Cyprus shifts from migration crisis to labour needs

Cyprus is trying to turn migration from something associated almost exclusively with crisis into part of the solution to the country’s labour shortages, Deputy Migration Minister Nicholas Ioannides has told the Cyprus Mail , as irregular arrivals have fallen by 92 per cent from their 2022 peak. At the same time, the government is preparing for more Syrians to return home, opening legal routes for foreign workers and trying to overhaul a migration system long associated with tortuous bureaucracy and delays. Pournara migrant reception centre had just 142 people staying there when Ioannides visited this week. By the beginning of 2022 there were over 3,000 there. Irregular arrivals fall 92 per cent Asked how Cyprus had achieved such a dramatic reduction in irregular arrivals, Ioannides said there had been no single measure responsible.

“It was a sequence of events and essentially a web of policy measures. It was not something that happened with one action,” he said. He pointed to increased surveillance of the Green Line, cameras, sea patrols, faster asylum procedures and returns. “Previously, someone could submit an asylum application and remain for years until it was examined. Now applications are examined within weeks or a few months,” he said. Together, the measures sent a message to smugglers and to people coming from designated safe countries that Cyprus could no longer be used to enter the asylum system and remain for years while a claim was examined. At one stage, he said, around 80 per cent of asylum applications were considered abusive. Deputy Migration Minister Nicholas Ioannides – ‘if you are a foreign national in Cyprus you need to have a reason to be here’ An information campaign was also carried out in sub-Saharan Africa after the government concluded many…