Signs SL becoming human smuggling hub

Going by recent reports from the Immigration authorities, Sri Lanka seems to be on its way to being a hub for illegal immigrants. This week 10 Bangladeshi nationals who had entered the country with the intention of making their way to Europe were arrested by officers of the Investigation Division of the Immigration and Emigration Department in the Katunayake area.

The men had travelled from Bangladesh to India and from there had arrived at BIA with an on-arrival tourist visa. The men were arrested after it was found they were overstaying their visas and initial investigations revealed that they were awaiting their forged visas to travel to Europe.

Meanwhile also this week, nine Sri Lankans who attempted to leave for Canada using forged visas were arrested at Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA). Initial investigations showed that each of them had paid around Rs. 4.5 million for a forged visa and were detained as they waited to board a flight to Dubai from where they were to take a flight to Canada.

In December last year, more than 100 Rohingya refugees from war-torn Myanmar who were adrift on a fishing trawler were rescued by the Sri Lanka Navy and are now being held at a military camp in the North. 

Soon after their arrival, Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala told Parliament that intelligence reports have revealed that there was a plan to bring down some 100,000 illegal migrants to Sri Lanka warning that the country could face a crisis if illegal immigration continues unchecked. The Rohingya refugee had paid for safe passage out of Myanmar to the boat operators who planned to abandon them in Lankan shores and leave, he said.

These are deeply disturbing developments that show that Sri Lanka has become a hub for illegal immigrants, both local and others in the region. Authorities at the airport say that there have been other detections of Bangladesh nationals in particular who have come to Sri Lanka and attempted to leave for Europe on forged visas. This shows that there are unscrupulous agents operating in Sri Lanka who now not only entrap locals with the promise of a visa to European capitals or other Western nations but have also begun to attract nationals from other South Asian countries who are looking for a way out of their countries.

Where the Rohingya refugees are concerned, Sri Lanka is bound by international obligation to provide for them till they found safe passage to a third country but if, as the Government claims, their arrival here is not accidental but part of a human smuggling racket, then the situation is more serious.

It is the same with the increasing number of cases being detected of late where more and more people are trying to leave the country with forged visas after paying exorbitant sums of money.

Illegal immigration is driven by economic woes, and this is the case with Sri Lankans desperate to leave the country as much as it is with nations which are beset with economic problems. Even though Sri Lanka has come out of the worst of the economic crisis of 2022, the number of those wanting to leave the country is still high and while the legal routes are not available to everyone, the illegal routes remain popular.

Despite the advancement of technology that makes forgeries earlier to detect, there still seems to be many who are willing to take the chance of making it to greener pastures by paying hefty sums of money to unscrupulous gangs operating here. Both the immigration authorities and Police need to do more to stop people from falling prey to such racketeers. A good place to start would be by raising awareness that short cuts to migration would mean many years in jails instead of a life of comfort in foreign climes.