Throughout 2023, the year of the great migratory crisis, Interior surpassed 4,000 migrant returns from non-European countries to their places of origin, according to sources from that ministry and data communicated by the Government to Eurostat.
The figures sent to Europe are returns after the issuance of an order to leave Spanish territoryhim, whatever the reason. The total number of these returns, most of them forced, is 3,795 as of last October 1. The specific data for the last quarter is still in the counting process, indicate the aforementioned sources, although the trend of 2022 will continue, with a thousand more for the sum in the last quarter.
The number of these cold returns has been decreasing as the recently concluded year progressed. In the first quarter, they were sent to their countries of origin 1,620 irregular immigrants. Between April and June they were 1,375 the people returned. Between July 1 and October 1, Spain sent its countries of origin to 800 immigrants.
The data includes the police figure of 1,941 expulsions and returns carried out between January 1 and June 30, the first half of 2023, counted in Immigration of the National Police. In this case, the figure has a more penal than administrative content: the expulsion is carried out when the foreigner in an irregular situation commits a serious crimee confirmed in a judicial instruction; to the return This is done when that foreigner, already expelled, tries to enter the country again, or has been intercepted at the border (cases of Ceuta and Melilla) trying to violate it.
Return flights
In comparison with the number of irregular entries of migrants in Spain during this year just ended. -only by sea, 56,852, with an increase of 82.1%- The number of mandatory returns does not even reach 10%. The returned foreigners, furthermore, do not have to be from the current and unfinished wave, since a segment of that contingent had already been more than a year in Spain in a non-regular situation.
But there has been return flights of Senegalese, Mauritanians, Nigeriens and Gambians during this year. EL PERIÓDICO has reported on three, all of them touching Canarian airports, and of which one, bound for Nouakchott last July, has also been picked up, and criticized, by the Stop Deportation platform.
Regarding this detail, Interior maintains great discretion. The minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska prefers to talk about departures avoided at origin. This Thursday he highlighted the fact again: the agreements with Senegal and Mauritania and the deployment of civil guards and police in those countries have allowed avoid 27,000 departures this year40% of a flow to Spain by sea, which the Minister of the Interior has compared with the 155,000 arrivals to Italy and the 47,000 to Greece.
The weight of money
In Spain, the political power avoids reporting on the repatriation flights that are organized, despite the fact that some of the police advisors recommend that the minister make them public so that they can be provided. a deterrent effect.
But deterrence is scarce if poverty is pressing. The main reason why Spain does not send more repatriation flights to sub-Saharan Africa is the opposition of the countries in the area to receive them. On December 13, in Congress, the head of the Interior confronted the opposition: “Do you believe that the countries, due to the economic circumstances they are experiencing, are going to accept the return, thatLet’s send them planes with 300? Do you know in Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Konakri… what immigration remittances represent? “Between 10 and 15% of its GDP!”
The first objective of a sub-Saharan immigrant arriving on Spanish soil is, possibly, to continue traveling to France, Belgium or other European countries. But the one that weighs the most in his life plan is that of send money to your family. “And as soon as he has it he will do it, whether he is legally here or not,” confirm police sources from the Immigration area in Madrid. To do this, the migrant will use four ways: a mobile application, a money order, an ATM or a trusted countryman.
Small shipments from emigrants around the planet, most of no more than 100 euros, make up a remittance pool of 630,000 million dollars, according to the World Bank’s 2022 estimate. Since 2016, it is the largest flow of foreign money in Sahelian Africa. In that area, the receipt of remittances has grown at a rate of 14.1% annually since 2021. In Northern Africa, it has risen at a rate of 7.6% in the same period, according to the aforementioned source.
Out of Europe
With the return figures, Spain is among the ten European countries that return the most irregular immigrants to their points of origin, although at a distance from Germany, Sweden, France and near Poland, with 11,260, 7,935, 8,595 and 4,715 foreigners in an irregular situation returned until October 1 respectively.
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The accumulated throughout the European Union is 80,370 people returned in different processes until the end of the third quarter of last yeareither. In 2022, EU countries returned 96,795 migrants to their points of departure.
Interior does not offer data about the majority nationality of the forced returnees. Police sources tell this newspaper that the majority are sub-Saharans from West Africa and Algerians. The main reasons for a cold forced return are a negative ruling in an asylum procedure and the lack of a visa or administratively admissible reasons to remain in Spain.