Louis Michel, the EU's development commissioner, has opened the new Migration Management Centre in Bamako, the capital of Mali. Mali is the world's fifth poorest country and an estimated 4m of its 12m population are abroad.
The Migration Management Centre is part of a pilot scheme allegedly to try to dissuade Africans from taking the hazardous routes to Europe. Mali was chosen as a venue as it is a hub for tens of thousands of Africans who try to get to Europe every year via boat to Spain's Canary Islands from the west coast of Africa. Last week, for example, Spanish coastguards intercepted a group of 230 Africans, the largest single boat load detained so far.
The aim of the centre in the eyes of the European countries that financed it is to offer seasonal work for temporary legal migrants as part of a network of European migration centres across west Africa.
The Association of Malian Deportees however, which operates as an aid organisation for returned immigrants, claims that the new centre was being established simply to strengthen the EU borders against so-called 'illegal' immigration and to facilitate the more efficient expulsion of immigrants from Europe.
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