Illegal Immigration in the European Union Essay

Illegal Immigration in the European Union - Essay Example The Maastricht treaty of 1992 created what is known as the ideology of the European citizens, the aim of this treaty was to incorporate the national identities of the citizens of the EU into a European identity without reducing the importance of the national identity of the citizens. The Amsterdam treaty of 1999 gave the citizens of the European Union the right to vote and also to participate in the elections for the European parliament. The Amsterdam treaty granted human rights to the citizens of the EU and this led to the creation of European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights. It was in the Tampere summit in 1999 that it was decided that there would be certain rights and laws for dealing with the issue of immigration, both legal and illegal. It was at the Tampere summit that it was decided that illegal immigration would be fought against using certain measures that would ensure that the illegal immigrants would be investigated quickly and hence the major goal of this paper was to send back the illegal immigrants to their country of origin as soon as possible. ... Canary Islands is an archipelago that is a part of Spain and it lies west to the African continent and is located at a close distance from morocco though the journey might look very easy but it is a very difficult one especially when the means of transport is not a very stable one. In 2005 around 4500 people entered the Canary Islands through the sea route but in 2006 the number almost grew 6 times when the number of illegal immigrants reached the figure of almost 31000. About 6000 migrants went missing or died and only 5000 people were intercepted by the coast guards. This led the then Canary Islands president to ask the centre for help with the issue of illegal immigrants by setting up a committee to address the problem which he describes as 'critical'. Aden martin, the then president of the canary islands, asked not only thy kingdom of Spain for help but also asked the EU to play its part in controlling this situation because he saw this not as a threat only to the canary islands or Spain but as a threat to a whole of Europe because once the illegal immigrants got through to the canary islands they could pretty much move through the whole of Europe freely as they were no check points because of the relaxation in visa policies for the whole of the European bloc. The problem as illustrated above is indeed quite critical because of the staggering number of people that have been trying to make it to Europe through the canary islands not only risk their lives and more than 10,000 people have already lost their lives but they also pose a threat to every party involved economically and due to the large numbers there are no facilities intact currently to deal with them that leads to the problem of crossing the line with respect to human rights issues and accommodation and