Oh well...such a disaster...
Lets make it in a short way, because the problem is a deep one....
First of all and as you may know, in Morocco, there is a Kingdom where the king is the "boss" of the government. That makes a lot of people upset with it and want to go to Europe, to live in a democracy.
In Argelia there is a "supposed" democracy ,but they are damned with a fundamentalist terrorist group that uses to kill people for the minimum stupidity regarding religion (and as religion in Islam rules nearly all aspects on the life...well you get the point)
So making more people wanting to move to Europe.
There is also the general belief that in Europe Work conditions are way better and better payed than in North Africa...so making people want to go to Europe.
Of course in Europe inmigration laws are quite restrictive, so the "legal" way of inmigration is, to say it this way, closed for the most of the time.
In fact if you arent a worthy man, you can forget about the "legal" inmigration.
So people started some years ago to cross the strait of Gibraltar in overloaded little barges,rafts,boats...whatever...some with engine propulsion, some with a kind of raw sail propulsion...even sometimes with no motion at all...Most times they sail with little freeboard because the number of people on the raft.
Gibraltar strait waters are not the calmest in the world, exactly, so making a lot of people to die drowned in the way to Europe with this little overloaded raft capsizing very easily...
Last year,and with the announcement of a more restricted inmigration law in Spain, the number of illegal inmigrants has multiplied by 5. There are even mafias who sell passage in a barge for a prohibitive cost...only to let them on a beach with no owns, no luggage and no life in an unknown country.
The net result is that this year the loss of life is nearly 7 times what it used to be. And there are a lot more to come, and to die...
not to mention those poor souls who manage to cross the treacherous waters of Gibraltar only to be arrested by the Police and returned to their country...
They used to be people from Morocco,or Argelia, but now with the problems in Western Africa (wars ,civil problems in Nigeria,etc), there is a lot of inmigrants from the core of Africa...
ITs a total disaster
...the few people who manage to cross the Straits and not be returned to Africa only find that the work conditions aren't that great,and the pay really indecent... because as illegal inmigrants they have to accept toejam works
Its a TERRIBLE problem, that for sure.
And one with no clear solution in the short or medium term
[This message has been edited by RAM (edited 08-16-2000).]
