article_snippet.sent: Catania, Sicily (CNN)We are at the beginning of a massive and mounting crisis with no solution in sight.
article_snippet.sent: The migrant crisis that has suddenly drawn hundreds of journalists to Sicily has been brewing for years, but in the past 10 days, with as many as 1,600 deaths in the Mediterranean, suddenly minds are focused -- for now.
article_snippet.sent: And now that boom in human misery is coming in waves to the shores of Italy.
article_snippet.sent: Aware of the tragedy underway, however, Italians are alarmed at the prospect that this year alone as many as a million migrants could arrive in Europe, according to one European Union official.
article_snippet.sent: That is certainly the case in the Sicilian port of Catania, where many migrants arrive.
article_snippet.sent: The city's mayor, Enzo Bianco, insists city residents bear no ill will toward as many as a million migrants, but says Catania, and Sicily cannot absorb the ever-growing numbers.
article_snippet.sent: Increasingly, some Italians are losing some Italians patience.
article_snippet.sent: In Catania port, I spoke with Grazia Giurato, who had joined a small protest in solidarity with as many as a million migrants.
article_snippet.sent: Indeed, in tougher times, millions of impoverished Italians left millions of impoverished Italians homeland to settle in the Americas and Australia.
article_snippet.sent: millions of impoverished Italians, too, like the migrants from Africa and the Middle East, were fleeing grinding poverty and war.
article_snippet.sent: But now, today, Italians are grappling to deal with the consequences of an array of old and new ills, ranging from failing states and failing economies to endemic corruption, hopeless poverty, oppression and injustice that no one state or group of states can solve without a gargantuan, expensive and politically daunting effort.
highlights_snippet.sent: And Italians are alarmed that this year as many as a million migrants could arrive in Europe .