Madrid: Cooperation with Rabat Helps Curb Illegal Migration

Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska hailed Morocco’s cooperation, which helped his country to reduce by 50 pc the arrival of illegal migrants.

At a meeting held Monday in Madrid with vice-president of the European Commission Margaritis Schinas and Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson, Mr. Fernando said prevention policy works. He affirmed that his country has succeeded in reducing by 50 pc the arrivals of illegal migrants in 2019 thanks to Morocco’s input in the fight against smugglers and human trafficking.

He called for a harmonized EU migration policy, stressing the need to enhance cooperation with the countries of origin and transit of migrants.

In 2019, Morocco prevented 74,000 people from illegally crossing to Spain and foiled 89,000 illegal migration attempts the previous year.

The degradation of security conditions in Libya pushed many migrants to opt for Morocco as a transit point. Last year, Moroccan authorities busted 208 migrant trafficking networks, seized 3021 fake passports and captured 505 persons specializing in human trafficking and smuggling of migrants.

Besides being a transit country, Morocco is also a destination country and was the first in Africa to launch a migrant regularization campaign offering legal residency status to some 56,000 migrants mostly from Sub-Saharan Africa.