Morocco moves on to regularize situation of illegal migrants

Morocco has launched the second phase of the regularization of the situation of illegal immigrants in the country, the National Commission in charge of Illegal Immigrants' Regularization said in a statement on Monday.

Given the success of the first phase of the regularization campaign that took place in 2014, the Moroccan king Mohammed VI gave his instructions for the launching of the second phase of the process, as already planned by the end of 2016, the source pointed out.

This second phase, which will be launched immediately, will take place under the same conditions as the first phase, which involved about 25,000 people.

In last September, the Moroccan authorities announced that they had regularized the situation of nearly 23,000 illegal migrants since 2013.

According to Morocco's Interior ministry statistics 23 percent of these unauthorized migrants are Syrians, 21 percent are Senegalese and 19 percent from Democratic Republic of Congo.

Morocco has also deported some 5,000 illegal migrants to their countries, the source said.

The same source added that in three years the authorities have dismantled 320 illegal migration networks and foiled some 26,000 illegal migration attempts, chiefly to Europe.

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.

In 2013 Morocco announced a new and more liberal immigration policy that includes avenues for regularization of unauthorized immigrants. Endit