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2,500 illegal immigrants reach the Canary Islands since Thursday
By m.p. - Sep 4, 2006 - 11:33 PM

Some of the 2,500 illegal immigrants who have reached the Canary Islands since Thursday. Photo - EFE.
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Immigrant reception on the Canary Islands are now overflowing. The Deputy Prime Minister says Spain will not tolerate such vast numbers
The central government offices on the Canaries have confirmed that the reception centres on the islands are now unable to take in any more illegal immigrants, and have exceeded their capacity of 5,446 people.

There are currently 5,461 immigrants in the centres, with another 700 temporarily housed in National Police buildings on southern Tenerife while they wait for space to become available.

Yet more people continued to arrive on the islands from Sub-Saharan Africa on Monday, bringing the total number to arrive since Thursday up to an almost unimaginable 2,500 people.

The Deputy Prime Minister, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, warned on Monday that Spain ‘will not tolerate’ that the immigrants keep arriving on the coast.

She told a conference of Spanish Ambassadors around the world in Madrid that the government and its ambassadors have the obligation to work to ensure that the only migration to Spain is legal, and is orderly. ‘We have to make their countries of origin understand that we are not going to tolerate the vast numbers of immigrants arriving on our coast these past weeks, that we will not continue to accept non-compliance with bilateral and multi-lateral agreements, and that we are prepared to be completely firm on this,’ she said.

Fernández de la Vega added in her speech to the ambassadors that the countries of origin and the immigrants themselves must be made to understand that anyone who comes into the country illegally will have to leave it, sooner or later.