Map of Europe Still Has Its Borders

HENDAYE, France —  The churning currents of Europe’s immigration politics swept trainloads of illegal immigrants into this Basque seaside town recently, with strange results.

Rather than catching illegal entrants, French border police found themselves collaring platoons of conspicuous, bewildered migrants as they tried to leave the country for Spain, beckoned by a legalization program.

On the other side of the line, Spanish police swarmed usually unguarded checkpoints on roads and railways to intercept border-crossers, then herded them back into France to beat a four-hour deadline for returning the detainees.

“This kind of thing happens every time a country undertakes a legalization,” said Thierry Guiguet-Doron, the chief of the border police in this sector of France’s boundary with Spain. “The word spreads and the undocumented around Europe mobilize.”

With most internal borders officially erased, travel within the European Union resembles a flight from Los Angeles to Chicago or a drive across the California-Nevada state line. The shuttered inspection booths and skeletal remnants of ports of entry are manned only for spot checks or special operations targeting suspected criminals.

But the boundaries remain politically charged fault lines. The ideal of a unified, borderless community of nations collides with the reality of disparate laws and attitudes regarding sovereignty, security and citizenship. Smugglers and migrants exploit the open borders and diverse policies to float among countries in search of jobs and papers.

The case of Said Farid, a boyish migrant with a bowl-shaped haircut and a nervous smile, illustrates that convoluted reality.

Farid, 30, found himself in the French border police lockup here this month. He claimed to be an Afghan fleeing political persecution, although police believed that he was actually Pakistani.

Farid recounted an odyssey that took him by plane from Pakistan to an unknown destination, a clandestine boat crossing to Italy, furtive road travel by night. In Paris late last month, he joined groups of fellow South Asians who boarded an overnight high-speed train bound for Spain via the Hendaye crossing.

French police say smugglers marshaled part of the exodus but that some migrants were drawn simply by rumors of an opportunity in the south.

Farid insisted that he didn’t know that Spain was offering a legalization program. He claimed that he didn’t even realize that he had arrived at a border.

“My friend just gave me this piece of paper and said, ‘Call this number when you get to Hendaye,’ ” Farid said in accented English, sitting stiffly against the drab, blue wall of an interrogation room in the police lockup. “I went to the cafe in the train station to use the phone. The French police stopped me and said, ‘Show me papers.’ And I didn’t have any.”

In the last two months, border police here caught more than 700 illegal immigrants -- about half the total number of arrests in this sector for a typical year. About two-thirds were Pakistanis, Indians and Bangladeshis whose journeys from their homelands typically cost more than $8,000 in smuggling fees, French officials say. The police also intercepted private buses and vans full of Romanians en route to Spain from Germany and Austria.

In fact, Farid and the rest would not have qualified for legalization in Spain. The initiative that ended May 7 applied only to workers employed in Spain for at least six months. In addition, it granted only legal status in Spain, not the regionwide freedom of movement that allows most EU residents to live in whatever member nation they choose.

But, coming at a time when Europe has fortified itself against immigration, organized crime and international terrorism, the scope of the Spanish amnesty -- about 700,000 applicants were accepted -- exceeded previous programs in the EU and generated tension with France and other neighbors.

Last week, the interior ministers of Europe’s five most powerful nations met in Paris to declare new cooperation in a crackdown on illegal immigration. French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin made it clear that France would not embark on any legalization programs like the one in Spain, calling it a bad idea.

“It’s out of the question,” Villepin told reporters, labeling France’s last two amnesty initiatives, in 1981 and 1997, failures. “Each time, it creates a chain reaction and a wave of new arrivals,” he said.

Villepin and his counterparts from Spain, Germany, Britain and Italy said they had agreed on ways to improve coordination. Those agreements are meant to help avoid the repercussions that angered French authorities struggling with an influx of immigrants bound for Spain, the French minister said.

“We don’t want any kind of misunderstanding to happen again, any kind of difficulty between our countries,” Villepin said. “That’s why we think it’s good to discuss ahead of time so we can verify that the decisions of each will not have consequences on the others.”

Spanish officials denied causing problems for their neighbors, arguing that the legalized workers would have been more likely to travel elsewhere if they had remained undocumented and in the underground economy.

