Guinea-Bissau poised to repatriate 18,000 illegal immigrants

Publisher; Korir, africanpress@getmail.no source.apa

Illegal immigrants in Guinea-Bissau are slated to be « repatriated soon», the director of the border immigration police, Lino Luyal, said in a statement on Monday at the inauguration in Pirada of a police post at the border with Senegal.

“We are going to proceed without delay to the identification of all illegal immigrants (…). They will then be handed over to their embassies for repatriation, including beggars of foreign citizenship squatting in the Bande market of Bissau”, Lino Luyal said.

According to the border and immigration police boss, the repatriation measure will affect 18,000 nationals of the sub-region, including Guineans, Sierra Leonean, Senegalese, Nigerians and Congolese. The beggars are mostly from Guinea (Conakry) and Mali, he said.

According to sources from the Bissau Guinean border and immigration control police, an estimate of over 32,000 foreigners, mainly from the sub-region, are living in Guinea-Bissau.

Mauritanian and Guinean citizens are essentially active in trade (retail, semi-wholesale and wholesale), or even import. The Senegalese are very present in trade as well as traditional fishing.

Apart from Mauritania and the Congo, all the other nationals targeted by the measure are members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

The free movement of people and goods is one of the main objectives of that Community.

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