0
CAIRO: Middle Eastern nations are coming under pressure from the EU to stem the tide of illegal migration from their shores into the bloc — but the pressures of runaway population growth and economic stagnation look even stronger.
The 15 European Union leaders meeting in Seville on Friday are aware of growing demands for anti-immigration policies among voters across Europe and plan to call on their poor neighbours to help them clamp down on illegal migration.
But nations like Turkey and Morocco, both sources of migrant workers and a transit point for refugees from elsewhere, appear ill equipped to halt the flow, which is driven by political conflict in neighbouring states and economic troubles at home.
And demographics suggest that in the absence of higher economic growth rates, illegal immigration from countries like Algeria and Egypt will increase further in coming years as young populations mature into adulthood.
“If you look at the countries that are sources of migrants, legal or illegal, they are nearly always countries that have few prospects of economic growth,” said Giuseppe Calandruccio, programme development officer at the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The national leaders of the EU’s 370 million citizens will endorse measures to strengthen border guards, set a timetable for enacting a common asylum policy and make migration control a major element in relations with third countries.
TIGHT SPOT: High on the list of those affected is Turkey.
Every year thousands from the troubled, mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey seek asylum abroad. Hardly a day goes by without reports of Turkish police operations to catch illegal migrants, most of them Iranians, Iraqis or Turkish Kurds.
Official figures on the numbers detained are not available but the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants (ASAM) estimates as many as 150,000 illegal migrants were detained by Turkish authorities in 2001.
The number who slip through the net is hard to pin down, but is clearly high.
Struggling to overcome its worst recession since 1945 after last year’s financial crisis, Turkey lacks the resources to tighten its borders or to feed and sheltering migrants.
Morocco has asked the EU for more technical and financial aid to battle gangs of people smugglers operating off its shores, just a short boat ride from Spain and the EU.
Relaxed visa regulations in Morocco have attracted Algerians, Tunisians and jobseekers from sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, who use the country as a springboard to Europe.
Moroccans themselves have ample reasons to seek work in wealthier markets.
GROWING ATTRACTIONS: The lure of labour markets in the affluent EU can only grow. In contrast with Middle Eastern societies, European birth rates have slumped, average ages are rising and the working population is shrinking.
Egypt has many migrant workers in Gulf Arab states as well as in Europe. At home, it must find jobs for 550,000 young people each year in an economy with unemployment of nine per cent, according to official figures.
The army of jobless can only swell further, with growth in the fiscal year ending June 2002 forecast to be zero to one per cent. Some 37 per cent of Egypt’s 68 million people are 15 years old or younger.
Egypt’s inflexible labour laws combine with economic stagnation to discourage job creation.
In Algeria, unemployment runs as high as 30 per cent and economic growth at 3.5 per cent, despite billions of dollars in annual income from oil and gas exports, mainly to Europe.
About 35 per cent of an estimated 31 million Algerians are 14 years old or under, waiting in the wings to enter the job market.
In Tunisia, independent economists put the jobless rate at around 30 per cent.—Reuters
