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In 2013, the highest number of persons granted protection status was registered in Sweden (26 400), followed by Germany (26 100), France (16 200), Italy (14 500) and the United Kingdom (13 400). All together, these five Member States accounted for more than 70% of all those granted protection status in the EU28.
Anybody got figures of non-asylum immigrants whatever that means (for Swedish xenophobes this may include Greeks, but not include Americans, for example, so even EU vs non-EU may not be quite enough)?
A few years back I dug a bit into the Dutch numbers on African illegal immigrants - but I found there isn't anything solid on non-asylum immigrants in regard to official figures, just estimates based on the numbers of police arrests, when police by coincidence discover someone has no legal status. It is not actively measured by policy, rarely researched and exceedingly difficult. Other means to attempt tallying the size of this group can be thought of (e.g. hospitalization), but these too would also form a proxy at best.
But what else is to be expected with a harsh government policy that actively pursues sending illegal immigrants straight across the borders and is blind for the very possible bureaucratic nightmare when people get stuck between nations and become de facto stateless? The upshot is that non-asylum immigrants (or those that applied and were not recognized) in the Netherlands actively avoid the means of government bookkeepings and drop out of the system and into darker circuits, with all the consequences that entails. Yet even stuck in these conditions, the people I interviewed confessed they were happier here than back home.
Penso has spent several years documenting Europe's worsening immigration crisis. He's produced work on detention centres in Malta, migrant workers in southern Italy, and in 2012, he began a project documenting young people stuck in immigrant limbo, in Greece. Many of them are barely 18 years old. "At the time, Greece had the harshest immigration regulations in Europe," Penso told an interviewer earlier this year. "Almost all applications for asylum were being refused and a wall was being constructed on the country's northern border to stem immigration in that part of the country. The economic crisis that was engulfing Greece was also contributing to a marked rise in xenophobia" [...] In Europe, migrants must claim asylum in the first country they enter or the first country in which they are identified. The purpose of this regulation (called "Dublin II") is to discourage multiple asylum claims, but the rules severely tax the resources of the countries bordering the Mediterranean, like Italy, or Greece. And the regulation often disadvantages migrants seeking to move beyond these Mediterranean countries, many of whom are often en route to relatives already established in another country. If they are found in another country, they get sent back to the country of reception.
"At the time, Greece had the harshest immigration regulations in Europe," Penso told an interviewer earlier this year. "Almost all applications for asylum were being refused and a wall was being constructed on the country's northern border to stem immigration in that part of the country. The economic crisis that was engulfing Greece was also contributing to a marked rise in xenophobia" [...]
In Europe, migrants must claim asylum in the first country they enter or the first country in which they are identified. The purpose of this regulation (called "Dublin II") is to discourage multiple asylum claims, but the rules severely tax the resources of the countries bordering the Mediterranean, like Italy, or Greece. And the regulation often disadvantages migrants seeking to move beyond these Mediterranean countries, many of whom are often en route to relatives already established in another country. If they are found in another country, they get sent back to the country of reception.
And from the same source:
Greece's Neo-Nazi Politicians Are Awaiting Trial -- and as Popular as Ever Golden Dawn may emerge as the third force in parliament
But we were talking about the results of elections, so if too many people vote for the far right because of immigrants from the "wrong" EU countries, that isn't just their problem.
I'd say that's our problem as well.
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
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