Austria takes tougher standon economic immigration
Print Edition
AUSTRIA will take tougher action to turn away economic migrants in order to reduce overall immigration as it sees little help from other European countries in stemming the flow of migrants arriving at its border, ministers said yesterday.
Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere have entered Austria, many en route to Germany, in the past year.
Around 90,000 of those sought asylum in Austria — a country of 8.5 million people — in 2015, around three times more than the previous year, interior ministry statistics show.
No figures are given for economic migrants.
Vice-Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner, from the conservative junior coalition party, said Austria was under pressure to act on a national level in the absence of help from EU neighbors.
“I see nothing on the European level that points in the direction of taking actions,” Mitterlehner told reporters, pointing to slow progress in setting up so-called hotspots on Europe’s outer borders to speed up asylum processes.
Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said so-called Dublin rules had to be applied more firmly again, which would allow sending migrants back to the EU state they first arrived in.
She also described as economic migrants those who fled from war, but traveled through several EU countries to settle in one they considered more affluent, such as Sweden or Germany, which is currently in the process of sending hundreds of migrants back to Austria.
Chancellor Werner Faymann echoed her comments on the need to reduce the number of arrivals, calling for a Plan B.
“That means to intensify policies together with Germany to send back economic migrants and decrease overall numbers,” Social Democrat Faymann said in an interview with Austrian newspaper Krone.
He said Austria needed to explore differentiating between those fleeing war and those who migrate for economic reasons.
“We will be more active at our borders than today. The Germans will also do more,” Faymann said.
Previously more lenient on accepting migrants, Faymann has come under pressure from his conservative coalition partners and the far-right Freedom Party, which is supported by around a third of people surveyed.
Last month, he said Austria should step up deportations of people who do not qualify for asylum.
Austrian police said on Monday that Germany was refusing more and more migrants entry at its southern border, sending a few hundred back to Austria every day since the start of January.
“Germany has clearly in part said goodbye to its ‘welcoming culture’,” Mikl-Leitner said yesterday.
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