Mediterranean migrants- specific questions

jank wrote: »

Can you show me more data to the above as it contradicts the way the rules should have been enforced and the way most people understand who EU asylum seeking policy was meant to work. Most people understand rightly that the first EU country a asylum seeking reaches should be the one they apply to, you are saying that is not true, in contradiction to my links.

Hello? Earth calling Janks? I don’t need to provide links to confirm what I’m saying; you have already provided them. Your links do not contradict what I have been saying; they back it up. They contradict what you have been saying, and what you think “most people understand”. I don’t know whether most people do have the understanding you say they do but, if they do, they are wrong. As your own links show.

jank wrote: »

In short can you show me explicitly that an Asylum Seeker can reach any EU country and travel intra-EU legally over land to claim asylum in a country of their choice.

Sigh. This is definitely the last time I’m doing this for you. Once more, from the top:

1. All EU countries are parties to the Refugee Convention. In becoming parties to the Convention, they bind themselves to afford protection to refugees, defined as people who are outside their home country by reason of a well-founded fear of persecution on the grounds of race, religion, etc.

2. There is no exception, limitation, qualification or anything of the kind in the Convention to say that a party can decline afford protection to refugees on the grounds that they have passed through/could have sought protection in another country.

3. Nor does the Dublin Convention say that.

4. Therefore, there is no basis for the claim that people can be refused protection on this ground, and people who say that there is are talking through an orifice that nature intended for another purpose. If they are wise, they will not repeat this claim until they are in a position to point to the text of a treaty or law which says this.

5. Similarly, if they claim it is illegal to enter any EU country for the purpose of seeking asylum in that or any other country, they need to point to a law of that country which says so. And if they cannot find a law which says so, they might perhaps conclude that it is not quite so illegal as they had assumed.

6. They can save themselves the trouble of fruitlessly looking for such a law by reading the Refugee Convention, article 31 of which provides that parties may not impose penalties for illegal entry or presence on people who enter their territory as refugees, shall not unnecessarily restrict their movements and shall allow them to attempt to obtain access to other countries. So the chances that any EU country has on its books laws with make it illegal to enter that country for the purpose of claiming asylum there or in another country are zero.

jank wrote: »

Ah, these migrants are by your definition only 'transiting' to the UK.
Unfortunately for you by definition under French law you are wrong, that only applies if one is in an airport not if they are camped for months on end on French soil waiting to jump on a passing trunk.

If you are on French soil (i.e. outside the airport) you need to have a valid visa.

http://www.ambafrance-au.org/IMG/pdf/exemption_ord_passport.pdf?8427/43d4a931e3d026ac756b2af812ee0abaa823e23a

Obviously most of these migrants would fall foul of this hence why they are illegal.

I think you’re making a basic error here, Janks. (Though, in your defence, it’s a very common error.)

The key point you need to grasp is this: it’s not illegal to enter France (or most other countries) without a visa. That’s why we look in vain for the word “illegal” in the document you have linked. If you turn up without a visa you may be refused entry, but that’s an administrative matter. If you get in without a visa - say, by crossing the border from Italy, or because they simply fail to check your documents at the airport - you have committed no crime. You have done nothing illegal. This is no more illegal than entering a bar that the bouncer could have excluded you from, but didn’t.

jank wrote: »

By all means show me the law where anyone from outside the EU can rock up at CDG airport, go up to the immigration, hand over the passport (if they have it) and say that you want to go into Paris's Gare du Nord and catch Eurostar from there to London as you want to apply for asylum in the UK. You can catch a plane of course as one is 'transiting' (you don't pass immigration), but go into Paris and get a train? Nope, well not legally anyway.

The law you’re looking for is the Refugee Convention, Janks. I have pointed to it many times in this thread. If, if the circumstances you outline, you say you’re a refugee and wish to apply for asylum, they’ll let you in. They have to, since they have accepted the Refugee Convention. You don’t have to say that you wish to apply in France, or only in France.

Once you’re in, you are free to seek to go to the UK - again, because the Refugee Conventions explicitly says that you are free to seek to do this, and France has accepted this.

(Note: The British don’t have to let you in. Consistently with the Dublin Convention, they can choose to afford protection to you by returning you to France to have your claim assessed there in accordance with the Refugee Convention. But it’s not illegal for you to seek entry to the UK. And the Dublin Convention allows the UK to refer you back to France; it doesn’t require the UK to do so.)

jank wrote: »

You seem to be hung up on semantics. Firstly, yes anyone who applies for asylum is by definition an asylum seeker. I could rock up to the U.S. today and claim asylum and by that definition I would be one, yet after a review of my case it would be quickly thrown out and I would be deported. The vast vast number of cases in Ireland (well over 80%) and elsewhere in Europe are indeed thrown out because it is found the the asylum seekers case is not valid, hence THEN they would be correctly called economic migrants who are trying to scam the system.

