EU Member States Criticised Over Immigration Policies and Double Standard Approach With Ukrainian Asylum Seekers
According to Euro-Med Monitor, a Mediterranean non-profit organisation, migrants and asylum seekers have been dealing with a particularly tough year as the COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing, the levels of forced deportation have increased, and the European countries’ immigration policies continue being complemented by more concerning proposals and crisis, AtoZSerwisPlus.com reports.
On the other hand, the EU has worked relentlessly to find new ways to make it tough for asylum seekers to utilise their rights and, thus, seek asylum.
“There is no such thing as an irregular asylum seeker. Irregulars are only the routes that Europe has for asylum seekers to arrive,” said Michela Pugliese, Euro-Med Monitor’s Migration and Asylum Researcher.
She also noted how different the European countries have reacted to Ukrainian refugees compared to the rest, saying ‘they [European states] should learn from the way they have reacted to the Ukrainian war this year’ also advising they should take into consideration people’s free choices, starting from where to seek asylum and settle.
In general, the organisation reveals the struggles and hardships asylum seekers and migrants are going through across the 27-nation bloc, revealing a matter of life or death that these people have gone through.
According to the Euro-Med press release, 12 people were found dead due to freezing temperatures at the Turkish border, which reportedly were victims of Greek illegal pushbacks.
Moreover, the number of arriving asylum seekers and migrants in 2021 soared, with the official number of sea and land arrivals peaking at 123,318 while the number of those announced as lost in the first attempt is 3,231 – double from the previous year.
The number of deaths during border crossings is also on the rise, as 742 people have died or gone missing in the last six months as of June 12, 2022. In addition, the number of people reaching the bloc has amounted to 41,140.
The report also mentioned the UK’s decision to outsource migration to Rwanda, an act in which the EU Commission has shown interest by proposing a Status Agreement to Senegal to deploy Frontex teams, claiming to tackle smuggling.
Denmark has introduced increasingly tightened immigration policies, aiming at having zero asylum applications. France, the Netherlands, and Belgium have left hundreds of asylum seekers with no accommodation spots, leaving them to sleep rough in December of 2021.
In addition, the Swiss parliament last year allowed the State Secretariat for Migration to search through asylum seekers’ phones without the needed consent or any suspicion of false claims, something Germany, Denmark, and Norway have already done.
