Libya set to deport all illegal immigrats

AP/Houston Chronicle:

Libya on Friday defended plans to carry out a massive expulsion of illegal immigrants, rejecting criticism from a human rights group that doing so would violate international law.

Labor officials estimate there are 2 million foreigners in Libya and that only 60,000 of them have work permits and legal visas. Most are Africans who sneak through the deserts into Libya from Sudan, Chad and Niger.

On Wednesday, the state news agency Jana said authorities were working on the "immediate deportation of all the illegal foreign residents," quoting a member of the national assembly.

"No resident without a legal visa will be excluded," the report added.

London-based rights group Amnesty International called on Libya "not to implement what appears to be a rushed decision as it would violate the rights of potentially hundreds of thousands of people, including women and children," it said in a statement Friday.

...

Amnesty does not say what right the immigrants had to illegally enter the country. It appears that many of them were using Libya as a gateway for illegal entry into Europe. Human migration has been going on for thousands of years, but with the rule of law has come the regulating of the migration process and Amnesty is not going to be able to turn back the clock on that. Libya seems to be managing the process better than the UK and the US at this point.

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