#European asylum system

[munaeem]

What to expect from Germany's migration policy after federal elections

As Germany heads to the polls this Sunday, migration has emerged as a defining issue in the election campaign. With around 60 million eligible voters, a significant majority are calling for stricter policies to curb irregular migration. This demand follows a series of high-profile attacks by individuals with a migration background. Some of these individuals should have already been deported.…

[tearsofrefugees]

11 Questions and Answers on the reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS)

1. What is the Common European Asylum System (CEAS)?

2. Does the existence of a Common European Asylum System mean that all procedures (asylum, reception, integration, etc.) will be the same in every European country and that every asylum seeker will have the same opportunities?

3. Does this reform restrict the right to asylum?

4. What are the “border procedures” as extended by the new CEAS and what are their implications?

5. What is a “safe third country” and how is the concept expanded in the new CEAS?

6. What does the “fiction of non-entry” into the EU mean and what will its impact be on asylum seekers?

7. Will the possibility of administrative detention for people seeking asylum be expanded under the new CEAS? What will this mean for the people and their rights?

8. What must Greece do to comply with the New Pact?

9. As a refugee, how will you be able to obtain travel documents and reunite with your family in Greece after the implementation of the CEAS?

10. If the CEAS is implemented, how could the right to legal assistance for asylum seekers and their support from civil society be affected?

11. Will the implementation of the CEAS mean that other European countries will return more refugees to Greece?

[head-post]

Migrants on small boats hit last year’s record high

The number of migrants arriving at UK shores on small boats is breaking another record as authorities detain the smugglers’ organisers.

The number of migrants arriving in the UK on small boats crossing the Channel is now approaching 10,000. This is 2,600 more than last year.

Some 103 people arrived yesterday on two small boats, meaning the total at the moment, not including today’s arrivals, is 9,803. This compares to 7,217 at the same date last year and 8,693 in 2022, 3,112 in 2021 and 1,492 in 2020.

Journalists photographed women and children on the first boat that docked Sunday morning. Border Agency took them to Dover in their own vessel. Labour’s shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock said:

This milestone is yet more evidence that the Tories’ plans are fundamentally failing. Thousands of people have crossed the Channel since the Government’s Rwanda bill passed, with crossings up a third on last year already. The figures also show that criminal smuggler gangs are piling more and more people into each unseaworthy boat, putting lives at even greater risk.

It comes after Home Office agents detained the first group of illegal migrants travelling to Rwanda last week.

Immigration officers took part in several raids across the UK to recruit asylum seekers who had crossed the Channel in small boats. Around 800 immigration agents took part in the operation, codenamed Vector, which will take nine to 11 weeks to travel and target 2,143 asylum seekers.

Asylum seekers who have made the journey are receiving letters from the UK Home Office informing them that the migrants will fly to Rwanda because they have failed to seek asylum in the first “safe country” they visited.

Read more HERE

[rodaportal]

European Immigration Policies: A Complex Quandary

🌐 Explore the intricacies of European immigration policies! From France's political dynamics to Germany's stance and transformative EU reforms, grasp the complexities shaping the continent's approach. 🤔💬

Join the conversation and stay informed! Check out our insightful YouTube video for an in-depth analysis: 🎥✨

[metamatar]

With a budget nearing $1 billion, Frontex is the EU’s best-funded government agency. [...] including by helping Libya’s EU-funded coast guard send hundreds of thousands of migrants back to be detained in Libya under conditions that amounted to torture and sexual slavery. In 2022, the agency’s director, Fabrice Leggeri, was forced out over a mountain of scandals, including covering up similar ​“pushback” deportations, which force migrants back across the border before they can apply for asylum.

[...] EU hopes to extend Frontex’s reach far beyond its territory, into sovereign African nations Europe once colonized, with no oversight mechanisms to safeguard against abuse. Initially, the EU even proposed granting immunity from prosecution to Frontex staff in West Africa. [...] 26 African countries have received taxpayer euros aimed at curbing migration through more than 400 discrete projects. Between 2015 and 2021, the EU invested $5.5 billion in such projects, with more than 80% of the funds coming from developmental and humanitarian aid coffers.

[...] Besides the surveillance tech the DNLT branches receive, migration data analysis systems have also been installed at each post, along with biometric fingerprinting and facial recognition systems. The stated aim is to create what eurocrats call an African IBM system: Integrated Border Management. [...] no European countries maintain databases with this level of biometric information.

[...] In Niger, for instance, the EU helped draft a law that criminalized virtually all movement in the north of the country, effectively making regional mobility illegal.

[salvation-within-the-void]

The prime minister of the UK has just confirmed that he will change the law to allow the conservative party to forcibly deport immigrants to Rwanda.

The SUPREME COURT of the UK found this policy unlawful, the government were told they CANNOT do this.

Their response? Change the law

This policy is a threat to the lives of refugees who fled here seeking support and asylum, as a country we should be kind and welcoming. Instead these poor people are being sent straight back into the instability and violence they risked their lives to escape.

Rwanda has a history of being used to 'sweep refugees under the rug', having signed a similar deal with Israel. The supreme court found that Rwanda has previously violated laws protecting immigrant against refoulement, as it has sent people back to the nations they fled. Directly violating international treaties and violating the rights granted to refugees and asylum seekers.

Sunak also stated that he will not allow the European human rights court to block this policy and will revisit any treaties that may act as "obstacles" to this policy.

They are trying to get out of THE INTERNATIONAL BILL OF HUMAN RIGHTS! The refugge system in Rwanda is so unsafe that this is a human rights issue! And our government want to violate those rights for thousands of immigrants they are determined not to help.

These people are hell bent on making life miserable for refugees. The deputy chair of the conservatives stated the government should "ignore the law and start the flights anyway".

Rishi Sunak is also introducing "emergency legislation" in order to force this through parliament and the courts.

Where have we heard that before?

