The European Union is to be congratulated for managing to craft an immigration policy which at no point addresses the actual causes of the problem and whose proposed solutions are guaranteed to worsen everything about that crisis. Readers will want to compare this approach to that of Pope Leo XIV during his recent trip to Spain.
According an article in AP, the new “European Migration and Asylum Pact is the culmination of years of grueling negotiations that overhauled the previous system, which was widely considered a failure and gave far-right parties a potent issue to win votes.” Meant to establish common procedures in all 27 EU member states, the Pact was set to be announced on Friday June 12, but “even the European Commission admits no member is completely ready. European Commissioner for Migration Magnus Brunner hailed the pact as a milestone but noted ‘it is only the beginning and not the end.’”
The new rules include: “foreigners will be screened at EU borders for up to seven days before they are admitted… Some applicants may be kept at the border while their cases are processed. They will be given only one chance to appeal a rejected application.”
Another key point is to immediately issue “return orders” once asylum is rejected. Send them where? “Member states also are working with EU lawmakers to allow for the creation of ‘return hubs’ in third countries where they can send rejected asylum seekers who can’t be repatriated. Questions remain about deportation centers that are being quietly negotiated between a group of five nations and potential partners.” Among the countries considered “safe” for such purposes are Syria and Bangladesh.
According to the European Agency for Asylum, there were about 802,000 pending first-time asylum applications in March. “Judith Sunderland, senior refugee and migrant rights adviser at Human Rights Watch, said the new pact ‘slams the door in the face of people who deserve to be treated with dignity and to have a fair hearing of their claims for protection,’” AP reported. The EU commission admitted that “work also is needed to ensure there is independent rights monitoring at the border.”
