Spain agrees Moroccan migrant quota

Some Spanish farms rely on Moroccan labour

By David Bamford in Rabat

Morocco and Spain have signed a new agreement to allow up to 20,000 Moroccans to enter Spain annually in search of work.

The agreement signed in Madrid by Spanish Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy and Moroccan Social Development Minister Abass el-Fassi is designed to reduce the number of Moroccans who make the treacherous sea journey in makeshift motor boats across the Straits of Gibraltar in their attempts to enter Spain illegally.

Many Moroccans are desperate to leave their home country

Moroccans already make up Spain's largest foreign community.

About 250,000 live and work there legally although the number of illegal Moroccan residents is thought to be up to three times that number.

The fact that Spain is signing this agreement at a time when its unemployment rate is the highest in the European Union shows the extent to which Madrid recognises something must be done about illegal immigration.

Every year thousands of boat people leave Moroccan shores in the dead of night trying to reach the Spanish coast without being spotted.

They are joined by thousands more people fleeing the poverty of other African countries.

Hundreds have drowned in the attempt.

Washed up

Bodies are washed up every day on both Moroccan and Spanish beaches.

The deal is important to Morocco to help ease its own unemployment burden.

But the authorities in Rabat have basically said that the illegal exodus to Spain is Europe's problem and not Morocco's.

They say that if the EU wants the flow of immigrants to stop it should invest more in North Africa and help create jobs there.