The Balkan route closure has not put smugglers out of business

Mountains of orange life vests still litter the beaches of the Greek island of Lesbos, a year after refugees and migrants stopped landing there in the kind of vast numbers that sparked Europe's migration crisis.
"It's good that people no longer lose their lives between Turkey's Aegean coast and the Greek islands," a Greek coast guard officer says.
The inflow dried up after several Balkan countries closed their borders to irregular migrants travelling via Greece on March 9 last year.
A refugee pact between the European Union and Turkey in April, allowing for migrants to be transported back to camps in Turkey, put a further brake on a route that connects the Middle East with Western Europe.
The effect of these deals has been dramatic: while 124,500 people came to Greece from Turkey in January and February 2016, the numbers dropped to 2,379 in the first two months of this year.
But that is far from saying that the crisis is now over.
Some 61,000 migrants are stuck in Greek refugee camps, while people smugglers continue to ply their trade in the region, trying to get past the fences and border controls that have sprung up since last year.
Asylum procedures progress at a snail's pace, not least because the EU has only sent to Greece a fraction of the 400 asylum judges it has promised.
Brawls and riots have broken out among those who live in this Greek limbo, while residents on Lesbos report that prostitution is on the rise.
Amid this bleak situation, a growing number of asylum seekers are going underground.
"We can't find them," Migration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas admitted in parliament recently. It is unclear how many have disappeared, he said.
It is clear, however, that the flow from Greece through the Balkans never stopped completely, despite pushbacks by border guards and despite fences raised between Greece and Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary, as well as Croatia and Slovenia.
In Serbia, the inflow is expected to increase with the arrival of warmer weather, mainly from Bulgaria.
The barricaded Hungarian border in Serbia's north and the utterly porous borders in the south have created a long-standing backlog of migrants and refugees.
Presently, according to the UN's Refugee Agency UNHCR,there are around 7,700 people in the country.
An estimated 800 are squatting in Belgrade's derelict railway station warehouses.
"I can go any day, my smuggler says. But I'll wait a little longer," says Bahir, an Afghan who has found shelter there.
The 19-year-old admits he has grown more concerned since a fellow migrant?whom he befriended in Belgrade died as he tried to cross to Hungary.
Rahmat Ullah Hanife, 22, fell through the ice into the Tisa river.
His death was reported in the media. The smuggler who led his group was never identified.
The Balkan route closure has not put the smugglers out of business.
"Now they work in big, often very professional networks consisting of several dozens of people," says Gerald Tatzgern, who leads the fight against people-smuggling in the Interior Ministry in Austria, which shares its eastern border with Hungary.
"It's still a billion-dollar business," he says.
Although the daily number of irregular arrivals has dropped to around 100 in Austria, the government has continued to introduce a wave of policies to deter asylum seekers.
Vienna's centrist government allowed 90,000 migrants into the country in 2015, but it changed course abruptly in early 2016 when it saw that its open-armed stance towards foreigners had alienated Austrian voters.
Austria introduced daily and yearly limits?for the number of asylum seekers it would let in each day, prompting the Balkan countries to react with their restrictive measures in March.
Similarly to the situation in Germany and France, the growing influence of the far-right in Austria, which has fiercely opposed the refugee influx, has forced the government's hand.
Austria wants to introduce fines of up to 15,000 euros (15,900 dollars) soon for rejected asylum seekers who refuse to leave the country. Those who are not deterred can be detained for up to 18 months.
Like other European countries, Austria is worried that Turkey may stop honouring its deal to stop the outflow to Western Europe, especially given strained ties between Ankara and Berlin.
Even now, Western criticism of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan likely influences how well Turkey protects its borders, experts told dpa, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"As soon as Turkish police are not fully on guard, hundreds of refugees suddenly reach Greek islands and Bulgaria in a single day," Tatzgern said.