Illegal Immigrants Swamp Al-Andalus

Madrid seeks to stem tide of Muslim African immigrants.

Spain has put the last touches to initiatives, including a strengthened [diplomatic] presence in Africa, to try to stem the swelling tide of immigrants from the continent heading for its shores.

The government's plan was agreed as it was announced that a total of 656 African illegal immigrants had arrived in Spain's Canary Islands in the space of 24 hours.

In Madrid Deputy Prime Minister Maria-Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said after a cabinet meeting she would be going to Brussels next week to discuss the issue with, among others, European Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso.

She said that "more Europe" had to be one of the weapons in the battle against would-be illegal immigration.

Translation: we need further transfers of sovereignty to inflexible, unaccountable EU institutions, and more power concentrated in the hands of ideological, unelected elites.

Once again, Europe identifies a problem too late, and realizes that moves toward fascism are among the few remaining options to solve it.

And in the case of Spain, a net drag on the EU's coffers, "more Europe" is code for shifting the economic burden to other nations' taxpayers.

The diplomats will seek over a three to six month period to reach deals on the repatriation of illegal immigrants similar to accords already concluded with Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Nigeria.

Illegal immigrants can only be expelled if such agreements exist and above all if their countries of origin can be determined. Otherwise the Spanish authorities have to free them after 40 days with a notice of expulsion that cannot be implemented.

The Canary Islands, Spanish territory and therefore part of the European Union, have been targeted by would-be immigrants since passage became more difficult from Morocco to Europe via the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, the scene last year of violent attempts by would-be immigrants to storm them.

They don't call it "demographic jihad" for nothing.

UPDATE: Same story in Italy.

Boats carrying more than 400 migrants have been intercepted off Lampedusa over the past 48 hours, overwhelming the tiny island south of Sicily, local authorities said.

"In the past 48 hours, around 420 people have been intercepted near the island. On Saturday night alone 213 migrants were picked up from four different vessels and brought onto the island," Marcello Marzocca of the Palermo customs office told AFP Sunday.

Lampedusa's transit centre can accomodate 190 people but it is frequently overwhelmed by mass arrivals. Transfers to centres in Sicily were being organised on Sunday. Lampedusa, some 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Sicily, is the closest Italian territory to the coasts of Tunisia and Libya.

In 2005, 207 vessels were intercepted off the coast of Italy with nearly 22,000 would-be immigrants on board. In the same year, coast guards and customs officers found the bodies of 70 migrants.