Broadcast on November 21, 2001, on Moroccan TV channel M2, this 54-minute report, part of the investigative program Tahqiq presented by Mohamed Khatem, tries to explore the reasons that prompt Moroccans to consider the adventure of illegal immigration.     

  

            The team of journalists working with Mohamed Saad Alaoui embarks the viewer on its travels as it seeks to understand the underlying reasons of this quite self-evident life plan at the beginning of the 21st century. The report carried out in several cities deeply concerned with the problem of illegal immigration, namely: Tangier, Oujda and Nador, gives voice to those who devise various strategies, sometimes risking their lives, to reach the Spanish shore. The journalists talking to some of the would-be migrants to Europe focus on the means and tricks used in these illegal crossings.    

 

            But the report also shows the measures adopted by Moroccan authorities to contain this phenomenon considered a serious scourge. Thus, multiple controls are in place, carried out for example in the ports of Tangier and Nador, as well as at the crossing points along the entire border between Morocco and Algeria. This crossing “dream” is often dashed either by the efficiency of the police hunt when it succeeds in breaking up crossing networks, or in the case of those who make it across the Mediterranean, by the difficulties of living clandestinely in European countries like France and Spain, due to exploitation by employers, police hunts and the racism of the natives.               

 

Article by Pierre Vermeren in Le Monde Diplomatique newspaper, June 2006, « Moroccans dream of Europe », available online

http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2002/06/VERMEREN/16632