Interior Ministry's Instruction Does Not Serve Algerian Illegal Immigrants

Interior Ministry’s instruction concerning the modalities and conditions for granting emergency passports prevents thousands of immigrants who have no residence documents abroad, to settle their positions in the hosting countries, General Union of Algerian Immigrants, which is based in Spain, said.

Statement of the General Union of Algerian Immigrants in the Spanish Seville, which copy is received by Echorouk, said that the Interior Ministry’s instruction is unfair because it eliminated the dreams of immigrants to settle their residence status.

“Same instruction is devoted to illegal immigration abroad. Interior Ministry issued a statement that was directed to the consulates in order to grant the emergency passports for immigrants who are residing illegally abroad, and ruled the need to grant the request to obtain residence by the hosting country’s authorities, as a condition to take advantage of the emergency biometric passports, considering this procedure as illogical and unfair against thousands of Algerians.”

“It’s strange because there is no similar procedures to the content of this instruction in the communities of other Arab and African countries and South America, which do not put in place similar conditions to the emigrants to get biometric passports in order to settle their situation.”

“Hosting countries’ officials did not understand the significance of this instruction. How can these authorities issue a document of accepting the settlement request, if there is no original demand, due to lack of the valid passports”.

Statement gave the impression that immigrants found themselves in a problem, as on the one hand, the authorities of the foreign country requires a passport to the settlement process, on the other hand, the Algerian authorities require the acceptance of the hosting country’s authorities to accept to settle their positions in order to give them emergency passports. 

It called upon the Prime Minister, Abdelmalek Sellal, by saying that this instruction does not help the Algerian illegal immigration in it will be applied, because it pre-empts any chance to settle the situation for thousands of them, and invited him to intervene with the relevant ministry to cancel this instruction.