The 580 migrants currently being held in the new €2.6m detention centre on the eastern Aegean island of Samos, designed to accommodate less than half that number and known locally as 'Guantánamo', began a hunger strike Wednesday to protest their possible deportation following the forced deportation of 26 fellow migrants to Turkey earlier in the week. The previous detention centre on the island, a converted tobacco factory and itself the venue of a notorious hunger-strike in 2006 where Iranian detainees sewed-up their lips with wire, was forced to close following protests from European Parliament MPs and the UNHCR after conditions there were slammed as being "an insult to human dignity ... and a downright violation of human rights."
In recent months the Greek authorities have significantly stepped up their attempts to detain and remove migrants from the country, most of them being deported illegally* across the Turkish border, where most are assumed to have entered Greece from. In 2001 Greece-Turkey signed a bilateral readmission protocol as part of the process that could lead to Turkey gaining EU membership. However, the functioning of this protocol has been less than smooth. Amongst the complaints made by the Greeks are that, of the 6 border exchange locations agreed, the Turks are only allowing deportations via the Maritsa crossing in northern Greece. This imposes considerable transport and logistic costs on the Greek state and has led to a preponderance of clandestine deportations.
The Greeks claim that 60,000 or 40% of all 'illegal' migrants reaching Greece have travelled via Turkey and, of the cases submitted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for return under the protocol, only 12% were agreed upon by the Turkish authorities and only half of those have actually been readmitted via the process. Turkey in turn demands that Greece accepts significant numbers of 'illegals' that they claim have crossed into Turkey from Greece. Whilst a small number of Europe-bound migrants may have accidentally crossed the River Mariç in the wrong direction, most are understood to be illegal Greek police 'push-backs'. Migrants are also known to have drowned in the river after being denied access to both Greek and Turkish territory.
Just as the French authorities have in recent years come to blame the UK government for the costs they claim they have to bear because of the large numbers of migrants trying to cross the English Channel, so the Greek government now complain that it cannot be expected to bear a disproportionate burden of what is an EU problem. So the Greeks try to blackmail its Northern and Eastern neighbours into bear more of its 'pain and suffering'.
The Turks, on the other hand are caught in a cleft stick; caught between a desire to join the EU but at the same time not wishing to end up where the Greeks are now, shouldering an unequal share of EU migration prevention costs**, even before it joins the EU! On top of that is the on-going clash of rampant nationalisms that will inevitably see the 2 states continuing to trade insults and expelled migrants across their common border.
* Greek police have also been systematically denying migrants access to asylum procedures. In one example, 45 Kurdish refugees at Chania on Crete, despite 17 having signed asylum applications in front of Amnesty International representatives and local lawyers, the police representatives present refused to process the documents. Instead the migrants were herded on to a bus and taken to a detention centre in Athens, prior to removal to the North.
** It has recently built seven new reception centres able to accommodate 750 people each, with 6 more at planning stage, adding to the 30 plus detention centres and informal holding facilities it already has, as part of the accession process.
Thursday, 6 August 2009
Monday, 3 August 2009
Points Based Or Points Scoring?
On the Today program on Radio 4 this morning that nice Mr Woolas was talking about the Labour Party's latest bit of tinkering with immigration system, a new 'points based' citizenship test.* Responding to a question about the controversial suggestion that it would count against prospective citizenship candidates if they demonstrated against British troops as happened recently in Luton, he let slip that whilst the right to freedom of speech is protected by the law, this only applies to UK citizens.
He then went on to admit that effectively non-UK citizens have no right to demonstrate in this country, and if you do and you are planning on applying for citizenship then you can forget it. Interestingly he is also, despite claiming that none of this was based on party political or election positioning, trying yet again to steal some of the BNP's moral low-ground. He suggested that the new system should also have regard to the impact that UK migration policy has on the developing world by posing questions like "Are we causing a brain-drain in Western Africa?", echoing the BNP's new line on not 'profiting from the theft of skilled workers from the developing world'.
* Why there will not be a 'points based' test.
He then went on to admit that effectively non-UK citizens have no right to demonstrate in this country, and if you do and you are planning on applying for citizenship then you can forget it. Interestingly he is also, despite claiming that none of this was based on party political or election positioning, trying yet again to steal some of the BNP's moral low-ground. He suggested that the new system should also have regard to the impact that UK migration policy has on the developing world by posing questions like "Are we causing a brain-drain in Western Africa?", echoing the BNP's new line on not 'profiting from the theft of skilled workers from the developing world'.
