A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #337 - With the pact on migration and asylum in the European Union, humanitarian disasters predicted (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

On December 20, 2023, a political agreement towards a common migration 
management system in the European Union was reached by the European 
Parliament and the Council after three years of negotiations. ---- This 
agreement concerns five essential proposals which should be finalized 
before the European elections in June 2024. ---- As we could have 
expected, this standardization of asylum in EU countries will be done at 
detrimental to respect for the most fundamental human rights. ---- The 
main lines of this nauseating project, ---- The five proposals of the 
pact are to date as follows (this may change by February 2024):

Regulation on screening of asylum seekers at EU borders.
The country of arrival will be responsible for carrying out checks - 
taking fingerprints, photos, examining identity documents - to then 
direct migrants towards a traditional or accelerated asylum application 
procedure or reject their application. In the event of rejection, 
migrants will be returned to their country of origin (before having set 
foot in an EU state) or a third country as quickly as possible. The 
procedure will concern all arrivals, including children aged 6 and over, 
only unaccompanied minors will be exempt.
To ensure "reception" during this period of control which could 
apparently last six days, the asylum and migration pact provides for the 
creation of 30,000 additional accommodation places in "dedicated 
reception centers"... It There will therefore be more detentions at the 
borders, including of children, in closed prison-type centers.

During these six days of checks, officials will use the common "Eurodac" 
database, bringing together more reliable and more complete data than 
those in the file currently in use in French prefectures, to detect 
movements of unauthorized migrants, but also possible supposed 
terrorists. Eurodac is a large-scale information system containing the 
fingerprints of applicants for asylum and subsidiary protection as well 
as illegal immigrants who have entered EU territory at least once.
As today, the Eurodac database contributes to the application of the 
Dublin Convention on the processing of asylum applications. It makes it 
possible to determine the European Union (EU) country responsible for 
examining an application for asylum or subsidiary protection. When a 
participating country sends a set of fingerprints to Eurodac, it 
immediately knows whether they match fingerprints that are already in 
the database. In the event of a match, it often chooses (except in 
special cases) to send the person back to the first country where they 
arrived or in which they submitted an application for asylum or 
subsidiary protection. It is up to the authorities of that country to 
make a decision on the applicant's right of residence. Please note that 
brothers and sisters will be excluded from family reunification. If 
there is no match, the request is processed by the country that 
submitted the fingerprints. Currently we are in the third version of the 
Dublin Convention, called Dublin III, which should not be called into 
question in this new pact, and it seems more effective... for the 
managers of European States who will have more time (20 months) to 
manage these "Dubliné.es".
Asylum procedures will be faster, more efficient, as these EU 
technocrats and politicians say. If a migrant has escaped the so-called 
Dublin III procedure, they will be faced with the accelerated procedure 
(box 1). And it will not depend on what she may or may not have suffered 
in her country of origin. Indeed, it all depends on your nationality! 
This rapid procedure will concern all nationals of countries for which 
the average rate of recognition of asylum seeker status in the European 
Union is less than 20% (and up to 60-70% in a "crisis" situation, such 
as that of 2015 at the time of the civil war in Syria)! As CIMADE says, 
in this case "requests will no longer be individualized and will be 
processed according to nationality, in violation of Article 3 of the 
Geneva Convention which expressly prohibits any discrimination based on 
country of origin in processing. asylum requests. The asylum application 
will then be examined in a maximum of 12 weeks.

The accelerated procedure in France currently in force

This procedure exists and it is the French Office for Refugees and 
Stateless Persons (OFPRA) which decides. It places the request in the 
accelerated procedure if it is a request for re-examination (with new 
facts) and if the person comes from a safe country of origin which... 
ensures respect for the principles of freedom, democracy and the rule of 
law, as well as human rights and fundamental freedoms (usual discourse). 
Currently there are 13 countries decided as safe by OFPRA and verified 
by the Council of State, many of which do not respect their own 
minorities such as the Roma for example.
Furthermore, the request may be placed in an accelerated procedure by 
OFPRA in one of the following cases:

You use false documents or submit multiple requests under multiple 
identities
You raise questions that are not relevant to your asylum application
You make inconsistent, contradictory or false statements
Without valid reason, you entered or remained irregularly in France and 
submitted your application 90 days after your entry. This is the current 
main cause of placement in the accelerated procedure which affects many 
minors who were waiting to reach the age of majority to submit their 
asylum application.
In all other cases, requests are placed under the so-called normal 
procedure.
The rules previously set out will be accompanied by a "compulsory 
solidarity" mechanism, making it possible to better distribute the 
reception of asylum seekers between the countries of southern Europe 
(Italy, Greece, Spain, etc.) which concentrate arrivals, and others. 
According to this new regulation included in the pact, each year, 30,000 
asylum seekers will be subject to "relocation" to another EU country 
while awaiting the study of their request. If a country opposes this 
principle of solidarity, it will have to pay a fine of 20,000 euros per 
refused asylum seeker.
In the event of a migration crisis or force majeure, the pact will 
authorize member states to largely exempt themselves from the right to 
asylum and opens the door to numerous potential violations of rights 
such as the principle of non-refoulement, recourse effective legal 
assistance, etc.
Note that the definition of the new concept of instrumentalization of 
migrations can, in its current version, include NGOs, civil relief and 
rescue organizations at sea!

