The European Union has come up with a novel way of tackling illegal immigration from Africa into Europe; they=92re going to make all African immigration in Europe legal.
The EU has opened its first immigration centre outside Europe in Bamako, the capital of the West African country of Mali. The EU says that thousands of West Africans die in the attempt to get to Europe illegally each year and they hope that the new centre will help Africans find legal work in Europe.
At present, the EU is stressing that the centre will not be a recruiting agency as such and will offer no specific job vacancies, but in the future European countries may recruit from the Bamako office.
Spain already has a similar scheme and offers seasonal contracts to several hundred people from Senegal each year, who mainly work picking fruit or are employed in hotels.
The opening ceremony for the centre was held on Monday and was attended by Amadou Toumani Toure, the president of Mali, EU development commissioner Louis Michel and French Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux.
President Toure called on France to take their share of Malian immigrants, saying that France and Mali =93will have to find solutions to our common problems.=94 He continued:
=93Let=92s be clear, a solution of 100% security is not realistic but neither is a 100% humanitarian solution.
=93The trouble is finding work for young people.=94
Every year, many thousands of West Africans set off from the north of Mali and go across the Sahara Desert on the way to Europe to find work illegally.
Patrick Taran, a migration expert with the International Labour Organisation applauded the EU initiative and said that it was perfectly logical to make illegal immigrants legal immigrants:
=93It makes a lot more sense for people to come through legal channels so that their rights are protected and they can demand and receive fair pay for their work.=94
This is not the first time the European Union has looked at extending its influence, and membership, beyond Europe. Last year Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband suggested that the EU should work towards including countries in the Middle East and North Africa as full EU members.
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