* Why there will not be a 'points based' test.
Sunday, 2 August 2009
The Prison Of The Brave In The Land Of The Free
On Wednesday this week, the same day that the Department of Homeland Security decided to reject a federal court petition after a two and a half years delay calling for legally enforceable detention standards, detainees in the immigration detention centre in Basile, Louisiana have started their 5th hunger strike in the past month to protest substandard conditions.
Over 60 detainees are participating in the staged waves of three-day hunger strikes at the privately run 1,002-bed facility operated by LCS Corrections Services Inc. and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice six men at the immigration prison have been put in solitary confinement as a result of their participation in the hunger strike. They and around 100 other detainees have been playing roles as human rights monitors, speaking out about detention conditions and contributing to a damning report published by the Workers' Center. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency in charge of immigrant detention, has claimd that the solitary confinement isn't disciplinary, but precautionary "medical isolation."
Five inmates said they had been placed in the "hole" on the morning of July 23 for planning a hunger strike. The next day they were brought out of the "hole," cuffed at the ankles and wrists, and interrogated for two hours
Detainees have complained of rats, mosquitoes, flies, and spiders inside their cells. One Jewish detainee, Manuchar Khalhaturov, has said he was denied a kosher diet, while others said the detention centre's food routinely made them sick. Others complaints include that the phone cards that take a week to be issued once purchased regularly fail to work and that the jail ran out of soap and toothpaste for 3 weeks in July.
These conditions would put the facility in violation of several standards issued by the Department of Homeland Security for immigrant detainees, but federal officials responsible for the detainees flatly deny they have been subjected to any mistreatment. In fact, Philip Miller, acting field office director in New Orleans for ICE, visited the Basile facility on July 16 and said he found its maintenance and pest control program satisfactory.
All this follows the issuing of a highly critical report, 'Jailed Without Justice', in March this year from Amnesty International claiming that thousands of immigration detainees in America are being held in violation of international law.
Over 60 detainees are participating in the staged waves of three-day hunger strikes at the privately run 1,002-bed facility operated by LCS Corrections Services Inc. and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice six men at the immigration prison have been put in solitary confinement as a result of their participation in the hunger strike. They and around 100 other detainees have been playing roles as human rights monitors, speaking out about detention conditions and contributing to a damning report published by the Workers' Center. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency in charge of immigrant detention, has claimd that the solitary confinement isn't disciplinary, but precautionary "medical isolation."
Five inmates said they had been placed in the "hole" on the morning of July 23 for planning a hunger strike. The next day they were brought out of the "hole," cuffed at the ankles and wrists, and interrogated for two hours
Detainees have complained of rats, mosquitoes, flies, and spiders inside their cells. One Jewish detainee, Manuchar Khalhaturov, has said he was denied a kosher diet, while others said the detention centre's food routinely made them sick. Others complaints include that the phone cards that take a week to be issued once purchased regularly fail to work and that the jail ran out of soap and toothpaste for 3 weeks in July.
These conditions would put the facility in violation of several standards issued by the Department of Homeland Security for immigrant detainees, but federal officials responsible for the detainees flatly deny they have been subjected to any mistreatment. In fact, Philip Miller, acting field office director in New Orleans for ICE, visited the Basile facility on July 16 and said he found its maintenance and pest control program satisfactory.
All this follows the issuing of a highly critical report, 'Jailed Without Justice', in March this year from Amnesty International claiming that thousands of immigration detainees in America are being held in violation of international law.
Saturday, 1 August 2009
MailWatch #2
Instalment number two of our occasional service debunking migration stories in the Daily Mail, self-styled 'Last Bulwark Against The Tide Of Filth That Is Threatening To Engulf Civilisation'™
In MailWatch #1 we pointed out the the paper's claims that "would-be illegal immigrants are forming human roadblocks to force motorists passing through the French port town to stop. Travellers are then robbed at knife-point by the migrants, who are desperate for funds to help them sneak into the UK" and that the local police had issued a public statement warning "the nine million Britons a year who pass through Calais ... to keep their windows closed and doors locked until they are safely inside the ferry terminal."
