A boy at an unofficial camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. Photograph: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images

Close to 900,000 asylum seekers in the EU are waiting to have their claims processed, according to figures from the European statistics office.

Women, men, and unaccompanied children are living for years in uncertainty, with numbers of pending applications for international protection almost unchanged from two years ago when 1.1 million migrants were “stuck” in the continent.

“Living in limbo is now the norm for those seeking protection,” said Karl Kopp of Pro Asyl, Germany’s largest pro-immigration advocacy organization. “Limbo means living in the miserable Greek EU hotspots or being trapped and pushed back at the borders. It means living in the desperate search for protection and human dignity.”

Eurostat figures have revealed a backlog of 878,600 requests at the end of 2018, with Germany having the largest share of pending requests (44%), ahead of Italy (12%). The figure comes despite the number of migrant arrivals in Europe practically halving in the last two years.

Factors leading to the continuing backlog include new laws from right-leaning governments and an increase in the number of rejections, leading to lengthy appeals processes.

“The vision of governments on the migration crisis has changed and more and more countries are rejecting an increasing number of requests for asylum,” said Fulvio Vassallo, an expert on asylum law from the University of Palermo.

The rejection rate for asylum requests in Europe has almost doubled in three years, from 37% in 2016 to 64% in 2019. In Italy, rejections were at 80% at the start of 2019, up from 60% the previous year as the populist government also removed key forms of protection.

The German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) has in 2019 rejected three-quarters of family reunification requests from Greece, where migrants live in the overcrowded camps of Athens and Lesbos.

“If a migrant has his asylum request rejected, in any case, he is entitled to have recourse to appeal, which, however, lengthens the time waiting in limbo by up to four years,” said Vassallo. “There are migrants who arrived in 2015 and had their asylum requests denied. At that point, they presented an appeal to a court and are still waiting for an answer on their future.”

Experts point out how some governments in recent years, especially in Italy and Germany, have accelerated evaluation procedures for asylum requests, which appears to have caused an increase in rejections because high-speed procedures are not carried out with as much thoughtful evaluation.

“The agenda of the rightwing extremists is now the agenda of the mainstream and all that matters is high speed, few or no rights in the procedure, highest possible rejection rates and increasing the deportation figures,” said Kopp. “Many rejected asylum seekers receive protection only through legal action but years of waiting for the court decision extend the limbo situation in an intolerable way.”

According to Eurostat, since 2014 there have been 3.6m requests for asylum in EU countries, only 1.8m of which have resulted in legal protection. Those who stay after rejection are at risk of suddenly becoming illegal immigrants. “This is the worrying part of this phenomenon, with thousands of people exposed to the risk of a difficult life, at the mercy of labor exploitation,” said Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, in Italy.

According to Eurostat, Germany reported the highest number of illegal migrants in 2018, with 134,100. France was second with 105,900. But Italy, where hardline measures are likely to keep increasing the number of illegal immigrants, could soon far exceed them. Matteo Villa, a research fellow for the Italian thinktank the Institute for International Political Studies, said that based on analysis of figures from the interior ministry, “there could be more than 700,000 asylum seekers who will find themselves living irregularly in Italy by 2020”.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/25/asylum-seekers-limbo-eu-countries

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European Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos emphasized the need for a European solution to a migration crisis that has weighed heavily on Greece and other countries on the EU’s southern flank.

Avramopoulos underlined the need for solidarity among EU member states and hit out at those unwilling to share responsibility, remarking that they have “other priorities.”

Pressure has been growing on state-run camps on the Greek islands – with 12,585 people on Lesvos alone – as arrivals from Turkey continue. A Migration Ministry official told Kathimerini that a solution must be found quickly.

“A system that has only inflows and no outflows will explode at some point,” the official said.

Source: http://www.ekathimerini.com/233870/article/ekathimerini/news/migrant-inflows-fuel-concern-as-eu-commissioner-calls-for-more-solidarity

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“It has collapsed as a reception system and as a shared system. Europe has lost the sense of shared solidarity. Some states do, some states don’t,” he added.

While various European countries adopted new methods to deal with migrants and asylum seekers who continue to flock to the continent, the “migration crisis,” as it has become known in the Western media, remains pervasive.

