European, African ministers meet to tackle illegal immigration

RABAT, Morocco -- Thousands of Africans clamber onto Spanish beaches every year, fleeing poverty and violence for what they hope is a brighter future.

Thousands more wash ashore as corpses.

The flow of African migrants has doubled since last year by one measure, fueling widespread concern. Representatives of 58 European and African countries plan to meet today in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, to tackle the problem, and the chronic poverty in African countries that fuels it.

The talks are the first to bring together the countries the migrants are leaving, the ones they pass through and those they are aiming for, said European Union external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who planned to attend.

The migrants have been undaunted by tightened border controls and the treacherous seas that kill an estimated 40 percent of them.

EU officials said European and African countries hope to agree on conducting joint patrols in the Mediterranean or off the West African coast and expanding language training and education of potential legal immigrants, among dozens of other measures.

The migrants' swelling numbers and high death rate are "just a few examples of the consequences of a failing European policy," European Parliament member Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said. "Reinforcement of the external borders alone is simply not sufficient."

Migrants' rights groups agreed.

Europe "thinks about opening and closing borders," said Abdelhilal Belgacem, an activist with the Friends and Family of Clandestine Immigration Victims, based in Khouribga, a town in poverty-stricken central Morocco. "For us, the concern is how to dissuade people from leaving."

Until now, Spain has led European efforts to police the Mediterranean, backed by EU funds and logistical support.

The European parliament has lately begun urging member states to adopt a common European asylum and immigration policy.

Hennis-Plasschaert said the European Union should streamline asylum procedures and introduce a European equivalent of the U.S. "green card," allowing migrants to work legally in destination countries.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, said that more than 10,000 people have arrived in Spain's Canary Islands since the beginning of 2006 -- already more than twice as many as arrived in 2005.

Some migrants set off for the Canaries from North Africa's Mauritanian coast, having first traveled overland from as far as neighboring Senegal, Chauzy said.

To reach Italy, migrants usually travel through Libya, he said.

"I've seen numbers of 20,000-30,000 people waiting to cross (into Italy), but there's absolutely no way you can verify those numbers," he said.