Tag Archives: asylum

Violent crime rises in Germany and is attributed to refugees

Armed police officers guard 'St. Petri Dome,' next to the town hall of the northern German city Bremen, February 28, 2015.

By Riham Alkousaa

BERLIN (Reuters) – Young male refugees in Germany got the blame on Wednesday for most of a two-year increase in violent crime, adding fuel to the country’s political debate over migrants.

Violent crime rose by about 10 percent in 2015 and 2016, a study showed. It attributed more than 90 percent of that to young male refugees.

It noted, however, that migrants settling from war-torn countries such as Syria were much less likely to commit violent crimes that those from other places who were unlikely to be given asylum.

Migration will be a key issue in forthcoming coalition talks between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD). The arrival of more than a million migrants since mid-2015 hurt both parties in last September’s election.

The government-sponsored study showed a jump in violent crime committed by male migrants aged 14 to 30.

Christian Pfeiffer, a criminology expert and one of the study researchers, told Deutschlandfunk radio there were huge differences between various refugee groups depending on where they came from and how high their chances were of staying and gaining legal status in Germany.

Asylum seekers who are regarded as war refugees who have relatively good chances of staying in Germany tend to avoid trouble more, the study found.

Around 17 percent of violent crimes in Lower Saxony that were attributed to refugees, for example, were suspected of being committed by North African asylum seekers who made up less than 1 percent of the state’s registered refugee population. North African asylum seekers have relatively slim chances of obtaining legal status in Germany.

“The situation is completely different for those who find out as soon as they arrive that they are totally undesirable here. No chance of working, of staying here,” Pfeiffer said.

The study said reuniting refugees with their families by allowing them to come to Germany too could help to reduce violence. Such reunions look set to be a particularly contentious issue in talks about a new coalition government.

The predominantly young male majority of refugees live in Germany without partners, mothers, sisters or other females whom the study sees as a “violence-preventing, civilising force.”

(Reporting By Riham Alkousaa Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Asylum requests dip slightly after 2015 record, OECD says

People walk as they flee deeper into the remaining rebel-held areas of Aleppo, Syria December 13, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail

PARIS (Reuters) – The number of people fleeing war or strife for stabler parts of the world fell marginally in 2016 from a record high in 2015, with the lion’s share of those seeking asylum doing so in Germany, the OECD said on Thursday.

In a report on broader migration trends, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said that the biggest exodus of asylum-seekers was from war-ravaged Syria, followed by Afghanistan and Iraq.

Asylum request numbers continued to drop in the early months of this year, it added.

For a fourth straight year, Germany registered by far the largest number of asylum applications – 48 percent of a world total of 1.64 million in 2016.

The United States, where the bulk of asylum applications are from Latin Americans, was a distant second, registering 262,000 asylum applications.

The total number of applications dropped by one percent from 2015, said the Paris-based OECD, which noted that many of those who arrived in Germany in 2015 filed formal asylum applications in 2016.

When compared to the population of the host country, Germany registered more than 10 times as many asylum requests as the United States and four times as many as Italy, another key destination for many migrants, notably from Nigeria.

The OECD, a think-tank funded by the governments of its 35 member countries, most of them wealthy economies and relatively stable politically, suggested the slight dip in asylum requests in 2016 may be followed by a more pronounced reduction this year.

In the first six months of 2017, the total number of landings on European shores reached 85,000, around 10 times less than at the peak in the second half of 2015, it said in a statement that accompanied its report.

With two in three refugees arriving in Europe, OECD chief Angel Gurria said: “Improving the integration of immigrants and their children, including refugees, is vital to delivering a more prosperous, inclusive future for all.”

While OECD countries, primarily in Western Europe, received 1.6 million asylum requests in 2016, Turkey alone was providing temporary protection to another three million Syrians, the organization said.

(Reporting by Brian Love; Editing by Toby Davis)

Asylum-seekers fleeing U.S. may find cold comfort in Canada’s courts

FILE PHOTO: A woman who told police that she and her family were from Sudan is taken into custody by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers after arriving by taxi and walking across the U.S.-Canada border into Hemmingford, Quebec, Canada on February 12, 2017. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi/File Photo

By Anna Mehler Paperny and Rod Nickel

TORONTO/WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Migrants who applied for asylum in the United States but then fled north, fearing they would be swept up in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, may have miscalculated in viewing Canada as a safe haven.

That is because their time in the United States could count against them when they apply for asylum in Canada, according to a Reuters review of Canadian federal court rulings on asylum seekers and interviews with refugee lawyers.

