Macedonian Asylum Seekers Arrive From France

The plane landed at the Ohrid airport.

“We come from France. We stayed there for two months. We are coming back because we were deported. We stayed there at a hotel but we did not find any jobs,” one returnee said.

“We were there for four months before they deported us,” another man said. “I worked there illegally and the police caught me. I stayed at my relatives. There are many like me there who work without permission. We went to France through an agency,” he told media.

One man who was at the airport explained that he was waiting for his relatives to arrive on the flight.

“They left for France four months ago to seek asylum. They are coming back because France has also been hit by the economic crisis. I do not know where they stayed but they fled from Macedonia because of the poverty,” the man said.

There was a heavy police presence at the airport for the return of the asylum seekers. This step was taken after an incident at the Skopje airport last week, when several deported asylum seekers attacked the media crews at the Skopje airport who were there to film their arrival.

The first groups of asylum seekers from Macedonia and neighboring countries were reported at the beginning of 2010, shortly after the EU scrapped visas for citizens of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro and allowed them to travel to most EU countries as tourists.

Following the dramatic increase in asylum applicants headed to western Europe from Macedonia, EU states complained and threatened to scrap the visa-free regime. The authorities in Skopje then attempted to clamp down on the departures by closing two tourist agencies and fining six more who organised transport to EU countries.