Brussels, 05/02/2010 (Agence Europe) - More and more European member states are criminalising and punishing illegal aliens simply for being in the country illegally, explained Human Rights Commissioner at the Council of Europe, Thomas Hammarberg, on Thursday 4 February 2010. He said that he was alarmed at the growing trend, which is often claimed to be a way of managing immigration. Criminalising entering a country and staying in a country illegally in fact infringes principles underscored in international law, explained Hammarberg, unveiling a report in Brussels on the criminalisation of immigration in Europe. States have a legitimate interest in monitoring their borders, he said, but criminalisation is disproportionate and can lead to greater stigmatisation and marginalisation of immigrants. He said that law-breaking in relation to immigration should be viewed as administrative infringements rather than criminal acts, as is currently the case in countries like the United Kingdom, Greece, Italy and Germany. The commissioner criticised practices like France's setting of quotas for the number of foreigners to be deported. Government sovereignty cannot be challenged, he added, but human rights should be respected, like the option of requesting asylum and respect for asylum procedures and not refusing to help (“non-refoulement”). Hammarberg said that turning immigration into a crime was the wrong way of reacting to a complex social phenomenon and has led to a string of human tragedies without achieving its aim of genuinely managing immigration. He explained, for example, that there are many people who remain underground in order to avoid punishment and therefore these people ran the risk of bad treatment by unscrupulous employers and landlords. In other cases, the criminalisation of immigration can lead to even more people ending up in prisons that are already bursting at the seams. The report presented by the commissioner analyses the problem of criminalisation of immigrants in Europe from the angle of human rights. The document makes a number of recommendations for Council of Europe member countries. Further information can be found at: http: //http://www.coe.int/t/commissioner/Default_fr.asp. (B.C./transl.fl)