THE HAGUE, June 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The three parties, forming the new Dutch government, are to adopt a new law authorizing the Dutch police to repatriate more than 100,000 illegal immigrants, half of them Muslims, to their original countries. The law follows the path of other European countries, however, it sparked anger among Dutch farm owners and rights activists.

The draft law was declared Thursday, June 13, 2002, by Matt Herbin, head of Pim Fortuyn’s the Liveable Netherlands. According to Herbin, illegal stay in the Netherlands will become “punishable crime”, once the new law is adopted.

That was never the case in the Netherlands, where an illegal resident could face nothing more than repatriation, if arrested.

The new right wing government will try to meet its electoral promises, on top of which is combating secret immigration, limiting the number of refugees and current illegal immigrants.

According to organizations defending the rights of illegal residents and refugees, the number of immigrants affected by the new law is between 46 and 116 thousand people, more than half Muslims from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

The Muslim minority is the most negatively affected by the new immigration laws, because most get married from their original countries, and bring their wives and children along. Many Muslim families also prefer to let their children stay back home till the age of 18, to preserve their national identity and language. The new law will deprive them of such a possibility too.

For his part, president of Dutch Farmers Union, Dit Mann rejected the draft law Thursday, saying it will inflict heavy losses on farmers, who depend mainly on illegal residents during harvest seasons.

Muslim minority represent 6% of the Dutch 16 million population. They have seven Parliamentary seats, out of 150, a record among other Muslim minorities in Europe.

The Dutch tough immigration measures are only a point in a case. Other EU countries, like Britain, Spain, and Italy have already started the process of cracking down on immigration and adopting new policies of fortified borders.

On Thursday, June 13, 2002, EU Interior Ministers approved a series of concrete steps leading eventually towards joint management of the European Union's external borders.

Officials said there was broad consensus for the blueprint and accompanying timetable, put to EU heads of state and government at their summit in Seville, southern Spain next week.

The summit takes place June 21-22 in the Andalusian capital, less than two weeks before Spain turns over the six-month rotating EU presidency to Denmark.

Most notable is launching about a dozen priority measures to beef up intergovernmental cooperation, said the officials in Luxembourg.

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said his country was ready to coordinate a specialized center to combat criminal networks that deal in migrants.

He told reporters that the French government favored intra-EU steps to ensure the return of some illegal immigrants to their countries of origin.

Other initiatives agreed included an exchange of officials between points of border entry, joint programs for training border guards, and a computer network to swap information on bogus travel documents. Most of the measures are to become operational within a year.

Before adopting the measures, the Interior Ministers examined a set of proposals from the Spanish EU presidency on combating illegal immigration.

The European Commission thinks there might be 500,000 illegal immigrants in the EU, but it warns that a true picture is hard to get due to differences in the way that national data is collected.

Thursday's meeting in Luxembourg came one day after the House of Commons adopted major changes to Britain's immigration and asylum laws. The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill now goes to the House of Lords.

A Spanish document is more focused on dealing with illegal immigrants who come to Europe by sea.

It addresses the need to envision "measures against third countries that refuse to cooperate with the European Union in the fight against illegal immigration."

Britain and Spain support such a perspective, but others like France and Sweden are reticent, and the idea is likely to be referred to EU foreign ministers who meet in Luxembourg Monday, June 17 to make final preparations for the Seville summit.

For its part, Amnesty International warned Wednesday, June 12 against an EU "war" on illegal immigration, saying the number of asylum-seekers is actually on the decline.

In an open letter from its Brussels office ahead of an EU summit in Spain next week, the human rights group said fear was allowed to dictate the immigration debate.

"In the current climate of fear and suspicion, the balance seems to be swinging even further away to the point where human rights and in particular the right to asylum may be sacrificed for the sake of the further fortification of Europe," it said.

Citing data from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, it said the total number of asylum applications lodged in the 15 EU member states has been falling since 1999, when the Kosovo conflict caused many ethnic Albanians to seek refuge in western Europe.

From 675,460 in 1992, during the violent break-up of Yugoslavia, and 396,700 in 1999, asylum applications declined to 384,530 last year, and 83,462 in January through April this year (Italy not included), Amnesty International said.

"The numbers are relatively modest compared to those of many developing countries, where the vast majority of the world's refugees find shelter," it said.

Immigration and asylum policy is set to be one of the top issues at the EU summit in the southern Spanish city of Seville.

On June 4, 2002, the lower house of the Italian parliament also passed a series of anti-immigration measures swiftly condemned by opposition groups as "unjust and racist".

The bill was approved by the conservative dominated house by 279 votes to 203, after a heated debate between the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the left-wing opposition.

If it passes the upper house, non-EU foreigners will only be able to live in the country if they have arranged work before entering, and they will receive a residency permit only for the duration of their employment contracts - up to a maximum of two years.

The bill also makes family reunions more difficult - immigrants will only be allowed to bring their children to join them if they are under 18.

The government, which has frequently linked immigration with crime, will make foreigners provide fingerprints for identification purposes, while those immigrants who return to the country after being expelled will be treated as if they have committed a crime.

"There aren't sufficient adjectives to describe this law," said Graziella Mascia, a member of the Refounded Communist Party told the house before the vote.