MORE THAN 30 THOUSAND ILLEGAL MIGRANTS HAVE ENTERED BIH SINCE BEGINNING OF YEAR

SARAJEVO, DECEMBER 14 (ONASA-Hina) – More than 30,000 illegal migrants have entered Bosnia and Herzegovina since the beginning of this year, but the authorities in that country believe that the problem is under control and emphasize that there are enough places in the organized camps for their temporary accommodation.
Almin Imamović, the deputy director of the Service for Affairs with Foreigners of BiH, said on Thursday, in the N1 television program, that the influx of migrants to BiH has increased throughout the year and that 31,300 of them have been registered so far after crossing the border.
All of them, as he pointed out, go through the identification process, during which their identity is established and biometric data is taken, and thanks to this, it is possible to discover the perpetrators of criminal acts.
After identification, they are placed in some of the reception centers established in the wider area of Sarajevo and in the Bihac area, which can accommodate up to a little less than five thousand people. About 2,300 people are currently housed in these camps.
“The most important thing is that we know exactly who has entered our country,” said Imamović, who until now was the coordinator of the temporary reception center in the village of Lipa near Bihać, where an average of 900 migrants reside on a permanent basis.
There are mostly people who come from Afghanistan and North Africa, and recently the number of citizens of Syria has increased.
Imamović points out that all of them stay in the camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina for seven to ten days at the most, because their goal is to continue their journey to the countries of Western Europe as soon as possible. He confirmed that they are increasingly being helped by groups created by other migrants who now participate in organized people smuggling across the border with Croatia.
Commenting on the fact that last week the police discovered an illegal camp in the vicinity of Svilaj, along the Sava river, where there were also weapons, Imamović pointed out that this was the first such case recorded in BiH and that the most important thing was that the police managed to act preventively.
“There is no reason to be alarmed,” Imamović said, adding that until now the “wild” camps were the biggest problem, but the Service for Affairs with Foreigners continuously works with the police to detect them and move migrants to centers where they are registered and where they stay in controlled conditions.
Migration will certainly not stop, especially not after the new escalation of the crisis in the Middle East, and the only thing countries on migrant routes can do is to take additional measures to protect the border, but at the same time they must cooperate closely with neighboring countries, this official warned.