Three months after the launch of a second operation to regularize the status of illegal migrants in Morocco, over 18,000 people have submitted requests to benefit from this process.
Until March 8, some 18,281 migrants have submitted requests to obtain regular status in the country, the minister of Moroccan Expatriates and Migration Affairs Anis Birou said during a meeting on migration here on Thursday.
Last December, Morocco launched the second phase of the regularization operation, an approach aimed at achieving the economic and social integration of people in an irregular situation, most of them from sub-Saharan countries.
Many have fled violent conflict, whereas others left in search of a brighter economic future in Europe.
Due to the restrictive immigration policy of the European Union, the irregular migrants, whose stays in Morocco planned to be transitory, were consequently obliged to settle down in different cities in the country.
In early 2014, Morocco launched an exceptional operation to regularize the status of people living illegally in the country.
The operations resulted in granting nearly 25,000 migrants a legal status.
Morocco announced the new and more liberal immigration policy in 2013, including avenues for regularization of unauthorized immigrants.
Figures show that 85.5 percent of the requests submitted by 27,449 people had been accepted.
Among the requests made by migrants from some 116 different countries, 23 percent of these unauthorized migrants are Syrians, 21 percent are Senegalese and 19 percent are from Democratic Republic of Congo.
Meanwhile, over 21,000 migrants from 36 countries benefitted, from the voluntary return to their countries of origin since 2014, especially from Senegal, Nigeria, Mali and Cameroun, according to data from the Ministry of Moroccan Expatriates and Migration Affairs.
In recent years, Morocco has turned from a country of passage for illegal migrants to Europe, to a country of settlement for migrants and refugees from sub-Saharan Africa, Syria and Iraq.
SOURCE: Coast Week