Hotspots

"The "hotspots approach" is one of the responses to what the European 
Union called the "migrant crisis" of 2015. It consists of providing 
support from European agencies (mainly the European Support Office 
Asylum Matters (BEAA) and the Frontex agency) in areas located at the 
external borders of the EU and faced, in the words of the European 
Commission, with "disproportionate migratory pressures", to ensure that 
all Migrants who enter European territory are identified, registered and 
their cases are treated according to their situation: treatment of 
people eligible for asylum, return of others. The "hotspots approach" 
quickly resulted, in the two countries where it was deployed, Italy and 
Greece, by the creation of confinement centers - when they were not 
detention centers. -, generators of violence, overcrowded and 
under-equipped, where the sorting of arrivals is carried out in defiance 
of European and international rules regarding the reception of asylum 
seekers and the processing of their requests.»
Claire Rodier, "The pretense of hotspots", Revue des Droits de l'Homme, 
13 | 2018, January 2018

Some thoughts
There is apparently almost nothing in this pact which directly concerns 
the concept of outsourcing while Italy has just signed an agreement with 
Albania which undertakes to recover on its territory migrants 
intercepted in off the Italian coast (See CA of December 2023). But this 
is only an appearance because, in this pact, mention is made of third 
countries (safe of course!) which would welcome migrants expelled from 
the EU and which could a priori have links with this third country which 
would receive them. An example that sends chills down the spine is that 
of Ivorians who were victims of racism when they passed through Tunisia 
before arriving in Europe. Refused in the EU, they risk being sent 
back... to Tunisia without being asked for their opinion. In fact, what 
is very worrying is that outsourcing will one day be integrated into the 
asylum procedure in the EU; even if, even today, non-refoulement is 
still provided for in the functioning of the EU, expellees can choose 
the country which will welcome them (with its agreement!) if their 
country of origin of which they have the nationality does not suit them.
The most important point is certainly the generalization of the hotspot 
approach which currently exists in Greece and Italy (see box 2). This is 
logical, since the aim of this pact is to sort migrants at the EU 
borders before they settle in a European state. We will therefore see 
the opening of detention centers where human beings will be sorted, 
which will necessarily involve violations of rights, violence, 
exclusions and sidelining.
The obsession of migration and asylum managers is always the distinction 
between refugees and economic migrants, that is to say between real and 
false asylum seekers. Let us remember here that this distinction is a 
fantasy! It is all the more a scandal since most European states have 
and will need labor in all areas. The case of Italy is emblematic. 
Giorgia Meloni, who was elected, among other things, on the promise of 
stopping illegal immigration, has an urgent need for labor immigration 
to serve the interests of employers and thus promises a residence permit 
to 450,000 foreign people in the three years. This may appear to be a 
contradiction which will, over time, be generalizable to many European 
states including France where we could see Marine Le Pen doing the same 
thing as Meloni! In fact, European states want to choose their workforce 
at all levels of the social pyramid and give residence permits to 
migrants while they are exploited before being expelled.

The Mediterranean is the deadliest migratory route in the world. From 
2014 to September 2023, the number of deaths is estimated at more than 
28,000 people! If the EU really wanted to solve this problem as well as 
that of "smugglers", it should logically give these people who flee 
their country access to legal travel routes such as access to visas! We 
are very far from it! Freedom of movement and installation are the only 
demands to put forward if we really want these humanitarian disasters to 
stop!

Global Commemor'action call
February 6, 2024 - Tenth anniversary - Their life, our light. Their 
destiny, our anger. Open the borders!

It has been almost 10 years since the Tarajal massacre took place. On 
February 6, 2014, more than 200 people, leaving from the Moroccan coast, 
tried to swim to Tarajal beach, in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. To 
prevent them from arriving in Spain, the Guardia Civil and the Moroccan 
soldiers present used violence and did not come to the aid of the people 
who were drowning in front of them (1). Since then, the number of dead 
and missing has continued to increase, in the Mediterranean and on the 
Canary Islands route, within the internal borders of the EU, in the 
English Channel, on the eastern borders, along the route of Balkans, and 
again in the Sahara Desert and along any other mobility trajectory.
On the sad anniversary of the Tarajal massacre, we relay Global 
Commemoraction's call for the World Day to Fight the Regime of Death at 
Borders and to demand truth, justice and reparation for victims of 
migration and their families on February 6, 2024.
In a context of racist and repressive escalation, while the French 
government is preparing to promulgate the "law of shame" and the 
European Parliament to vote on a Pact just as unworthy and dangerous for 
people in migration, we call for a time of Commemor'Action.
Mobilizations will take place in several cities in France

Migrate to live, not to die! They are people, not numbers!
Freedom of movement for all!

https://missingattheborders.org/news

1- Other dozens of migrants were massacred by Moroccan and Spanish 
police and soldiers on June 24, 2022 in Melilla, a Spanish enclave on 
the border with Morocco.

The first consequences of this pact
The application of this pact will have consequences in asylum requests 
in France. Will they still be able to be done in the prefecture in 
one-stop shops? Where will they put their human sorting centers, 
necessarily close to the French borders? In the Pyrenees? the Alps? on 
the northern and eastern borders? What is certain is that Europe's 
internal and external borders will be increasingly militarized.

Denis, January 6

Withdrawal of the Immigration law!

On January 25, the Constitutional Council censored 40% of the 
immigration law, among the most discriminatory articles validated by the 
presidential majority. But the reasons for removing these articles are, 
for the most part, purely formal; these could be taken up in future texts.
What remains of this law remains deeply stigmatizing and liberticidal: 
an anti-immigrant and anti-worker law, which attacks the most 
precarious. It violates fundamental rights, it will greatly facilitate 
the conditions of expulsions, it will make the reception of refugees 
more precarious and the living conditions not only of undocumented 
immigrants, but of all people of origin more difficult. foreign.
The mobilization must continue to demand the total withdrawal of this law.

A new national day of protests is called February 3, 2024.

source: The solidarity march

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4070
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