IN a single week in August, 10,000 migrants were rescued from sinking boats in the Mediterranean and taken to Italy.

Prominent among the rescuers is a charity called Spanish Proactiva Open Arms. This charity makes a special effort to welcome migrants fleeing Eritrea and Somalia – migrants who pay large sums of money to the unscrupulous gangs of people-traffickers.

People-trafficking is the new boom industry in Europe’s stagnant economy. According to the International Organization for Migration, 105,342 migrants have reached Italy by boat this year, most of them having set sail from Libya.

An estimated 2,726 men, women and children have died over the same period trying to make the journey, often packed perilously into small boats that are not sea-worthy.

Italy has been the front-line of Europe’s migrant crisis for the three years since 2014, during which time more than 400,000 successfully made the voyage to that country from North Africa.

Recently, Austria and Switzerland tightened their border controls confining this huge, and growing, number of migrants to Italy. Unsurprisingly, Italy’s rulers are complaining that their county is overwhelmed.

Since Angela Merkel opened her borders to welcome almost a million migrants last year, Germany’s predicament is even more critical than Italy’s.

Meanwhile, Hungary, Poland and other east European nations are severely restricting the numbers of migrants allowed in.

Britain’s net migration figures for 2015 stand at 350,000.

It should be made clear that “net” means you subtract the numbers leaving this country annually from the numbers coming in.

Therefore, the incomers number 650,000 – the equivalent of a city the size of Leeds every year.

As a subtext to the numbers we know about, the police last week revealed that there are “probably” 27,000 illegal immigrants slipping through our porous borders every year.

Should we be concerned or should we echo the sentiments of Spanish Proactive Open Arms and welcome all-comers? I think we should be alarmed.

Even the BBC – not regarded for taking a tough line on immigration – is alarmed. In an edition of File On Four last year, the very worried presenter detailed the extent of illegal immigration and its methods: by lorry, by evading customs checks at airports, by forged documentation and by boats landing on sparsely-populated stretches of coastline.

Of course, there is no place for xenophobia. Not many of the immigrants are jihadists. Not all the newly-arrived Muslim men in Cologne are rapists. But, owing to this alien influx, formerly pacific and socially progressive Sweden has been described as “the rape capital of the world.”

France, which is home to more Muslims than any other European country, is ghettoised with no-go areas for native Frenchmen, 40,000 cars set alight every year and on the edge of social breakdown.

Let me conclude with a few questions.

Am I merely xenophobic, racist and plain wrong to mention these facts?

Is there intensifying social disquiet throughout Europe?

If immigration – by people who are very different culturally from native Europeans - is allowed to continue at its present rate, it is undeniable that the character of the continent, including Britain, will be changed.

Is that what we want?