#UNHCR will deploy a team to the Canary Islands to assess refugees arriving by boat

UNHCR figures for migrants to Spain Jan-May 2020

This announcement is welcome, as are the outstanding members of the UNHCR whose efforts too often go unrecognised nor properly supported.  However this is not simply a refugee problem (as if refugee problems could ever be simple…).

Economic migration is to be surely expected when such huge disparities exist in the world, and between neighbouring populations, and while so little effort is put in to addressing the problems of our nearest neighbours, particularly considering Spain’s long colonial past in the region, and its sudden abandonment in 1975, some might say, that a more serious, holistic and humane approach is long overdue.

Spain must rethink its attitudes towards Africa, and offer guided pathways to improving expectations, collaboration and education, in Spain as well as in Africa, to foster an over arching sense of cross-border community that can benefit us all moving forward. Of course there are those who through thinly veiled racism seek to blame the migrants. That is to blame the victim for the crime.  Badly treating the symptoms and never the cause.

Right now, we all turn our backs, especially the immigrants of privilege, so-called expats, invariably white Europeans, firmly facing away until some dark skinned strangers turn up on our beaches. While for many that may have been a functional response in the past, in this new age of global pandemic, instant information and not nearly normality, we must comprehend that no virus will respect our borders, or cultural difference, any more than it will care for our material property. To fail to at least try to improve the aspirations of those who so naturally envy our lives of plenty, here on Europe’s most southwesterly edges, while they have opportunity for naught, is to make more and more attractive even the most life threatening of journeys, if there is any hope of being able to gain some small part of what those others, otherwise, could never hope to have.

While overall numbers of migrants reaching Spain have dropped over the last two years, already more than 20% down on last year nationally, due to ongoing work being done on all the Mediterranean coasts, and with various northern African countries, to try to prevent boats crossing or even leaving in the first place, the simple fact is that this has applied huge pressure to follow a much more dangerous Atlantic route, making us more attractive, resulting in an inevitable increase in people attempting the Canary crossing.

We are now at a crucial stage in a pandemic response, having here been more successful than most in suppressing infection rates, however, too little attention is being paid to the sudden uptick in pateras arriving to the islands since the end of last summer, 2019, and we are now again at peak migration season, when we are likely to see more and more people attempting to reach these islands, many will succeed, too many will fail.

To date more than a third of all this year’s irregular migration to Spain is being handled by The Canary Islands, a more than 600% increase in people over 2019, however the various NGOs and governmental organisations appear to have been very slow to recognise that we are in a most precarious situation, we must act.  We are between an ocean and poor place, with funding meant to try to curb migrant departures from originating coutnries having increased by 240% this year it seems clear that there is a huge disparity between deployed boots on the ground and the actual size of this growing issue.

Those with a long enough view will still remember the summer of 2006.  Ten years before the so-called “migrant crisis” we had The Canary Migrant Crisis.  32,000 migrants, at that time, half of whom were Senegalese, arrived on these shores, following a short-sighted, if well meaning, attempt to regularise large swathes of the undocumented foreign community present in Spain.  It was a starting gun to a manic dash from West Africa to try to enter Europe, at least 6000 people died in the effort, of which we know.  Probably a lot more than that.  That woke everyone up suddenly, and resulted in huge amounts of extra funding and collaborative agreements between Spain and several West African governments which allowed much more work to happen in those countries of origin.  This resulted in less than half attempting the journey the following year, and by 2010, less than 200 were found to be trying to make the crossing.

But the world has continued turning, and everything has changed more than once more.  If we don’t take some positive decisive action, we could easily find ourselves at the dawn of the next big surge in migration, and with it the potential for divisiveness, racism, fear and bad decisions, not to mention a virus we thought we had got under control.  It’s not under control, by any stretch, but last thing we need is “others” to blame.  It’s a real danger.

That all said, it is worth pointing out that with the exception of a small abandoned boat, big enough for four or five, found on the coast near Arguineguín this Tuesday morning, with no sign of who, or how many, if any, may have been travelling in it, Canary Islands coast guard, and the Search And Rescue teams, do an extraordinary job of detecting and intercepting pretty much every vessel that manages to get to us.

Migrants, over recent weeks and months, have not only been greeted by the usual Red Cross volunteers, but immediately assessed and tested for COVID-19 before being put directly into quarantine isolation, and repeatedly tested every two days for a minimum of a fortnight.  This ironically means that all African migrants arriving in pateras are likely to be the lowest risk visitors we have right now coming to the islands. There is no official testing whatsoever of our European tourists, now tentatively starting to return, with masks in their hands, and little more than temperature scans, waving an app based declaration, to assure us that those long overdue holiday makers have taken all the right precautions to ensure they are not bringing anything nasty in to our largely uninfected populations. It’s a bit of a joke, right now.  Anyway, here’s hoping it will all be ok.  Though hope may be no strategy at all, it is something we can all recognise. We want hope to protect us.

While several migrants in recent weeks have tested positive for corona virus, we can be sure we have detected pretty much every one of them.  We will not likely discover any carriers among the tourists until it has already been passed on.  Let’s hope everyone voluntarily keeps washing their hands and wearing their masks while spending their euros to enjoy the sun, sand and sea we offer, so tempting to so many peoples of every shade and socio-economic background, if for sometimes very different reasons.