Commissioner Héctor Moreno is the top manager of Spain's National Center for Immigration and Borders, a body designed to "integrate visions" around the problem of "illegal, irregular or whatever you want to call it" immigration, as he himself remarks. Its task is to face "a huge problem, against which the police is only part of the solution", and also to emphasize that "the Border Police not only frustrates the entrance of immigrants; it also saves lives". Moreno intervened in the I congress of Borders and Human Rights, organized by the School of Law of the University of Navarra.

The numbers shared by the members of Frontex - the agency that controls the external borders of the European Union - give an idea of the dimension of the challenge: 4% of the current population of the member countries was born in countries outside the Union, some 20.4 million citizens. In addition, 2.1 million permits were granted last year to residency program, most of them to U.S. citizens (200,000), Ukrainians (163,000), Chinese, Indians, Moroccans and Russians, in order from highest to lowest.

The EU has 12,500 kilometers of land and 70,000 sea borders, as well as some 600 international airports through which 675 million passengers of 120 different nationalities pass every year. "Airports are the most important points of entrance for illegal immigration, ahead of the boats in the Mediterranean and the Balkan border," remarked the commissioner.

This overview of immigration in Europe was completed at a local level by the Councilor for Social Policies of the Government of Navarra, Iñigo Alli, who pointed out that 9.4% of the current population of Navarra is made up of people born outside Spain. The Minister remarked that the current 508 million European inhabitants would decrease to 400 million in 2060 if there were no immigrants entrance , so he advocated continuing to work on policies for the protection and social integration of foreigners: "They do not want to leave and we need them", he insisted.

I congress Borders and Human Rights

The Human Rights Institute of the University of Navarra Law School School has organized the I International congress 'Borders and Human Rights'. The symposium has addressed this week the reality of borders in the contemporary world, related to very diverse aggressions to human rights contained in the Universal Declaration of the United Nations Organization.

The congress focused specifically on two very different border realities that are equally generating aggressions to human rights: on the one hand, the European Union's immigration policy, and specifically the protection of the southern maritime borders, with the reality of the arrival of small boats from Africa as the main focus of the problem; on the other hand, the Israeli border and the Gaza Strip, the scene of a war that has its roots in the history of the twentieth century.