The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaskaannounced this Friday the implementation of transit visas at airports to avoid fraud in asylum applications. As Marlaska explained in Rabat, where he met with his Moroccan counterpart, it has been detected that people from some African countries board flights from Morocco to Latin American countries where they do not need a visa and take advantage of the stopover at Spanish airports to apply. asylum when in transit. This practice has been detected with citizens from Kenya, Morocco either Senegal. “We are working to avoid what we could define as fraudulent use of scales on international flights,” he explained.
At the Barajas airport, more than 300 migrants have resorted to this system and have been waiting for a decision for weeks in the rooms for inadmissible migrants and asylum seekers in terminals T-1 and T-4 in overcrowded conditions.
According to Marlaska, this situation had already occurred in the past and he has not ruled out asking visas traffic to be able to make a stopover in Spain, with the aim of avoiding these situations. The Minister of the Interior has not specified which countries this measure could affect. “We are working intensely and the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior also does extraordinary work at Casablanca airport,” he added.
Collaboration
The Spanish minister and his Moroccan counterpart, Abdelouafi Laftithave shown “excellent” harmony on the two major issues that involve the two countries: the immigration control and the fight against terrorism. “We have a very intense, important and satisfactory relationship,” said the Spanish minister after the meeting, and he also described Morocco as “the main strategic partner of Spain in Interior Affairs”.
As José Manuel Albares, the Spanish Foreign Minister, did a few weeks ago, Marlaska has launched his international agenda for the legislature in Morocco. This Friday was the fourteenth meeting between the two people responsible for the Interior. “We have a high level of effectiveness in the fight against irregular migration,” he stated, before pointing out that the objective is to continue exchanging information with Morocco to dismantle the networks that traffic with human beings. The minister has described this relationship between Rabat and Madrid as “the most relevant and developed example of practical cooperation known between Europe and Africa.”
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Marlaska thanked the “effort“of Morocco in the surveillance of the borders of Ceuta and melilla. According to their ministry, they have observed a 41% decrease of irregular entries into the two autonomous cities. The minister has also informed his Moroccan counterpart of the “technological improvements that are being carried out in the two cities to promote the fluidity of border crossings,” according to the subsequent statement. Also participating in the trip were senior officials of the National Police and Civil Guard responsible for borders.
“The fight against terrorism is one of our greatest concerns, especially when we are in an area like the sahelwith significant destabilization, with coups d’état such as those in Mali and Niger and with a presence on the ground of organizations terrorists“explained Grande-Marlaska. In the last year, Spain and Morocco participated in 14 anti-terrorist operations that culminated in more than 80 detainees, according to the Interior. Both ministers have also spoken about the Operation Crossing the Straits, which ended last year with more than 3.2 million passengers. “We must congratulate ourselves on the satisfactory collaboration in this matter that will continue in 2024,” he explained.