By Oualid Bakkas
Rabat - When Cheick Yacoub Sylla, 33, left the Ivory Coast in 2007, he dreamt of reaching Europe to become an international football player for the biggest European football clubs. He never made it. After a short experience in the Arabian Gulf, he’s now living in Morocco, and his dream is no longer to become a famous football player, but to see the dignity and rights of immigrants respected.
“I’m still waiting to get a scholarship from the Embassy of my country to continue my graduate studies here in Morocco,” said Sylla.
In November 2014, Morocco launched an exceptional operation to legalize undocumented immigrants living in Morocco. The operation was based on a 2013 report of the National Council for Human Rights (CNDH), calling for a new policy of migration and asylum. The core beliefs of this program were the respect for human rights and dignity of migrants and refugees, fighting human trafficking, and the integration of immigrants and refugees into society.
“When preparing for this operation, we gathered different NGOs working on migration affairs and human rights, our council was the link between these organizations, and the governmental sides, and we worked together on this project,” said Aminata Pagni, the migrants’ projects officer at CNDH. “All stakeholders presented their ideas about how this operation should be.” She added that their position in the CNDH, was to try to make all conceptions meet, and it was up to the authorities to decide on the criteria of getting residency cards.
In a press conference on February 9, 2015, the Minister Delegate to the Minister of Interior, Charki Draiss, said that Morocco had legalized the status of 17,916 illegal immigrants, with an acceptance rate of 65 percent of the applications from immigrants of 116 nationalities.
For Amadou Sadio Baldé, a prominent member of the Council of Sub-Saharan Immigrants in Morocco, this operation is a start, but there is a long way to go.
“Thanks to this operation, our rights as immigrants are respected, we can move freely and we got rid of that long time fear to be arrested by authorities, and be sent to the Algerian border,” said Amadou.
However, Amadou says Morocco should have gone further, legalizing all of the 27,000 immigrants who applied for residency.
“We criticized the five strict criteria that the government put [these criteria are: being married to a Moroccan citizen, being married to foreign who resides legally in Morocco, being children of one of the two cases, having an employment contract in Morocco, having at least five years of residency in Morocco, and being diagnosed with serious illnesses], because due to these criteria that we have about 9000 applications that were refused.”
Commenting on this point, Aminata Pagni said that the CNDH would like to accept all applicants, and give them their papers, but the authorities did what they thought was right, regardless of the recommendations from civil society organizations.
“There is a possibility that these criteria will be expanded and that the NGOs’ recommendations will be taken into consideration by the Appeals Board that will revise the rejected applications,” Aminata said. “We would be glad if all the 9000 rejected applicants would be legalized.”
Migrant rights activists hope that getting residency cards will help them integrate into Moroccan society. “I know many people who fulfill the criteria, but don’t apply to get residency papers, simply because they think that these cards are useless,” said Sylla, adding that it is important for Moroccan people TO accept migrants, and that migrants find better jobs and a better life.
Created in 2006, Le groupe antiraciste de défense et d’accompagnement des étrangers et migrants (GADEM) is one of the prominent organizations defending the rights of migrants in Morocco. “It’s difficult to see a quick impact of this operation on migrants’ life,” said Bilal Jouhari, the Communication Manager of GADEM. “Integration is a long process,” he said.
For Sylla, integration has been a very long process, but it’s the only thing that can guarantee that legal immigrants will give up on reaching Europe. Still, he believes that the responsibility belongs to both the Moroccan and European governments. “It’s all about finding good job opportunities for immigrants, and stopping conflicts in the south [sub-Saharan countries],” said Sylla. “European countries encouraged Morocco to introduce this new policy of migration, so they must contribute and care about the question of integration, too.”
Mary Byrne contributed reporting
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