EU migrant relocation plan to start

[Sally]

I wonder if among those being relocated, some will not like where they are being sent and will try eventually to get to another country.

EU migrant relocation plan to start



Wednesday 4 Nov 2015 3:18 p.m.

A Syrian refugee covered with a blanket arrives aboard the passenger ferry Eleftherios Venizelos from the island of Lesbos at the port of Piraeus, near Athens, Greece (Reuters)




Greece will begin the process of sending refugees, mostly Syrians and Iraqis, to other EU member states under the bloc's refugee relocation plan on Wednesday (local time).

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will meet a first group of 30 refugees at Athens airport early on Wednesday morning before they voluntarily board a plane for Luxembourg, the government said in a statement on Tuesday.

The European commissioner for immigration, Dimitris Avramopoulos of Greece, as well as European Parliament president Martin Schulz and Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn will attend the launch of the program, an EU statement said.

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EU migrant relocation plan to start

 

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Sweden ready to start deporting migrants...

Mass expulsions ahead for Europe as migrant crisis grows
Jan 28,`16 -- Dazzled by an unprecedented wave of migration, Sweden on Thursday put into words an uncomfortable reality for Europe: If the continent isn't going to welcome more than 1 million people a year, it will have to deport large numbers of them to countries plagued by social unrest and abject poverty.

Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said Sweden could send back 60,000-80,000 asylum seekers in the coming years. Even in a country with a long history of immigration, that would be a scale of expulsions unseen before. "The first step is to ensure voluntary returns," Ygeman told Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri. "But if we don't succeed, we need to have returns by coercion." The coercive part is where it gets uncomfortable. Packing unwilling migrants, even entire families, onto chartered airplanes bound for the Balkans, the Middle East or Africa evokes images that clash with Europe's humanitarian ideals.

Refugees wait their turn at the Tabakika registration center, Chios island, Greece. Despite the bitter winter cold and rough seas, tens of thousands of men, women and children fleeing violence and poverty in their homelands continue to risk their lives to make the relatively short but dangerous journey from the Turkish coast to nearby Greek islands, seeking a better future in Europe​

But the sharp rise of people seeking asylum in Europe last year almost certainly will also lead to much higher numbers of rejections and deportations. European Union officials have urged member countries to quickly send back those who don't qualify for asylum so that Europe's welcome can be focused on those who do, such as people fleeing the war in Syria. "People who do not have a right to stay in the European Union need to be returned home," said Natasha Bertaud, a spokeswoman for the EU's executive Commission. "This is a matter of credibility that we do return these people, because you don't want to give the impression of course that Europe is an open door," she said.

EU statistics show most of those rejected come from the Balkans including Albania and Kosovo, some of Europe's poorest countries. Many applicants running away from poverty in West Africa, Pakistan and Bangladesh also are turned away. Even people from unstable countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia can't count on getting asylum unless they can prove they, personally, face grave risks at home. Frans Timmermans, the Commission's vice president, told Dutch TV station NOS this week that the majority of people seeking asylum in Europe are not refugees. "More than half, 60 percent, should have to return much more quickly. If we start with doing that, it would already make a huge difference," he said.

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Germany reaches migrant deal, with restrictions on relatives
Jan 28,`16 ) -- Germany's governing coalition reached a deal Thursday to end prolonged squabbling over measures to streamline its handling of the migrant influx, a result that means some Syrians may face a longer wait to bring relatives to Germany.

The agreement foresees that refugees who didn't face "immediate personal persecution" won't be allowed to bring relatives to join them for two years, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said after meeting Chancellor Angela Merkel and Bavaria's governor, Horst Seehofer. The coalition also plans to declare Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia safe countries of origin, Gabriel said, making it easier to send migrants back to those countries. Germany did the same last year for several Balkan nations whose citizens are barely ever granted asylum. The package of measures, which was first tentatively agreed in early November, also foresees using special centers to quickly progress migrants who have little realistic chance of winning asylum. It has been held up since then as Merkel's and Seehofer's conservative parties squabbled with Gabriel's center-left Social Democrats over who should initially be blocked from bringing relatives to Germany.

