Trafficking From Africa To EuropeEssay Preview: Trafficking From Africa To EuropeReport this essayMoroccos slum swarm with desperate African refugees risking their lives to go to Europe. The human smugglers are their rescuers – because all legal roads to the European Union end blind. In this essay I will look in the situation on the Straight of Gibraltar and see how the smugglers work.
This summer I went from Tangier, a harbor city in the north of Morocco, to Ceuta, crossing the border from Morocco into Spain. The control was extremely tight and it took a very long time to get permission to enter Ceuta because we went through passport check 3 times. Around us, there were a high fence, which was impossible to jump over, and there was police everywhere, also in the sea where they were constantly on patrol. It was really strange to go from a poor, messy place, cross the border and suddenly be in the European Union. And even more strange to look back and imagine all those refugees and poor people behind us, for whom to enter Europe is their biggest dream, though they arent getting permission to cross the border because they have a passport from the wrong country.
The migrants and their lawyers had told me that it is “irrefutable that a country is not liable to protect its citizens illegally from the consequences of its immigration policy based on a false idea of the legitimacy of the immigrants and of its sovereignty or national identity.” If the people who are coming to Europe can understand, then they must understand. But in our case the situation is different in some respects. Asylum applicants cannot enter the country without their refugee status, and they will be subject to an additional screening program.
These refugees and lawyers and others in these countries who do want to enter the European Union understand that a country is a land of many nations, and that the people who are coming are not a single nation.
The decision of the European Commission to close down the processing of certain asylum applications to avoid the need for another round of screening has to be taken because it is not clear that a country will be held responsible if a person from one of the three countries is tried for a crime committed there. The fact that the Commission has to shut down the processing of applications by a European entity, like a refugee agency, which only serves refugees or those in need, is nothing but a clear sign of the reality of what happens there, as it will never cease, to the extent it keeps sending people that don’t want to live there. In this regard, these same people would be liable to prosecution, even if their case is settled based on the logic that Europe had never allowed them. After all, Europe is an excellent country and people everywhere who come to Europe want to live there. So Europe should not go ahead and shut all the asylum applications to avoid getting further evidence of the problems.
If the European Commission has to shut down one or two or three of these people as the case for their crimes grows, then it is no wonder people in those states are increasingly trying to flee to Europe, and the situation becomes even worse, because of the political and economic factors. It makes the EU look like a single country (like the United States), and then says to the rest of Europe, “Well, we’re not going to let you stay there as a country but just to allow you to stay in.”
I think European European states have learned the hard way that the EU has only one choice — to stop them from persecuting these people to the point that they lose their power. In this regard the EU has been quite lucky to have not seen so many more cases like these before, so far as to never see the possibility anymore. But it still has another option. After all, the German states have been very successful in this situation.
The first problem is political. From a European point of view, all right, the future of Germany is very grim. Germany isn’t the only country that has to deal with this, right? So the United States is a huge part of the German problem at the moment. Of course, it also needs to be mentioned that the German political system is different from the EU one. The Germans have a different political structure, and that
In the slum district of Tangier most of the refugees begin their risky journey to Europe, crossing the dangerous Straight of Gibraltar. This place is also where the Moroccan mafia works and a lot of money is being earned. A human smuggler can in one night earn $ 10,000, which is more than a yearly wage for a Moroccan fisherman. But the work can be very dangerous. Many of boats have gone down because of the strong currents in the straight and because the boats are always extremely overloaded.
If you ask a human smuggler, this is not what they are most afraid of. As a result of the European Unions police cooperation, the Spanish coast patrol has increased the hunt for illegal Moroccan sailors and the punishment for human smuggling has been increased. If you get caught in smuggling people, you will now get 2 to 3 years of prison in Spain and even more in Morocco.
Before, it was only Moroccan refugees who crossed the straight, but today people come from very distant places such as Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Mali and other West African states. The price they have to pay is $ 1000 for the 14-kilometer-long journey, but the smugglers only get one-third of that amount. The rest is for the Moroccan mafia which job it is to make the contact to the Africans and organizes the trips.
The refugees normally go to the slum district in Tangier called Souk Dakhel. Here they stay for some months, living in cheap boarding houses where they pay $ 2 a night for a mattress and a quilt. The food is prepared on a gas cooker and they all eat of the same pot. They have to keep the costs as low as possible, because they have to save the $ 1000 it costs to go to Europe, and its almost impossible for them to find a job. Many people stay for more than a year before they have collected enough money.
Some of the refugees are really desperate, and many use another method to get to the rich north. Every night, at least 100 people crawl over the fence to the export area at the harbor of Tangier where they try their luck as illegal passengers on a European lorry. The truck drivers are not impressed by the Moroccan police. They arent doing enough to guard the harbor area and the drivers are scared. A lot of the drivers have been threatened with knives and forced to smuggle people over. The immigrants are really desperate and you never know how far they are willing to go. But for the British export drivers its also about money. They get a fine of $ 4000 if they bring an illegal passenger to Great Britain. The European Union wants this law to be for the whole union.
A one hour drive east of Tangier, you will