En Marcha: EU approves migration policy

En Marcha #2090 April 17-23, 2024 [ www.pcmle.org/EM/spip.php?article13085 ]

Central Organ of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador

EU approves migration policy

Thousands of migrants, especially from Africa, will have to suffer the new migration conditions that include confinements and deportation.

The European Union has just approved a reform to its migration policy that is rejected by humanitarian organizations, considering that it criminalizes migrants, especially those motivated by their economic situation.

Although these reforms will come into force after approval in each of the countries that make up the European Union, which would be by 2026, it is clear that the right to free movement, supposedly respected on that continent.

The agreement, which officials say has been in the making for nearly a decade, proposes to the 27 member states several "solidarity" mechanisms to tackle the problem of migration. The first is to alleviate the impact on the countries through which unwanted migration enters Europe, mainly Spain, Italy, Greece and Malta, which, due to their location in the Mediterranean, constitute the places of entry. The mechanism takes the form of the contribution of the other member countries with economic resources that could be about US $600 million per country each year, which they would receive to address the problem.

The other mechanism is the redistribution of migrants among member countries, i.e. although Spain, for example, receives them, it can send them to other countries, where they would have their residence. Redistribution could mean that some 30,000 people a year would be at risk of being sent to other countries.

The above, which has been presented as the ideal mechanism to solve the problem, in reality, conceals the discriminatory mechanism that consists of a series of "shelters" that would be built at different points in the arrival areas where the migrants would be "housed", awaiting the decision of whether or not to be accepted. If they are not accepted, they would be deported to their countries of origin, with all the consequences that this entails.

These "shelters" would actually be prisons, as they already are in the United States, where migrants would not have freedom of movement, much less of getting work, which is the main reason for migration for economic reasons ins the majority of cases.

In addition, agreements are being negotiated with various countries to provide European aid so that the governments of origin of migration take measures to prevent it, either by creating better living conditions or increasing migration controls.

Since 2014, 27,346 people have lost their lives by drowning in the Mediterranean, mainly from Africa, 643 due to extreme environmental conditions such as cold, dangerous transportation and other causes.

Europe receives migrants particularly from African countries, which is the poorest continent in the world. It arrived at this situation due to the impact of the colonial activities of most European countries which, for centuries, have benefited from the enormous natural wealth of Africa and which even today, some of them such as France, maintain colonies from which they continue to extract wealth.

The imperialist and pro-imperialist countries have built an infrastructure of well-being at the cost of extracting resources from dependent countries that they have subjected and conditioned by various mechanisms, to then prevent the poverty they created with these actions from filling their streets.