A hard-fought agreement between France and the United Kingdom to prevent the formation of another refugee camp at Calais remains the exception. While such agreements can only be reactive, there are deeper issues that address root causes requiring greater effort from the European Union as a whole.

The United Kingdom agreed to pay nearly $55 million for extra security measures, part of a deal that effectively updates the 2003 Le Touquet agreement, which shifted British border control to the French side of the channel.

The money will go towards extra security in Calais and around the channel port, including fencing, CCTV and other detection technology, with the United Kingdom also agreeing to accelerate procedures for accepting legitimate migrants and asylum seekers — including unaccompanied minors — currently in limbo in France.

However broader questions remain on how the system would deal with failed asylum seekers, with many countries accused of allowing the free passage of illegal migrants and failed asylum seekers across their borders once they reach the continent.

Several European countries offer migrants and asylum seekers financial incentives to leave, including Germany, which has moved to pay migrants extra until February 28. Individuals will get about $1,200 and families approximately $3,700 to cover rent or resettlement costs in their home countries.

The United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway pursue similar policies. Figures from the International Organisation for Migration indicate that 98,403 people returned to their countries of origin in 2016. More than half — 54,006 — left from Germany. Around 39,000 (61%) received cash or benefits at a cost of $32.7 million.

A study titled “Out of Africa: The Organisation of Migrant Smuggling across the Mediterranean” by Cambridge University warned that European attempts to stem the tide of migration will fail unless they address root causes in the migrants’ countries of origin.

“Criminal justice responses require the adoption of coordinated tactics involving all countries along the route to target these localised clusters of offenders simultaneously,” said report author Paolo Campana.

“This is a market driven by exponential demand and it is that demand which should be targeted,” he added, calling for Europe to address the conflicts, instability and poverty that drive migration.

The study was released the same week that Europe’s border agency warned that the number of migrants and asylum seekers crossing the western Mediterranean to Europe is likely to increase in 2018, particularly via Spain. It lacks the refugee intake services that have been created in Italy and Greece, with many predicting disaster unless action is taken now.

“The bad news is in the western Mediterranean… Spain deserves more solidarity from the European Union,” said Fabrice Leggeri, the director of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency known as Frontex.

“Economic migrants don’t want to end up in a country [Libya] where there are clashes between armed groups… There are individual cases considering finding an alternative route,” he added.

Frontex said 22,900 people were detected as they reached Spain via Morocco or Algeria in 2017, up from 10,231 in 2016. That figure is expected to be higher in 2018.

The seemingly unending flow of economic migrants and asylum seekers into Europe has infiltrated European politics, with far-right parties normalising anti-immigration discourse in various election campaigns in 2017.

This is a trend that is expected to continue this year with far-right groups in Italy such as Forza Nuova and the Northern League relying on anti-immigration rhetoric to boost their chances in the March general election.

“We cannot [accept all asylum seekers] because we won’t all fit, so we have to make choices… if our ethnicity, if our white race, if our society, should continue to exist or if it should be wiped out,” said right-wing Northern League candidate for president of Lombardy province Attilio Fontana to local Radio Padania.

The Northern League, a right-wing nationalist party, is the largest political party in Veneto and Lombardy in northern Italy.

In Austria, where the far-right, anti-immigration Freedom Party is part of the coalition government and head of several ministries, Interior Minister Herbert Kickl faced criticism after he said that he wanted “basic services centres, suitable infrastructures that enables us to concentrate people in the asylum process in one place.”

His use of the term “concentrate” was viewed as provocative, given Austria’s history under Nazism, including the establishment of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp where tens of thousands of people were killed during the Holocaust. The Freedom Party was established following the second world war by former Nazis.

Kickl’s comments came as Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache, who is Austria’s vice-chancellor, said migrants should be held in disused barracks and subjected to curfews to keep “order” in the county.

With Europe braced for increased immigration and hateful far-right anti-immigration discourse becoming increasingly mainstream, many are calling on the European Union to take decisive action to tackle root causes.

Several European countries offer migrants and asylum seekers financial incentives to leave, including Germany.

Mahmud el-Shafey is an Arab Weekly correspondent in London

This article was originally published in The Arab Weekly.

Source: http://middle-east-online.com/english/?id=86972

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