Sicily has become a major new weigh station for migrants from Africa and the Middle East desperate to start new lives in Europe. <br /><br /> Since the alarming deaths off the island of Lampedusa in 2013, the influx to Sicily has soared. There, they wait to see if their asylum applications will be accepted. <br /><br /> Penniless, without documentation, hopes exhausted and futures dark, they felt compelled to risk their lives at sea.<br /><br /> Many of the migrants are in their early 20s. <br /><br /> Gambian migrant Lamin Beyai, age 20, said: “I was never good at swimming. It was very risky. I was so scared. It is not easy being in the sea where you can’t hold anything. Anything can happen there. Only God can save you.”<br /><br /> If a migrant leaves Sicily’s Umberto I holding centre in Siracusa before his or her asylum hearing, the application is annulled.<br /><br /> Sono, from Senegal, said: “I am here but I have cried. If I think about it I want to cry because I have no money. Not even these clothes are mine. I was a man, in the name of
