Thursday, May 18, 2006
Spain seeks EU help on migrants
"Spain has asked the European Union for more help to deal with a renewed wave of illegal immigrants travelling by sea from West Africa. More than 1,500 illegal immigrants have arrived on the Canary Islands in the past week.", report the BBC, which says "Illegal immigration is a European not just a Spanish problem, Madrid says, so needs a co-ordinated response."
Not that anyone asked for my opinion, but I do think that Spain and the Canary islands are now bearing the brunt, through accident of geographical location, of the whole of the developed world's indifference to the situation in Africa. To expect these small islands to deal with it alone would be beyond unreasonable.
And the situation has certainly escalated this week. After the wave at the weekend, during Monday's meeting of high level politicians, the government reinforced both maritime and aerial surveillance and hire a satellite to discover exactly where they are coming from and where they are being given help.
One thing that is evident, is that the boats that have been arriving of late must have been getting help somewhere. I can remember one report of police finding goods or bags from Canary Islands' supermarkets on one of the boats coming in. President of the political party, Coalición Canaria, Paulino Rivero, has said that it is "more than evident" that there are "nodriza" (wet nurse) boats, or supply lines and that there are aerial photos of them with cayucos in their interior, which may well be one of the reasons why more are making it to the islands and that there have been less reports of losses of life recently.
Not all of them make it, however, as Tenerife News reports that, "Last week the terrible fate of those on board, nobody knows how many, lost boats was revealed when one washed up in Barbados. Inside were ten sun-bleached bodies. It is thought it too had left Senegal weeks previously."
Other reports suggest that nobody dares do an exact head count, but that there are thousands more looking for a place in one of the rickety boats leaving Senegal and says that "the fever to escape hunger knows no reason".
It seems incredible to any of us that these people would even attempt such a journey, if they knew the risks. Of course they know the risks. If they stay in their countries, they know they are going to die, slowly, of starvation, as will their families, while they (and we) watch. If they die in the attempt to cross the seas, they have been spared the agony of one slow death and died with a certain amount more dignity of at least having tried to help themselves.
Tell me who of us would not do the same, if we were in their position?
Meanwhile, two more boats were spotted by a plane from the Tenerife Maritime service 15 to 30 miles from the shore on Monday evening, three more arrived on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the number of incoming immigrants was over 300 and, when I caught a few moments of the lunch time news on TV today, there were yet more arriving in Los Cristianos then.
In the midst of this human suffering, the political finger pointing has begun. (Which may, or may not, be without just cause.) The Canarian Government also accuse the Spanish National Government of not doing enough.
It is really hard to see what more they could have done, any sooner. Illegal immigration had been in decline. "In 2005, more than 4,700 migrants were detained while trying to reach the Canary Islands, down from 8,500 the year before.", say The International Herald Tribune. Whilst numbers have been growing steadily again this year, the previous wave in March was the only other real cause for alarm and one wave, does not indicate that you have trend and a phenomenon on your hands. (Until you get 20/20 hindsight.)
In short, you can't usually solve a problem until you know you have one.
And, it is reported that Spanish President, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has postponed a meeting with Canarian President, Adán Martín, over the "unjust criticism". The report says they won't meet until the "tone is lowered".
Senegal has reacted and intercepted some cayucos leaving the country and have detained 20 people suspected of organizing them, but admit that there is little they can do with insufficient resources. There is also the difficulty that many leave Senegal, legally, under fishing permits, then pick up their human cargo in Cape Verde. This report says that another new route has opened up from those islands, where would-be immigrants go first and get construction jobs to earn the money to pay for their passage to the Canary Islands.
Of course, there is nowhere to put them and no jobs, for which they are qualified, for them to come to in Europe, but the irony of the fact that these immigrants are only "illegal" because we say they are - because of laws we've passed and lines we've drawn around countries - has not escaped me.
Just my humble opinion, of course, but the west has to help these people, or we face dealing with the same situation over and over. The money that is being spent on feeding, housing and transporting them here, would be better spent on helping them to stay in their own countries and start a better life there.
There does also seem to be an underlying preoccupation with image.
On the one hand, there have been various statements made to calm any fears in the local population; assurances that the immigrants are not let out onto the archipelago's streets and that "life will not change". Was there alarm? Have Canarians already forgotten when the boot was on the other foot and it was Venezuela and Cuba receiving illicit boatloads of Canary Islanders who were escaping a regime they couldn't live under and poverty they could not bear?
On the other, there is the concern over the impression it gives to visitors, which, I believe, is a good reason to know exactly what is going on here.
Responsible, grown up visitors will see the tragic situation for what it is and realize how fortunate they are; get off the beach and help the Red Cross, donate or lobby their own Governments to help with the problem when they get home. The ones that don't and merely find themselves put off by the sight of suffering, probably weren't the type of tourists we wanted to visit us anyway.
Are you a Tenerife resident or visitor?