Strangely, no confirmation of these claims could be found in either of the main local Calais papers, Nord Littoral or La Voix Du Nord, on the police website or anywhere on any French websites despite exhaustive searches. The local police station denied all knowledge of it and so far the Mail has failed to respond to requests for copies of the statement and their sources for the car-jacking story.
Now, the Nord Littoral itself has waded into the argument with their own article on the veracity of Mail stories, saying that Anne-Sigrid Catton, Deputy Commissioner of Police, denies the Calais police had issued any public warning to UK tourists. Nearby Coquelles detention centre is also quoted as saying that it has no records of any incidents involving migrant violence against tourists.
The Nord Littoral article also goes on to point to other occasions when the Mail also played fast and loose with the truth. On Tuesday the paper alleged that Calais migrants were now squatting empty council houses, quoting one Philippe Bouvard, the president of a Calais association of residents, as saying: "Many families in Calais are furious that homes meant for French families have been overrun with migrants." Except no one at the Office Public de l'Habitat de Calais has ever heard of this person. On top of that, they have only one empty council house on their books and they state that, even if the squatting story were true, it is impossible for the migrants to have illegally reconnecting the utilities as the Mail has claimed.
Now the paper that the Association of Chief Police Officers has in the past accused of misquoting information about immigration and warned that its "racist expressions towards asylum-seekers appear to have become common currency and 'acceptable' in a way that would never be tolerated towards any other minority group"*, likes to print at least one story a day vilifying the Calais migrants or asylum seekers in general. But that day they had two such articles, the second bemoaning the fact that tax payers money was being used to bribe migrants via the IOM assisted returns policy to return home for £1,700 and a free flight.
Another non-story. In fact, this program was originally set up in 2007 and the fact that it was receiving additional funding from the UKBA's Returns and Reintegration Fund and France's Office Français de l'Immigration et de l'Intégration had been announced back in May. Why publish a story about this now? Maybe it was because it "emerged last night that the Government is reconsidering funding joint flights with the French to take failed migrants home." Except this in fact came out of the recent Evian summit at the beginning of the month, not on Monday night.
On Wednesday the Mail took a slightly different tack in that this story was based on fact: 'Calais migrant cried rape as revenge against people smuggler who failed to get her into Britain'. Now we don't mean to minimise the seriousness of any rape allegation, however this one was in fact only 'newsworthy' in the eyes of the Mail's editor because it happened in Calais and involved migrants, conveniently provided another stick to beat them with. Had it not involved migrants, even if it had occurred outside the Mail's own offices, it would not have rated the column inches given this Calais story.
The most amazing Mail story of the week however, and not just because of its length, was 'Bloody siege of Calais: The violent new breed of migrants who will let nothing stop them coming to Britain', by one Paul Bracchi. In it he relates the story of how the Mail's very own intrepid photographer Will Leach was allegedly attacked on 22nd of July by irate migrants using lumps of concrete to smash his car windows; the Mail's reputation obviously precedes it, even amongst the migrants!
Whilst trying to get "dramatic footage" of two "would-be asylum seekers "climbing into the gap between the cab and trailer of a lorry, the sun glinting off the giant telephoto lens of our slumming-it paprazzo appears to have alerted the migrants that yet another bloody tabloid journo was on their case. So they did a Pierce Brosnan/Alec Baldwin/Lindsay Lohan/Hugh Grant/Lily Allen/Robbie Williams/Pete Doherty/Britney Spears/Kayne West/Amy Winehouse [delete as applicable] and saw him off in a less than friendly fashion.
This incident provoked 2,000 plus words of vituperation in response from the paper. Unfortunately, like most of the Mail's diatribes, it was shot through with prejudice and errors. After a little riff on the name of the 'Jungle', "where fights and feuds between rival factions are commonplace", "a godforsaken 'community'" more "akin to the trenches", the article mentioned "a security guard at an American owned company on [Rue des Garennes] was clubbed over the head with an iron bar a few weeks ago." This clearly refers to an incident at the Thioxide plant, also the site of a meeting that the article claims the French immigration minister Eric Besson attended "a few weeks ago to listen to the views of those who work and live near the Rue des Garennes."
The big problem with this is that the meeting actually occurred on 23th of April, with the attack on the night-watchman happening on the 16th of March. That's 14 and 19 weeks ago respectively, hardly "a few weeks" in anyone's book. But this is typical of the Mail's fast and loose way with the facts.
