Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska hailed Morocco’s cooperation, which helped his country to reduce by 50 pc the arrival of illegal migrants. He called for a harmonized EU migration policy, stressing the need to enhance cooperation with the countries of origin and transit of migrants. In 2019, Morocco prevented 74,000 people from illegally crossing to Spain and foiled 89,000 illegal migration attempts the previous year. The degradation of security conditions in Libya pushed many migrants to opt for Morocco as a transit point. Besides being a transit country, Morocco is also a destination country and was the first in Africa to launch a migrant regularization campaign offering legal residency status to some 56,000 migrants mostly from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Source: The North Africa Journal February 18, 2020 23:48 UTC