Migrants shift to risky route to Spain and Europe

The smugglers took Rodriguez Tankeu’s savings and disappeared, leaving the 25-yearold bewildered near Tripoli, the Libyan capital. The former car mechanic headed to Algeria, where he saw, one by one, all the spots on engine-powered boats go to wealthier migrants.

Broke, tired and desperate, he moved further west.

“Morocco was my last hope,” he says. “It was either making it to Europe or giving up for once and for all.”

Algeria and Morocco are increasingly popular points of departure for economic migrants and asylum-seekers whose arrivals more than doubled last year along the hazardous Western Mediterranean passage into Europe.

The trend comes as Libya and Turkey have worked to stop mi- grants from departing for Europe. The controls helped reduce the number of migrants arriving in Italy by one-third and by more than 70 per cent in Greece last year, according to European border agency Frontex.

Spain worked to help shape the European Union’s approach to curbing immigration, in large part by training and funding governments in countries such as Turkey. Yet it is the EU member that could face most pressure if migrants keep moving westward.

The Spanish prime minister has called on the bloc to increase funding for southern European countries.

Observers say that recent social unrest in the northern Moroccan Rif region has been a contributing factor to the reshaped migration patterns. The focus on the internal conflict has relaxed policing of migrant departures and Moroccans of young age have also joined Algerians and subSaharan Africans seeking better economic opportunities.

In Morocco, Tankeu considered buying a fragile inflatable boat to brave the strong currents at the mouth of the Mediterranean. But having grown up in Douala, a coastal hub in his native Cameroon, he knew about the perils of a sea journey. Plus, he had no cash left.

The young man eventually joined hundreds of others who assemble in forest camps to get through the fence to Ceuta, a Spanish enclave and tiny pocket of official European soil in Africa’s northern edge. Three times he was intercepted, and three times he returned. Last summer, on his fourth attempt, he finally made it to the other side.

“I’ve paid a high price for my European dream. I wouldn’t do it again,” Tankeu said at a charityrun migrant centre in Madrid where he receives advice while he navigates Spain’s intricate bureaucracy for asylum-seekers.

According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 28,300 migrants entered Europe via Spain last year. At least 6,200 people crossed the borders of Ceuta and Melilla — another Spanish territory — either jumping barbed-wired fences or hidden in vehicles.

But the highest numbers washed up in boats or were rescued off the Spanish coast: arrivals by sea totalled 22,100 in 2017, up from 8,100 in the previous year. Their sharp increase over the last quarter worries observers about what’s to come.

“The current European policies are the perfect breeding ground for intensifying the flows along the Western Mediterranean route,” says Estrella Galan, secretary general of CEAR, a non-governmental organization working with asylum-seekers.

“If we don’t change our policies we are going to continue an endless cycle of replicating migration patterns from one location to another,” she says.