These are the same emergency powers that allow laws to be passed without parliamentary votes. The same emergency powers that enabled the "war on terror" so the UK and US could commit war crimes. The same emergency powers used by the nazis to legitimise the holocuase

This is facism! Plain as day.

I am very very worried for the future of my country and the future of this world. Facism is not on the rise, it is here. We must watch very very closely, at home and abroad, so that we can act accordingly and protect ourselves.

[mariacallous]

In this 2024 “super election year,” a common concern across Europe and the United States has been the growing popularity and electoral successes of far-right movements and narratives. Though right-wing parties exhibit clear distinctions in different countries, they echo each other strongly in their nationalist orientation, their softness on Russia—and skepticism toward support for Ukraine—and their harsh anti-immigration stance. In the European Union (EU), one election after another has demonstrated the centrality of irregular migration and border security in public discussions and forced mainstream parties to take more restrictive approaches to calm fear and anxiety fueled by xenophobic, far-right rhetoric. The conflation between regular and irregular migration has also severely distorted the debate.

The results of the European Parliament election, France’s snap election, three German state elections, and the Austrian election all showed a strong rightward drift and signaled voters’ distrust in their national governments, confirming the notable shift in tone on migration in Europe toward a more securitized, hardline approach, even among mainstream parties. A look at the numbers indeed reveals a challenging situation as the European Union faces its highest number of asylum applications since 2016, which is straining resources for processing, accommodation, service provision, and thus integration.

In the aftermath of Europe’s so-called “refugee crisis” or “migrant crisis,” which began in 2015, EU member states tried and failed repeatedly to rethink and renew the union’s common policy, until a breakthrough this summer concluded the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. In the interim years, however, national governments made separate plans, implementing ad hoc measures to fortify their borders, restricting access to their asylum systems, and negotiating deals with non-EU states to limit movement.

This patchwork of policies did little to deter an increasing number of displaced persons worldwide from heading toward Europe in search of safety. It did, however, create divisions within and between member states, thus impeding progress on effective EU-wide responses. This political incoherence, together with fluctuating irregular arrivals, has since been exploited by populist parties, who propagate the sense that governments have lost control over their sovereignty and can no longer protect their populations.

To provide a better understanding of the complex situation Europe finds itself in today, this explainer aims to clarify the EU’s role in migration and asylum policy, why the issue became so controversial, how to understand recent developments in the migration space, and what opportunities the new pact offers.

How does migration and asylum policy in Europe work?

The free movement of goods, services, capital, and persons has been a fundamental pillar of the European idea, as enshrined in the 1957 Treaty of Rome that founded the political and economic community that today constitutes the European Union. Within the EU, national borders became almost fully invisible with the creation of the Schengen Area in 1995, which today includes 25 EU member states and four non-EU countries, collectively home to more than 450 million people.

When it comes to regular migration, the law stipulates that the EU has the authority to establish the conditions for entry and legal residence in member states, “including for family-reunification purposes, applicable to nationals of non-EU countries. Member States retain the right to set quotas for admitting individuals from non-EU countries seeking employment.” The fight against irregular immigration requires the EU to implement “an effective returns policy, in a manner consistent with fundamental rights.”

The EU’s Common European Asylum System (CEAS) was established in 1999 to enhance coordination across member states and streamline systems for processing asylum claims and supporting refugees granted protection. More specifically, the “Dublin Regulation” governs relations among member states and manifests that the country of an individual’s first arrival in the EU is responsible for asylum processing and refugee reception. For years, the Schengen regulation of free movement has made the Dublin system difficult to administer, as it unintentionally permitted asylum seekers to self-select destination countries—often based on linguistic abilities, families, perceived hospitality, and benefits. It has also placed disproportionate obligations on EU border countries at the forefront of irregular movements to Europe, particularly in the Mediterranean (Greece, Italy, and Spain) and the Balkans (Hungary, Croatia, and Bulgaria). Finally, a lack of enforcement to relocate applicants in instances of violation has sustained pressure on more “popular” destination countries and undermined authorities’ credibility.

Before this year’s overhaul of common EU policy, as reflected in the agreement on the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum—more on that below—member states at the national level and EU leadership implemented incremental measures to deter irregular arrivals. While some actions temporarily led to decreases in arrivals in certain member states, however, they failed to address the underlying drivers of displacement.

Most notable have been a series of EU deals with third countries in Europe’s neighborhood to improve border management and halt irregular departures toward the EU, in exchange for the provision of financial support. A 2016 agreement with Turkey became a model for future EU deals with North African and Middle Eastern countries, including Lebanon, Egypt, Mauritania, and Tunisia. Italy, on its own, concluded a memorandum of understanding with Libya in 2017, which pledged millions of euros in assistance to enhance the maritime surveillance capacities of the Libyan Coast Guard. In exchange, Libyan authorities would prevent people from departing the Northern African country and intercept irregular migrants at sea to return and detain them in Libya. Yet these “migration partnerships” have been severely criticized by humanitarian groups and lawmakers alike, who express concerns about how the policy legitimizes and increases Europe’s dependency on autocratic regimes, disregards human rights, and threatens migrants’ physical safety. A recent investigative report by The Washington Post and Lighthouse Reports further revealed that local authorities, aided by EU funding and equipment, have violated human rights and asylum law. Several research studies have further criticized the migration deals’ lack of effectiveness.

Why is migration so controversial?

When over 1.2 million people entered the EU in 2015 to claim asylum under international law, most of whom were Syrian refugees fleeing civil war, the CEAS and the Dublin Regulation quickly proved dysfunctional and ineffective in absorbing the shock to European processing and integration systems. The situation sparked tensions among frontline countries—which were challenged by the arrival of 1,216,860 and 1,166,815 asylum seekers at their borders in 2015 and 2016, respectively—and countries further inward, which in many cases resisted migrant transfers to share responsibility and restricted access to their asylum systems under fear of adverse domestic consequences. Municipalities in major destination countries were overwhelmed by the speed and scale of arrivals and faced difficulties mustering enough resources for housing, financial support, and integration of newcomers in their local communities.

