BRUSSELS—Huddled on mattresses on the floor of a church in central Brussels, some 240 illegal migrants have embarked on a hunger strike to demand the right to stay in the European Union.
The answer they are getting from the bloc's headquarters across the city is: You are not welcome.
Envoys from the EU's 27 states broadly agreed on Wednesday to let governments detain illegal migrants for up to 18 months and ban them from re-entering the bloc for five years, diplomats said. They will meet again on Thursday to work out technical details.
Rights groups say the move would erode international human rights law and encourage locking up more illegal migrants.
"The European Community is not human," said Mohad from Algeria, who did not give his second name. He has been on hunger strike since May 8 and said he had spent about two years in a migrants' detention centre in the Netherlands.
"Look around you, look at the situation here. No one is doing anything about it," he said, pointing at migrants from more than 40 countries lying listlessly next to each other.
Others complained they were being treated as criminals.
"You would go to jail for a year for a violent theft, but we face 18 months in jail for being without papers. We are treated worse than criminals," said Mohammed Aissaoui from Morocco.
The 18-month limit is higher than the maximum detention in two-thirds of EU states.
The cap is 40 days in Spain and eight months in Belgium, although in practice it can extend to over a year, according to European Commission data. Those countries would be allowed to keep an upper limit lower than the new EU one although critics say the new cap could encourage longer detention periods.
Germany has an 18-month cap. Eight countries which have higher caps or none at all would need to adopt the EU limit.
Children can also be detained, according to the draft text, though "for the shortest appropriate period of time".
Lawmakers and governments have been struggling over the draft law for nearly three years and it must also be approved by the European Parliament. Lawmakers are divided and a vote set for early June has been postponed with no new date arranged.
Some 8 million illegal migrants live in the EU, the Commission estimates, and it says the lengthy talks and controversy over the legislation illustrate just how hard it is to find a solution.
'No Paradise'
The EU executive argues the new legislation is needed to deter more would-be illegal migrants from embarking on often risky journeys to reach the bloc.
"We can understand their desire to improve their future," Commission spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing said of the men and women on hunger strike.
"Sorry, but what we are precisely doing right now is ... to be tough on illegal migration," he said. "If they arrive here, it's not going to be paradise."
More than 200,000 illegal migrants were arrested in the bloc in the first half of 2007 and fewer than 90,000 were expelled.
Roscam Abbing said being tough on illegal migration was the only way to convince governments and EU citizens to open the door to legal migrants.
"It's not only 'Fortress Europe'," he said, using the term usually employed by critics of EU policies. "You can only be generous on legal migration channels if on the other hand you make sure it is the only route to get in."
The EU executive proposed last year new legislation to attract high-skilled migrants, modelled on the U.S. Green Card, and will table later this year a scheme for seasonal workers.
Elizabeth Collett of the European Policy Centre think tank said she was worried by how tough some in the EU were getting over the issue of migrants.
"If you look at Italy right now, there is a certain trend towards the idea that illegal migration is a crime," she said.
"This is a trend that is quite dangerous for the EU."
Rome will discuss new laws such as re-imposing border checks, increased deportations, making illegal immigration a custodial offence and turning holding centres into detention camps.
Shahi Tulsi Devi, a pregnant Nepalese in the Brussels church, said she had not found the respect for human rights she had been expecting in Europe.
"Now is not good," she said. "When I have papers, then the child's future is also good."
"I will stay until I die," said Iranian migrant Ali Rajab, who has been living in Belgium for eight years. "We will continue until we get papers or until we die."
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