Here's another Mail classic from the same piece: "A single raid by the CRS in April resulted in 194 arrests of suspected people traffickers. In other words, nearly a quarter of those living in this sprawling cardboard and tarpaulin city had possible criminal links." Yes, 194 people were arrested in Calais on 21st of April in raids, which was ostensibly aimed at traffickers, many of them children. However, despite the 194 "suspected people traffickers" being dragged off to police stations in 3 nearby cities, the prosecutor's office in Boulogne-sur-Mer found no one to hold on trafficking charges and almost all were eventually released, a fact that was widely covered in the French press and even made it in to the pages of the Daily Mail!
Further on in the article, after all the babbling about police having "now stepped up patrols" (apparently "not just a story spun by the local council's public relations department." What can he mean by this, even if he and his cameraman "had seen the evidence for themselves"?) and nonsense about migrants willing to "mutilate themselves to conceal their identities" (referring to removing their fingerprints** to avoid detection, which is hardly mutilation), we get some crocodile tears.
Then, having reluctantly conceded that many of the Calais migrants are children (so they are not all money-grabbing 'economic migrants' or even people traffickers), the article tells some of the children's "pitiful stories" and says "equally tragic examples of forgotten youngsters were standing in the long, winding queue for the twice-daily soup kitchen (sic) in Quai de La Moselle". Yet more lazy journalism. The Quai de La Moselle is in fact the site of a food distribution operation at lunchtime run by Belle Etiole, one of two volunteer-run projects in Calais. The second evening distribution however is run by Salam, a completely separate humanitarian organisation, and takes place half a mile away at the Hanger Paul Devot on the Boulevard des Allies.
Now, the incident with the photographer was meant to have occurred on the 22nd, with the article being published on the 25th, but Salam stopped operations on the 17th of July to give their exhausted members their annual summer break (with Belle Etoile stopping on the 31st). So this highly paid and supposedly observant journalist does not seem to know that his "twice-daily soup kitchen" occurs in 2 separate places and that only one was still operating when his and his photographer's skirmish in the "Bloody siege of Calais" was meant to have taken place.
So what are we to conclude from all this? Good old-fashioned stupidity? Genuine mistakes? Lazy mealy-mouthed journalists trying to beat a deadline? Or just the standard yellow journalism we have come to expect from the sort of mendacious hacks that are employed by this tub-thumping right-wing anti-immigration rag? We'll leave you to make up your own minds.
* Which ACPO held was increasing the risk of "significant public disorder."
** Interestingly the Mail has consistently failed to mention one of the most common means of removing fingerprints used by the migrants, sanding them down with glass-paper. But that is far less dramatic than burning the tips of ones fingers. [See also: MailWatch #1]
In MailWatch #1 we pointed out the the paper's claims that "would-be illegal immigrants are forming human roadblocks to force motorists passing through the French port town to stop. Travellers are then robbed at knife-point by the migrants, who are desperate for funds to help them sneak into the UK" and that the local police had issued a public statement warning "the nine million Britons a year who pass through Calais ... to keep their windows closed and doors locked until they are safely inside the ferry terminal."
Strangely, no confirmation of these claims could be found in either of the main local Calais papers, Nord Littoral or La Voix Du Nord, on the police website or anywhere on any French websites despite exhaustive searches. The local police station denied all knowledge of it and so far the Mail has failed to respond to requests for copies of the statement and their sources for the car-jacking story.
Now, the Nord Littoral itself has waded into the argument with their own article on the veracity of Mail stories, saying that Anne-Sigrid Catton, Deputy Commissioner of Police, denies the Calais police had issued any public warning to UK tourists. Nearby Coquelles detention centre is also quoted as saying that it has no records of any incidents involving migrant violence against tourists.
The Nord Littoral article also goes on to point to other occasions when the Mail also played fast and loose with the truth. On Tuesday the paper alleged that Calais migrants were now squatting empty council houses, quoting one Philippe Bouvard, the president of a Calais association of residents, as saying: "Many families in Calais are furious that homes meant for French families have been overrun with migrants." Except no one at the Office Public de l'Habitat de Calais has ever heard of this person. On top of that, they have only one empty council house on their books and they state that, even if the squatting story were true, it is impossible for the migrants to have illegally reconnecting the utilities as the Mail has claimed.
