Challenges in return EU immigration system – remarks on current situation.
Immigration has been an ongoing challenge in the European Union for some time now. Hundreds of thousands of people are eager to get to Europe by any means necessary. Their journey to the EU can be extremely dangerous and even deadly, but large amounts of people are still ready to risk it all for a chance to build a new life in Europe. Most of the time these are families from impoverished nations sufferings from war, poverty, crime and instability and unfortunately, in some cases, the hardships of such people are being exploited as political tools to influence opponents around the globe.
According to the EU data, majority of these people will not be able to stay in Europe and will be return to their home countries. But does the European Union possess an ability to do so and what happens to the immigrants once they reach European shores?
According to the procedure regarding immigrants in the EU and specifically in Poland, migrants are to be placed in detention centers, where they would await the decision on return, which is more likely to happen if. The problems arise when it comes to an actual return. First thing first, the procedures needed to determine all the information about the person and make a decision on their status and future takes many months, and sometimes even years. This means, that these people stay in the country they may have illegally entered for quite some time. Another issue, is that a lot of migrants from certain countries like Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan and so on, never actually apply for protection because of the low application recognition rates for these countries. Big chunk of immigrants enter the European Union legally and simply overstay their visas and residence permits. Deporting people to certain countries like Iraq, for example, is close to impossible as this country is considered unsafe by the EU. Migrants are then being sent not to their country of origin, but to one of the transit countries.
The situation can vary across Europe but the issue stays the same everywhere. In the period between 2018 and June 2023, more than 100,000 migrants entered UK illegally using boats. Out of those migrants only 1,319 were deported to their home countries, which constitutes for around 1.3%. From 2019 to 2020, UK would sent the majority of illegally staying migrants to transit countries in the EU, like Germany and France. But after Brexit, UK began to sent the majority of migrants to their countries of origins, like Albania and less so, to Iraq and Iran. United Kingdom has an agreement with Albania, which they sighed in 2022, in order to curb illegal migration between those countries. The situation is similar in Italy. In 2022, more than 105,000 people reached Italy through illegal routs, mostly throw Egypt (approximately 20,500) and Tunisia (approximately 18,000). The majority of those migrants did to apply for protection and were decided to be deported. But as time went on only small fractions of those people were actually deported – 316 Egyptians and 2,234 Tunisians. Government data shows that in 2022, out of 105,000 illegal migrants only 3,916 were actually deported from Italy. The same problem can be found in Germany. In 2023 around 280,000 people were ordered to be deported from Germany but the issue is, that about 80% of those migrants cannot be sent back to their countries of origins because of certain formal and legal reasons. First, is the complete lack of identification documents that are needed for the process to succeed and second, stubbornness and open reluctance of the governments of those countries to cooperate with German authorities. Because of this, Germany managed to sent back only 16,430 people in 2023, and in 2022- not more than 13,000.
The majority of deportees were sent back to Georgia, with which many EU countries successfully cooperate on the immigration matters. The opposite can be seen with Iran, Iraq and Nigeria where deportation proceedings have been slowed to an inch, or stopped completely. In 2023 the rate of deportations have noticeably incensed, but its nowhere near the mark of needed numbers as the amount of people illegally entering Europe has stayed the same since the start of the humanitarian crisis. The European Union has made steps to streamline the deportation processes and signed agreements with all Balkan countries, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Pakistan, Macau, Cape Verde, Hong Kong, Russia and Sri Lanka. The agreement with Belarus was also in force until 2021, but was terminated in response to the sanctions imposed by the EU. In addition to these agreements, the European Union has also signed agreements with Guinea, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Gambia, Côte d'Ivoire and Afghanistan. However, they are not formally binding, which creates problems in trying to enforce them in practice. Certain EU countries have also signed separate bilateral agreements with other countries to help solve the issue. Spain has had a sighed agreement with Morocco for years at this point, and it they continue to renew it every couple of years. UK has an agreement with Albania since 2022. In 2023, Germany signed such agreements with Georgia and Moldova and announced further agreements with other countries, one of them being Morocco. Italy has signed agreements with Tunisia, Egypt and Nigeria. They are also actively working with Gambia, Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire, but cooperation with this countries is not as fruitful – they refuse to take back all their citizens, but only those who have been convicted of crimes in Italy.
The situation with insufficient cooperation from different countries around the globe with the European Union has to do with inability of European authorities to establish the identity of migrants and their countries of origin often refusal to help.
Some migrants destroy they identification documents to prevent or at least postpone their deportation. In 2021, approximately 45% of people reaching Germany and asking for international protection did not have any document with them.
During the return proceeding, migrants are being placed in special detention centers or prisons where have access to food, water and medical help. Many European countries have recently tightened detention rules to quicken deportations and prevent migrants from escaping and hiding from the law. The maximum stay in these centers is up to 18 months-24 months even. The problem is placing migrants from countries they cannot be returned to is futile, as they will be simply released after the end of long detention. Even greater problems with deportation arise the longer illegal migrants are located in European countries. Recently, German made moves to diminish social benefits for illegally staying migrants and those who await return in order to deal with a high influx of migrants into the country. In February 2024 The German parliament has also passed a new law making it easier for the authorities to return people whose asylum applications have been rejected. Noticeably, it allows German services to receive access to documents that will help determine the identity of a migrant and expedite the process of deportation by abolishing the requirement to notify the person of the coming deportation.
Janek, Junior Immigration Lawyer
