EU immigration plan draws flak in Africa

(DAKAR) - New European Union proposals aimed at tackling illegal immigration drew criticism on Thursday in Africa where the plans were attacked for criminalising immigrants and building a wall around Europe.

African rights watchdog Raddho slammed "the EU policies of criminalisation and locking up of migrants and asylum seekers" and spoke of its "intense worry" at the new guidelines announced by France's EU presidency on Monday.

The immigration issue was spotlighted by a latest tragedy on Wednesday night when at least 15 illegal African immigrants, including nine children, died at sea while trying to reach Spain.

"The establishment of a European pact on immigration and asylum will accentuate the vulnerability and the criminalisation of immigration and asylum rights," Dakar-based Raddho said.

The watchdog called on the African Union (AU) to protect its citizens and engage with the EU on the matter of immigration.

The pact, presented Monday in Cannes, sets out principles for the EU to manage migration, fight illegal immigration and help development in poor countries that people are leaving or travelling through to get to Europe.

The agreement aims to organise legal immigration based on a state's needs and ability to welcome people, and combat illegal immigration, ensuring that foreigners who do not have papers are removed.

EU nations would base legal immigration on workers or professionals whose skills are tailored to their particular labour needs, favouring those who would stay in their countries long term.

The pact, which was welcomed by the refugee agency of the United Nations, should be signed in October, the EU's French presidency said.

Senegal, which has traditionally seen a large outflux of immigrants and where the money they send home is more important to the economy than development aid, called Wednesday on Africa to forge its own immigration pact.

"Africa needs to come up with its own pact and maybe one day the two pacts can come together into one Euro-African migration pact," Senegalese Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio said.

Many observers in Africa lament the unilateral pact by the EU and want more joint solutions for the problems of immigration.

A newspaper in Burkina Faso on Thursday said that "to stop the desperate hordes coming from the southern countries Europe has not found a better solution that to build a wall."

"We thought the time of walls was over but we did not count on the strong desire of Europe to protect itself against the 'threat' of illegal immigration," Le Pays daily said.

"It's North against South," it concluded.