EUROPEAN DIARY: Mustafa doesn't have much, but he says he is happy. He spends his days and nights selling pirated DVDs and fake Prada handbags to rich tourists along Marbella's exclusive seafront. This gruelling work earns him about €500 a month, or about five times what he made in his native Senegal as a builder.
"It is difficult to survive here, especially when it is not the summer season," says Mustafa, who glances nervously around for police who might confiscate his wares. "But this is better than Senegal, where the government is corrupt and it is so poor."
Like thousands of other African migrants selling trinkets to tourists or toiling away in the orchards of Almeria, Mustafa took huge risks to live the "European dream".
About two years ago he left Senegal in a rickety boat stuffed to the brim with 50 or 60 other illegal migrants bound for Andalucia and the hope of a better life.
"Five people died on the boat before we got here," he says. "Conditions were terrible. We were locked up for a long time with little chance to eat.
"I had a friend when I arrived who helped me . . . but it is very hard to get a proper job because I don't have the right legal documents to enable me to work legally."
This is the predicament faced by the 10,000 illegal African immigrants who have arrived in Spain over the past seven months. Spurred on by TV images of the type of lifestyle enjoyed by Europeans, thousands of Africans from poor states such as Morocco, Senegal, Congo and Chad are risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean. The death toll is huge. The Red Cross estimates that one-fifth of migrants who make the journey die en route, either while crossing the desert to board rickety boats to Spain, Malta or Italy or during the sea crossing.
The rising tide of African immigration is causing headaches in these states, which claim that they cannot cope with the problem on their own. Last week Malta refused entry to a Spanish trawler that had picked up 51 illegal African migrants stranded in a boat without power 113 miles off the coast of Libya. For six days the migrants were stranded on the boat in difficult conditions as states argued over where to send them.
Malta's interior minister, Tonio Borg, eventually allowed the ship to dock after a deal was brokered between Spain, Libya, Italy and Andorra to take some of the migrants.
"Europe has finally realised that Malta cannot handle this strain alone," says Mr Borg, conscious that 1,000 migrants have landed on Malta (an island with 400,000 people) this year. "This has been the first example of burden-sharing and it must continue."
To address the growing humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean, justice commissioner Franco Frattini proposed several new immigration policy initiatives last week.
These include setting up an EU rapid-reaction team which could assist national coastguards in dealing with sudden waves of migration; cracking down on employers who recruit illegal migrants in EU states; monitoring EU states' policies on regularisation of illegal migrants; and setting up return policies with third countries.
International human rights organisations such as the Red Cross have criticised the EU response to immigration for focusing on restrictive measures rather than on trying to help African countries by creating adequate development policies.
There are also concerns that beefing up border patrols in one area of the Mediterranean will simply shift migrants' routes to other less-patrolled - and more dangerous - parts of the sea.
Spain has been criticised by several EU states over the past year for its policy of regularising illegal immigrants.
After the Zapatero government announced an amnesty for 500,000 illegal migrants, former German interior minister Otto Schily complained that the process would have "consequences for the rest of Europe" because immigrants would then be able to move on freely to Germany and France.
Behind all the negative headlines, migration has given a huge boost to the Spanish economy, says Rickard Sandell, analyst with the Elcano Royal Institute in Spain.
"In 1998, there were just 900,000 immigrants in Spain, and now there are 4.4 million," says Mr Sandell, who predicts a dip in migration if tough new measures are introduced to prevent regularisation of workers.
"There could be negative consequences for economic growth if barriers were erected to prevent migrants becoming legalised."
He emphasises that most illegal migrants arriving in Spain come from Latin America and Europe (estimated at 400,000-600,000 a year) compared to only 15,000 Africans.
Luckily, for migrants such as Mustafa, the harmonisation of immigration policy in the EU still seems a long way off, with most states, including Ireland, eager to control their own borders and inviting them to join their workforces.
This means that Mustafa can probably look forward to a life in Spain and the opportunity to get a legal job sometime in the future.
"I think I will have a better future here," he says. "I want to get legal papers so I can go back to Senegal and bring my family to join me in Spain for a new life."