3071-The political economy of new slavery

78 The Belgian Counter-trafficking Policy
2000). We will now discuss all four pillars (administration, labour law,
criminal code and victim support) in turn. Trafficking in human beings
and illegal immigration often increase with rising migration flows
due to existing restrictive immigration policies. Thousands of migrants,
who want to leave their country of origin for different reasons, often
lack sufficient means. Moreover, migration can occur voluntarily or be
forced (Hayter, 2000) and the widening gap between restrictive immigration
policies and the need for migrant labour constitutes a perfect
environment for trafficking ( Jordan, 2002). The lack of means can be
judicial (like a passport or a visa), or factual (for example, lack of money
to travel via regular channels). Smugglers anticipate the victim’s urge to
migrate abroad, and even stimulate it, using the restrictive migration
policies of the Western European countries as the reason for their
existence (Siron and Van Baeveghem, 1999). Smugglers and traffickers
often make use of legal channels, though not in conformity with the
spirit of the laws. The Belgian parliamentary commission on trafficking
in human beings and a pilot study on the Philippines (De Ruyver et al.,
1999) revealed a number of bottlenecks within the protection of national
borders and the external borders of the Schengen territory (the so-called
Fortress Europe).
In the first place there are abuses of the asylum procedures, marriage
and adoption procedures, abuses of labour licences for cabaret artists,
transit visas, visas for tourists, visas for purposes of family reunion,
the authorization of temporary residence for au pairs; study or sport
purposes, and so on. Furthermore, use is also made of false documents
(forged visas) or residence titles obtained through corruption.
A second problem is the slack control on the application of the
administrative visa rules, in particular within the first half of the 1990s.
However, it became clear in the latest annual report on human trafficking
produced by the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Combating
Racism that there exists even today an enormous abuse of Schengen visas
(Centrum, 2000). Individual shortcomings combined with insufficient
surveillance of the embassy activities are deemed to be important factors
within this area of document fraud. Since every EU member state has its
own policy towards the treatment of visa applications, attention should
be given to a common EU policy concerning asylum and migration.
To counter this problem a data processing system has been put in
place in the Belgian visa sections of the diplomatic offices abroad.
Concerned agencies such as the law enforcement bodies, the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs and the Immigration Office of the Ministry of Home
Affairs meet on a regular basis to enhance the exchange of information