Illegal Migrants Turn to Smugglers as Europe’s Borders Tighten

KOENIGS WUSTERHAUSEN, Germany — Their odyssey hit a dead end on an autobahn outside Berlin, where 16 men from Bangladesh, some barefoot and frostbitten, were found abandoned.

Germany is accustomed to waves of refugees, but the story of the Bangladeshis made headlines after they were dumped on a frigid winter morning by smugglers who prey on human desperation.

Despite rising unemployment and anti-foreigner sentiment in Western Europe, many on the outside will still try anything to get in, for a chance at a better life.

During the Cold War, the fortifications erected by communist countries to wall in their citizens also kept refugees from crossing Western Europe’s eastern flank. Now that the iron curtain is gone, Western countries are spending millions on beefed-up patrols and high technology to stem the tide of unwanted migrants. In turn, more and more would-be migrants from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa are paying thousands of dollars to smuggling rings for a better chance of reaching their destination.

“The more they pay, the better the service over the border,” said Juergen Reimann, director of the German border patrol office in Frankfurt an der Oder, on the Polish border about 30 miles east of Berlin. “There are even guarantees: ‘You get three attempts, and we guarantee one will be successful.’ ”

The Germans hope to put a dent in the flow with the capture of a Turk described as Europe’s most-wanted people smuggler. Mulis Pinarbisis, who was taken into custody April 8, and his gang are alleged to have smuggled at least 90,000 Kurds into Germany over the years.

Germany has long been a beacon for economic refugees fleeing poverty, but the welcome mat is no longer out. Politicians argue that a country with 4.5 million jobless, or nearly 12% of the labor force, can no longer afford to be so generous.

Germany’s border with Poland is among Europe’s most heavily patrolled, but Interior Minister Manfred Kanther wants reinforcements: an additional 1,500 guards to stop illegal immigrants and smugglers headed west.

More than 500 were arrested in January alone on Germany’s wooded borders with Poland and the Czech Republic, where most of the traffic is concentrated. But many still get through. One smuggling route from Asia goes through Moscow and Minsk to Poland, then across either one of the two rivers--Oder and Neisse--on Germany’s eastern border.

The migrants have slowed plans of European Union nations to lower internal borders and drop passport controls. Britain, an island nation that can more easily protect its borders, refuses to sign the plan because of the millions of illegal immigrants already residing in other EU countries, where there are few controls.

The Dutch, saying asylum-seekers should not be treated as prisoners, lets them walk away from processing centers while their requests are being reviewed.

Italy’s government has proposed a law allowing 30-day detention of asylum-seekers, and expulsion if their request is denied. Now they are given 15-day temporary visas, and many disappear in Italy or head north to other EU nations.

North Africans who elude the Spanish coastal police use Spain as a stepping-stone into the rest of Europe, in the same way Turkish and Middle Eastern immigrants slip through Greece’s many islands.

The problem with unwanted economic migrants isn’t confined to Europe.

The United States has fenced off stretches of its border with Mexico to discourage tens of thousands of Latin Americans trying to enter illegally. The smuggling in of Chinese illegals and other Asians is also increasing.

In Asia, booming Hong Kong is walled off to keep out migrants from mainland China. That will not change when the British colony is handed back to Beijing’s control July 1.

But for many of the world’s poor, Western Europe remains the goal, and criminal bands have sprung up to capitalize on that dream.

Some organize runs in leaky boats on the long Mediterranean coastlines that form Europe’s southern flank. Often the migrants take their lives in their hands.

In late March, a boat carrying Albanians trying to escape unrest in their homeland sank after colliding with an Italian warship that was part of a blockade to halt Albanian refugees. Eighty people were reported missing.

In January, 152 people from Turkey, Iraq, Iran, India, Pakistan and Senegal were rescued by the Italian coast guard from a leaking Turkish ship. They are awaiting deportation.

In late December, authorities arrested 114 people, mostly from south Asia, after they waded ashore at Nafplion, Greece. Dozens of others managed to elude arrest.

The land route can also be dangerous.

in January, 143 refugees--men, women and small children from Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka-- were found freezing in a barn near the village of Cerveny Kamen in Slovakia. They were dumped by smugglers who told them they had reached Germany, authorities said. “The culprits usually disappear, leaving these poor people on their own,” said Bernard Priecel of the Immigration Office in Bratislava.

The 16 young men from Bangladesh who were abandoned near Berlin said they paid $4,000 to $6,000 each to smugglers for the trip to Germany.

After reaching Poland, they tramped for hours through the snow before dashing across the frozen Neisse River on Dec. 30, half of them losing their ragged shoes along the way. Once across, they were met by a white truck and driven for 2 1/2 hours before they were ordered out along the autobahn.

Picked up by German authorities, they were taken to a hospital in the Berlin suburb of Koenigs Wusterhausen for treatment of frostbite. Five had to have toes or fingers amputated.

Under a law passed in 1993, refugees caught entering Germany by land can be sent straight back on grounds that they could have sought refuge in a peaceful neighboring country.

The Bangladeshis could still qualify for political asylum in Germany because they were far from the border when they were caught. While their cases are being decided, they join thousands of other illegals at detention centers across Germany.

Amarjit Singh, a 28-year-old Sikh mechanic from India, is one of those awaiting a decision on his case at a center in Eisenhuettenstadt.

Singh said he faced police beatings back home, but conceded that his biggest problem back in the Punjab was lack of a job. “I was looking for four years,” he said in a recent interview. “There’s no work.”

German border officials believe their beefed-up efforts are showing results. More than 27,000 people were caught illegally entering Germany in 1996, the Interior Ministry says. That was almost 9% less than the previous year.

But the number of smuggled migrants caught last year rose 11% to almost 7,400, indicating that gangs are playing a bigger role in evading border patrols, Reimann said.

Germany is helping Poland tighten its borders, donating the equivalent of $66 million for equipment such as carbon dioxide detectors to find stowaways in trucks and sealed containers. Poland also plans to put 1,000 more guards on its eastern border with Belarus and Ukraine.

Polish officials say most of the 3,200 people who applied for asylum in Poland last year were caught en route to Germany. That was up from 842 in 1995.

But two-thirds of the cases were dropped last year because the applicants disappeared.

“The problem is that after several days they simply leave the refugee centers and try to storm the German border again,” said Krzysztof Lewandowski, a deputy director at Poland’s Interior Ministry.