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Le Pen
What made him a walking time bomb of racism, xenophobia and nationalism?
5/6/2002 |
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Islam in Europe
Young muslims are holding on to their culture
12/24//2001 |
 Outside
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Immigration takes center stage in the Czech election campaign 05/30/02
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Indian tech workers benefit from expedited work permits to plug skills
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Hostage
to Fortuyn
Is the famed Dutch tolerance finished? 04/26/02 |
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NICK CORNISH for TIME
ENTRY POINT Clothes lie discarded on a beach near Otranto after asylum seekers have swum ashore
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Posted Sunday, June 16, 2002; 11:45
a.m. BST
The Adriatic Sea is a glassy calm as the first hint of dawn
turns the horizon a deep, dark blue. Another day is breaking
across Italy's heel, and nothing more than the faint lights
of a fishing boat is visible from the coast. But after a short
walk along this beach near Otranto, a policeman's flashlight
reveals scattered shirts and jeans, several pairs of warmup
pants, one kid-sized sneaker, shoes, underwear, a gym bag.
Shed like the skin of a former self, the week-old, waterlogged
belongings of perhaps six to eight people are all that remain
of the latest wave of the human tide that crashes on Western
Europe's far southeastern shores.
Over the past decade, a harrowing 96-km motorized raft trip
across the Adriatic from Vlore, Albania has become one of
the main routes for would-be immigrants seeking work and a
better life inside the European Union. Many spend four or
five months traveling over land and across other waterways
before paying Albanian smugglers €500 to €1,500
to ferry them to Italy. They are usually forced to abandon
ship well short of the shoreline, and then wade in to look
for a safe place to change into dry clothes. The immigrants,
most of them economic migrants but some seeking political
asylum, arrive from all points east and south — China,
India and Pakistan, Iraq, Iran and Turkey, the Balkans and
North Africa. But if they receive legal resident status, or
manage to evade the authorities, they almost all wind up farther
north — not just in Rome and Milan, but in Frankfurt,
Calais, Dover and London too. Authorities estimate that 20,000
immigrants land illegally each year on the Italian coast.
In addition to the Puglia region, they also touch down in
Sicily and Reggio Calabria. And police estimate that at least
half of all illegal immigrants simply disappear into the landscape.
Some, however, seek legitimate entry. Leaving behind poverty
and a family of six in eastern Turkey, Mustafa Çelik
made a two-month journey by land across Bulgaria, the former
Yugoslavia and Macedonia before begging Albanian smugglers
to let him on board a raft for just €300. "It was all
I had," the 38-year-old says, pulling at his shirt to indicate
that he arrived in Italy with just the clothes on his back.
After a choppy ride across the Adriatic, the smugglers motioned
for the 40 or so passengers to jump into the water. Çelik
, soaking wet, was picked up by police and brought to a nearby
church-run holding facility north of Otranto to await a month
of processing by Italian immigration authorities. Even if
his request for political asylum is denied, Çelik will
simply be given a written expulsion order requiring him to
report to Rome's Fiumicino Airport within 15 days. But with
no ticket — and often no desire — to go home,
most people in Çelik 's situation simply start the
long journey north.
Çelik says he was grateful at first to have made it
safely to Europe, which he believes offers his family's only
chance of escaping poverty. "Where I come from there is nothing,"
he said. Paris, where his brother works in construction, is
his probable destination. But, he adds as his eyes moisten,
the last week has given him time to ponder what he left behind:
"I think about my family always."
Until now, E.U. leaders have left places like southern Puglia
largely on their own to both prevent and protect new arrivals.
When the raft traffic first began in the early 1990s in response
to political and economic upheaval in Albania, Otranto residents
responded with their own blankets and hot meals for the shivering
travelers. Four years ago the city converted one of its buildings
into an arrival center that provides basic necessities through
national funds. In 1999, a border police unit was established,
equipped with the same fast and agile rafts that smugglers
use. Still, with a lack of top equipment and adequate staffing,
at least some officers are frustrated. "This is the border
of Europe and we don't have a proper radar," one says. "At
least when they arrive, we should know they're here."
The anxiety extends to the ordinary citizens of Otranto, though
virtually none of the arrivals ever settles in the area and
the national government has begun picking up the bill for
their immediate care. "We hosted them, fed them, clothed them
— and then they began to steal," says an elderly man
buying fish in the port. "Once [the immigrants] come, they
never leave." Italians never challenge a raft with immigrants
aboard because of the risk to the passengers. Otranto border
police chief Carmine Ingrosso says the open sea requires extra
care: "Yes, there are laws that must be respected. But in
those very first moments we are concerned solely with the
safety of the immigrants." Occasionally, disaster strikes.
In the predawn hours of June 8, for example, smugglers forced
43 Kurdish refugees into the water at knife point a kilometer
from the coast just south of Otranto.
Four drowned. Such incidents form a tragic backdrop to the
wider debate in Italy over immigration. In 1990, the number
of new legal immigrants into the country was 24,200; in 2000,
it was 181,300, a mere fraction of the 2.2 million already
in Italy. The Lower House of Parliament this month approved
a bill to make deportation easier and require all immigrants
to be fingerprinted. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has
been swaying between right-wing allies who want a strict limit
on arrivals and industry executives who value them as a ready
source of labor. Otranto Mayor Franco Bruni says that the
European Union must establish a common immigration policy
to coordinate controls and challenge the non-E.U. states that
are the source of unchecked arrivals. "Maybe with Iraq it's
difficult," Bruni says. "But if Turkey wants to join the E.U.,
it can't play a clever man's game on this issue." After working
a 10-hour night shift, fisherman Mauro Trotto is back in the
port of Otranto at dawn untangling the scorpion fish and mullet
from his giant yellow net.
The 50-year-old father of five didn't see any immigrants heading
inland last night. But over the years he's seen more than
his share of over-crowded rafts filled with desperate people.
"Most see Europe like we saw America," he says, "a place where
you can live well and live free." But with the tide of political
opinion turning against immigration, those dreams of a better
life may shatter on Europe's shores.
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TIMEeurope.com
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