Illegal migration, the lure of the north

Each year thousands of West Africans risk everything they have - their life savings, even their lives - in the hope of finding work and a better future in Europe or North America. “I would rather die in a plane than in my village,” Mar Diagne, a 24-year-old unemployed Senegalese man, told IRIN. "At least then they would know that I was going abroad!" Diagne continued. Jean-Claude, a young Ivorian man whose dream is to go to London, agreed. “Dying poor or dying while trying to reach Europe is the same thing,” he said. Every year hundreds perhaps thousands of West African men, women and children drown in the seas off southern Europe. Others freeze, suffocate or starve to death in the cargo holds of airplanes or ships. Others die of heat and thirst during the long trek across the Sahara desert. In 1998, two young Guinean boys made headlines when they died frozen in the cargo of an Air France flight bound for Paris. Airport officials also discovered a poorly hand-written letter by the boys in which they said they wanted to reach Europe to flee Guinea’s poverty and misery. In January this year, a Cameroonian man died when he fell from the undercarriage compartement of a Cameroon Airlines flight heading for Djedddah, Saudi Arabia, soon after the plane had taken off from Douala. Late last year, the Italian authorities rescued some 200 West African illegal immigrants from a boat’s whose engine had failed in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea as they were sailing from Libya. Due to the clandestine nature of this movement of people, accurate figures of the numbers involved are difficult to come by. However Spain, a favourite entry point to Europe, apprehends hundreds of illegal immigrants each month. Some take small boats to cross the straits of Gibraltar, which at its narrowest point is less than 20 km wide. Others sail much greater distances from Mauritania and southern Morocco to the Canary Islands. The Spanish coastline is heavily patrolled to stop the people smugglers from bringing their human cargo ashore at night on quiet beaches. And in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on Morocco's Mediterranean coast, armed police patrol a double line of barbed wire fences to stop illegal immigrants from getting in. But every night people try to scale the barriers to reach Spanish soil. Spain arrested 800 would-be illegal immigrants in January alone. The following month, one boat stopped by Spanish coast guards was found to be carrying 200 Africans who were trying to circumvent official immigration channels. Between October 2003 and March 2004, over 1,500 Nigerians on illegal transit to Europe through Morocco were sent back to Nigeria, Nigeria’s Emergency Management Agency told IRIN. It said there were about 3,000 Nigerians still in Morocco, waiting for a chance to reach Europe. Trading in dreams A lucrative trade has grown up to exploit this movement of poor, frustrated and ambitious people. There are now several well established networks of middle men and racketeers who will forge passports and visas and transport or assist the migrants in their journey north. On Oluwole Street in Nigeria’s commercial capital of Lagos, you can easily buy forged or stolen documents to try and dupe immigration officials. But these cost up to US$6,000 and offer no guarantees of success. Sophie, a young Ivorian woman, told IRIN that she travelled to Benin by road to get fake travel documents which she hoped would enable her to start a new life in France. But the trip proved fruitless because once in Cotonou she not could reach her contact Sophie spent a few days in the city, gave up and returned to Abidjan. She has also tried unsuccessfully to buy forged documents in Abidjan, but still she is not ready to give up: "I've enrolled to become a flight attendant!" she said. Sophie says she has lost count of how much she has spent on trying to start a new life in Europe between phone calls, transportation costs to meet the sellers of forged documents and payment for a fake passport. But this young unemployed woman says that money is not an obstacle. She is willing to all she can to make her trip because “there’s nothing here for me.” Like many other young Africans keen for a better life outside the continent, Sophie has no clear idea what she would do if and when she ever got to France. “Just work, le djossi” she said, using an Ivorian slang word for low-paying illegal activities. Many young West Africans offer to smuggle drugs to get a plane ticket to Europe. The airport police in Nigeria and Ghana frequently detain travellers who are found to have swallowed condoms full of cocaine that has been shipped in transit from South America. And once young African women reach their intended destination, many of them fall back on prostitution to survive. The Nigerian embassy in Rome has estimated that there are more than 10,000 Nigerian sex workers in Italy. The International Organisation for Migration estimates that Nigerians account for the largest