Despite agreements by the European Council to relocate up to 160,000 asylum seekers from frontline countries Italy and Greece to other member states to reduce pressures on the Italian and Greek asylum systems, fewer than 12,000 relocations were realized by the end of 2016. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, for instance, refused orders from Brussels to take in 1,294 asylum seekers and instead organized a national referendum on whether the EU should have the authority to “mandate the obligatory resettlement of non-Hungarian citizens into Hungary,” which he used to validate his harsh domestic anti-immigrant approach. Stoking fears of a Muslim “invasion” and claiming his country was the “last Christian-conservative bastion of the Western world,” Orbán’s approach also included the construction of fences at Hungary’s southern borders, changing asylum laws to speed up processing and reduce protections, and introducing “transit zones” at Hungary’s border with Serbia, which have been condemned as “container prisons” surrounded by barbed wires.

In stark contrast, German Chancellor Angela Merkel valiantly declared “Wir schaffen das!” (“We can do it!”) and decided to keep her country’s borders open, leading to the arrival of around 1.2 million asylum seekers in Germany between 2015 and 2016. The real pressure on municipalities and the sense of chaos and disorder, however, benefitted the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), which entered the federal parliament for the first time in 2017 and became the largest opposition party.

Over the years, asylum seekers have become convenient scapegoats for disillusioned and frustrated Europeans who have seen their societies change and economies tumble because of successive external shocks, from climate change and a global health crisis to rapid technological change and a disruption of Europe’s decades-old security order. In this time of great uncertainty, a rights-based vision of migration and asylum has become a perceived political vulnerability, replaced with a security approach stressing law and order.

In a 2021 effort led by Marine Le Pen, the head of France’s National Rally party, 16 right-wing parties from across Europe—including the governing parties of Hungary, Italy, and Poland at the time—declared their opposition to a “European Superstate” allegedly being created by “radical forces” within the EU. They objected to a perceived “cultural, religious transformation and ultimately nationless construction of Europe” and instead pressed for “respect for the culture and history of European states” and “respect for Europe’s Judeo-Christian heritage.” Uniting diverse national political actors, their communique demonstrates the focus on national identity and Christian values that the far right has portrayed as being under threat because of the EU’s migration policy. Hence, the EU finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place: its policy is weaponized by right-wing populists as too weak, and it is denounced by nongovernmental organizations and observers as not respecting its own values.

How does the new Pact on Migration and Asylum address prior shortcomings?

A sound European policy that attempts to better manage the drivers of irregular migration in countries of origin and centers on the collaboration of all EU member states is needed to handle rising global displacement trends. The passage of the new Pact on Migration and Asylum in May 2024 offers a chance to transform the EU’s current governing framework if implemented effectively by the time the new legislation takes force in 2026. It represents the first major agreement on migration and asylum policy in over a decade, intended to accelerate procedures and enhance cooperation and solidarity between member states.

Framed by the European Commission as a “fair and firm” approach, the new legislation consists of 10 major reform proposals that cement Europe’s policy shift to fortify borders, enhance scrutiny in asylum processing, double down on deporting rejected applicants, and partner with non-EU states of origin and transit to limit irregular arrivals. A key aspect is a new accelerated procedure for asylum applicants from countries with a low recognition rate, whose probability of getting their asylum application request granted is low. The mechanism will take a maximum of 12 weeks (about three months) and permits fast-track processing at EU external borders, during which migrants, including families and children, will stay in collective detention-like facilities. Further, the pact aims to correct the failures of the Dublin Regulation through a new solidarity system, which obliges all member states to share responsibility, either by receiving up to 30,000 asylum applicants per year, paying a fee of 20,000 euros per asylum applicant to assist hosting countries or contributing other resources.

Critics have pointed out, however, that the focus on securitizing EU borders as opposed to addressing humanitarian implications is unlikely to reduce arrival numbers and increases the risks of human rights violations. The European Union must satisfy its obligations under international law to ensure fast-track processing facilities satisfy human rights standards and that all asylum claims are evaluated fairly, as required by the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. These principles should apply equally to EU-funded migration management projects in Europe’s neighborhood.

As the European Union enters a new governing cycle—following the European Parliament election in June and with a new college of commissioners later this fall—it has an opportunity to prioritize a new common migration and asylum policy and take functional steps to achieve a more balanced and orderly system among member states, which provides for the dignity, safety, and rights of those seeking international protection. The number of displaced people globally has increased consistently over the past 12 years and is expected to have exceeded 120 million persons in 2024. However, it is imperative to remember that 75% of displaced persons remain in low- and middle-income countries in the “Global South,” which often struggle with political, economic, and social insecurity themselves. As war continues in Ukraine, conflicts escalate in the Middle East, political instability grows across sub-Saharan Africa, and the secondary effects of climate change jeopardize people’s lives and livelihoods, the EU will be forced to grapple with irregular migration for the foreseeable future.

The nationalities of first-time asylum applicants in the European Union in recent years demonstrate the global nature of migration today. In 2023, for instance, Syrians (183,250), Afghans (100,985), Turks (89,985), Venezuelans (67,085), and Colombians (62,015) represented the five largest nationalities among first-time asylum applicants in the EU. Certainly, contemporary migration flows to Europe are mixed and not all persons applying for asylum fall into the protected categories of the Geneva Convention.

It is also true, however, that many EU countries are changing demographically as birth rates fall across developed economies and are experiencing severe shortages of workers across professional and blue-collar sectors, threatening future social and economic vitality and stability. Immigration, therefore, offers an enormous benefit for Europe to counteract downward demographic and economic trends. Beyond the pact, leaders should dedicate greater efforts to expand legal pathways at the national level for people not considered refugees under international law, but who desperately seek greater economic opportunity and are eager to contribute meaningfully to host societies.

