• Home /
• Statewatch Database /
• Expulsions up by 63% in 2002

Expulsions up by 63% in 2002

01 January 2003

According to Interior Ministry sources, 74,467 illegal immigrants were expelled in 2002, compared to 45,544 during the previous year, indicating a 63% increase. The group that was most affected were again Moroccans, although slightly less were expelled than in the previous year. In contrast to this drop, Romanians and Ecuadorians saw a spectacular increase in expulsions: from 1,514 Ecuadorians expelled in 2001, to 5,558 in 2002; in the case of Romanians, the increase was from 1,607 expulsions in 2001 to 18,865 in 2002.
Moreover, the government began to put into practice the policy of hiring charter flights jointly with other European governments in December. Thus, on 4 December, together with France, it expelled 85 Romanians on a flight that left from Madrid and stopped over in France to collect another 22 Romanian citizens residing illegally there. On 10 January, 90 Romanian citizens, 78 men and 12 women, were boarded onto a charter flight going to Bucharest. 48 of them were expelled for residing illegally in Spain.
The detentions of migrants who reached the Spanish coast in dinghies were 16,504 in 2002 compared with 18,517 in 2001. In regard to asylum applications, these decreased by 34% in 2002, largely as a result of the introduction of a visa requirement for Colombian and Cuban citizens. The decrease is from 9,490 asylum and refuge applications in 2001 to 6,227 in 2002.