percentage of the 20,000 to 30,000 foreign migrants who end up in Italy's sex trade each year. Most of the illegal immigrants who cannot afford a plane ticket set off on their journey north overland, crossing the desert in beat-up jeeps or trucks to reach Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia or Libya. From there only a short journey across the Mediterranean Sea stands between them and Spain, Italy or Greece. One Guinean illegal immigrant told the BBC recently that he paid over $1,000 to reach Spain from Dakar. The trip, which lasted five months, included lorry and bush taxi trips through the dangerous Sahara Desert. At one point during the journey, the lorry driver stopped and showed him and his companions the graves of seven people, including a 21-year old woman from Nigeria, who had died of thirst as they waited for help after their lorry broke down. At the port city of Tangiers in northern Morocco, the Spanish coastline is clearly visible across the narrow Straits of Gibraltar. There "guides" will, for a fee, assist with boats, rafts or whatever is necessary to try to reach Spanish territory. In London, a team of 12 people were arrested by authorities in April on suspicion of running a network that assisted illegal immigrants to enter the UK. Forged immigration stamps and passports from various West African countries were seized. Similar arrests are common across Europe. However, neither the threat of arrest, nor the prospect of dying in the attempt to reach Europe dampens the enthusiasm of West Africa's would-be immigrants. “Jean-Marc” is a young Ivorian who flew to France 11 years ago. Jean Marc is not his real name. It belongs to a dead man whose passport was doctored to give him a new false identity. He paid about US$200 to a forger who took out the photograph of the passport's original owner and inserted his own. The trick worked. Jean-Marc told IRIN that in France, the immigrant smuggling rings are run by French nationals working together with Africans. The Africans partners lure in friends and families and others desperate to start a new life in Europe, while their French associates fix the necessary paperwork. Today Jean-Marc is a French citizen, thanks to an arranged marriage and other fake documents. “But you have to pay for everything. It is a business,” he stressed. Poverty, main push factor Poverty, and in particular unemployment, tops the list of “push factors”, sociologists, economists, government officials and even the would-be immigrants and their crooked accomplices all agree on this. "I have been unemployed for years," said Cheick Keita, a 30 year old Malian who dreams of stepping on a plane to Paris." I've done several odd jobs. Several times I failed the civil service entry exam - I think it's time for me to try my luck elsewhere". In Lome, a 29-year old graduate in management studies, told IRIN he had spent the past five years looking in vain for a job at home in Togo. “I would suffer in Europe, because there at least I would earn all the five francs from my five-franc job. Here the employers are dishonest and besides, there are no jobs in this country,” he said. In most West African countries, official statistic show that between 10% and 40% of the active population is unemployed, but many believe the real figure is much higher. In war devastated Liberia, where government statistics long ago ceased to have any real meaning, UN officials reckon that 85 percent of the country's three million population are unemployed. Getting a regular job is not always a solution, either since wages in the region are so low. In Cote d'Ivoire, which was the most prosperous country in West Africa before it slid into civil war two years ago, the minimum wage of 35,000 CFA francs (US$70) per month, is barely enough to buy food with. Money, main pull factor In 2003, a French publication ‘Alternatives Economiques’ said in a report on immigration that on average developed countries were sixty times wealthier than poor ones. It is the prospect of money on a scale that they could never dream of at home, that inspires West Africa’s illegal immigrants. “Success stories” of friends and relatives and television pictures and magazine stories about the fabled wealth of Europe and North America all fuel the dream and drive the bravest to try the risky journey. “I am going there to work. There at least I will make money”, said Stam, a 20-year old football prodigy who takes his nickname from a Dutch football star, Jaap Stam, who plays for the Italian team Lazio. Stam lives in Abidjan's upper-class neighbourhood of Cocody, just 10 minutes from the private residence of President Laurent Gbagbo. In recent years his three older sisters and his mother have all emigrated to France and the United States. He told IRIN that in his relatively affluent neighbourhood, he knows of at least 10 people, who successfully got into France using forged documents. “They call, they write, they send e-mails. All they talk about is money”, the young man said. Of course, he too is preparing