Deadly exodus

Salama A Salama

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Many people crossed the Mediterranean from this country to Europe for work, study, or pleasure in the early 20th century. None of them could have foreseen the day when immigrants would follow in their footsteps, only to meet death and horror.

Over the past few years, young men from Egypt have been boarding rickety boats to die on the way or be dumped, weary and hungry, off the coasts of Italy and Libya. Theirs is part of a sad exodus that has grown steadily sadder as time goes by. For years, thousands of men aged 16-35, their prime working years, have been leaving their homes in the sub-Sahara region, travelling through Morocco and Mauritania, heading north. The phenomenon spread to Morocco and Tunisia. Now it is our turn.

At first, illegal immigrants from Egypt numbered in their hundreds. Now the trickle has become a torrent. Entire villages send their young men into the unknown. Enticed by what they see on television, and totally ignorant of living conditions in Europe, the young pay to risk their lives. A young man would hear of a friend who made it across the sea and is now washing dishes in a restaurant or working as a farm hand. And he would want to give it a try.

Countries targeted by this kind of immigrants, such as Italy and Spain, have for a long time taken the phenomenon seriously. Eager to protect their society, jobs, and culture from the peril coming from the south, and obviously afraid of terror, those countries took measures to stop the immigration. At first, they just tightened up on the paper work and expelled some illegal immigrants. Now they have electrified fences, barbed wire, and detention centres. They hold conferences on how to stop the immigrants. They run naval patrols, monitor the shores with helicopters, and arrest all illegal immigrants. Europe now has anywhere between five and seven million illegal immigrants. It is expelling 400,000 a year on average.

So what have we done in Egypt? Unlike Maghreb countries, we're only beginning to grasp the full magnitude of the problem. In the 1980s and 1990s, we used to try and help the young. We used to give land to graduates to reclaim. Not anymore. The dark forces of corruption and exploitation managed to take the land back from the young, and are developing it into luxury homes. So our young men are left with no choice. Even the Gulf labour markets that once gave them hope no longer need their services. Our successive governments failed to implement one project after another to absorb the excess supply of graduates. We failed to offer the young a chance to develop small projects, instead of wasting their savings and the savings of their parents in crossing the deep sea.

Not that we don't cooperate with the Europeans. Plenty of cooperation is going on: the Euro-Mediterranean partnership agreements, the EU neighborhood policy, and the Barcelona Declaration. All these agreements involve deals with Egyptian businessmen. All involve favourable treatment to European investment. But not even one has contemplated a way to legalise immigration. Not one has made immigration a main topic on the agenda. Even when immigration is addressed in such arrangements, the issue remains secondary. The main focus is on economic and financial cooperation.

We need a more enlightened approach to this problem. The shadowy smugglers are not the only ones to blame. We still haven't tightened up our coastal patrols. What is especially bizarre is that those who have deigned to address this problem so far are the very ones who don't seem to get it -- the mufti and the Ministry of Interior. The latter hastened to provide its usual panacea: arrest anyone engaged in human smuggling. Think again. We can do better.