Now the paper that the Association of Chief Police Officers has in the past accused of misquoting information about immigration and warned that its "racist expressions towards asylum-seekers appear to have become common currency and 'acceptable' in a way that would never be tolerated towards any other minority group"*, likes to print at least one story a day vilifying the Calais migrants or asylum seekers in general. But that day they had two such articles, the second bemoaning the fact that tax payers money was being used to bribe migrants via the IOM assisted returns policy to return home for £1,700 and a free flight.
Another non-story. In fact, this program was originally set up in 2007 and the fact that it was receiving additional funding from the UKBA's Returns and Reintegration Fund and France's Office Français de l'Immigration et de l'Intégration had been announced back in May. Why publish a story about this now? Maybe it was because it "emerged last night that the Government is reconsidering funding joint flights with the French to take failed migrants home." Except this in fact came out of the recent Evian summit at the beginning of the month, not on Monday night.
On Wednesday the Mail took a slightly different tack in that this story was based on fact: 'Calais migrant cried rape as revenge against people smuggler who failed to get her into Britain'. Now we don't mean to minimise the seriousness of any rape allegation, however this one was in fact only 'newsworthy' in the eyes of the Mail's editor because it happened in Calais and involved migrants, conveniently provided another stick to beat them with. Had it not involved migrants, even if it had occurred outside the Mail's own offices, it would not have rated the column inches given this Calais story.
The most amazing Mail story of the week however, and not just because of its length, was 'Bloody siege of Calais: The violent new breed of migrants who will let nothing stop them coming to Britain', by one Paul Bracchi. In it he relates the story of how the Mail's very own intrepid photographer Will Leach was allegedly attacked on 22nd of July by irate migrants using lumps of concrete to smash his car windows; the Mail's reputation obviously precedes it, even amongst the migrants!
Whilst trying to get "dramatic footage" of two "would-be asylum seekers "climbing into the gap between the cab and trailer of a lorry, the sun glinting off the giant telephoto lens of our slumming-it paprazzo appears to have alerted the migrants that yet another bloody tabloid journo was on their case. So they did a Pierce Brosnan/Alec Baldwin/Lindsay Lohan/Hugh Grant/Lily Allen/Robbie Williams/Pete Doherty/Britney Spears/Kayne West/Amy Winehouse [delete as applicable] and saw him off in a less than friendly fashion.
This incident provoked 2,000 plus words of vituperation in response from the paper. Unfortunately, like most of the Mail's diatribes, it was shot through with prejudice and errors. After a little riff on the name of the 'Jungle', "where fights and feuds between rival factions are commonplace", "a godforsaken 'community'" more "akin to the trenches", the article mentioned "a security guard at an American owned company on [Rue des Garennes] was clubbed over the head with an iron bar a few weeks ago." This clearly refers to an incident at the Thioxide plant, also the site of a meeting that the article claims the French immigration minister Eric Besson attended "a few weeks ago to listen to the views of those who work and live near the Rue des Garennes."
The big problem with this is that the meeting actually occurred on 23th of April, with the attack on the night-watchman happening on the 16th of March. That's 14 and 19 weeks ago respectively, hardly "a few weeks" in anyone's book. But this is typical of the Mail's fast and loose way with the facts.
Here's another Mail classic from the same piece: "A single raid by the CRS in April resulted in 194 arrests of suspected people traffickers. In other words, nearly a quarter of those living in this sprawling cardboard and tarpaulin city had possible criminal links." Yes, 194 people were arrested in Calais on 21st of April in raids, which was ostensibly aimed at traffickers, many of them children. However, despite the 194 "suspected people traffickers" being dragged off to police stations in 3 nearby cities, the prosecutor's office in Boulogne-sur-Mer found no one to hold on trafficking charges and almost all were eventually released, a fact that was widely covered in the French press and even made it in to the pages of the Daily Mail!
Further on in the article, after all the babbling about police having "now stepped up patrols" (apparently "not just a story spun by the local council's public relations department." What can he mean by this, even if he and his cameraman "had seen the evidence for themselves"?) and nonsense about migrants willing to "mutilate themselves to conceal their identities" (referring to removing their fingerprints** to avoid detection, which is hardly mutilation), we get some crocodile tears.
