Brussels, 10/10/2011 (Agence Europe) - All illegal immigration indicators rose in the second quarter of 2011, a report from the European border surveillance agency Frontex revealed on 4 October. According to the report, the main illegal immigration route into the EU was once again the Greek-Turkish border. Second came the Italian route, via the island of Lampedusa, which for a spell claimed the top spot from the Greek-Turkish route, with the arrival of North African migrants in spring 2011, and in third place was the island of Malta.
In its report, Frontex says that the overall number of people illegally entering the EU reached levels in the second quarter of this year not seen since the third quarter of 2008, with entries estimated at 40,000, 50% higher than in the second quarter of 2010.
At the Greek land border with Turkey, detections rose to a level comparable with the second quarter of 2010 - over 11,000 illegal entries - with Afghans previously resident in Iran and fleeing the Iranian authorities' policies towards its estimated 3-million population of Afghan refugees being the largest single group. Frontex says that Greece remains a key entry point for people-smuggling networks with secondary movements most often detected in the Western Balkans, Slovenia and Hungary as well as at the maritime border with Italy.
Following a surge of some 20,000 Tunisian nationals in the first quarter of 2011, the second quarter saw a 75% reduction in numbers of Tunisian migrants thanks to an accelerated readmission agreement between Italy and Tunisia. However, the overall number of detections on this route increased due to large numbers of inter alia Central African, Nigerian and Ghanaian nationals previously resident in Libya. Since the effective fall of the Gaddafi regime, irregular migration from Libya has dropped dramatically, though the situation there remains “difficult to predict”, Frontex notes.
The agency says, too, that “circular migration between Albania and Greece was significantly affected” by visa-free travel rules for Albanians, leading to a concurrent rise in refusals of entry for Albanians. An increasing number of migrants were detected on the eastern border with Belarus: some 6,800 Georgians arrived in the EU via Belarus in the first six months of 2011, Frontex observes. (SP/transl.rt)