Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-13-Speech-2-052"
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"en.20071113.4.2-052"2
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"Mr President, Europe benefits from its immigrants, but in today’s Europe xenophobia is increasing rather than diminishing. The example of Italy is fresh in our minds. In my country, Greece, an EP delegation recently saw for themselves the wretched conditions in which hundreds of immigrants and asylum seekers are detained on the island of Samos. This was in a detention centre which Ministers promised would be closed immediately, but which is still open, despite a report by an international NGO condemning it for torturing illegal immigrants. Unfortunately, in the present dangerous climate, instead of promoting the positive aspects of immigration, the Commission is responding to a climate of fear artfully created in certain sectors.
The problem you have presented us with focuses mainly on policing, and this is somewhat biased. It is necessary, of course, to combat illegal immigration. There is a need for solidarity with countries receiving huge influxes of immigrants. Proper agreements on readmission at European level and the common European protection of immigrants’ fundamental rights are needed. Immigrants cannot be sent back into danger and destitution. Europe needs a serious foreign and economic policy to combat the main causes of migration, such as poverty and war, through peaceful yet tough measures. Above all, of course, a multilateral policy is needed to integrate migrants into our societies.
Instead of this, your programme equates immigration with criminality. Commissioners, you are specifically stating that the European border control system, a programme that is integrated into the framework of immigration policies, will increase the internal security of the Schengen area by preventing illegal immigration, terrorism, etc. What does security have to do with immigration, or indeed with illegal immigration? What does it have to do with terrorism? By associating these bogeys with immigration in the public imagination and in Europe’s policies, I fear you are playing the game of the EU’s far-right forces.
Please eliminate these dangerous attitudes from your strategy documents. There are undoubtedly criminal immigrants, just as there are English, German and Greek criminals, but the immigrants’ only real crime is that they were born in poor or war-torn regions."@en1
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