In 2016, 160 asylum cases came to the federal courts after being rejected by refugee tribunals. Of those, 33 had been rejected in part because the applicants had spent time in the United States, the Reuters review found.

Lawyers said there could be many more such cases among the thousands of applicants who were rejected by the tribunals in the same period but did not appeal to the federal courts.

The 2016 court rulings underscore the potentially precarious legal situation now facing many of the nearly 2,000 people who have crossed illegally into Canada since January.

Most of those border crossers had been living legally in the United States, including people awaiting the outcome of U.S. asylum applications, according to Canadian and U.S. government officials and Reuters interviews with dozens of migrants.

Trump’s tough talk on illegal immigration, however, spurred them northward to Canada, whose government they viewed as more welcoming to migrants. There, they have begun applying for asylum, citing continued fears of persecution or violence in their homelands, including Somalia and Eritrea.

But Canadian refugee tribunals are wary of “asylum-shopping” and look askance at people coming from one of the world’s richest countries to file claims, the refugee lawyers said. (For graphic on asylum process see http://tmsnrt.rs/2nyY8CJ)

“Abandoning a claim in the United States or coming to Canada after a negative decision in the United States, or failing to claim and remaining in the States for a long period of time – those are all big negatives. Big, big negatives,” said Toronto-based legal aid lawyer Anthony Navaneelan, who is representing applicants who came to Canada from the United States in recent months.

The Canadian government has not given a precise figure on how many of the border crossers were asylum seekers in the United States.

But it appears their fears may have been misplaced. Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has said that anyone in the United States illegally is subject to deportation, but there is no evidence that asylum seekers with pending cases are considered illegal under the new administration.

“LACK OF SERIOUSNESS”

The asylum seekers will make their cases before Canada’s refugee tribunals, which rejected 5,000 cases last year. The tribunals’ decisions are not made public, so the reasons are not known. An Immigration and Refugee Board spokeswoman confirmed, however, that an applicant’s time in the United States can be a factor in a tribunal’s decision.

Rejected applicants can appeal to Canada’s federal courts, whose rulings are published. The federal courts upheld 19 of the 33 tribunal rejections they heard last year and recommended fresh tribunal hearings for the other 14 cases.

The judges believed those claimants had a good explanation for having been in the United States first. The outcomes of the new tribunal hearings are not known.

The federal court handles only a small portion of all applications rejected by the refugee tribunals. But overall, applicants who have spent time in the United States have a higher chance of being rejected, said multiple immigration lawyers, including two former refugee tribunal counsel, interviewed by Reuters.

Last year, a federal judge upheld a refugee tribunal rejection of Sri Lankan man who had abandoned a pending U.S. claim. The tribunal said the man’s decision demonstrated a “lack of seriousness” and was “inconsistent with the expected behavior” of someone who fears persecution in their own country.

A Chadian applicant lost his 2016 appeal because he did not claim asylum “at the first opportunity” in the United States.

The asylum-seekers who have crossed the U.S border since January are still going through the claim process and many have yet to go through tribunal hearings.

WELL-FOUNDED FEAR?

Canadian officials want refugee applicants to behave the way they think people fleeing for their lives would behave, said lawyer and researcher Hilary Evans Cameron. Living undocumented in the United States for years or abandoning a pending claim, as many people among this latest refugee influx have done, are not seen as consistent with that fear, she said.

Those with failed U.S. asylum claims must prove to Canadian tribunals that the U.S. courts were wrong in their assessment, that their circumstances have changed for the worse, or that they qualify in Canada, several lawyers said.

Crucially, all applicants must show that the often years-old fears that led them to leave their home countries for the United States still exist.

Canada grants asylum if applicants qualify under the United Nations’ definition of someone who has a well-founded fear of persecution based on certain criteria, such as race, religion, nationality or political affiliation.

A federal judge ruled in March that the deportation of a Honduran family, who had lived in the United States for more than three years, could go forward after immigration officials found the family no longer faced a risk in Honduras.

“The longer they’ve been away (from their country of origin), the more difficult it is to establish that they’re a refugee,” said Winnipeg refugee lawyer Ken Zaifman.