Recent political developments in the European migration space

The yearslong EU effort to agree to a set of clear, cohesive policies as represented by the new Pact on Migration and Asylum, however, appears to be undercut by a recent shift in tone on migration across the bloc. National, xenophobic rhetoric is no longer contained to the fringes of the political spectrum across the European Union. Anti-immigrant sentiment today features dominantly in public debates, after years of far-right populists amplifying cultural anxieties and accusing governments of having lost control of their sovereign borders. Right-wing leaders, from Hungary’s “illiberal democrat” Viktor Orbán to Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party has its roots in a 20th-century fascist movement, have increasingly shaped the direction at the EU level toward a more restrictive approach focused on border security and a defense of European culture and values.  

Recent electoral outcomes across the EU revealing strong support for far-right parties have sent shockwaves across the continent. Following June’s European Parliament election, parties to the right of the European People’s Party—the center-right Christian Democrats—now hold over one-quarter of seats in the EU’s lower legislature (187 out of 720). The vote produced a snap election in France, from which a center-left coalition barely emerged ahead of the far right. In Germany, the extremist AfD emerged from the European vote as the second strongest party, ahead of all three governing coalition parties. In three recent regional elections in eastern Germany, the AfD and the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht—a new party on the extreme left founded in January 2024 that has also adopted a harsh anti-immigration stance—fanned the flames of fear and xenophobia and soared to a combined 42%-49%, both landing among the top three strongest parties in each state. Finally, Austria’s September election saw the far-right Freedom Party become as the strongest new parliamentary grouping, whose campaign included promises of “remigration” as part of a larger theme to create a “Fortress Austria.”

In response to these volatile political trends, member states—including many led by centrist governments—are once again turning to reactive, unilateral measures to contain the far right by way of a more restrictive stance on migration and asylum.

Most notably, Germany’s center-left government has drastically shifted its tone on combating irregular migration and enhancing domestic security after two fatal knife assaults occurred in Germany this summer, whose perpetrators turned out to be foreign nationals. In a stark break with Merkel’s hopeful and humanitarian spirit, the government expanded temporary controls to include all German borders—defying the Schengen regulation—imposed stricter rules on benefits and protected status for asylum seekers, and even began deportations of convicted Afghans to Afghanistan. Not only are these actions inconsistent with the principle of EU solidarity and grounds for heightened tensions with Germany’s neighbors, but the German police union has deemed the border checks largely ineffective, particularly as people claiming asylum can still enter.

Emboldened by the German turn on the issue, Orbán most recently threatened to send buses of migrants to Brussels—copying his conservative MAGA friends in the United States. The new French government, led by Prime Minister Michel Barnier, has also vowed to crack down on irregular entries and strengthen controls at France’s borders. In Poland, Prime Minister and former President of the European Council Donald Tusk announced a temporary suspension of the right to seek asylum for irregular migrants entering through the Polish-Belarusian border, claiming that Russia and Belarus were “weaponizing” migrants in attempts to destabilize the EU. The policy could violate the right to non-refoulement—which protects individuals from being returned to a country under international human rights law—and set a perilous precedent for other member states trying to restrict irregular entries.

In a novel move, Meloni concluded a new “partnership” with Albania—a non-EU country—under which Italy will send up to 36,000 asylum applicants per year to process their claims externally. Though the policy only applies to adult male individuals intercepted in international waters prior to arrival at Italian shores, several attempted transfers of migrants to Albanian processing centers have already been invalidated by an Italian court. Together with six other EU countries, Meloni has also tried to advance normalization with the Assad regime in Syria, in part to reconsider the possibility of returning Syrian refugees to the war-torn country.

At the October 2024 European Council summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, and leaders of EU member states gathered to discuss a full agenda of topics in which migration featured prominently. In a letter setting the tone for the summit, von der Leyen stressed to European leaders the centrality of expanding third-country partnerships like those concluded with Turkey and countries in North Africa and the Middle East, to improve processes of return and counter the “weaponization” of migrants by Russia, Belarus, and others attempting to instigate political instability in Europe. During the meetings, the agreement between Italy and Albania was lauded as a model for the EU to emulate, confirming the shift toward externalization that has gained traction in Europe.

Notably absent from the summit communique was any mention of the new common EU Pact on Migration and Asylum or strategies for its timely and comprehensive implementation. The recent uncoordinated measures by EU members and their preoccupation with “weaponization,” third-country deals, and “return hubs” at the EU level are unlikely to provide the sense of reassurance, cohesion, and opportunity that people expect of their national and European leaders.

[beardedmrbean]

Jan. 23 (UPI) -- Friedrich Merz, currently leading in polls to become German chancellor, said Thursday if elected he will impose strict border controls.

Merz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union Party, cited a fatal knife attack by an Afghan asylum-seeker as evidence the immigration system has failed and all illegal migrant entries should be stopped.

"On the first day of my tenure as chancellor, I will instruct the interior ministry to impose permanent border controls with all our neighbors and refuse all attempts at illegal entry," Merz said in a speech Thursday.

He said even people seeking asylum would be barred from entering Germany.

His position is seen as an effort to take support away from the far-right Alternative for Germany Party, or AfD which has also attempted to link violent crime to immigration.

The Afghan man charged in a Wednesday stabbing attack on a group of kindergartners killed two people, including a 2-year-old boy, was due in court Thursday.

The Wednesday stabbing is the most recent in a series of violent, fatal assaults by suspects seeking asylum in Germany that occurred in Mannheim last May, Solingen in August and Magdeburg last month.

If elected, Merz plans to order the interior ministry to take permanent control of Germany's borders on his first day in office.

He described European Union asylum rules as "recognizably dysfunctional" and declared Germany should "exercise its right to the primacy of national law."

EU law allows temporary border controls to deter illegal immigration, but not permanent control measures.

If elected Merz and his center-right party would need to govern in a coalition with other parties. His plans on immigration would not likely be supported by left-leaning parties like the Free Democratic Party, Social Democrats or the Green Party.

