Posting earlier today, Mark Krikorian records the latest chapter in the immigration disaster unleashed by Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s hard-left prime minister. Earlier this year, his government approved a decree (the measure could not get through Parliament in the normal way) that would effectively give an amnesty to (supposedly) “500,000” illegal immigrants, a number always understood to be an undercount. As Mark notes, the actual number has turned out to be about double that.
The next chapter in the story was the sudden arrival of 60,000 illegal migrants in Ceuta, a Spanish city of some 80,000 inhabitants located on the North African coast, which juts into Moroccan territory. They and a smaller group that tried to get into Melilla, Spain’s other city in the area, were probably responding to two incentives. The first was the amnesty. Spain has passed a number of immigration amnesties. Why should the latest be the last?
The second was a ruling at the end of June by the Spanish Supreme Court opening a loophole in the special immigration regime in place for Ceuta and Melilla, another Spanish city on the north African coast). Under this, asylum-seekers could be turned back at the border (rechazo en frontera), but not if they swam into either city. Rechazo en frontera only applies, the judges ruled, if the asylum-seeker is confronted by a physical barrier. The sea did not count, and neither did surveillance devices intended to detect intruders, although the judges suggested that (unspecified) physical barriers might do the trick.
Mark speculates that the sudden flood of “asylum-seekers” might have taken place with the connivance of the Moroccan government, which regards both cities, Spanish or Portuguese for hundreds of years, as “occupied.” Morocco may see an immigrant surge as a way of pressuring Madrid.
That is certainly possible, but my best guess is that the immigrants saw one open door and the possibility of another reopening one day and decided to act. Most, however, have now returned to Morocco — at least for now.