Solidarité sans frontières – News Aggregator BETA

Source: “EUROPOLITICS -the European affairs daily” The member states’ home affairs ministers will meet, on 8 March in Brussels, to debate governance of the border-free Schengen area and in particular the problems they are experiencing with Greece, the main gateway to Europe for 80% of “illegal migrants” (more than 60,000 caught at the border between Greece and Turkey in 2011).

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/21549012 Would-be immigrants to Europe can go almost anywhere—for a price

IT TAKES a few minutes to cross the Evros river, now the main entry point for illegal immigrants from Asia into Europe, but it can be frightening. On the Turkish side people-smugglers can be armed. In winter the river is fast-flowing and very cold. Groups who pay €300 ($400) a head to cross are packed into rubber dinghies at night.

TEXT: ANDRÉS MOURENZA // PHOTO: ALESSANDRO PENSO Finally, on Monday morning (2 days after the incident) the suspect of the racist attack to migrants in Corinth was arrested by the police. Also one of the two hospitalized migrants was able to leave the medical premises and return to the train station, with the other migrants.

Nabi, a 20-years old Moroccan, is lying on the ground. He looks dead. Twenty minutes earlier we were sitting in the recovered-from-garbage chairs and furniture, smoking cigarettes and chatting in one of the abandoned wagons of the old train station of Corinth (Greece). Nabi lives there with about other 50 migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen. Nasir—a polyglot, art lover Afghan interpreter—asks Nabi, another art lover, to draw something.

Construction of a fence along the Evros River on the Greek-Turkish border officially commenced on Monday, budgeted at 3,162.5 million euros, is due for completion in late August or early September.

The contract to build a fence on Greece’s border with Turkey in Evros was signed on Thursday. The 12.5-kilometer construction is being built to deter illegal immigration and trafficking but has prompted opposition from human rights groups. Citizens’ Protection Minister Christos Papoutsis said that the signing of the deal proved the government was serious about moving ahead with the construction of the fence.

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/21542818 IT IS lunchtime and children pour out of Sunday-school classes in Thessaloniki. Waiting parents seem agitated as they talk to Valbona Hystuna, a teacher. The adults speak Albanian; the children talk to each other in Greek. Many of the youngsters have no knowledge of Albania. But the crisis in Greece is forcing their families to return home. The latest census by Albania’s statistical office found only 2.

Source: http://www.athensnews.gr/issue/13471/50902

AFTER years spent trying to build “Fortress Europe” to keep undocumented migrants out of the European Union, Brussels now wants to make it easier for immigrants to get in and boost the 27-member bloc’s economies.

The European Commission is now proposing a new policy on migration and mobility which will benefit both sides of the immigration fence – the EU and the source countries.

Even as the repercussions of the debt crisis make the prospects of a new life in Greece less than rosy, the influx of undocumented immigrants into the country has increased significantly over the past year, according to figures released on Wednesday by the European Union’s border monitoring agency, Frontex. However, a top agency official has told Kathimerini that Greece woefully lacks the infrastructure to accommodate the would-be migrants.

A group of 61 undocumented migrants from Pakistan and Afghanistan boarded a charter flight bound for Islamabad and Kabul on October 19.

This was the fifth expulsion flight to take off since March when Greece deported some 73 Dominicans. They were accompanied by 139 police officers and two doctors. European Union regulation requires two police officers to escort each immigrant on a flight.

So far this year, a total 335 undocumented migrants have been flown back to their country of origin.