Graphic on asylum process http://tmsnrt.rs/2nyY8CJ

(Additional reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley in Washington; Editing by Amran Abocar and Ross Colvin)

Turkish tensions with Europe risk spilling into Switzerland

European Union (L) and Turkish flags fly outside a hotel in Istanbul, Turkey May 4, 2016. REUTERS/Murad Sezer/File Photo

By Michael Shields

ZURICH (Reuters) – Neutral Switzerland risks getting swept up in Turkey’s political row with European countries as Swiss authorities weigh how to handle Turks’ requests for asylum and a call to ban a rally on Sunday by Turkey’s foreign minister.

The government was keeping a low profile on Thursday, saying only that it was reviewing a request by financial capital Zurich to block a planned weekend appearance by Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu for security reasons.

The Hilton hotel booked for the rally canceled the event, saying organizers could not ensure the safety of guests and visitors.

It comes amid a series of speaking engagements to galvanize support among the Turkish community for President Tayyip Erdogan’s bid to increase his powers in a referendum on April 16.

The foreign ministry declined to comment on media reports that several Turks with diplomatic passports, including the second-ranking envoy in Bern, had sought asylum after President Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown in the wake of a failed coup last year.

The State Secretariat for Migration, which handles asylum requests, said it does not comment on individual requests for refugee status. It referred instead to a government response this week to a parliamentary query on the matter.

That note said 408 Turkish citizens had sought asylum since the July coup attempt, including some holders of diplomatic passports. It said it could not comment further on the “very few individual cases” among diplomats for fear it could give away their identities.

Turkish embassy officials in Bern were not immediately available by phone and did not respond to an email seeking comment.

During a visit to neighboring Germany on Wednesday, Cavusoglu accused Berlin of hostility towards his country and Islam as acrimony between the NATO allies showed no sign of abating.

On Thursday, Chancellor Angela Merkel told Turkey to stop comparing the German government to the Nazis over the cancellation of Turkish ministers’ rallies in Germany, only for Cavusoglu to repeat the comparison.

Ankara is furious over the cancellations. Germany has said the rallies can go ahead if the organizers respect local laws, but has canceled several rallies, citing security concerns.

In Austria, the interior minister said this week he wanted to change legislation to permit a ban on foreign officials making speeches in Austria if human rights or public order were threatened, a move aimed at Turkish politicians.

Swiss government statistics show around 68,000 Turkish citizens live in Switzerland, a nation of 8.3 million whose population is a quarter foreign. The Turkish embassy’s website refers to around 130,000 Turkish citizens.

(Additional reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Door knocks in the dark: The Canadian town on front line of Trump migrant crackdown

Refugees walk along railway tracks from the United States to enter Canada at Emerson, Manitoba, Canada, February 26, 2017. REUTERS/Lyle Stafford

By Rod Nickel

EMERSON, Manitoba (Reuters) – Jaime French was jarred out of bed in Emerson, Manitoba early one morning this month by pounding at her front door, just yards from the U.S. border. A face peered in through the window, flanked in the darkness by others.

Outside were 16 asylum seekers, arriving at one of the first houses they saw after crossing a lightly monitored border between Canada and the United States.

“They banged pretty hard, then ‘ring ring ring’ the doorbell,” said French, a mother of two young girls. “It was scary. That really woke me up.”

The town has become the front line of an emerging political crisis that is testing Canada’s will to welcome asylum seekers.

Hundreds of people, mainly from Africa but also the Middle East, are fleeing U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, migrants and refugee agencies say. Many asylum seekers say Trump’s election and subsequent crackdown on illegal migrants spurred their plans to head north.

Those arriving in Emerson come on foot in the dead of night, unnerving its 650 residents. Some fear the influx of unscreened migrants while others are frustrated by the cost and effort forced on the community.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is under increased pressure from the left, which wants him to let more in, and from the right, which is fearful of an increased security risk. Trudeau must tread carefully to ensure the issue does not complicate relations with Trump.

The cooling welcome in Emerson is a microcosm of growing discontent over Canada’s open door policy for refugees.

Last week, an Angus Reid poll found that while 47 percent of respondents said Canada is taking in the right number of refugees, 41 percent said the number is already too high. (See the report) (http://angusreid.org/syrian-refugee-travel-ban/)

“It could become a real political liability for the government,” said Christian Leuprecht, a politics professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, noting that spring will lead to more crossings as travel gets easier.

THAWING OUT IN THE KITCHEN

After the 16 migrants left French’s home, without being admitted, they found truck driver Brad Renout two doors down leaving for work.

“I was going to leave them all outside,” Renout said. “I figured, to hell with (them) for coming over the border in winter.”

When he saw children among the group, Renout allowed three women, three toddlers and two teenagers into his kitchen.

