Bulgaria Proves Dead-End Street for Poorest Migrants - French Daily

Bulgaria in EU | January 3, 2012, Tuesday // 14:44|  views

Photo by Sofia Photo Agency

Being a member of the EU but not of the Schengen area, Bulgaria is just a transit county for illegal immigrants, according to a French daily.

In a publication devoted to asylum-seekers in Bulgaria, Le Figaro explains that all persons accommodated at Registration-and-Reception Centres of the State Agency for Refugees complain of the confined living space, the strained relations with the security guards and the dilapidated equipment.

However, they are free to come and go, which is not the case at the Lyubimets and Busmantsi detention centers, where persons pending deportation are also held, the French daily notes, as cited by the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency (BTA).

All asylum applicants in Bulgaria are poor and somewhat confused and the country is rarely their end goal, Iliana Savova from the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) is quoted as saying.

The refugees themselves say that Bulgaria's only advantages are the low prices and the opportunity to cross the border with Turkey easily.

An official of the migration department at the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry speaking on condition of anonymity points out that migrant traffickers rarely ask for more than EUR 1000 to show the way out to an entire family of illegals.

Persons accommodated by the State Agency for Refugees say that crossing into Greece, a Schengen country, costs twice more.

According to Le Figaro, sometimes Bulgaria proves a dead-end street for asylum-seekers.

Some 1000 persons apply for asylum each year, mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq, Armenia, Iran, and most recently, from Africa.

However, no more than 10% get political asylum, while the remaining ones may spend years roaming through the local red-tape labyrinths before they decide to head off to Western Europe, often again illegally.

The imperfections of the legal system (one asylum-seeker can file an indefinite number of applications), combined with the insufficient administrative capacity, enable the formation of a community of people without documents whose stay in the country has expired.

They live in groups, some of them squatting in vacant homes.

Most of them work illegally, others engage in petty scams, still others become drug addicts and hobos, Le Figaro adds.

Migrants staying in Bulgaria, however, describe it as a nice country despite the insecure conditions at their places of accommodation, the low minimal wage and the harsh looks locals tend to give them.

They say that they have left hell behind them and try to convince the interviewers that they want to settle permanently in the poorest EU country.

Despite that, their eyes shine at the mention of Paris, London and Amsterdam, the French daily reports.

Each year, a total of 90 aliens who are granted refugee or humanitarian status will get financial assistance by the state.

30 of them will be children, 20 at school age and 10 pre-school aged.

The assistance is provided under the National Programme for Integration of Refugees in the Republic of Bulgaria 2011–2013, which was adopted last year.

According to statistics of the State Agency for Refugees, 825 persons from 50 countries applied for asylum in the period January 01, 2010 - October 31, 2010.

19 of the applicants in the said period were granted refugee status and 108 were granted humanitarian status.

The majority of the asylum-seekers, 341, listed Iraq as their country of origin.

The top three refugee countries of origin for the past 17 years are Afghanistan, Iran and Armenia, respectively.

70% of the refugees are men and 17% are children.

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Tags: Busmantsi Detention Facility, lyubimets, Schengen, traffickers, State Agency for Refugees, Asylum, asylum seekers, humanitarian status, refugee status, refugee, illegal migrants, Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, BHC

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