Then, having reluctantly conceded that many of the Calais migrants are children (so they are not all money-grabbing 'economic migrants' or even people traffickers), the article tells some of the children's "pitiful stories" and says "equally tragic examples of forgotten youngsters were standing in the long, winding queue for the twice-daily soup kitchen (sic) in Quai de La Moselle". Yet more lazy journalism. The Quai de La Moselle is in fact the site of a food distribution operation at lunchtime run by Belle Etiole, one of two volunteer-run projects in Calais. The second evening distribution however is run by Salam, a completely separate humanitarian organisation, and takes place half a mile away at the Hanger Paul Devot on the Boulevard des Allies.
Now, the incident with the photographer was meant to have occurred on the 22nd, with the article being published on the 25th, but Salam stopped operations on the 17th of July to give their exhausted members their annual summer break (with Belle Etoile stopping on the 31st). So this highly paid and supposedly observant journalist does not seem to know that his "twice-daily soup kitchen" occurs in 2 separate places and that only one was still operating when his and his photographer's skirmish in the "Bloody siege of Calais" was meant to have taken place.
So what are we to conclude from all this? Good old-fashioned stupidity? Genuine mistakes? Lazy mealy-mouthed journalists trying to beat a deadline? Or just the standard yellow journalism we have come to expect from the sort of mendacious hacks that are employed by this tub-thumping right-wing anti-immigration rag? We'll leave you to make up your own minds.
* Which ACPO held was increasing the risk of "significant public disorder."
** Interestingly the Mail has consistently failed to mention one of the most common means of removing fingerprints used by the migrants, sanding them down with glass-paper. But that is far less dramatic than burning the tips of ones fingers. [See also: MailWatch #1]
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Targetting The Most Vulnerable
In time honoured fashion the Labour Party have decided to target their first cuts at some of the most vulnerable in our society - single asylum seekers. From October single asylum seeker over the age of 25 will have their already meagre subsistence allowance cut by 20% tp £35.13 a week as part of an effort by the government to reduce the size of the 'asylum budget'. According to a parliamentary answer to Chris Huhme in January this year, it costs an average of £130 per day or £47,450 per year to keep a person in immigration detention.
As most people held in 'administrative detention', as it is euphemistically called, are there for little or no concrete reason, with many of them being held for years before ultimately being released because they cannot be 'returned' to their country of origin (nor were they ever likely to be), maybe the government would be better off closing a few detention centres to save the money rather than lining the pockets of the shareholders and friendly directors of companies that run them at such exorbitant rates?
As most people held in 'administrative detention', as it is euphemistically called, are there for little or no concrete reason, with many of them being held for years before ultimately being released because they cannot be 'returned' to their country of origin (nor were they ever likely to be), maybe the government would be better off closing a few detention centres to save the money rather than lining the pockets of the shareholders and friendly directors of companies that run them at such exorbitant rates?
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Italy's Moroccan Slaves
Nearly 1,000 Moroccan migrants are living in what the International Organisation of Migration (IOM), a body not known for its use of strong critical language, says amounts to slavery. The IOM claim the migrants are living in abandoned buildings "eking out a living amid piles of rubbish, without running water or electricity."
The young Moroccans were travelled to Italy on tourist visas having paid up to 8,000 euros per person to a middle-man in their home country for the false promises of contracts regular seasonal labour contracts and regularisation of their status. Once there the employers did no materialize or they refused to give them contracts, leaving them open to being exploited by some of the same unscrupulous employers, who pay them between 15 and 25 euros a day for a 12-hour day labouring in nearby greenhouses and fields. Their employers often charged them for basics like transport and water, in the sweltering summer temperatures of southern Italy.
Each year, Italy sets a quota for the number of migrant workers allowed to enter the country as seasonal workers in its large agricultural sector, which also relies on cheap, illegal labour to maintain its profit margins. Official statistics showing that undocumented labour accounts for between 15.9 percent and 17.6 percent of gross domestic product, mainly in the agricultural sector.
The young Moroccans were travelled to Italy on tourist visas having paid up to 8,000 euros per person to a middle-man in their home country for the false promises of contracts regular seasonal labour contracts and regularisation of their status. Once there the employers did no materialize or they refused to give them contracts, leaving them open to being exploited by some of the same unscrupulous employers, who pay them between 15 and 25 euros a day for a 12-hour day labouring in nearby greenhouses and fields. Their employers often charged them for basics like transport and water, in the sweltering summer temperatures of southern Italy.