The conflict and disorder arising from the Spanish program were an example of the growing pains of a continent whose prosperity attracts migration from the developing world.

Europe has changed substantially since the 1970s, when French police manned the line in Hendaye round the clock. In those days, they pursued impoverished Portuguese wading stealthily across the Bidassoa River, which flows through the verdant, high-walled valley dividing France and Spain.

With the implementation of the Schengen Treaty in 1995, most of the European Union’s 15 core nations opened their borders to their neighbors.

Despite the idyllic facade, today European law enforcement struggles in a chaotic shadow world that recalls the hotspots of the U.S.-Mexico border and Florida. Southern and Eastern Europe are front lines overwhelmed by thousands of desperate migrants arriving mainly from North Africa and the Balkans.

Although Britain is the only West European country in the EU to continue inspections of arrivals from Schengen states, its generous policies to applicants for political asylum have made it a top destination. Migrants cluster in northern France to attempt illegal crossings of the English Channel by train and ferry.

That kind of “jurisdiction shopping” shaped the journey of Hassan Hussein, a Pakistani jailed in the Hendaye lockup. A 27-year-old with a shaved head and an edgy stare, Hussein hunched forward in his chair as he explained in French that his family had spread out around Europe. Two brothers had obtained immigration papers in Italy, and his aunt had established herself in Paris.

Hussein, who described himself as a farmer, said he had made his way to Paris via Turkey to stay with the aunt. Last month, he set out to visit a friend in Barcelona. “My buddy in Barcelona has papers,” Hussein said, his French broken but streetwise. “I went to see him.”

But French police caught him before he made it across.

When asked if he had hoped to apply for the Spanish legalization, Hussein’s French appeared to fail him. He began to complain about political troubles in Pakistan and the mental and physical toll of his ordeal.

He pulled up his sleeves and pant legs to display his bony elbows and knees. He touched his bare, brown scalp to indicate that the strain had caused his hair to fall out.

“My nerves are sick,” Hussein muttered. “Because of my problems in Pakistan, I asked the French for asylum. Why won’t they give me asylum?”

Hussein was in jail because he had the misfortune of having been caught with a Pakistani identity card.

Strangely enough, the truly “undocumented” have a better shot at freedom. French police were forced to release most of the men because they were South Asians who carried no identity documents and refused to divulge their nationalities. Authorities are not always sure where to send them -- and countries such as Pakistan refuse to accept deportees without hard proof.

At their first summit on migration here last week, the five European ministers discussed a strategy to work together against such multifarious challenges. They plan to expand efforts to require fingerprinting and other biometric screening for visitors from countries that account for large numbers of illegal immigrants so they can be more easily identified later.

In addition, Europe has just unveiled a fledgling border enforcement agency based in Warsaw that will coordinate resources and expertise.

Poland and nine other new EU members in Central and Eastern Europe are not yet members of the open-border Schengen Treaty, but eventually some will become the region’s easternmost border.

The leaders agreed to share more data on airline passengers and other travelers. They pledged to establish a single standard for the economic resources an immigrant must have in order to enter the EU, a requirement that now varies among Schengen countries.

Finally and most ambitiously, the ministers announced plans to meet with representatives of five North African countries that are smuggling hubs to discuss blocking the northward flow with a combination of police cooperation and economic aid.

The timing is partly political. Disgruntlement in France about ceding power to the European Union has raised the stakes of a referendum here May 29, when voters will be asked to approve a new constitution for the European Union.

The fear of a politically disastrous “no” vote has spurred the French government to talk tough on security, hoping to send twin messages: that the European Union works and that France retains control of its border security, an area in which cooperation with neighbors is inescapable.

As for Farid, his chances of escaping a long trip home will depend on the Afghan Embassy in Paris. A French judge has ordered an interrogation by Afghan diplomats to evaluate his claim that he is an Afghan political refugee.

The diminutive Farid spent about $10,000 getting this far; he wants to stay in any European country that will take him.

“I like it very much here,” he said, smiling hesitantly. “It is safe, calm, no danger. At 1, 2, 3 o’clock in the morning, walking the street, no danger. In Afghanistan you have fighting, fighting all the time. One group, another group, this is my area, this is my area, don’t come here.”