by LILI ESKINAZI
Illegal immigrants represent the world’s newest class of criminals: Locked up in detention centers that are equivalent to prisons awaiting their deportation date. And for what? Having the audacity to challenge their life circumstances.
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Modernity redefined the movement of people in a profound way. Colonizers claimed the ultimate right to freedom of movement and the power to define and restrict the movement of the colonized. We don’t have to look further than the forced displacement of indigenous peoples onto reservations in what is now the U.S. and Canada or the slave trade that forcibly relocated Africans to the Americas to be exploited for their labor. Fast-forward to today, whether it is along the Mexico-U.S. border, or the Mediterranean sea that separates Africa from Europe, Northern countries are increasingly using their dominating power to limit and define the rules of immigration: Who, how many, for what reason, when, and where.
The European model provides a striking example of the colonial legacy in that the pattern of immigration is South to North, largely from former colony to former Metropole. The modern-day European immigration system is neo-colonial in two main ways: First, the immigration apparatus is a moneymaking industry for European corporations; and second, it allows Europe to exert its control on Southern governments to restrict “illegal” immigration at their borders.
Frontex: A Lucrative Industry
The European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union—Frontex for short—was established in 2004 and became operational in 2005. Its main function is to provide a pan European model of Integrated Border Management to fortify the external borders of the Shengen zone so as to keep the zone “safe” for free movement internally.
The official Frontex website self defines its role as follows: “Within this [the Shengen zone] context, Frontex’s responsibility is essentially simple, though in practice daunting: To ensure that the EU’s external borders remain permeable and efficient for bona fide travelers, while being an effective barrier to cross-border crime.” The distinction is clear: legitimate traveler versus cross-border criminal, read: illegal immigrant.
Frontex controls 42,672 km of external sea borders and 8,826 km of land borders made up of the 25 member-country Schengen free-movement area (including a number of non-EU states). Since its implementation in 2005, Frontex’s budget has ballooned to nearly 14 times its original figure: from 6, 280, 202 EUR in 2005 to 87,917,000 EUR in 2010. Funding for Frontex essentially comes from the so-called “community,” or Schengen member countries.
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(Thanks to Feroz Mehdi)