Migration Crisis Is Overpowering This Tiny French Island (HBO)
Posted
August 21, 2018
Views
172,011
Likes
1,704
Comments
605
Engagement
1.34%
August 21, 2018
172,011
1,704
605
1.34%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
4:44Now PlayingAs France just toughened up its asylum policy, mass arrivals of undocumented migrants are not only overpowering European shores, but a tiny French island off East Africa.
Since it voted to become part of France in 2009, Mayotte has been flooded with people from neighboring islands; now, more than half of its residents were born somewhere else, mostly in the nearby Comoros, whose government claims Mayotte is theirs.
But Mahorais disagree; they blame migrants for leeching off social services and crowding the only hospital on the island, while Mayotte already struggles to operate on par with other French regions.
Earlier this year, locals' frustration boiled over, sparking a two-month labor strike to demand more immigration enforcement from the mainland.
“We’re afraid of illegal immigrants,” strike organizer Maila Mouhadji told VICE News. “We’re afraid of the kids who have nothing to do and can’t work because they’ve come to Mayotte illegally … They will steal your handbags just to be able to survive.”
France sent more police and promised to invest 1.5 billion dollars into the island. But people like Maila say the response is inadequate, and if anything, conditions in Mayotte have deteriorated since the strike ended in April. The reaction has left locals feeling like second-class citizens on their own land.
“We can’t house the whole world in Mayotte,” Mouhadji said. “Yes, we're French, but how French are we?"
Subscribe to VICE News here
Check out VICE News for more
Follow VICE News here:
More videos from the VICE network
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
