By A. D. McKenzie
The European Union is studying a range of measures
aimed at strengthening its external borders to deter undocumented
migrants from entering via Mediterranean member states such as Italy,
Greece, Cyprus and Spain.
[ipsnews.net] Following a meeting of EU immigration and interior
ministers called by France late last week in Brussels, the 27-nation
group wants to implement a "European police force" and bolster Frontex,
the EU agency responsible for external border security, French
immigration minister Eric Besson told journalists.
Meanwhile, the French human rights organisation GISTI (Group
for Information and Support to Immigrants) has called for Monday, Mar.
1, to be a day without work and/or consumption, to "protest against the
fate meted out to foreigners, legal or undocumented".
The group said it wants to stress its support for "equal
rights between French people of all origins and foreigners or supposed
foreigners." It is organising demonstrations in Paris, Nice, Marseilles
and other towns under the banner "24 Hours Without Us". Many essential
jobs throughout France are done by immigrants.
With the newly proposed EU measures, the French government
says it wants to protect lives and to dismantle migrant-trafficking
networks.
"Faced with the worsening situation in the Mediterranean,
which is the scene of daily ‘irregular- immigration’ dramas, France has
not ceased, since the summer of 2009, to alert the EU to the major
challenges posed by the illegal migration networks in this strategic
region for the Schengen Area," Besson said in an address to his
counterparts in Brussels.
"People are dying every day in the Mediterranean, anonymously,
victims of the cynicism and the greed of modern-day slavers," he added.
"People are entering illegally every day into the Schengen Area from
the Mediterranean, sometimes in a sincere search for protection, but
most often without this motive."
France, a member of the Schengen zone that has dismantled its
internal borders, has proposed 29 measures for the EU to consider.
These include "urgent revision" of Frontex’s regulations to improve its
operational capabilities, and the dismantling of migrant-trafficking
networks a priority for Europol, the EU’s criminal intelligence bureau.
France would also like to see "systematic operational
cooperation" between the EU and the countries from which the migrants
emigrate or which they use as transit points, said the French
immigration ministry.
Such cooperation would mean the repatriation of undocumented
migrants, the strengthening of surveillance, the establishment of
common land and sea patrols, and the collection and exchange of
information, the ministry said.
Besson also proposed several joint projects with Libya and
Turkey, where many migrant-trafficking networks allegedly operate. He
said the measures were urgent and should be implemented without delay,
preferably by the end of the year.
He first called for an EU plan of action last September after
eight African migrants drowned off the coast of Morocco when their
overloaded boat sank as it headed to Europe. Dozens of people have died
in their attempt to reach European countries and the prospect of better
lives.
Some critics, however, see the French and EU actions as further moves
to fortify Europe against asylum seekers. The proposals also come ahead
of French regional elections in March where right-wing politicians seem
keen to benefit from anti-immigrant sentiment.
The group French Coordination for the Right to Asylum (CFDA),
which comprises some 20 organisations including Amnesty International
and Médecins du Monde, says that the right to asylum is being
"profoundly recast" with a climate of suspicion being created around
those seeking refuge.
Among industrialised countries, France ranks second after the
United States in the number of asylum requests registered, with 47,000
last year, an increase of more than 10 percent from 2008, Besson said.
Overall, the EU had an estimated 119,000 asylum requests in the first
half of 2009, according to figures from the UNHCR, the United Nations
refugee agency.
But developing countries are also dealing with large migratory
flows, with an estimated 40 percent of all refugees based in these
states, the UNHCR says. Most of these countries are ill-equipped to
take care of refugees, a situation that NGOs say the EU should take
into consideration.
"There should be no reason why European countries are so
fearful of migrants," Dan Rosenthal, a spokesman for the transnational
network No Borders, told IPS.
"They (governments) have created a connection between being a migrant
and being a criminal," he said. "People should be able to go where they
want to, and the money currently being spent on tightening borders,
preventing immigration and detaining people could be used more wisely."
He said migrants leave their country of origin for reasons
including war, official repression, poverty, climate change and a range
of other reasons that are not being addressed by government officials.
Many of the undocumented migrants in France are from war-torn
Iraq and Afghanistan, the two countries that accounted for most of the
asylum-seekers that landed in industrialised countries last year,
according to the UNHCR. Somalia, also in the grip of a civil war, was
the third-largest source country of asylum seekers.
"Why is there such ‘aggression’ by the state against migrants
forced to flee from wars, violence and misery?" asked the French group
SoS Sans Papiers when French authorities expelled undocumented migrants
from a hangar in Calais recently.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy said on television that he
did not want to see migrants "arriving on rafts" or being deposited on
the beaches of France by traffickers as has happened in the
Mediterranean.