[conceptofjoy]

What alternative even exists to capitalism? It's def not communism [i'm Polish, so i may or may not be "biased" here], socialism? Anarchism? Is the alternative even invented yet?

society can exist without capitalism. it's a economic system that in turn effects how world wide governments run. perhaps i should say western i dunno, i've got very elementary knowledge on the subject.

an extremely brief explanation of what capitalism is, is when a worker doesn't own their output of labor, instead directly going into the pockets of someone in power over them. why is it that a business owner makes more money than their workers despite them never having to work? that's called passive income. with the capital (or material wealth) those people hold, they can only get richer if they make good investments else where. It's that gut churning feeling you get when you ring up someone's items and think oh, yeah I couldn't afford that even if I were standing here for three days straight.

the idea that capitalism breeds innovation is a myth, we can get shit done without most of a workers profits going to a ceo. that's why capitalists hate unions, people up top need workers, but the workers don't need them. democratic options can be applied to the workplace, but it's not like capital owners would let that happen.

because economics and government are tied, what ends up happening is that the government is the one that has to manage corporations, or like should, because exploitation has zero limits as long as they can generate output. but then we get to like corparate bribes and such, yippee.

i said worldwide earlier because capitalism didn't happen in a vacuum. it's a system that came from colonialism efforts to exploit third world countries and its people. using slaves for for labor to increase profits. america still has slaves in the way of prison labor and camp labor so those values are still very ingrained in society.

idk im not super up to world news but i think poland-belarus border is one that vehemently turns away (muslim) asylum seekers since poland is one of the most eastern european nations. basically a trump situation happening over there as well. america routinely fucks up south american and middle eastern countries and when refugees come to our respective borders, the fash gov steps in and dehumanizes the migrants in media. it's all just cycles man.

[scarlet--wiccan]

Do you think Wanda would make it in the new Ultimate Universe? And if so, what are your ideas for a reimagined Scarlet Witch?

I've been turning over a few ideas. My main hope is that if Wanda and Pietro are featured in the new Ultimate Universe, that their cultural ethnic background won't be too heavily distorted. We know some characters have already been significantly changed, but I think the only ones who've had their race altered are white characters, so fingers crossed.

A big part of the premise for this iteration of the Ultimate Universe seems to be asking what the world would look like if the "age of marvels" never happened, or at least, didn't start happening until the present day. We know that the Maker used time-travel to systematically prevent super heroes and villains from emerging the way they have on Earth-616, while simultaneously imposing his own systems of control. So if we assume, for argument's sake, that the X-Men, Brotherhood, and Avengers have never existed, and that the Darkhold has been neutralized and contained along with most of the world's "power catalysts" (like Peter's spider), where does that leave Wanda?

Well, if the circumstances of her birth and upbringing are mostly similar, then I assume she and Pietro would still be living in or near Transia, which is very close to Latveria and would be part of the larger European territory controlled by the Maker himself. Now that the Maker has disappeared, however, I assume that region will experience a major upheaval. It would be cool to see Wanda and Pietro resurface as freedom fighters or asylum seekers from the area, and it might be a good opportunity to revisit the depictions of marginalized Roma from the 60s and 70s with a more modern lens. As far I'm aware, we still don't know where the real Victor von Doom is in this world-- the "Doom" that joined Tony's team is actually a variant of Reed. So I'd really like to see them team up with him and do something cool with their similar backgrounds.

I can't decide, personally, if I think the twins should be mutants or not in this universe. Part of me feels like this is Marvel's chance to have their cake and eat it too-- stick with the retcon in 616 canon, but use 6160 to maintain a version of the twins that are still Magneto's kids. But I know this fandom, and I doubt that would satisfy the majority, plus, I think the writers are going to avoid using Magneto or Xavier for as long as possible, since the state of mutantkind is so different in this world.... and I don't think World War II happened.

For me, Wanda being a witch and her connection to chaos magic is more interesting and more important to her actual character than her being a mutant, but mutants and magic are more closely related than ever in the new Ultimate universe. The Maximoffs being both mutants and magical would actually work really well here, and I guess they could do it anyways, even without Magneto. I still I still need to learn a little bit more about Earth-6160's mutant population before I can say for sure, but at the end of the day, this sort of thing is up to editorial, and I have no way of knowing what kind of rules or mandates are still in place with these characters.

[head-post]

Asylum seekers in UK should have opportunity to work after six months, MPs say

Asylum seekers should have better access to public services and be entitled to work after six months, MPs have said in a cross-party report on the UK’s immigration system, The Guardian reports.

In their recommendations, MPs call on the government to allow asylum seekers to work for six months after arriving in the UK while they await the outcome of their claim.

Currently, most people awaiting a decision on their asylum claim are not authorised to work in the UK. There are limited exemptions after 12 months for those qualified to work in sectors where there are skills shortages, such as social care.

The report, which will be published on Tuesday, was produced jointly by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Poverty and Migration following an enquiry involving 200 experts. It says taxpayers are bearing the costs of the current immigration and asylum system.

It concludes that current government policy is “designed” to push migrants and asylum seekers into poverty, but does not deter them from coming to the UK.

Read more HERE

[atthecenterofeverything]

dunno what makes tosquelles and oury so much more irritating to read for me than guattari even though they're all (or were all at some point) part of institutional psychotherapy - i think at least part of it is the style, the former two clearly retain a lot more freudian language and concepts and a certain conception, at least as far as i saw, of psychotherapeutic concepts as distinct from political analysis, action, and events. but it's also that guattari, even as a psychiatrist himself, was at least formulating a greater criticism of institutions of power, of the links between the asylum and authority, etc., whereas, direct quote from tosquelles:

This is clearly seen in the concrete tasks entrusted to the institution known as the “national gendarmerie”, where protection and repression go hand in hand, or are accentuated in different ways. I've always successfully tried to work locally in Lozère, with the gendarmerie, whose first article prescribes help for lost or vagrant lunatics. They were our “out-of-hospital nurses”. Foucault never understood this; he only saw the repressive side.

