Draconian package
01 January 1991
Draconian package
artdoc May=1993
The most draconian package yet of measures to control immigration
were approved in principle by 33 immigration ministers from
eastern and western Europe at the second Conference to Prevent
Uncontrolled Migration in Budapest on 15 and 16 February 1993.
The first, held in Berlin in October 1991, set up a working party
(yet another ad hoc group, termed the `Berlin group') with the
task of `rapidly developing proposals' for implementing measures
decided by the Conference.
The main recommendations of the conference were: to criminalise
the smuggling of `illegal migrants' and confiscate the means of
transport used; to crack down on the employment of irregular
workers; to set up special police and control units with a `joint
tactical concept', to pursue those aiding and abetting illegal
migration, and illegal workers; to promote the exchange of
information about illegal immigrants; to set up effective
procedures for discovering illegal entrants, including those
coming in as visitors or businessmen; to establish re-admission
agreements allowing return of illegal migrants to countries
through which they travel for expulsion to their countries of
origin; to secure external borders with mobile surveillance
forces; to ensure that carrier sanctions are applied
comprehensively.
The recommendations are noteworthy for their monolithic
approach to illegal migration. There is no recognition, for
example, that some `illegals' may be refugees: in most European
countries asylum-seekers arriving without documents are condemned
as illegal migrants. There is no attempt to divide `smugglers'
of `illegal migrants' into profiteers and those individuals or
organisations attempting to throw a lifeline to refugees fleeing
a war zone, so that humanitarian organisations trying to bring
civil-war refugees out would be pursued as `smugglers', with, in
the words of the conference document, `operational tactics geared
to the modus operandi of the operators, inter alia by acting
along the lines developed for combatting organised crime'. There
is, indeed, no attempt at discussing the causes of `illegal'
migration.
The increasingly military attitude to migration is vividly
captured by the recommendations on external borders. The mobile
surveillance forces should perform their tasks:
`at sea borders by using patrol boats or appropriate
helicopters without, however, dispensing with the use of
operational forces on land, whose mission primarily
consists of apprehending illegal migrants reported by the
airborne surveillance forces'; [and are to be] `integrated
into a close network of telephone, radio, telex and other
connections', `use highly efficient equipment .. which
should be harmonised step by step on the basis of an all-
European standard.'
The conference is the latest stage in the process of engaging
eastern European countries fully in western Europe's immigration
policing. Conferences such as this are conducted in parallel with
the signing of association agreements giving workers of the
eastern European `buffer states' limited opportunities to enter
the EC as migrant workers, and promising preferential terms of
trade and limited aid. The EC has now signed five such
association agreements - with Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia
(this needs re-signing with the two separate republics), Romania
and, on 8 March, Bulgaria. They are `second round' agreements,
giving far fewer rights than those earlier signed with Turkey,
Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The eastern European states'
cooperation comes cheaper, and costs them dear: they effectively
shoulder the burden of keeping migrants and asylum-seekers away
from Europe's eastern borders. Annex to Notice to members,
European Parliament: Committee on Civil Liberties and Internal
Affairs, 4.3.93.
Statewatch vol 3 no 2 March-April 1993