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Gambia News : African Illegal Aliens Down 22% in Spain
The arrivals in Spain of African migrants on rickety boats fell in 2008
by more than 22 percent, according to figures for the first 11 months
of the year provided Thursday by immigration authorities.
The
secretary of state for Spain's immigration and emigration, Consuelo Rumi, said
that between January and November, 3,745 people fewer than last year
tried to enter the country illegally via ocean routes.
The
decline comes after an earlier reduction in 2007, when arrivals of
African migrants were 50 percent below those in 2006, Rumi told
reporters before the close of an immigration conference in the southern
city of Almeria.
Rumi hailed the "efficacy" of the measures
implemented by the Spanish government in this area, among which she
noted Madrid's cooperation with the migrants' countries of origin,
including Morocco, Senegal, Mauritania and Gambia.
Spain's
southern coasts, as well as its Canary Islands archipelago, off the
coast of West Africa, are the main objectives of thousands of
sub-Saharan migrants who cram into often unsafe boats to chance the
perilous journey.
They pay criminal rings in advance to get a spot on the fragile and overcrowded vessels.
Although
authorities do not know the precise number of people who have died at
sea or traversing the Sahara desert while trying to get to Spain or to
its two enclaves on the North African coast, they estimate that it is
well into the thousands.
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