The struggle of migrants stuck in hostile Bulgaria
▶ Syrians who are unable to move to more welcoming states are left to fend for themselves
Syrian refugee Fahim Jaber hoped for a better life in Europe. But like hundreds of others he is stuck in Bulgaria, the EU’s poorest country, safe but unwelcome and with few prospects.
The average salary there is €510 (Dh2,203), a third of the EU average and a fraction of that of rich countries. There is little state aid to integrate newcomers.
Arriving from Aleppo last year, Mr Jaber and his family found themselves in Elin Pelin, outside the capital Sofia, facing a hostile protest by people in the town square.
“They shouted ‘We resisted the Ottomans and we will not accept you, we will Christianise you’,” said Mr Jaber, 57.
The mayor, a member of one of the ultra-nationalist, openly xenophobic parties in Bulgaria’s governing coalition, refused to give the family a residence permit.
“We came back to the house, locked the door and didn’t dare to go out for two months,” said Mr Jaber’s wife, Fatima Batayi, recalling how frightened she had been.
Their son Mehmed, who has a job in Bulgaria, took care of them, buying food and other necessities while a long-established Syrian immigrant helped them to become registered.
Since 2013, almost 60,000 migrants have applied for asylum in Bulgaria, having taken the land route out of Syria into Turkey and then over the border into the Balkan country.
Most then continued their journey westward to Germany, France or Sweden, but a few hundred remain in Bulgaria largely because they had no choice.
While the Jaber family’s experience was extreme, generally the welcome has been far from warm.
This is due to what analyst Yavor Siderov calls an “anti-refugee consensus” in Bulgarian society, incited largely through the media and shared across the political spectrum.
“It creates fear and makes people feel scared about a shift in the population, given the demographic collapse in this country,” Mr Siderov said.
Like other eastern European countries, Bulgaria has lost many workers who are seeking opportunities in wealthier parts of the EU.
But the population has shrunk at a speed that has alarmed Bulgarians: almost two million citizens have emigrated in the past 23 years, leaving about 7.1 million – a rate of attrition that is one of the fastest in Europe.
Bulgaria is shooting itself in the foot with its approach to migrants, Mr Siderov said, because its economy urgently needs foreign workers.
“Since Germans and Swiss aren’t coming here, we have to look to other countries,” he said.
But a report by the UN refugee agency in April bemoaned the absence of “targeted integration support” from the government for the arrivals.
“Integration services such as Bulgarian language classes, housing support, professional education classes or help with child care and enrolment of children in school are not provided,” it said.
“The government here, they
We came back to the house, locked the door and didn’t dare to go out for two months FATIMA BATAYI Refugee
don’t do anything for refugees,” said Syrian Bilal Hasan, 44, whose money was taken by people smugglers and now he has humanitarian protection status in Bulgaria.
“If you want to do anything here – to search for a job, find a house, anything – you have to do it on your own. I was so lucky because I made some friends and they help me a lot now.”
The story is similar for his compatriot Kaled Deyab, 36, and his wife and two children, some of the 1,000 migrants due to arrive in Bulgaria from Greece under an EU relocation scheme.
“We left Damascus in 2015 and arrived in Greece in February last year,” Mr Deyab said. “It’s been two years that we’ve been on the road already and the children haven’t been to school,” he said
Once they get refugee status, the Deyabs will have two weeks to leave their home at the migrant centre in Sofia. They have no idea where they will go.