Friday, September 08, 2006
Rising immigration tide fuels Spanish discontent
As migrants continue to arrive and retention centers continue to fill, the emotional climate has been heating up as much as the weather.
Thousands of Africans had to sleep on the street in the early hours of Tuesday, as the courts and the police station in Arona overflowed. Tuesday had been a record day for arrivals - almost 900 - fuelling growing public discontent.
In the first seven days of September the number of arrivals has been an average of 537 per day and there just wasn't anywhere left to put them.
Yesterday, there were at least 1,200 people staying in the police station in the south of Tenerife, waiting to pass before the courts. The day before, it had been 1,500 and 20 minors had to sleep on the floor of the patio for two nights as they ran out of mattresses. And that is where they spend all day, while the paperwork is made out for them to be interred in the centers for foreign minors.
Four (only four, mind you) "irregulars"; a father and son and an uncle and nephew, had to be liberated onto the streets of Tenerife this week, after their 40 day "quarantine" was up and they could neither be repatriated to their own countries, nor sent to the mainland. It appears that transfers and repatriations had been suspended, while Senegalese officials on the island could determine how many of their countrymen there are in the retention centers.
It also appears that the eastern coasts of the Canary Islands are going to be without patrols for 10 days, as the Guardia Civil say they are short of personnel.
Complaints are from all sides. One migrant who was repatriated earlier this year, says that he was tricked into boarding a plane to Dakar that he and the others who were put on the plane, believed was bound for Madrid or Malaga.
The only "good news" is the report that Spain and EU have agreed to activate an urgent plan for the repatriation of these immigrants, which includes provisions for their "reinsertion" into their places of origin; training, particularly in realms of agriculture, new technology and administration and, via microloans.
A foreign ministry source revealed separately that Spain had agreed to finance an information campaign in Senegal, from where many of the immigrants hail, to try to persuade them not to head for Europe.
Canarias recibe en lo que va de mes una media de 500 inmigrantes al día
Unos 20 menores duermen en el suelo de un patio de la Comisaría Sur, sin colchón
La costa oriental de Canarias se quedará sin vigilancia durante diez días
España y la UE acuerdan activar un plan urgente de repatriación de inmigrantes
Rising immigration tide fuels Spanish discontent
Miles de africanos duermen en la calle debido al colapso del juzgado de Arona
Cuatro irregulares «quedan libres en Tenerife»
Senegal: 'They Tricked Us'
Canaries in record migrant influx
