Immigration Here and There

BY MRINALINI REDDY, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE
(See related story "Educating about the risks of emigration: an initiative from Senegal")
(See also the pictures of World Press Photo 2nd prize winner Arturo Rodriguez)

It took 17-year-old Mohammad Silah nearly half his life to reach Spain's Canary Islands in December 2005.

Forced to flee Sierra Leone in the midst of its civil war, Silah escaped the Revolutionary United Front's rebels to neighboring Guinea-Conakry. After both his parents were killed, Silah moved to Gambia, Senegal and Mauritania, where a chance encounter with some teenage boys bought him passage on a four-day boat journey from Nouadhibou to the Canary Island of La Palma.

Massar Beng, 14, arrived in Spain's Canary Islands under different circumstances.

People in his village in Senegal were abuzz with news of work opportunities in Europe. Beng knew he would never be able to offer much financial support to his parents with the bleak job prospects in Senegal. The men and women in his village took to the teenage boy's pleasant disposition and offered to be his chaperone as they set out on a risky journey across the high seas from Darkar to Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands.

He arrived in Tenerife in August 2006.

Beng may not have shared the harrowing experiences of living in a conflict-ridden country. But both boys faced the same challenges of leaving their countries alone, under-taking a perilous journey that has claimed scores of lives, arriving in a country without papers and knowledge of the local language, and facing possible discrimination in a country that has been accused of xenophobia before.

What makes this journey even more difficult, as it is for so many other unaccompanied minors, is a complicated legal system that poses a whole new set of challenges when they do make it to Spain's shores alive.

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands, lying less than 200 kilometers off the Moroccan coast, has become one of the most popular destinations for sub-Saharan Africans attempting to reach Europe to escape poverty, conflict or both.

The number of migrants arriving on the Canary Islands by boat was estimated at 31,000 in 2006, six times the figure from the previous year, according to Canary Islands government official Froilan Rodriguez Diaz. Approximately 900 were unaccompanied minors - mostly boys under the age of 18, who comprised the majority arriving from Senegal.

As many as 6,000 sub-Saharan Africans might have died last year during the hazardous journey to the Canary Islands. Boats are often over-crowded with not enough life jackets for travelers, and this is compounded by the fact that many of them cannot swim.
Malta and Southern Italy are other destinations for the thousands of migrants who arrive often penniless after paying high fees to people-traffickers on makeshift vessels. "Pateras" or small boats holding up to 12 immigrants have been replaced by bigger "cayucos," brightly painted Senegalese fishing boats, packed with up to 150 desperate people hoping for a better life in Spain or beyond.
This trend is only expected to increase. Earlier this year, the European commission warned of a fresh wave of tens of thousands of illegal migrants arriving on the beaches of southern Europe by the summer and issued an appeal for help in curbing migration from sub-Saharan Africa.

Who are the migrants?

Previously a country of emigration, Spain has seen growing waves of migrants entering the country both legally and illegally during the last few years. Of Spain's 44 million, as many as 3 million have immigrated legally in the past six years, but many others have entered the country using forged documents with the hope of finding a job.

While a lot of media attention has been directed toward "boat migrants," more than 95 percent of migrants arrive by air to Spain's airports from countries such as Equador, Morocco, Columbia and Romania, according to Fernando Herrera of Comision Espanola de Ayuda al Refugiado in Madrid, an organization dedicated to assisting asylum seekers. Most immigrants enter Spain with tourist or transit visas, overstay their allotted time then apply for residency status after finding a job.

"It is almost impossible to immigrate legally if they do not have money or connections," Herrera said. "The application system is complicated and ineffective. The process goes so slow - there are administration deadlines of three months, but it takes a year and a half."

The sub-Saharan Africans largely comprising the "boat migrants" are not statistically significant, but they have become the most visible group. They arrive from a diverse array of countries and regions such as Senegal, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Sudan.

The migrants coming from sub-Saharan Africa, both adults and children, fall into two broad categories: asylum seekers, individuals or families escaping oppressive regimes, and economic migrants, who come with the hope of finding work.

The patterns of movement have been adapting to border control measures enforced by European authorities, trying to control the flow of migrants. But new departure points appear each time.

Senegal was the primary exit point in 2006, after Morocco and then Mauritania tightened their borders in recent years.

Spain's African enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, have been sealed off with sophisticated double fences following a series of incidents in late 2005, when hundreds of Africans attempted to cross the fence and Moroccan police shot ten of them dead. The intense vigilance did not deter migrants and Nouadhibou, the northernmost port in Mauritania, the country south of Morocco, became the exit point for the 500-mile journey to the Canaries. Like Morocco, Mauritania accepted Spanish migrant law enforcement and the traffic started passing through Saint-Louis, the northernmost port in Senegal, 830 miles from Spain.

