A growing number of irregular migrants is again trying to enter Lithuania from Belarus. However, even more foreigners are leaving the country to go to Western Europe.
The barrier on the Lithuanian border with Belarus is expected to be completed in autumn. Currently, the fence covers about 60 percent of the border. The remaining open stretch is a space where migrants continue trying to enter Lithuania, the State Border Guard Service (VSAT) says.
“This month alone, we have already had more than 600 people trying to enter Lithuania,” Rimantas Petrauskas, deputy head of the VSAT, told LRT TV.
However, even more migrants want to leave Lithuania than enter it. Since June, when some foreigners were granted the right to move freely in Lithuania, around 1,200 of them have left and never returned to the country’s migrant accommodation centres.
Read more: Lithuania is releasing migrants – but leaving them in limbo
Poland also completed the construction of a fence on its border with Belarus in June. However, the country’s border with Lithuania is open and is used by migrants as a gate to Western Europe.
“In recent weeks, the number of people crossing the border illegally from the Lithuanian side has increased. Some of them have documents proving that they have been in Lithuanian migrant centres, while others are trying to leave directly from the Lithuanian-Belarusian border through Poland to other European countries,” said Anna Michalska, a representative of the Polish Border Guard.
“This year, we have already apprehended 250 such people at the Lithuanian border, up from 100 last year,” she added.
The Polish Border Guard is also seeing an increase in the number of people trying to smuggle migrants out of Lithuania and through Poland to the West, with over 40 of them apprehended this year, Michalska said. Lithuanian border guards are aware of the situation, they say.
“Some of them are foreigners who lived in our centres and have moved away. The other part is those who crossed the Lithuanian-Belarusian border and went to Poland without being noticed or stopped. And then there is a third part, a very small part – foreigners who came from Latvia,” Petrauskas said.
If a migrant who was first registered in Lithuania is stopped in another EU country, he or she is returned to Lithuania within 48 hours. There, he or she is again accommodated in one of the foreigners’ registration centres. The free movement permit is not revoked, but it might change if a person tries to leave again.
“If, for example, each person tries to leave several times, they will also be taken to court for revocation of the right of free movement and possibly detention,” said Vitalijus Dmitrijevas, Deputy Interior Minister.
Among the migrants who have left, there are also those who want to go back. The Red Cross says it receives inquiries from migrants who are interested in returning to Lithuania after reaching Germany.
“I think until you go to that country, you don’t really have a good idea of what the opportunities are. Then you get there, and you see that in any EU country, you have to make some effort to make a living,” said Eglė Samuchovaitė, head of the Lithuanian Red Cross Asylum Programme.
There may be several dozen people who want to return to Lithuania at the moment, according to the Red Cross. But the journey could be difficult, as entering Germany without a Schengen permit is also considered illegal, which means that the return journey would again be an illegal border crossing.
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