Ivorians queue up to leave

Hundreds of people gather every day outside the French embassy visa section in Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast in West Africa.

They start queuing from 0400, even during the rainy season, desperate to leave for France, the former colonial power.

Hardly anyone in the queue admits wanting to settle in Europe, but they say many Ivorians are being driven into exile by poverty and increasing fears of political instability since a coup in 1999.

"There are lots of people who want to settle abroad," one young man told me.

"First, there's a political problem, but what mainly bothers young people like us are economic problems."

Abidjan is one of sub-Saharan Africa's showcase cities.

Its central business district is dominated by modern skyscrapers.

But you do not need to venture far from the centre to find extreme poverty.

'Unjust'

Many slum dwellers are desperate to go to Europe where they believe they will find work and a better life.

An estimated 30,000 French people live and work here, and Ivorians trying to go to France are furious because they say it is becoming more difficult for them to do so.

People are herded through the embassy gate a few at a time while guards shout at them to stay in line.

It is as if the fence around the visa section marks the outer wall of "Fortress Europe".

"It's unjust and unacceptable," said a man in the queue who gave his name as Belmondo.

Forgeries

"Look, Ivorians identify with the French. Our model is France. Why shouldn't we be allowed to go to a place that we see as home?"

"It's very difficult to get a visa," said Flore Anastasie Bridgi, a smartly dressed woman standing in line.

"I want to go on business because I have a shop and I need to buy goods to sell. I have all the required papers and I'm not going to stay in France, so why is it such a lengthy process?"

Mingling with the crowd outside the embassy are a number of young men who whisper offers to sell forged visas and even passports.

I told them I was from Eastern Europe and needed to change my passport, and they offered to supply me with an Ivorian passport and French visa for the next day for less than $100.

"We sell a lot of these to Nigerians and Sierra Leoneans," one man told me, showing me what appeared to be a genuine Ivorian passport.

But diplomats say the forgeries are generally poor quality, and few who buy them manage to enter a Western country.

Many would-be migrants believe that they stand a better chance of smuggling themselves into Europe.

But that means paying a trafficker thousands of dollars to arrange the trip, and they run the risk of shipwreck, death or jail on the way.

Census

One man I met in a working-class suburb of Abidjan told me that he had handed over all his savings to a trafficker who promised to send him and his family to Italy and then on to France.

"He took all our money and then he just vanished," said the man, who declined to give his name.

"Now I don't know how we're going to live. I can't pay my rent and my family are going to end up on the street."

But it is not only European countries that are trying to stem the refugee tide.

With hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring into Ivory Coast from Liberia, where civil war has broken out again, and huge numbers of workers coming here from other neighbouring countries such as Mali, Guinea and even relatively well-off Ghana, the government is now carrying out a census.

One of its purposes is to identify who is Ivorian and who is not.

It has become a political issue here, as an opposition leader, Alassane Ouattara, is being denied the right to run for president on the grounds that the government says he is originally from Burkina Faso, although he says he is from the north of Ivory Coast.

Up to a quarter of Ivory Coast's population come from neighbouring countries or are descended from immigrants.

The increasingly tough attitude of the authorities here has triggered fears of a potential refugee crisis in the region if they are expelled.