Of more than 30 000 African refugees who landed on the Spanish Canary Islands last year, few had time to see the statue towering above the small port Garachico. And if they did, few could have understood what it meant.
It is the statue of a man dragging suitcases in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean. The figure represents the hundreds of thousands of Spanish who sailed to the Americas during the 20th century to flee poverty following the bloody Civil War in the late 1930s, and then the dictatorship between 1939 and 1975.
The statue has a hole where the man’s heart should have been, suggesting that the emigrants abandoned their motherland against their will, that they left their hearts at home. It is a feeling that would be familiar to the African refugees who fled poverty and political violence in their home countries to arrive in Tenerife and other Canary Islands.
Geography, the changing fortunes of Europe and the perennial misfortune of Africans combined to transform the Canary Islands, a Spanish territory in the middle of the Atlantic, in less than a century from an emigration port into a destination for immigrants and refugees.
Situated about 1 300 km south-west of the Spanish and Portuguese mainland, the Canary Islands were once the last harbour for south European emigrants leaving in search of a better future in Latin America. But the archipelago is also located only about 100km from the nearest West African coast; it is within sailing distance for desperate African refugees ready to risk their lives on makeshift boats to reach European soil.
Policy
According to official figures, 30 058 African refugees — they have been called boat people like the Vietnamese refugees of the 1970s — landed in the Canary Islands last year. That flow looks set to continue in 2007. That means, among other things, a growing challenge for the European Union.
In December, the heads of state and government of then 25 EU member countries agreed in Brussels to a new common immigration policy, to be developed by June this year. But many European leaders continue to oppose a common policy that could encourage legal immigration into the EU, and press instead for a tightening of border controls.
French Minister for the Interior and presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy is at the head of a move against further migration. Last year he repeatedly called immigration ”a threat” for France. Arguing in support of his new immigration law in the French Parliament in May, Sarkozy said ”we do not want to continue suffering immigration; we want to choose immigrants”.
Under a new Act passed in June, France will now choose immigrants according to their qualifications.
Sarkozy has also refused to legalise the large number of refugees settled in France for many years, and has relaunched massive expulsions instead. He also criticises the massive recent legalisation of immigrants in Italy, Spain and, more recently, Germany.
In his campaign now, Sarkozy has said that under his government France would continue to tighten controls against immigration, in the face of expert advice suggesting that such controls only encourage illegal immigration.
Sarkozy’s main opponent, Socialist nominee Ségolène Royal, says that only a coherent European development policy for Africa can stop the flow of refugees into Europe.
”We cannot dissociate immigration from development,” she said during a television debate last November. ”It is only by improving the chances of African people to enjoy a dignifying life in their countries of origin that Europe will effectively curb illegal immigration.”
Royal and the Socialist Party also oppose the law of chosen immigration passed by Sarkozy, arguing that it encourages brain drain from the developing world. The Socialists say they will cancel the law if they win the presidential and parliamentary elections.
Necessity
Many European experts see immigration as necessary both for developing countries and for Europe.
”In many countries such as India, Morocco or Brazil, the number of new university graduates is by far higher than the corresponding needs of their local labour markets,” said Catherine Withol de Wenden, expert on immigration at the French National Research Centre. ”Therefore, emigration of good educated young people from the south towards the north does not necessarily represent a brain drain.”
In addition, Withol de Wenden said, ”immigrants send money back to their countries of origin, helping their relatives to pay for their lives, and so stimulating local demand. Immigration is also a valve that helps liberating social tensions in the countries of the south, which otherwise could lead to conflicts in the migrants’ home societies.”
Other experts insist that Europe needs immigrants for economic and for demographic reasons. ”According to most demographic scenarios, immigration shall be the largest source of population growth in France and Europe by 2050,” said Francois Héran, director of the French Institute for Demographic Studies.
Demographic forecasts suggest that as European societies get older in decades ahead, the number of elderly pensioners will increase dramatically in relation to young people active in the labour market.
”Even if the French birth rate is larger than most others in Europe, given the expected trends in the age pyramid in France and in Europe, immigration would be the only way of countering the greying of our European societies,” Héran said.
Fears associated with immigration are unfounded, he said. ”The French government legalised 6 000 immigrants in 2006, against a total population of well over 61-million people. This number represents one immigrant for every 10 000 French citizens. In statistical terms, this means zero.” — IPS