Early Sunday, Reuters witnessed at least seven migrants bundled in new parkas and bulging backpacks walking into Canada from Minnesota, following railway tracks in the icy dark.

Ismail, a 25-year-old Somali man, said they had walked for 22 hours without sleep across North Dakota. As police lights flashed distantly, Ismail said he was afraid to walk toward them.

He thought the group was still on U.S. soil.

Canadian police caught up with them shortly afterward and arrested them for illegally entering Canada. The group squeezed, uncuffed, into a police minivan and headed to a government office for questioning.

“We feel sorry for the people,” said retired grain farmer Ken Schwark. “I just wish they would come through the legal way.”

A 2004 agreement between Canada and the United States means asylum seekers must submit applications in the United States if they arrive there first. But if they find a way into Canada, they can apply for refugee status there.

It’s an avenue that has spurred north illegal migrants in the United States, especially Somalis settled in Minnesota, which shares a land border with Manitoba. After pricey taxi rides to North Dakota, many like Ismail walk for hours in darkness and -20 C (-4°F) temperatures to dimly lit Emerson, in the shadow of the bright glare of the international border crossing.

The lucky migrants get rides dropping them off less than a mile from Noyes, Minnesota, within sight of Emerson’s southern edge. From there they duck under a metal crossing-arm gate, walk across the border and often use their own cellphones to dial police.

Others are dropped 30 or more kilometers (19 miles) from the border, and follow rail lines into Emerson, crossing a border marked in most areas only by scattered concrete boundary markers.

Faye Suderman, a four-decade Emerson resident, said she is sympathetic but draws a line between those fleeing persecution and those who have simply run out of chances in the United States: “How difficult is it to get rid of those people and give help to those truly in need?”

Emerson Cafe manager Jacquelyn Reimer, who has fed shivering asylum seekers for free, wondered why the Canadian government is helping refugees when the country has its own homeless problem. “We can’t even take care of our own,” she said.

MAKESHIFT BEDS, NUTELLA SANDWICHES

Due to its border-hugging location, Emerson’s encounters with migrants are not new, but the scale of their arrivals is.

In the first two months of 2017, 143 mainly Somali people walked illegally over the border into Emerson, representing 40 percent of Manitoba’s full-year total in 2015/16. Quebec and British Columbia are the two other major illegal crossing points, but police there refused to provide data.

Emerson residents don’t encounter the migrants for long before police arrive and whisk them to the local Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) office for questioning. From there, they are ferried to Winnipeg, Manitoba’s capital, to file asylum claims.

Despite some residents’ fears, asylum-seekers have not caused any trouble, said Bill Spanjer, Emerson’s emergency coordinator.

“They’re going to be on their best behavior because otherwise their refugee claim is certainly going to be affected,” he said.

When police receive a call, they summon the town’s volunteer firefighters to treat any health concerns, as the nearest ambulance is 25 minutes away. In December, two men from Ghana lost all of their fingers to frostbite.

Firefighter callouts cost Emerson about C$500 each time. The costs may add up to C$30,000 since last spring, representing 10 percent of its firefighting budget, said Emerson-Franklin’s elected leader Greg Janzen. The provincial government directed more resources to Emerson last week, including paramedics and paralegal and transportation services.

Since the influx sped up in January, the strain on Emerson has grown. In early February, police intercepted 18 migrants from Somalia and Djibouti and CBSA asked Emerson to temporarily house them in the town’s ice rink.

Brenda Piett and other volunteers laid folding banquet tables on the concrete floor, and layered them with blankets for makeshift mattresses. At the migrants’ request, they served white bread sandwiches with Nutella hazelnut spread.

“The groups are getting bigger, and the stories are scary, how far they’ve walked,” said Piett, an inventory clerk at Emerson’s duty-free store. “But it does affect our town. Some people are very scared of it.”

(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Amran Abocar and Ross Colvin)

Eight people flee U.S. border patrol to seek asylum in Canada

Canadian police assist child from Sudan family fleeing to Canada

(This version of the Feb. 17 story corrects the headline and first paragraph to eight people from nine)

By Christinne Muschi

CHAMPLAIN, N.Y. (Reuters) – Eight asylum-seekers, including four children, barely made it across the Canadian border on Friday as a U.S. border patrol officer tried to stop them and a Reuters photographer captured the scene.

As a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer seized their passports and questioned a man in the front passenger seat of a taxi that had pulled up to the border in Champlain, New York, four adults and four young children fled the cab and ran to Royal Canadian Mounted Police on the other side.