hilarious to trace parallels between the police and psych ward nurses but like in a positive way. like, i found anti oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia very dense and struggled with some of the concepts but i could tell the overarching architecture, or the political project behind it a bit more clearly - it felt like a sharper departure, a stronger refusal. whereas the others just read to me like run of the mill positivist psychiatry with a bit more group therapy. and like, in practice, they seemed to still believe in the usefulness of electroshocks and forced institutionalization. 

tosquelles again:

Anti-psychiatry is the practical denial and unthinking project of destroying man himself. The conditions of systematic exclusion and, above all, degradation of the insane in certain concentrationary social systems, while seeming to justify these active denials, fail to conceal their ultimate apocalyptic aim.

and none of this is particularly surprising - again most of them were practising psychiatrists, most of them western european white men, etc. but i think starting with guattari (who i would not even call "anti psychiatry" either) gave me a slightly warped idea of what the school would be like as a whole. it's crazy to think fanon studied under tosquelles, but then again this is just initial thoughts. i'm sure there's a lot of context i'm missing and i might be way off on this.

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

By M. Gessen

For those bewildered by why so many Americans apparently voted against the values of liberal democracy, Balint Magyar has a useful formulation. “Liberal democracy,” he says, “offers moral constraints without problem-solving” — a lot of rules, not a lot of change — while “populism offers problem-solving without moral constraints.” Magyar, a scholar of autocracy, isn’t interested in calling Donald Trump a fascist. He sees the president-elect’s appeal in terms of something more primal: “Trump promises that you don’t have to think about other people.”

Around the world, populist autocrats have leveraged the thrilling power of that promise to transform their countries into vehicles for their own singular will. Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban vowed to restore a simpler, more orderly past, in which men were men and in charge. What they delivered was permission to abandon societal inhibitions, to amplify the grievances of one’s own group and heap hate on assorted others, particularly on groups that cannot speak up for themselves. Magyar calls this “morally unconstrained collective egoism.”

Trump’s first term, and his actions in the four years since, tracked the early record of Putin and Orban in important ways. Looking closely at their trajectories, through the lens of Magyar’s theories, gives a chillingly clear sense of where Trump’s second term may lead.

I called Magyar to ask about this pattern in the late winter of 2021, when it became clear to me that Trump would run for re-election. Magyar is Hungarian, and has extensively studied the autocracy of Orban. Like Trump, Orban had been cast out of office (in 2002, in a vote his supporters said had been fraudulent); he didn’t regain power until eight years later. In the interim, he consolidated his movement, positioning himself and his party as the only true representatives of the Hungarian people. It followed that the sitting government was illegitimate and that anyone who supported it was not part of the nation. When Orban was re-elected, he carried out what Magyar calls an “autocratic breakthrough,” changing laws and practices so that he could not be dislodged again. It helped that he had a supermajority in parliament. Trump, similarly, spent four years attacking the Biden administration, and the vote that brought it to the White House, as fraudulent, and positioning himself as the only true voice of the people. He is also returning with a power trifecta — the presidency and both houses of Congress. He too can quickly reshape American government in his image.

Trump and his supporters have shown tremendous hostility to civic institutions — the judiciary, the media, universities, many nonprofits, some religious groups — that seek to define and enforce our obligations to one another. Autocrats such as Orban and Putin reject that deliberative process, claiming for themselves the exclusive right to define those obligations. If those two leaders, and Trump’s own first term, are any indication, he will likely begin by getting rid of experts, regulators and other civil servants he sees as superfluous, eliminating jobs that he thinks simply shouldn’t exist. Expect asylum officers to be high on that list.

A major target outside of government will be universities. In Hungary, the Central European University, a pioneering research and educational institution (and Magyar’s academic home), was forced into exile. To understand what can happen to public universities in the United States, look at Florida, where the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis has effectively turned the state university system into a highly policed arm of his government. The MAGA movement’s attack on private universities has been underway for some time; most recently it drove the congressional hearings on antisemitism, in the wake of which half a dozen college presidents no longer have their jobs. Watch for moves to strip private universities of federal funding and tax breaks. Under this kind of financial pressure, even the largest and wealthiest universities will cut jobs and shutter departments; smaller liberal arts colleges will go out of business.

Civil society groups — especially those that serve or advocate for immigrants, formerly incarcerated people, L.G.B.T.Q. people, women and vulnerable groups — will be attacked. Then they may come for the unions.

In an Opinion article in The Washington Post, the publisher of The Times, A.G. Sulzberger, laid out some probable scenarios for a Trump administration’s war on the media. I would add that, like Orban — and like the first Trump administration — this president will reward loyal media with privileged access and will attack critical media by targeting its owners’ other businesses. That is a particularly effective tactic, one that we may have seen at work even before Trump was re-elected, when the billionaire owners of The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post decided to nix their publications’ presidential endorsements. (Explaining their decision, the owners cited reasons not related to deference to Trump.)

--

Kamala Harris’s campaign, of course, tried to warn Americans about this and a lot more, labeling Trump a fascist. But Magyar describes fascist movements as “ideology-driven” in a way Trump is not. Take, for comparison, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the former prime minister of Poland, who pursued severe abortion restrictions even when polls showed that those policies could cost him his office. Trump, on the other hand, campaigned against abortion rights when it suited his ends and then positioned himself as a champion of reproductive rights when the context shifted.

I was not convinced by this distinction. To use George Orwell’s formulation, a politician’s face grows to fit his ideological mask. There is perhaps no better example of this than Vladimir Putin, once a cynic with no political convictions, who is now waging a costly, disastrous war in the name of an ideology (incoherent though it may be) of his own invention. And it’s only in hindsight that the European fascists of the 20th century appear to have been driven by coherent ideology: Many of their contemporaries described their beliefs as a hodgepodge. The Yale philosopher Jason Stanley, author of the book “How Fascism Works,” has argued that fascists are defined less by political beliefs than by the way they do politics: by trafficking in fear and hatred of the “other,” by affirming the supremacy of “us” over “them.” All of which describes Trump, doesn’t it?

