Police guard a group of immigrants at Gran Canaria airport in April 2021. Javier Bauluz
The XII. The high-level meeting (RAN) between Spain and Morocco, to be held in Rabat this Wednesday and Thursday, will bring together a dozen ministers, but one priority issue is always on the agenda between the two countries: irregular immigration. Reconciliation between the two countries last March has reduced irregular immigrant arrivals by more than 25% in 2022, but the scope for increased cooperation is huge, and Spain and Morocco have several outstanding issues. Despite the decline, it remains to be seen whether the trend will consolidate and whether control extends to sub-Saharan Africans, as Moroccans remain the most numerous among those crossing Spain’s borders irregularly. Another urgent problem for Spain – and for the European Union – is to increase the numbers of returns and expulsions of irregular immigrants, which remain at the lowest level in the historical series. Sources from the Ministry of the Interior confirm that work is being done not only with Morocco but with the almost 30 countries with which there are repatriation agreements to “further increase repatriation capacities”.
Spain’s decision to join Rabat and classify its offer of autonomy for Western Sahara as the “most serious, realistic and credible” option had both diplomatic and economic ramifications, and also impacted the mission that Morocco is dedicated to controlling the exit of emigrants from their territory. Irregular arrivals (31,219) have dropped to 2017 levels, the Canary Islands finally had a break after two years of uninterrupted landings, but that’s just a turning point for now. Morocco and Western Sahara, controlled by Rabat, continue to be the main exit points for emigrants, and Moroccans are the main occupants of boats arriving on the Spanish coast. Among the immigrants and refugees who arrived in 2022, 42% were Moroccans, followed by Algerians (21%) and Senegalese (10%). The percentage is slightly higher than in 2021, when Moroccans made up 31% of newcomers. The Interior Ministry never publishes these figures so as not to bother the countries of origin, but they appear in a confidential European Commission report to which EL PAÍS had access.
The economic crisis, the impact of the pandemic on sectors such as tourism and the drought are some of the reasons that prompt Moroccans to emigrate, but also the stifling of the regime. In this sense, a report by The Global Initiative, a reference platform that studies organized crime around the world, indicates that more and more Moroccans are trying to get to Spain by boat from the north of the country, an area from 2019 to enter more controlled. The information contained in the commission’s report ensures that these Moroccan citizens are from the Rif region, an area with high poverty rates that continues to rebel against a regime that has been using long prison sentences to repress popular protests in that region. According to The Global Initiative, “The government [marroquí] it would silently tolerate the movements of people from the Rif region (in the north of the country) in order to limit any risk of instability”.
The return falters
The return of migrants in an irregular situation is a cornerstone of the European Union’s migration policy, but instead of being reinforced, it is faltering. EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson last Tuesday expressed her concern over the matter, which she believes is urgent: the pandemic has hampered all efforts to expand deportations, but after restrictions on movement for health reasons ended, among other things, return rates are low other things, because the countries of origin do not work together in the way the EU would like. “We can make significant strides to increase returns and make them more effective and faster,” he said. According to the statistics office Eurostat, only 21% of the more than 342,000 return orders issued across the EU were carried out in 2021. According to European statistics, almost 2,000 of the almost 22,000 Moroccans for whom a file was opened for repatriation to their country returned.
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Spain has several open fronts to increase the repatriation of irregular immigrants. Interior Ministry sources claim that Spain is one of the countries “with the largest return capacity”, although the data does not support this statement. In 2021, 42,597 return and expulsion files were opened (two different return procedures) but only 3,594 were executed, just under 8.4% of the total, according to data collected by the Ombudsman. That’s a particularly low number considering that before the pandemic, between 9,000 and 11,000 immigrants were being expelled and brought back each year. The Eurostat statistics also show a long list of countries sending back more than Spain, including France, Italy, Greece, Germany or Belgium.
While Spain maintains recurring return flights to Latin America or Albania, return flights to Algeria have been suspended since the Pedro Sánchez government decided to side with Rabat in the Saharawi dispute. For its part, the return of Moroccans was reactivated with three weekly flights in 2020 with the arrival of thousands of people in the Canary Islands, but shortly afterwards suspended for health reasons. Although symbolic, the number of repatriations made from the islands was anecdotal compared to the number of Moroccans who landed on the islands. The requirements imposed by Rabat, which only accepted documented and vaccinated nationals, complicated the mission.
However, the return of Moroccans and nationals of other countries to Morocco was one of the topics discussed together in May at the XX. meetings of the Spanish-Moroccan Standing Group on Migration. Two sources participating in this delegation told EL PAÍS that the Moroccan authorities showed a great willingness to take back immigrants, Moroccans and people from sub-Saharan Africa, in hot air and by plane. Rabat’s open-mindedness was shown, for example, on June 24 during the so-called Melilla tragedy, when the Moroccan guards accepted the return of 470 people, in addition to the deaths of at least 23 people in one fell swoop. In addition, the nationality of the immigrants who have returned to their countries is another of the data that the Interior does not publish and it is currently not possible to know how much the harmony with Morocco has contributed to a greater number of returnees , in addition to those that occur on the billboards during relevant and well-known events.
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