LAMPEDUSA: Carrying just the clothes on their backs, Tunisian migrants began to be flown out of Lampedusa this week on the next leg of a journey they hope will take them to new lives in Europe.
Some of the latest transfers to immigrant detention centers on mainland Italy were seen lining up at the airport on this tiny outcrop, where thousands have been arriving on fishing boats from a turbulent Tunisia in recent days.
"I don’t know where they’re taking us. We are in the hands of Allah," said Issam, a 23-year-old from the Tunisian city of Ben Garden near the border with Libya, who crossed the Mediterranean to reach Lampedusa earlier this month.
Issam was one of 100 men taken on an Air Italy charter flight to the southern Italian city of Brindisi after a series of stringent health checks and patdowns by security guards wearing surgical masks and latex gloves.
"Where’s France?" "Do they check for passports on the border between Italy and France?" "How can I get to Milan?" asked some of the undocumented immigrants, as they planned how to evade police controls to stay on in Europe.
They scrutinized a map of Italy, looking for routes to northern Europe.
"I’m going to France. I’ve been there before. I don’t have any identity papers but I’m going to get there with the TGV," the high-speed French train, smiled 30-year-old Mullah, as he queued for the security checks.
Brusque guards barked out orders in English but migrants responded in French, creating confusion. They half-filled a plane in which the overhead lockers remained mostly empty as few brought belongings with them.
"I’m just looking for a calm place to live. You know what it’s like in Tunisia at the moment. It’s not stable at all," said one young man. Another man, who wore a long coat, said: "I’m going to France to be a cook."
Lampedusa is closer to Tunisian shores than to Italy and has been a gateway for illegal immigration into Europe, even though the arrivals of boatloads of migrants had decreased in recent years following a crackdown by Italy.
The main route into Europe is now believed to be the Greek-Turkish border.
Some 30,000 undocumented migrants were estimated to have arrived in Italy by sea between August 2008 and July 2009. That number went down to around 3,500 between August 2009 and July 2010, according to official data.
Lampedusa does not have facilities for processing migrants and all of the roughly 5,000 people who have arrived on the island in recent days will eventually be taken to other parts of Italy, officials explained.
They will have a chance to make a formal request for asylum at immigrant detention centers which usually takes around three months to process.
Those that are not granted any form of asylum are sent back under agreements between Italy and Tunisia, although Italian officials have said these accords have not been enforced since the Tunisian revolution last month.
"We can’t say that they’re all political refugees. We have to see case by case," said Roberto Cota, governor of the Piedmont region in northern Italy and a member of the anti-immigration Northern League party.
"Anyone who isn’t a refugee has to be sent back," he said.
Laura Boldrini, a spokeswoman in Rome for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said: "These are people who have faced the dangers of a sea crossing and they must be allowed to request asylum, as some have already done."
Wrapped in a parka jacket against the nippy night air, Bessem, also 30, said he just wanted to save up enough money to be able to marry in Tunisia.
"There’s no work in Tunisia. We’ll get jobs here and then we can get married," he smiled, as he waited for a plane out of Lampedusa.
"My brother lives in Paris. I don’t know how I’m going to get there.
