Migrants, Bound for Spain, Set Off a Boom

-- People along this stretch of Africa's west coast always enjoyed warm waters, a mild climate and an abundance of fruit and fish. But then, said Babacar Diop, 42 and unemployed, "foreigners emptied the seas."

Industrial trawlers from France, Japan, China and South Korea came in such numbers that catches of tuna and shark grew rare. "The Japanese took all the big fish," said Moustafa Elhadj Sow, 26, a boat painter in this fishing city of 300,000. "Now all that's left is herring."

So some residents of Mbour have found a new source of income: smuggling Senegalese and other West Africans 800 miles to the Canary Islands of Spain, as they aim for what local newspapers call "the dream of El Dorado": jobs in Europe.

It is a dangerous voyage. People here have a fatalistic saying in French and Wolof, a Senegalese language: "Barcelone ou barxax" — Barcelona or death.

This year, more than 10,000 migrants have reached the Canaries. Many go aboard large, canoe-shaped fishing boats known as pirogues.

"Fishermen have discovered trafficking in migrants as a new and more lucrative job," said Antonio Mazzitelli, regional representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. "If the situation continues, there will not be enough boats for fishing."

Senegal's government has stepped up surveillance and some migrants have been repatriated and given jail sentences. Others die en route. But the flow continues. --