Each year, Italy sets a quota for the number of migrant workers allowed to enter the country as seasonal workers in its large agricultural sector, which also relies on cheap, illegal labour to maintain its profit margins. Official statistics showing that undocumented labour accounts for between 15.9 percent and 17.6 percent of gross domestic product, mainly in the agricultural sector.
Confused? So You Should Be
In an Associated Press story widely covered in the world's media it is claimed that the current 'Economic downturn stems dangerous boat migration', to use the title of the piece, especially in Spain. As proof of this the article cites 2 main factors: that unemployment in Spain is running at nearly 18 percent, with the construction and services industries particularly hard-hit, sectors that regularly employed migrants clandestinely; and that "not a single immigrant boat was intercepted off the Canary Islands, the first time that has happened in years".
Yet the same article also states that the number of arrivals dropped from 38,180 in 2006 to just 13,424 last year. Additionally, increased naval patrols mean that the Spanish Coast Guard now believed to intercept 99% of all these boats whilst still on the high seas and migrants can now be sent directly back either to their home country or to the country from which they departed because of a series of new pacts negotiated with West African states.
The article then adds further counter-evidence by saying that a similar dramatic decrease in arrivals in Italy is due to the bilateral deal with Libya that sees the Italian navy returning migrant intercepted in international waters back to Africa without first screening them for asylum claims. Greece is also cited as having had a 25% increase in migrant detentions between 2007 and 2008, although it also mentions the widely publicised slight decrease in numbers of intercepts in April and May (which could just as easily be a statistical abberation).
Another recent report show what Romanian Border Police claim to be a significant increase in the number of people caught in the first half of this year trying to cross into Hungary. According to their figures border guards caught 1,164 people trying to enter Hungary illegally in 2007. Last year, the number was 1,628 and so far this year there are said to have been about 800 people arrested.
Now is it just me or is this yet another case of the facts not supporting the conclusions, of lazy journalism and official spin making a mountain out of a molehill? About 800 people in 6 months if continued at the same rate would mean about 1,628 in a year i.e. neither an increase nor a decrease.
Interestingly, Romania acceded to the EU in January 2007 and Hungary also became a member of the Schengen zone in December of the same year. So the fact that both countries had built a large number of new border posts on their common border (as Romania had also done on its frontiers with non-EU countries like Moldova and Ukraine) to coincide with their new status completely changed the dynamics of 'illegal' migration over that period, making it both more difficult to enter Romania and more likely that clandestine border-crossers would be caught. So who can in fact tell whether the statistics prove anything at all?
Yet the same article also states that the number of arrivals dropped from 38,180 in 2006 to just 13,424 last year. Additionally, increased naval patrols mean that the Spanish Coast Guard now believed to intercept 99% of all these boats whilst still on the high seas and migrants can now be sent directly back either to their home country or to the country from which they departed because of a series of new pacts negotiated with West African states.
The article then adds further counter-evidence by saying that a similar dramatic decrease in arrivals in Italy is due to the bilateral deal with Libya that sees the Italian navy returning migrant intercepted in international waters back to Africa without first screening them for asylum claims. Greece is also cited as having had a 25% increase in migrant detentions between 2007 and 2008, although it also mentions the widely publicised slight decrease in numbers of intercepts in April and May (which could just as easily be a statistical abberation).
Another recent report show what Romanian Border Police claim to be a significant increase in the number of people caught in the first half of this year trying to cross into Hungary. According to their figures border guards caught 1,164 people trying to enter Hungary illegally in 2007. Last year, the number was 1,628 and so far this year there are said to have been about 800 people arrested.
Now is it just me or is this yet another case of the facts not supporting the conclusions, of lazy journalism and official spin making a mountain out of a molehill? About 800 people in 6 months if continued at the same rate would mean about 1,628 in a year i.e. neither an increase nor a decrease.
Interestingly, Romania acceded to the EU in January 2007 and Hungary also became a member of the Schengen zone in December of the same year. So the fact that both countries had built a large number of new border posts on their common border (as Romania had also done on its frontiers with non-EU countries like Moldova and Ukraine) to coincide with their new status completely changed the dynamics of 'illegal' migration over that period, making it both more difficult to enter Romania and more likely that clandestine border-crossers would be caught. So who can in fact tell whether the statistics prove anything at all?
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