One by one they scrambled across the snowy gully separating the two countries. RCMP officers watching from the other side helped them up, lifting the younger children and asking a woman, who leaned on her fellow passenger as she walked, if she needed medical care.

The children looked back from where they had come as the U.S. officer held the first man, saying his papers needed to be verified.

The man turned to a pile of belongings and heaved pieces of luggage two at a time into the gully — enormous wheeled suitcases, plastic shopping bags, a black backpack.

“Nobody cares about us,” he told journalists. He said they were all from Sudan and had been living and working in Delaware for two years.

The RCMP declined on Friday to confirm the nationalities of the people. A Reuters photo showed that at least one of their passports was Sudanese.

The man then appeared to grab their passports from the U.S. officer before making a run for the border. The officer yelled and gave chase but stopped at the border marker. Canadian police took hold of the man’s arm as he crossed.

The border patrol officer told his counterpart that the man was in the United States illegally and that he would have detained him.

Officers on both sides momentarily eyed the luggage strewn in the snow before the U.S. officer took it, and a walker left on the road, to the border line.

The RCMP carried the articles to their vehicles, and the people piled in to be driven to a nearby border office to be interviewed by police and to make a refugee claim.

People seeking refugee status have been pouring over the Canada-U.S. border as the United States looks to tighten its policies on refugees and illegal immigrants. Asylum-seekers sneak across because even if they are caught, they can make a claim in Canada; if they make a claim at a border crossing, they are turned away.

(Writing by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

German agency working to clear backlog of 435,000 asylum cases

rejected asylum seeker returns to middle east

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s migration agency hopes to clear a backlog of 435,000 asylum cases within months, the organization’s new director said in an interview with Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper on Wednesday.

Jutta Cordt, who took over as head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) this month, told the newspaper her top priorities were to accelerate the processing of asylum applications, deepen integration, and step up deportations of those whose applications were denied.

“We carried over 435,000 cases into the new year and we want to have dealt with those this spring,” the paper quoted Cordt as saying.

She told the paper the agency had received 40 million euros ($42.57 million) in additional funding in 2017 to work on repatriation processing and wanted to start that process sooner.

“If there is virtually no prospect for a migrant to stay here, it makes sense to push for an early repatriation and to encourage that financially,” Cordt told the newspaper.

More than a million migrants from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere have arrived in Germany since the beginning of 2015, prompting concerns about security and integration. Polls show that migration will be a key issue in September’s national election.

The issue of repatriation – and better identification of refugees – has taken on new urgency after a spate of Islamist attacks carried out by failed asylum seekers, including Anis Amri, the 24-year-old Tunisian man who rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market in December, killing 12 people.

Amri, who was shot dead in Italy, had lived in Germany under at least 14 different names, police have said.

Cordt told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper in a separate interview that local authorities should be taking fingerprints from migrants to better track their identities and avoid multiple asylum applications.

Migrants are currently fingerprinted by police if they cross the German border without a valid passport, then again in a migrant intake center and for a third time when they file an asylum application.

BAMF has said that it has now biometric data on all migrants, but it is not clear how many multiple applications for asylum benefits have been filed.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alison Williams)

Protesters attack EU asylum offices on Greece’s Lesbos

Migrant camp in Greece

ATHENS (Reuters) – Asylum-seekers attacked the premises of the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) on the island of Lesbos on Monday, protesting against delays in dealing with asylum claims, Greek and EU authorities said.

About 70 people, most from Pakistan and Bangladesh, threw rocks and burning blankets at EASO containers inside the Moria migrant camp, damaging three of those, a Greek police spokesman for the island said.

EASO Spokesman Jean-Pierre Schembri said protesters had hurled petrol bombs while interviews with asylum-seekers were taking place. EASO staff had evacuated the camp.

“They burned our offices this morning … The process will not resume for the time being,” he said. “We have to evaluate security issues and in our view we need more presence of Greece police to be in place.”

More than 15,000 asylum-seekers are living in overcrowded camps on Greek islands close to Turkey, stranded by a European deal with Ankara to seal the main route into the continent for a million refugees and migrants last year.

Asylum-seekers wait for weeks or months for their claims to be processed.

There are nearly 6,000 asylum-seekers on Lesbos alone, nearly double the capacity its two camps can handle. Violence and protests at the conditions there are frequent.

