Date: Wednesday, 22 August 2018
Only a year ago, most African “refugees” came to Italy from Libya. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini in cooperation with the Libyan authorities and the Libyan coastguard took action to curb this procedure, and so Italy ceased to be the main migration route. Now Spain has become a new window for African immigrants wanting to get to Europe.
The number of immigrants reaching the Old Continent through the Iberian Peninsula is growing with every year. From the beginning of January to August 5, a total of over 59 thousand traveled to Europe by sea, of whom fewer than 19,000 went to Italy, over 16,000 to Greece, and almost 24,000 to Spain, which is more than 40% of all the so-called refugees arriving in the Old Continent.
Since the beginning of the year, nearly as many immigrants have passed through Spain as during the whole of the last year, and the number is rising. Thus, the transit route through Libya and Tunisia has lost its significance in favor of the road through Algeria and Morocco, where already 50 000 Africans are eager to cross the Strait of Gibraltar. This phenomenon is favored by the following circumstances:
1. Spain’s leftist government of Pedro Sanchez has a completely different approach to immigration than its Italian counterpart headed by Giuseppe Conte. While the Italians are closing ports to non-governmental vessels transporting Africans and assure to return the undocumented immigrants to their countries of origin, Sanchez announced an open door policy in June. The Spanish government also pledged to remove the barbed wire fence in Ceuta and Melilla, the Spanish enclaves on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar, and promised newcomers free health care.
2. When the Italian government began to take increasingly determined actions to block the influx of people from Africa, George Soros, who supported and financed the flooding of Europe with re-settlers, met the Spanish prime minister at the end of June.
The billionaire, who financed the independence activities of Catalonia, proposed withdrawal of support for separatist sentiments in Barcelona, in exchange for Madrid’s acceptance of African immigrants.
3. When Germany and France became stretched to the limit coping with the wave of “refugees”, the government of Pedro Sanchez decided to open the country’s door to them, turning Spain into the European leader of migration policy. Soon after having been sworn into office, the new prime minister said that the EU should perceive migration as a problem of all member states and consequently, he said, the evasion of solidarity in this respect should be met with putting pressure on uncooperative governments through to their marginalization. The fact that Brussels pays for accepting Africans arouses a suspicion that by letting them in Madrid is looking for financial means to balance the state budget.
4. Spain’s fertility rate is extremely low and amounts to 1.32. The new government – including Minister of Foreign Affairs Josep Borrel – claims that “new blood” is needed so that Europe “does not turn into an aging continent” but can grow economically. The same scenario, to which the Gefira Foundation has already alerted the readers, is to be implemented in other countries. Such an action, however, brings about an effect opposite to the desired one, which can be seen after the incidents in France, about which we wrote in June.
5. The distance from Morocco and Algeria to the southern coast of Spain is definitely smaller than that from Libya to Italy.
The distance between the Moroccan coast and the Spanish resort is less than 50 km.
For several weeks now, we have been observing that the Madrid government has not been reckoning with the consequences of opened borders. Spain is accepting all ships with immigrants that are not let in by other countries.20)21)On 26 July six hundred Africans forced their way through the Spanish border in Ceuta, leaving more than 20 casualties among the guards.22)Of course, the aggressors were not sent back, but taken care of in temporary “refugee” centers. Within only two days, on 27 and 28 July, 1 200 immigrants arrived in Spain by sea,23)which shows that Madrid does not want to prevent the Africans from flooding the country. We expect that Spain will become a state where in the near future more re-settlers will arrive than in previous years to Italy and Greece.
