Cyprus links migration policy to labour shortages as irregular arrivals fall

Nicosia, Cyprus. Cyprus is seeking to shift migration from a crisis-driven issue towards part of the response to labour shortages, Deputy Migration Minister Nicholas Ioannides said, as irregular arrivals have fallen by 92 per cent from their 2022 peak.

The government is also preparing for more Syrians to return home, opening legal routes for foreign workers and seeking to reform a migration system associated with bureaucracy and delays.

Decline in arrivals

Pournara migrant reception centre had 142 residents when Ioannides visited this week, compared with more than 3,000 at the beginning of 2022.

Ioannides said the reduction in irregular arrivals resulted from a sequence of measures rather than a single action.

Policy measures

He cited increased surveillance along the Green Line, cameras, sea patrols, faster asylum procedures and returns.

Previously, asylum applicants could remain in Cyprus for years while their cases were examined, he said. Applications are now examined within weeks or a few months.

Ioannides said the measures sent a message to smugglers and people arriving from designated safe countries that Cyprus could no longer be used to enter the asylum system and remain for years pending an examination of a claim. At one stage, he said, about 80 per cent of asylum applications were considered abusive.

Information campaign

The government also conducted an information campaign in sub-Saharan Africa after concluding that many people travelling to the Republic via Turkey and the occupied north did not understand their destination, with some believing Cyprus offered a route onwards to central Europe.

Asked whether there had been cooperation, including indirectly, with Turkey, Ioannides said there had been no direct contact.