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Thousands flee fire at Greek migrant camp as tensions flare

Migrants stand among the remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece,

By Karolina Tagaris

ATHENS (Reuters) – Thousands of people fled a migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos on Monday night after fire swept through tents and housing cabins during violence among residents, police said.

The fire was over by mid-day on Tuesday at the Moria camp which houses the 5,700 migrants on the island and many people had returned, though children had been transferred to other facilities, police said.

No casualties were reported from the fire and its cause was not clear.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, linked the fire to poor living conditions and a sense of insecurity among many of the residents.

Refugees and migrants on Lesbos are stranded there by a European Union deal with Turkey preventing them going beyond the island until their asylum claims have been processed. Those who do not qualify will be deported to Turkey.

Tensions have boiled over at overcrowded camps on Greece’s islands as the slow processing of asylum requests adds to frustration over tough living conditions.

Greek media said the clashes on Monday erupted among residents following a rumor that hundreds of people would be deported.

Roland Schoenbauer, UNHCR’s spokesman in Greece, said people were “sick of waiting” in the camps. “They don’t know when their asylum claims will be processed. Some people feel they don’t have enough information,” he said.

A police official in Athens said two riot police squads had been deployed to the island.

Nearly 60 percent of the Moria camp, including tents and metal-roofed cabins, had been destroyed by the fire, a police official said. Work was underway on Tuesday to set up new tents, Police Minister Nikos Toskas said.

At least nine people were arrested on accusations of damaging property and causing unrest and were expected to appear before a prosecutor, a police official in Athens said.

The remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece,

The remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece, September 20, 2016. REUTERS/Giorgos Moutafis

OVERCROWDING

Panos Navrozidis, Greece director of aid agency International Rescue Committee, said the camp had been operating at over-capacity for months, with people crammed into the facility with limited access to water, and in conditions that do not meet humanitarian standards.

He criticized the system to process claims as “opaque and inconsistent” and said preferential treatment based on nationality led to tensions within the community.

Thousands have applied for asylum and the wait is long, ranging from weeks to months. Just over 500 people have been deported to Turkey since March but none of those who have requested asylum were among those, Greece says.

Despite a slowdown in arrivals from Turkey compared to last year, more than 13,500 migrants and refugees are now living on eastern Aegean islands, nearly double a capacity of 7,450.

“The situation is difficult,” Christiana Kalogirou, prefect of the north Aegean region, told Greek TV. “There is a great need for decongestion of the islands … in the future things could become much more difficult,” she said.

Including those on the islands, there are 60,000 migrants and refugees stranded in Greece, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who made risky journeys in flimsy inflatable boats.

(Additional reporting Renee Maltezou; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Austria takes another baby step towards tougher asylum rules

Migrants wait to cross the border from Slovenia into Spielfeld in Austria, F

VIENNA (Reuters) – Austria has taken its next step, albeit small, toward introducing tougher rules on immigration that will allow it to turn away asylum seekers at its borders within an hour and also to cap the number of asylum requests it accepts.

The government said on Tuesday it would start next week to collect expert opinions needed to pass an emergency decree necessary to trigger implementation of the new rules.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka wants the emergency decree to be introduced as soon as possible rather than when an agreed yearly cap of 37,500 is reached.

But Chancellory Minister Thomas Drozda said on Tuesday that debating the matter and procedural issues would take at least until late October.

He also said that turning away migrants at the border might be complicated by the fact Austria has not yet agreed on a deportation arrangement with its eastern neighbor Hungary and many other relevant countries.

“It’s a question of whether one wants to or should prepare now for a situation that will possibly occur in November or December,” Drozda told reporters.

Chancellor Christian Kern has not pushed for the implementation of the tougher rules on asylum claims yet and has said he saw little point in starting to do so if this year’s limit would only be reached around late November.

Austria has mostly served as a conduit into Germany for refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa but the country of 8.5 million people has also taken in about 110,000 asylum seekers since last summer.

After initially welcoming refugees, the government decided to cap the number of asylum claims it would accept this year and has made family reunification harder for migrants, steps widely criticized by EU states and human rights groups.

Drozda said the number of asylum requests had reached 24,260 at the end of July with requests coming in at a much slower pace than last year.

Austria led efforts that resulted in the closing of the so-called Balkan route from Turkey to northern Europe and is turning away an increasing number of migrants at its southern border with Italy.

Also on Tuesday, the Danish government proposed the adoption of a law that would enable police to reject asylum seekers at the borders in times of crisis such as that in 2015 when thousands of migrants sought to enter the country.

(Reporting by Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Louise Ireland)