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The number of migrants to the Canary Islands has increased, most of them from Mali.
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Irregular migrant arrivals to the rest of the EU have declined sharply
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Canary Islands government says it needs more help
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More than 5,600 unaccompanied minors live on the archipelago
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Arrivals from Pakistan show that new Asia route is developing
By Joan Foss and Horasi Garcia
VALVERDE, Spain – El Hierro, a small island in the Atlantic Ocean, is Europe’s latest frontline in the fight to reduce irregular migration. The southernmost part of Spain’s Canary Islands has seen almost twice as many migrants as residents this year.
On a Sunday in late October, a group of 30 teenagers from Mali and Senegal, some of them wearing football shirts and headphones around their necks, were walking through a deserted city square in the capital, Valverde. Some local people kept watching silently.
Across town, chairs were stacked in the assembly hall of the Nuestra Señora de los Reyes hospital to make room for beds for smuggled migrants, who often spend about eight days crossing the border from Africa. Suffer from hypothermia, dehydration or injuries.
The hospital’s 31 regular beds, built for the island’s population of 11,400, now shelter people fleeing jihadist violence and economic troubles in Mali, as well as turmoil and poverty in Senegal and Morocco.
According to the Red Cross, approximately 19,400 illegal migrants had reached El Hierro by mid-November.
“The hospital is flooded,” resident Teresa Camacho, 67, told Reuters outside the hospital. He said one of his appointments was canceled to make room for the migrants.
Luis Gonzalez, the hospital’s medical chief, who visits the port to assess people’s health as they arrive in open-top boats called cayucos, said he was not aware of this. But he said employees are tired.
The emergency room has expanded into the corridor, there is a tent in the carpark and first aid tents now stand at the port.
This year El Hierro, which accepts no direct flights from outside the archipelago, has received half of all irregular migrant arrivals in the Canaries, an autonomous region of Spain.
Data from the EU border agency Frontex shows that the Canaries have seen the fastest growth in arrivals by sea to the EU this year. According to Spain’s Interior Ministry, as of November 15, they had received a total of 39,713 migrants, 23% more than the same period last year.
The increase comes even as illegal migrant arrivals to the EU fell overall by 43% to 191,900 in the year to October, according to Frontex. This includes a 62% drop in Italy, where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made curbing migration a priority.
Most of the people headed for the Canaries have left their homes in Africa: Frontex spokesman Chris Borowski said smuggling networks have taken advantage of instability in the Sahel region, including the worsening Islamic insurgency in Mali, and are sending more boats. Are. Generally, arrivals increase in winter, he said.
The Canaries attracted nearly 10,000 Malians in January-August, up from 784 in the same period last year, according to the latest available data from Frontex. Senegal was the second largest group, with Morocco third. They board boats in Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia and head west across the Atlantic to the archipelago.
Migrants to Italy come mainly from Bangladesh and Syria, via Libya and Tunisia and then from the central Mediterranean.
Meloni and the EU have made agreements with Libya and Tunisia to control boat launches from there. Similar efforts this year by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez with the leaders of Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia have slowed the rate of growth but not reversed it.
Under pressure from the conservative opposition and the Canary government to curb illegal immigration, Socialist Sánchez has said that immigration is essential to Spain’s economy and welfare state, and has promised to make it easier for immigrants to settle.
But a poll published in October by El País newspaper found that 57% of respondents across Spain thought there were too many immigrants in the country.
Irregular migration represents only 5% to 10% of all migrant arrivals in Europe, said Alberto Ares, a migration researcher at the Spanish Comillas Pontifical University and director of the European Assistance Network for Refugees.
“The route to the Canaries has increased because other routes are blocked,” he said, referring to security agreements with countries including Türkiye and Morocco.
Italy is still the EU’s biggest destination for irregular migrants, with 55,000 arrivals in the first 10 months of this year, according to Frontex data.
Nevertheless, the Canary government says it is particularly challenged by the number of unaccompanied children and youth. More than 5,600 minors are supervised by regional authorities, housed in shelters and educated in schools.
Manuel Dominguez, vice president of the Canaries for the conservative People’s Party, said in an interview that his government has more than doubled the number of shelters for minors, from 30 to 84, in about a year.
“We cannot deal with this continued avalanche alone,” Dominguez said. He said the archipelago had not received any financial aid from Madrid. However, a spokesman for Spain’s migration ministry said it had given the Canary government 100 million euros for 2022 and 2023 and had agreed on an additional package of 50 million euros for this year.
change route
In El Hierro’s La Restinga port, first responders are on 24/7 alert for the latest arrivals, not all of them surviving. In September, 63 of the 90 passengers on board a boat were believed to have drowned in the worst shipwreck on record off El Hierro in the Canaries. Only nine bodies were found.
According to a Spanish coast guard spokesperson, in the first weekend of November alone, about 1,000 migrants were rescued from 21 cayucos in the archipelago.
Migrants typically pay 400 to 1,500 euros to travel the distance of up to 2,200 kilometers from West Africa, a Spanish security source said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The stern seats, next to the captain’s, are the most valuable.
El Hierro is the most distant Canary Island from Africa, and the passage over the open ocean is extremely dangerous. Alexis Ramos, a Red Cross spokesman in El Hierro, said authorities believe smugglers adopted it last year to avoid African and Spanish coast guard patrols in the waters between the continent and the other Canary Islands.
Unaccompanied minors remain on El Hierro, but most adults who survive the journey are eventually transferred to Teneriffe, a large island in the Canaries, where they live in camps. As long as their asylum applications are processed, they can move freely within Spain; Some move through Europe’s porous land borders.
The 28-year-old Malian said he arrived in El Hierro from Mauritania this year, leaving his wife behind. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said two of his relatives were killed because they feared for their safety. Earning a living from farming had become impossible.
“I can’t take it anymore,” said the man, who cannot read and write, outside a camp in Tenerife. “I came here because I was afraid, but now I don’t know what to do.”
arrival from asia
As long as legal migration paths remain elusive and the root causes of migration are not addressed, migrants will seek alternative routes, said researcher Ares.
People are coming to El Hierro from further afield.
Several Pakistanis in Tenerife told Reuters they had paid smugglers up to 16,000 euros each for travel to Senegal via the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia and to board boats from Mauritania.
Abid Hussain, 39, was one of 65 Pakistanis aboard a boat carrying 76 people that arrived in October. He said he set out on a five-day voyage from Mauritania after two years of trying to get a visa for Italy, where his wife and two children will move in 2023.
Hussain, who comes from a poor family, said, “There is no future in Pakistan. European life is easy for the kids.”
Between January and August, 91 Pakistani canaries arrived, compared to a total of four in 2023, according to Frontex data.
A Canary official said authorities are concerned that sporadic arrivals from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen could signal a permanent change in migrant flows due to Libyan authorities’ tight controls on boats departing for Italy.
strict control
Spanish police have long been working to strengthen border controls in Senegal, Mauritania and Gambia, but now Madrid is trying to strengthen those ties in line with its agreements with Morocco, allowing migrants from there to cross the border. Helped in reducing arrivals.
Spain asked Frontex to resume aerial and maritime surveillance operations in Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia, which ended in 2018.
For this to happen, the European Commission must first reach an agreement with African countries on how it will operate.
A commission spokesman said it was working to intensify dialogue and cooperation on migration with Mauritania and Senegal, but did not elaborate.
Spain also wants to promote deportations. Official figures show that only 2,760 out of a total of 56,852 irregular migrants were deported to their home countries last year.
According to the public registry of agreements maintained by the Spanish Migration Ministry, Spain does not yet have deportation agreements with Mali, Gambia or Senegal.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.
