Banned from Politics

glic71rods46t0

Hi

I have been banned from the politics forum for 7 days for a violation of the forum charter for posting on this thread http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056303538

My posts on that thread should provide the context of why I believe the ban is unjustified. The forum charter is relying on an incorrect interpretation of the Dublin Convention.

It is just plain wrong, on so many levels, to allow a disputed interpretation of the Convention to become part of a forum charter.

I would appreciate an independent view on this.

Thanks

Fencer

nesf

I told fencer to come here about this, as such this is about the forum rule rather than the ban and should be dealt with as such.

glic71rods46t0

nesf wrote: »

I told fencer to come here about this, as such this is about the forum rule rather than the ban and should be dealt with as such.

Cheers, I misunderstood Nesf on that - but, that said, the ban and the forum rule are two sides of the same issue i.e. the ban and my complaint relate to the particular forum rule requiring just 1 interpretation of the Dublin Convention despite the fact that the Irish Refugee Council holds a different interpretation (which I linked in my post).
It seem enirely unreasonable for all posters to be expected to just accept this particular interpretation when an NGO, who should be expert in this area (i.e. Irish Refugee Council), appears to contradict this interpretation.

Thanks

Fencer

nesf

I'm afraid there will be a delay on this Fencer as Dades is away from home at the moment. I'm not sure when he'll be back but when he is he'll take a look at this for you.

bonkey

If no-one objects, we can "escalate" to admin (me) without waiting for Dades.

Let me know.

nesf

bonkey wrote: »

If no-one objects, we can "escalate" to admin (me) without waiting for Dades.

Let me know.

I have no objection.

Dades

nesf wrote: »

I have no objection.

Thought I wouldn't have time... but

EDIT:

From what I can garner of the Dublin Convention (from several sources) the Politics Charter seems to have the truth of it. Nowhere have I seen backed up the assertion that an individual merely landing in a Member State has to, or is deemed to have applied for asylum - or that they have even entered that country.

So, yeah, Bonkey - over to you.

Scofflaw

Dades wrote: »

Thought I wouldn't have time... but

EDIT:

From what I can garner of the Dublin Convention (from several sources) the Politics Charter seems to have the truth of it. Nowhere have I seen backed up the assertion that an individual merely landing in a Member State has to, or is deemed to have applied for asylum - or that they have even entered that country.

So, yeah, Bonkey - over to you.

UNHCR:

The Dublin Convention envisages that time spent in transit in an airport lounge without need for a transit visa would ordinarily not impose any obligation on the country whose transit lounge it was, to consider a claim for asylum not presented in that country.

That is, unless a transit visa is required in order to transit through a country, transit through a country's airport doesn't create any obligation on the part of the country to consider the case for asylum.

In general, transit zones in international airports are extraterritorial - that is, they are considered as not legally part of the territory of the state in which the airport is situated. Thus an asylum seeker passing through the transit zone of an airport in, say, Frankfurt, is at no point in Germany from a legal perspective.

Fencer references the IRC as follows:

The Dublin Convention is essentially a mechanism for determining which Member State of the European Union is responsible for examining an application for asylum lodged in one of the contracting States. Asylum seekers must lodge their application for asylum in the first EU country in which they arrive and may be returned to another EU Member State if it can be shown that they have either passed through the border of another State (by air, sea or land) or made an application for asylum in another Member State.

This does not support Fencer's claim at all, as he/she believes, because an asylum seeker who passes through an international transit zone in a German airport does not enter Germany, and does not cross Germany's border.

There is a specific provision within the Dublin Regulations which provides for the ability for an asylum seeker to make an application from inside a transit area:

the state where the application was made in the transit area of an airport;

If you think about it, if transit areas were considered part of the territory of the state, this provision would be superfluous, because the asylum seeker would already be in the territory of the state in question, and covered by the other provisions. As it is, though, they're not.

This is why we have the issue in the Charter - because a lot of people make this mistake, and follow on from it to insist that all asylum seekers in Ireland are necessarily bogus.

cordially,
Scofflaw

bonkey

OK...

Lets get this out of the way from the start...this thread is not about which interpretation of the law is correct.

There is a rule in the Politics charter regarding the interpretation of the law. While it may seem harsh to someone new to the forum, its not there because the mods wish to enforce some sort of goodthink. It is there because for an extended period of time, literally every immigration thread (of which there were plenty) ended up on this very same topic and it was felt something needed to be done about it.

Consequently, there is a rule in the charter. That rule was brought to your attention and - from what I can see - you chose to ignore it....to continue to argue exactly the case that the charter says is off limits. From that perspective, I can't really fault the ban.


That said...I'm not entirely happy about the rule in the charter. (Ideally, I'd like a "minimum bar" of some sort, rather then an outright ban. I'm not sure that this is the appropriate place to discuss changing the charter though...