Lithuania promises to pay 300 euros to illegal migrants agreeing to leave
The Lithuanian authorities promise to pay 300 euros to illegal migrants who agree to voluntarily leave the country, said the Head Migration Department under the Lithuanian Interior Ministry on LRT radio.
The payment, she said, will be made when the migrant boards a plane departing from Lithuania. Illegal migrants will receive 300 euros once and only if they fly to their origin country.
In July, Lithuania declared a state of emergency due to the influx of migrants from the Middle East who enter the country from the territory of Belarus.
The Lithuanian government decided to finance the construction of a barbed wire fence with a height of 4 meters and a length of 508 km from the state budget. Its cost is estimated at about 150 million euros.
Since the beginning of the year, Lithuanian border guards have detained about 4,000 illegal migrants, which is more than 40 times more than in the whole of 2020. Lithuanian Prime Minister Šimonytė said that this is a "hybrid aggression" unleashed by the self-proclaimed President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.