Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 00:43:47 +0200
Asylum seeker numbers in France ROCKETS by 20% as Europe’s migrant crisis continues
MIGRANTS fleeing war-torn countries including Afghanistan, Sudan and Syria, and applying for asylum in France, have rocketed by nearly 20 per cent according to official figures.
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Numbers being granted refugee status by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless people (OFPRA) is also on the rise by 36.7 per cent, six points higher than in 2015.
With over a third of migrants being granted asylum, France is getting closer to the European average, which, according to the statistics arm of the European Commission, Eurostat, is currently 45 per cent.
The vast majority of asylum seekers hail from Afghanistan or Sudan, and live in the Calais Jungle migrant tent camp, where six out of 10 migrants are granted asylum.
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But Afghanistan is in the lead when it comes to asylum applications. This year, the number of Afghan migrants seeking refuge in France rose by a staggering 726 per cent between January and August.
Some are arguing that the OFPRA is not processing migrant applications quickly enough, despite the unprecedented rise in demand.
According to OFPRA’s managing director Pascal Brice, the looming terror threat means it is “important” for his staff to spend time “thoroughly” investigating a migrant’s asylum application and carrying out in-depth background checks.
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Rushing through applications could result in granting refugee or asylum status to a migrant with links to a terrorist group, which would be an “absolute catastrophe,” he said.
OFPRA is also responsible for helping relocate migrants after president Francois Hollande pledged to take in 30,000 illegal immigrants stranded in Italy and Greece before the end of 2017 in September last year.
But according to the General Directorate for Foreigners in France, the DGEF, France has only taken in 1,656 of these migrants, with another 333 expected to arrive at the end of the month.
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Officially, government officials are said to be thrilled by the fact that they are respecting the EU’s migrant quotas, but in reality, with only 400 migrants being relocated every month, France is seriously lagging behind.
Some officials claim that the EU’s migrant relocation policy is a mess, and that Italy-based migrants waiting to be sent to France are heading to the Calais Jungle alone in a bid to ‘settle in’ more quickly, and skip all the red tape.