In the first place, the “vast majority” of cases in Ireland are not rejected. They are still pending. Ireland is extraordinarily slow in making decisions on asylum applications.

In the second place, the fact that you would call an unsuccessful asylum seeker an “economic migrant who is trying to scam the system” probably tells us more about you and your judgmentalism than it does about the asylum seeker. All you actually know is that his claim to have a well-founded fear of persecution has been rejected. You do not know, you are simply assuming because it gratifies your prejudices, that he had an economic motivation for migration. His claim may have been rejected because his fear of persecution, though subjectively honest, was not objectively well-founded. Or, it may have been both honest and objectively well-founded when he advanced it, but by the time (years later) it was adjudicated political conditions in his home country may have changed so that it is now safe to return. Or, his motivation may have been neither fear of persecution nor a quest for economic advantage but something else entirely, such as a desire to join family or friends, or to pursue a romantic relationship.

It does you no credit that none of these possibilities appear to have even crossed your mind.

jank wrote: »

What does waking up in Calais have to do with it? Well legalistic semantics and pedantry aside most ordinary people would view France as a pretty safe place that is not in any state of conflict nor under a dictatorship. Why not then claim asylum there, or Hungary, or Greece or Turkey....

Yes, yes, yes you are about to say that 'legally' they may not have to if they 'transit' through an airport and all that malarkey about this convention or this EU law.... (I dont want to go down the legalistic rabbit hole as these things can be viewed either way and I want to see proof of the first statement).

However, it is clear that with the aim that they are safe and secure, these migrants then make a choice to where they would like to settle. Its only natural to make a selfish decision to see what is best for yourself and your family if they are in tow. Hungary? Greece? 'Safe but meh no cigar'. Germany, UK, Sweden. Yes please, lets go there.

This is much the thought process of most of these migrants and refuges. Completely understandable but again, the asylum process was not designed to give someone a brand new life near the German Alps, it was designed to protect and keep people from harms way. Legalistic pedantry may give them the right to do what you say but that doesn't mean its right or it was designed to be used in this way.

It was designed to be used in precisely that way, and that is the way it has always been used. If you claim it was designed to be used in the way you wish it were used, evidence of the designers’ intention, please, and a credible explanation of why, if that was what they intended, they wrote something so very different? Or is this claim about design just one more “fact” that you have dreamed up?

jank wrote: »

The more people go on about pedantry and semantics the more I am reminded of Irish TD's and Senators claiming huge expenses as sure, that was their 'right', whats the big deal, these are rules ya plebs, deal with it, nothing to see here....

A surprising confession, considering you are the one who has been banging on about pedantry and semantics.

Think before you write, Jank. Yes, Kuwait has extended the residency permits of Syrians already in the country, and unable to return because of the conflict. But that's quite different from accepting refugees from ISIS, who might foreseeably feel some animus towards a regime perceived as supportive of ISIS.

But I'm not sure what the point of all this is. Syrians seeking refuge would be unwise to apply in any state which has not ratified the Refugee Convention, or in any state which is perceived to be supportive of ISIS. The Gulf states tick both boxes. Therefore, Syrians seeking refuge do not apply there indicating that, whether or not they are persecuted, they are not insane.

But so what? How does this bear, if at all, on the issue of how a Convention state (as all the EU states are) should respond to Syrian refugees seeking protection? I really can't see that it has any bearing. Can you explain why you brought it up?

This is the end of europe in 20 years almost all European states will be unrecognisable, Ireland has the chance to get out while we still can but you can bet your last euro that the crazed leftist bleeding hearts yellow bellies will sell our country down the drain.

Rightwing wrote: »

Ireland isn't doing enough here. We are talking the talk, and little else. I agree with Merkel.

Why not bring the ships to Ireland instead of the nearest port? Would our navy be so good then ?

A ridiculous situation at the moment.

these people will not be assimilated into the communities it is us who will be expected to fit in with them like the12 Christians they threw overboard to drown because when the boat was starting to sink they prayed to God and were told to stop when they did not they were thrown overboard, how many more of these do you want ?

The only way to know for sure that asylum seekers are genuine is to take people directly from the camps who people working there can say for sure have been in the camps for long period of times (people who have been there longest should be given priority, obviously there is no way to know for sure, but people on the ground who work there can make recommendations).

It means a massive overhaul of asylum regulations but it's doable. A situation where thousands of people pass through Greece and Hungary every day for the next few years is not acceptable.