I made that case to Magyar, unsuccessfully. Look at the Trump family’s appetite for profiting from his political office, he said. That’s not something fascists are known for. The Nazis, for example — “when they took away property from the Jews, they didn’t put it in their own pockets,” he said. “They put it in the state budget.” Orban, on the other hand, is understood to be extraordinarily wealthy; Putin is rumored to be the richest man in Russia. To become the wealthiest man in America, Trump would have to amass more capital than Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, which seems all but impossible. Putin solved this exact problem by extorting his wealthy allies and robbing his rich enemies.

--

Orban used the fear and hatred of immigrants to declare a state of emergency when refugees from the Middle East started coming to Europe in 2015. (He later used the Covid-19 pandemic and then the Russia-Ukraine war as pretexts to adopt emergency powers.) Trump, during his first term, similarly declared a national emergency in connection with the arrival of asylum seekers at the southern border of the United States. President Biden lifted this national emergency in 2021. But the United States has been under a permanent national emergency since Sept. 14, 2001, when President George W. Bush declared it in response to the 9/11 attacks. Every subsequent president, including Barack Obama and Joe Biden, has renewed this national emergency on an annual basis. That is only one of dozens of national emergencies currently in effect, most of them having lasted years.

In Orban’s case, emergency powers have given him expanded control over the armed forces, including the option of deploying the military domestically. In the United States, the president, under certain circumstances, already has this power. But a state of emergency offers an additional slew of “extraordinary powers.” These include the ability to redirect federal funds, as Trump did to finance the construction of the border wall. And the arsenal of power extends to curtailing electronic communications and — perhaps of particular interest to Trump — ways of exerting pressure on private business. Orban has used similar provisions of Hungarian law to exercise “state supervision” over private companies. In Hungary, Orban is the state.

--

Magyar describes autocratic breakthrough as the transition from the rule of law to the law of rule. When Putin campaigned for president in 2000, his slogan was “Dictatorship of the Law.” I remember a banner with that phrase decorating a polling station in besieged Chechnya. He proceeded to rule by decree, as Orban does now and as Trump did in his first term — and has said he intends to do in his second.

Reading Magyar’s writing about that period, I was struck most of all by the mood that seemed to accompany Orban’s actions. We all remember it from Trump’s first term, this sense of everything happening all at once and the utter impossibility of focusing on the existentially threatening, or distinguishing it from the trivial — if that distinction even exists. It’s not just what the autocrats do to stage their breakthrough, it’s how they do it: passing legislation (or signing executive orders) fast, without any discussion, sometimes late at night, in batches, all the while denigrating and delegitimizing any opposition.

As to the specifics, we know less than we may think we know. Had Trump been elected to a second term in 2020, Magyar says he would have expected him to try to repeal the 22nd Amendment, which established a two-term limit for presidents. I think he may still try to do it, clearing the way to run again at the age of 82. Much has been written about Project 2025 as a sort of legislative blueprint for the second Trump presidency. The historian Rick Perlstein, in a series of articles in The American Prospect, has argued that some of this coverage is misleading. Project 2025 is a vast, complicated document full of contradictory recommendations apparently made by people with different beliefs and agendas. Consistent with Magyar’s theory of autocracy, the document is more a reflection of the clan of people who empower Trump and are empowered by him than an ideological document. It is not a blueprint for coherent legislative change, but it is a blueprint still: a blueprint for trampling the system of government as it is currently constituted, a blueprint of destruction.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/15/opinion/donald-trump-orban-putin.html

[pearwaldorf]

Hey so this is happening and it's bad. Palestine is not recognized as a state by much of the world, so this risks making these children stateless.

Belgium saying it has nothing to do with the current round of conflict doesn't mean a damn thing. It's not like Israel hasn't been bombing the shit out of Gaza before August. What sets off alarm bells for me is this:

[The spokesperson] said that the Belgian authorities remain concerned about potential "abuses" of the country's asylum system. "The Foreigners' Office regularly notes that Palestinians in the European Union go to Belgium to have children there in order to acquire Belgian citizenship and, consequently, to benefit from family reunification," he said. "[We will] fight against practices where people who do not have the right to do so try to possess Belgian nationality," he added.

I trust this anti-immigrant rhetoric is familiar to Americans and others. Oh no, they get to have kids outside of a war zone, get citizenship in the EU, and keep their families together. What an awful thing to help enable.

By definition, people who apply for asylum are in a bad spot. Certainly it is one way people will try to game the system, but people will attempt to exploit any advantage they think they have, especially if it gets them out of very real danger.

I don't know anything about how asylum in the EU/Belgium works or if the Foreigners' Office can even do this, but it is deeply concerning they think they might have the authority to do something that drastic. Denaturalization of groups (usually ethnic minorities) is closely associated with ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Please be aware of this sort of rhetoric around citizenship and nationality, and how it is used to punish already vulnerable people. Push back against it, because it is absolutely wrong and extremely frightening as a barometer of what people think is acceptable.

[mariacallous]

In the context of a turbulent and unsatisfying three years in office, the incredibly awful September in progress might rank as the three-party German government’s grimmest month yet. After elections in the east that issued record results for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party—another vote, in Brandenburg, looms on Sept. 22—the government is also reeling from the fallout of two Islamist terrorist attacks that left three dead and eight wounded. One of those attacks involved a Syrian asylum-seeker whose petition for protection in Germany had been denied; he had links to the fundamentalist Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Now the government has announced its response: starting on Sept. 16, Germany will unilaterally impose border closures, for six months, on all nine of its borders with other European countries. Incoming foreign nationals will be screened according to arbitrary criteria, and rejected applicants will be forced onto Germany’s next-door neighbors.

Although some details remain unclear, Germany’s plan amounts to an unprecedented step. Eight of the neighboring countries are EU members, and all of them are part of the Schengen regime that guarantees freedom of movement across borders within the bloc and recognizes the right to political asylum. Meanwhile, Germany’s mainstream opposition party is demanding an even more severe policy—one that would essentially prevent the country from accepting any new asylum applicants onto its territory at all.

