The most recent story to come to my attention is of a boatload of migrants who died en route and who washed up in Barbados (more than 3,000 miles from west Africa). These stories say something about the desperation in Africa. Something very, very bad. It isn't only people fleeing from wars (as in Darfur or Congo), or from failed states like Somalia, Sierra Leone, or Liberia, but people leaving states that are largely at peace, like Mali or Nigeria, in search of work to support their families.