to follow them. But not everybody believes that Europe is some sort of El Dorado, where the streets are paved with gold. Stam’s 40-year old brother, Guillaume who had been listening to the conversation, suddenly chipped in: “It’s all lies. We all know what kind of work they do there.” Guillaume said he had lived in France for eight years before returning to Abidjan in 1996. During that time, he worked “underground”, in restaurants and shops that paid poorly, but did not ask for documents. Most of the other Africans he knew had arrived in the country illegally and were forced to take similar menial jobs. Others drifted into crime. “We all did the same thing, working illegally in restaurants, shops where owners did not pay income tax. Some did worse, ending up in drugs and prostitution. During eight years, I saved nothing. My friends saved nothing. Life was too hard, so I decided to come back and be poor in my own country”. Guillaume said the money he earned, about 800 euros (US$960) a month, barely allowed him to survive until the next pay day. He despises those who return on holiday to Cote d'Ivoire boasting of their success and “filling the heads of those who don’t know any better with false dreams.” It is not just the young who try to quit Africa for a better life. Bernadette Aka, a 62-year-old widow, left Abidjan for Paris 18 months ago after her husband died. There, she shares a house with two of her daughters who also arrived in France during the last three years. Relatives back home say none of them work, but they’ve learned to “beat the system” and now receive monthly allowances and other benefits from the French government. The younger of the two sisters “arranged” a marriage and has had three babies from two different fathers. The money they send home is barely enough to feed about 20 other sons and daughters, nieces, nephews and grand-children left behind in Cote d'Ivoire. The Aka family also has another daughter in Boston in the eastern United States. She arrived there 10 years ago and is now married to an American. She works in a local hospital and she also sends money when she can. “True success stories are rare," one illegal immigrant in the UK told IRIN. "I mean someone going from nothing to earning good money honestly" "Even when well-educated Africans come here with all the diplomas and everything, they can’t find work," he told IRIN by telephone. "For us illegals, there is a very rigid structure. I tell you, brother, it’s hard.” Workers remittances While the European Union and the United States fight hard to keep out illegal immigrants, they receive only half-hearted cooperation from many West African governments since emmigration is a social safety valve and also an important source of foreign exchange because of the earnings sent back home. The poor and semi-arid Kayes region of western Mali is famous for sending hordes of people to settle in France and other European countries. As a result, the town of Kayes now boasts a scheduled air service to Paris. France estimates that there are around 120,000 Malians immigrants in the country - 60% of whom are there illegally. Last October, Malian President told French President Chirac during a two-day trip in Mali: “Our compatriots contribute positively to the country’s development. They send back each year the equivalent of what Mali receives in public aid. In France, they work tirelessly and for that, they deserve our respect.” Combatting poverty would keep people at home According to Malian sociologist Aly Coulibaly, the best way to combat illegal immigration is to fight poverty and under-development within Africa. "Immigration is tied to these factors", Coulibaly said. Better school systems, job creation programmes and a strong government commitment to promote the creation of small businesses would do much to stop people going abroad. Further south in Cote d’Ivoire, another sociologist, Christine Sibay, spoke of the need for a more holistic approach to fighting poverty. She too would like to seean improvement in African education systems. In particular, she highlighted the need for more and better trained teachers, the introduction of a more modern curriculum, better adapted to the needs of today's world and a drive to ensure that a child's education was not interrupted. Sibay also stressed the need for an ambitious job creation policy to absorb the thousands of graduates who are turned out by colleges and universities each year. Both agreed that since poverty is the driving force that pushes people to leave Africa, anti-poverty strategies devised and implemented by African governments are needed to keep them at home. Meanwhile, discontented West Africans continue to dream of a better life in a wealthy country. "Whatever they do, we won't give up," said Mamadou Drame, a Senegalese civil sevant who was expelled from Paris last year, told IRIN. "If they can clarify things and facilitate work, so much the better. Otherwise they will never put a stop to this miserable situation. All of us here, we are looking north”.