“Until we achieve strong protection of the EU’s external borders with the new common European asylum system, we must strengthen controls at our national borders,” said Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser. Her proposal involves expedited procedures at the German frontiers to determine whether each person who arrives may enter and apply for political asylum.

According to Faeser, the planned border screenings will limit illegal migration and “protect against the acute dangers posed by Islamist terrorism and serious crime.” There will be more deportations during this period, she said, but they will conform to EU law. But some experts disagree. European law expert Alberto Alemanno, a professor of European law at HEC Paris, told the Guardian that the German controls “represent a manifestly disproportionate breach of the principle of free movement within the Schengen area.”

And Sergio Carrera, a research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), a Brussels-based think tank, told Foreign Policy that the border closures will most probably have a knock-on effect across the continent: “There’s the risk of these measures triggering a race to the bottom. Where’s the end point? We’re talking about rights that go to the very heart of what the EU is all about.”

The new measures at the German borders ratchet up pressure on European Union norms that are already strained. According to EU law, free movement within the bloc is guaranteed within the Schengen area, which encompasses most EU member countries (except Cyprus and Ireland) as well as Switzerland and Norway. Foreign nationals claiming political persecution have the right to apply for political protection in the country through which they enter the EU. But the bloc’s member countries may suspend Schengen’s guarantees in the case of “internal security concerns” as long as those concerns are proportional and legitimate and the suspensions temporary. Brussels must be briefed in advance.

Germany has had periodic border checks in place along the Austrian border since 2015—a response to the refugee crisis of 2015-16. Last year, in response to heightened migration flows, Germany established checks on its borders shared with Poland, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland. In fact, across the European Union, member states have temporarily restricted internal border crossings 404 times since 2015, according to German daily Die Tageszeitung.

Germany’s move would take another step toward turning the exception policy of internal EU border checks into the rule, argued Christian Jacob of Die Tageszeitung. A European Parliament study issued last year claimed that this was already happening and that a “systematic lack of compliance with EU law” could undermine rule of law guarantees.

One result would almost certainly be a chain reaction across the bloc. Walter Turnowsky, a migration expert at Denmark’s Der Nordschleswiger, a German-language newspaper, fears exactly this. “Officially, the announced German border controls are also temporary, but ultimately the announcement means the end of free travel across the EU,” he said. “From now on, governments will claim: ‘Well, Germany controls its borders too,’” so they will do the same.

The new German measures aim to stop non-EU citizens who have already applied for asylum elsewhere in the bloc from entering Germany by bus, train, or car from Schengen zone neighbors. (Currently, only third-country nationals who have invalid papers or don’t intend to file for political asylum are refused entry.) Under the new measures, the migrants would be returned to the country where they entered the Schengen area and originally applied for asylum, which are usually one of the EU’s southern external border countries, such as Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, or Spain.

German border guards would detain the foreign nationals at the border—perhaps even in a kind of jail, apparently for no longer than five weeks—until their status can be verified. Foreign nationals who had not previously applied for asylum but who claim political persecution could then enter Germany and apply for protection, which German courts would rule on at a later date.

One of the looming questions is what criteria German police would invoke to screen those parties interested in entering the country. Since not every person traveling into Germany can be stopped, “it will be people who look different, regardless of citizenship,” said Carrera, of CEPS. “A certain racial appearance will make some people suspect. This is racial profiling, and it is illegal.”

Against the background of its fierce battle in eastern Germany with the AfD, Germany’s conservative opposition, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has opted to steal the other party’s thunder by endorsing measures very much like those of the far right—and until recently entirely taboo. Claiming that the government’s measures do not go nearly far enough, the CDU argues that no people—none at all—should be permitted to enter Germany in the absence of a visa or European passport.

This would de facto end the country’s commitment to offering asylum. In order to make this flagrant violation of international law at least appear to conform to EU regulations, under the CDU plan, Germany would declare a state of emergency as a result of internal security threats. This, the CDU believes, would legalize the across-the-board rejection of unwanted third-country nationals.

The proposal also goes a gigantic step beyond the limitation of movement in the EU, effectively eviscerating the right to political asylum.

“This kind of measure, and those the government are taking, will be investigated and could come before the EU court of justice,” Carrera said. “The EU will determine whether the security concerns really justify such a breach of EU law.” Other experts have said that Germany will not be able to prove that the recent attacks or the numbers of asylum-seekers—which have fallen this year—actually threaten the state’s internal security and thus justify (or indeed, are really aided by) these measures.

One of the many problems with the new German modus operandi: Neighboring states will have to accept people refused by Germany back onto their territory—and Austria, for one, which has general elections on Sept. 29 (and where polls indicate the situation for migrants is getting even worse, with a very strong showing of the far-right Freedom Party likely) said forget it, it won’t take them.

Poland is also up arms at the prospect of traffic jams at the borders that would obstruct commercial and private transportation. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the German move a “de facto suspension of the Schengen Agreement on a large scale.”

The Belgian daily Le Soir seems to hit the nail on the head: “With governments like this, there’s no need for the far right to be in power. The pressure of elections and the fear of extremes are causing those in power to run around like headless chickens, with migrants as the only means for decompression.”

EU expert Thu Nguyen, the deputy director of the Berlin-based Jacques Delors Centre, told Foreign Policy that unilateral decisions taken by Germany—the EU’s most populous state—are entirely unproductive. She noted that the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum, a set of new rules passed this year for managing migration and establishing a common asylum system at a bloc-wide level, addresses some of the concerns about immigration raised by Germany and other EU states, including by facilitating faster procedures for asylum applicants at the continent’s external borders.

After all, Germany—including the CDU’s parliamentary group in the EU, the European People’s Party (EPP)—was essential in drafting the pact, together with the 25 other EU member states. When the pact came in front of the European Parliament earlier this year, EPP parliamentarian Tomas Tobé said that “the absolute best way to help support a European migration policy is to be loyal to the whole migration pact.”