The Social Democrats had taken the November agreement to mean that only a few people who receive "subsidiary protection" - a status that falls short of formal asylum - would face a two-year wait to be able to have relatives join them. But the conservatives then argued that many Syrians - some of whom came to Germany from neighboring countries rather than directly from Syria - should get that status. Germany resumed closer checks of Syrians' cases at the beginning of the year. Germany registered nearly 1.1 million people as asylum-seekers last year, among them nearly 430,000 Syrians. It is keen to ensure that this year's numbers are lower.

Gabriel said that about 20 percent of Syrians whose asylum applications have yet to be processed could be given "subsidiary protection" status, based on past experience. But in future, still-to-be-negotiated quotas for bringing in refugees from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, family members of people already in Germany - including those granted that status - will be given priority, he added. The deal still needs Cabinet and parliamentary approval. German officials also have long stressed the importance of making sure that migrants who don't gain asylum leave the country. Merkel said later Thursday that Germany's federal and state governments will discuss "how we can conduct returns better and faster."

Merkel said her government will work "country by country" with migrants' countries of origin to move the issue forward. "We want those with prospects of remaining to be integrated, but we also want to say that we need those who have no prospect of remaining to return," she said. Earlier this week, the Cabinet approved measures meant to make it easier to deport foreign criminals - a separate package that ministers drew up amid outrage over New Year's Eve assaults in Cologne blamed largely on foreigners.

News from The Associated Press

 

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Where they gonna deport `em to?...

EU mulls 'large-scale' migrant deportation scheme
Mar 3,`16 -- Turkey is under growing pressure to consider a major escalation in migrant deportations from Greece, a top European Union official said Thursday, amid preparations for a highly anticipated summit of EU and Turkish leaders next week.

European Council President Donald Tusk ended a six-nation tour of migration crisis countries in Turkey, where 850,000 migrants and refugees left last year for Greek islands. "We agree that the refugee flows still remain far too high," Tusk said after meeting Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. "To many in Europe, the most promising method seems to be a fast and large-scale mechanism to ship back irregular migrants arriving in Greece. It would effectively break the business model of the smugglers." Tusk was careful to single out illegal economic migrants for possible deportation, not asylum-seekers. And he wasn't clear who would actually carry out the expulsions: Greece itself, EU border agency Frontex or even other organizations like NATO.

Greek officials said Thursday that nearly 32,000 migrants were stranded in the country following a decision by Austria and four ex-Yugolsav countries to drastically reduce the number of transiting migrants. "We consider the (Macedonian) border to be closed ... Letting 80 through a day is not significant," Migration Minister Ioannis Mouzals said. He said the army had built 10,000 additional places at temporary shelters since the border closures, with work underway on a further 15,000. But a top U.N. official on migration warned that number of people stranded in Greece could quickly double.

Migrants queue for food outside the registration and hospitality centre, known as hotspot, of the eastern Greek Island of Samos, on the Aegean Sea,Thursday, March 3, 2016. The Greek government said it has requested 480 million euros ($520 million) in aid for the refugee crisis from the EU, under an emergency plan to cope with as many as 100,000 stranded refugees, roughly three times the number now stuck inside Greece.​

Peter Sutherland said the "inevitable consequence" of closed borders throughout the Balkans "is that Greece increasingly becomes a camp for refugees and migrants." About a third of migrants trapped in Greece are at the village of Idomeni, on the border with Macedonia. Dwellers at a sprawling camp there hold out hope for crossing in increasingly difficult conditions. Greek police said 130 people were allowed to cross the border Thursday. Migrants said Macedonia didn't accept computer-generated stamps issued by the Greek police, and therefore they couldn't prove their identity documents were genuine.

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NATO Commander: Terrorists, Criminals Hidden Among Refugees Flooding Europe
Wednesday 2nd March, 2016 | WASHINGTON -- NATO's top commander said the massive influx of refugees into Europe is providing cover for terrorists and criminals and that poses increasing danger for an attack.

U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove also told a Senate committee on March 1 that Russia's military campaign in Syria -- now in its six month -- has "wildly exacerbated the problem" of refugees fleeing the civil war there.

He accused Moscow and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of using migration as a weapon to overwhelm European support structures and break European unity. "This criminality, the terrorists, and the returning foreign fighters are clearly a daily part of the refugee flow in Europe," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He said Syria's use of barrel bombs have no military purpose and are aimed at terrorizing Syrian citizens to make them refugees and turn them into problems for other countries.

NATO Commander Terrorists Criminals Hidden Among Refugees Flooding Europe