International refugee movements - out of control

Collapsing

In the late 1980s, when asylum requests began to increase and recognition rates plummeted, western European governments began to realise that their systems were collapsing under their own weight. In 1983 the total number of asylum-seekers in western Europe was a manageable 73,700. In 1992 it peaked at 692,000 to fall back to 347,000 in 1998.

The distribution of arrivals by country also changed. In 1983, 4300 asylum requests were made in Britain and 3000 in Italy. Last year Britain received some 70,000 requests while applications in Italy fell to 681 in 1996.

Italy is a case in point. With an uncontrollable coastline, the country receives an estimated 150,000 illegal migrants a year. Hardly any, apply for refugee status because the benefits are so meagre and most prefer to move on and ask for asylum elsewhere in Europe, or to stay and work illegally, a situation the authorities have chosen to tolerate. Only in 1998, when Italy threatened to start deporting illegal immigrants, did asylum requests suddenly climb to 6930. They are projected at some 10,000 this year.

Delaying

With the 1951 Convention providing that a person may not be deported to his country of origin, it became a matter of course for all illegal immigrants to claim refugee status, to stave off, or at least to delay, a repatriation. A typical example might be an Albanian who left illegally for Italy in 1998, bought false Italian papers, moved on to Germany to work, was identified as an Albanian and shortly before deportation applied for refugee status.

While hie request is certain to be turned down, the combination of a good lawyer and a vocal advocacy group will ensure that his stay in Germany is prolonged by at least three years, during which both receive some social benefits and work illegally.

The combination of massive arrivals and procedural abuses resulted in the mechanism being both overwhelmed by numbers and turned into an endless labyrinth of litigation, delaying tactics and appeals. It soon took years for a case to be decided.

In some instances, governments facing labour shortages tried to short-circuit immigration legislation by being overly generous in granting refugee status, until the system backfired by drawing in even more asylum requests. Up to 95 per cent of the refugee claims proved bogus, and asylum-seekers presenting multiple claims in successive countries under false names further compounded the problem. When a claim was finally adjudicated negatively, in more cases than not deportation was impossible, either because the country of origin refused to take back its citizen, or because the applicants had destroyed all documents and no claim for nationality could be legally made.

Skyrocketing cost

The end result of disarray in the western European asylum system is skyrocketing budgets. It is estimated that from 1990 to 1998 asylum-seekers cost the European receiving countries between $40 and 45 billion. This year the cost is projected at $10 billion. While this is expensive by any standard, it is one thing to spend quite large sums of money to care for refugees and quite another if the overwhelming majority of arrivals are not in genuine need of asylum. Indeed, of the 2.4 million asylum claims filed in Europe from 1991 to 1995 hardly 10 per cent were found to be refugees under the terms of the 1951 Convention.

In the late 1980s, confronted with a crisis that showed no sign of abating, western European governments reluctantly acknowledged that the issue could simply no longer be addressed by individual countries acting independently. The only realistic solution lay in new, comprehensive asylum arrangements. While the process took time to gel, the setting up of a common asylum policy has now become a top European Union priority.

Preserving Principle

The new arrangements, now in the making, have two fundamental components. The first is to preserve the principal of asylum by curbing the abuses, which are causing it to collapse under its own weight. The second is to unlink asylum and migration issues so that each can be addressed in its own right. Both these issues are the exclusive prerogatives of democratically elected European governments. And while the 1951 Conventions are the starting point, Europe has already moved further, through the convention against torture and adding humanitarian status as an additional reason for asylum.

Temporary Protection

The idea of permanent, a opposed to temporary, asylum was a product of the Cold War. If not abandoned, it has now been at least curtailed, especially in regard to mass exodus. Following the Bosnian crisis European governments offered temporary protection. In a amass exodus from an area of conflict there would no longer be a costly and convoluted individual refugees determination procedure, but a whole group would automatically be given asylum. It was understood that this was temporary and that repatriation would occur once the acute crisis was over in the country of origin. The approach was also valuable in the 1999 Kosovo crisis, where tens of thousands of Kosovars were given refuge in Europe, to return when the war subsided.

Repatriation, generally voluntary with some integration assistance, is the key to the system. To ensure its success, given economic disparities between the countries of origin and those of asylum, governments must retain the option of deportation. In the right circumstances, with the possibility of subsequent free movement, voluntary or unobjected return is the rule rather than the exception.