Unaccompanied Minors

Minors, children under the age of 18, are protected under Spanish law, regardless of their immigration status. The age threshold is crucial because minors receive higher levels of support and protection than adults.

Unlike their adult counterparts, minors don't face the fear of repatriation when caught by Spanish authorities. The process of repatriation of the adult migrants with minimal access to legal authorities has had significant human rights implications and continues to be a problem not just in Spain, but in many Western European countries.

Eduardo Medina is a social worker who has run emergency centers for minors in Tenerife since August 2006. Affiliated with the Spanish non-government organization Associacion Solidaria Mundo Nuevo, Medina was deployed to start these centers for minors after a huge wave of children arrived in August.

"They come very exhausted and shocked," Medina said. "We receive them and make them feel safe and try to calm them. At the beginning, they are terrified. Their expectations are to be working in a couple of weeks of their arrival."

However, Spanish law does not permit children to work. Thus, the children stay in such emergency centers for a few weeks until they have filed for a residence permit, by which time they are placed in centers on the Spanish mainland. They are expected to attend school or enroll in vocational training until they reach 18. The hope for these young boys is that they will receive their residence permits by that time, get a job and apply for a work permit.

Legal issues

However, the reality is very different, said Almudena Escariol, an advocacy officer at Save the Children, an international organization dedicated to defending and promoting the rights of children.

"There are a lot of problems because the administration considers them as immigrants rather than children," Escariol said.

Often, there are delays in moving minors out of the emergency centers into smaller facilities in different parts of the mainland, and emergency centers can become over-whelmed.

"The Canary government wants to send the children to the Spanish mainland, but the problem is that they do not want to take the children," said Margarita de la Rasilla, a legal expert at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees office in Madrid. At the beginning of October, there were about 800 minors on the islands. The Canary government has promised to try to distribute 500 all over Spain, but in the last three months of 2006, only 220 have been sent.

Then there is the problem of integration.

"The government thinks of immigration like a legal problem and not a social one," said Adrian Rodriguez, a social worker at CEAR in Madrid. The negative perceptions perpetuated by politicians and the media often lead to exploitation, he said. Immigrants are not paid well by employees and often viewed with suspicion by the general public. The situation is especially grim for Africans because they do not share a common language or similar culture as their counterparts from South America.

In a good situation, an unaccompanied minor is placed in a hostel or home where he can learn Spanish, attend school and play football. Yet, he must not get too comfortable.

Spanish law is expected to issue a residence permit to minors within 9 months of coming under government protection. But this doesn't necessarily happen and the process can take up to 18 months or longer, Escariol said.

As children are not allowed to legally work until they turn 18, it becomes imperative they receive their residence permits before, so they can look for employment and apply for work permits to retain their legal status.

Eddie Freeman, 17, escaped conflict-ridden Liberia several years ago and reached Spain in December 2005 after spending a few years in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast.

"In my country, I was living good. But in war, your spirit is gone. It's been a long time since I talked to my family. I saw on BBC news that many people who lived there are dead," he said.

Freeman arrived in Spain with no papers and is seeking refugee status through the asylum process. He attends school in the hopes of becoming an electrician and plays football three times a week. Still, he has serious concerns.

"Even though I am free to live in Spain, there is not much value. I need a passport; I need an identity and [I] am relying on the asylum process for that."

The duration and inefficiencies of processing times does not work in their favor and is a big concern for advocacy lawyers working for children's rights.

"If they are 18 and don't have residence and work permits, they are not allowed to be in Spain. It's very dangerous for them because they have to live in the street - they can't work," Escariol said.

For asylum seekers like Freeman and Silah, an added concern is that these children are not told they can apply for refugee status under asylum law. Refugees have all the rights of Spanish citizens.

"With Blacks and Arabs, there is an obsession to prevent them from coming as the assumption is that they promote mafias or [drug] trafficking," Herrera said.

Recently, Spain announced its intent to hire 180,000 immigrants in their countries of origin next year to try to stem the tide of illegal immigration while satisfying its demand for cheap labor. But just 75 people will be recruited from Senegal, where thousands of migrants set sail this year in packed wooden fishing boats for the Canary Islands. Many of them drowned during the attempt.

"There is a lot of hypocrisy in our system," Herrera said. "Economic studies have shown that Spain has grown thanks to immigrants. Hundreds of thousands of Spanish women can work. Immigrants have fueled the agriculture, construction and transportation industries."

Some of the immigration problems have been attributed to Spain's inability to facilitate the immigration process in an organized manner. In 2005, the Spanish government granted amnesty or legalized about 800,000 undocumented immigrants, much to the chagrin of its European neighbors.

"In Guinea Bissau, life expectancy is 46 years," Herrera said. "In Spain, life expectancy is 89 years. It's a question of survival for so many of these people - they are not coming for just fun and money."