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Can Anyone Explain This Bizarre Asylum Case?

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retrocop | 23:02 Thu 16th Jul 2015 | News
33 Answers
I cannot supply a link as protocol demands on the News section because I can't find it.
I have just watched a report on ITV News at 10 about a Syrian illegal immigrant who has managed to reach the UK. Allegedly a professional football player.
He has admitted he paid people smugglers all his money and was conveyed by boat to Greece from Syria.
Once in Greece he admits to walking almost all the way to Calais through European countries.
He is free as a bird and was happily being interviewed by ITV news on the South Bank near Parliament.
Apparently his asylum appeal is being considered which,it is said,may take a while.
I thought I knew a little of the asylum law and the responsibilities and conditions of the applicants as when to claim it.
Please,someone,kindly explain just how the H.O. are considering this asylum application.
By his own admission he has walked through at least 5 European countries so why is his application being entertained here especially as he is illegally here..I know we are a soft touch but this seems totally wrong unless Liverpool F.C. want to sign him up.

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From the information provided by Buenchico and Gromit it is quite clear (as I have pointed out in the past) that the EU “rules” on asylum applications and those which really govern them (Article 39, I think without looking it up) of the UN convention on refuges) are at odds. Gromit says this: “Failure to seek asylum at the point of entry to the EU does not...
13:10 Fri 17th Jul 2015
I can't. But, have no fear, there will be some on here that will try.
-- answer removed --
Possibly a good starting point:
https://www.gov.uk/claim-asylum/overview
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Svejk
That's a safe bet. :-)
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methyl
That is the way I interpreted it also.
1. Failure to seek asylum at the point of entry to the EU does not affect the claim of someone who gets to the UK and applies for asylum. The asylum is investigated purely on merit of the individual case, and is not disqualified because they could have applied elsewhere.

2. The Home Secretary has the power to relocated the asylum seeker to a third country, while the asylum application is being processed. However, the third country has to agree to accept them, and in practice no one wants them. The Home Secretary will not return them to Greece if Greece says "no thanks".
No-one wants them? I find that very hard to believe. Such a boon to a country, as certain Abers keep assuring us, should be fought over.
-- answer removed --
Methyl:
Gromit is correct.

Under the 'common policy' created by EU Council Directive 2004/83/EC, an application for asylum in the UK has to be treated in exactly the same way as it would be in (say) Greece. That means that the applicant has the right to remain in the EU member state where his/her application is lodged until such time as a determination upon that application is reached:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32004L0083:en:HTML
It's a Guardian link I'm afraid. There are links within the link to the various Regulations, but I have not read all those.

The Home Office are following The Dublin II Agreement which states:
// When the asylum seeker has been living for a continuous period of at least five months in a Member State before lodging his/her asylum application, that Member State becomes responsible for examining the application. Where the applicant has been living for a period of time of at least five months in several Member States, the Member State where he/she lived most recently shall be responsible. //

So if they wait 5 months before applying, the asylum claim is OUR responsibility, even though the UK was not the point of entry into the EU.
Buenchico's link of 01:41 is longer than I care to read at one sitting (it's in legalese, to make matters worse) but here are two nuggets, from near the top.

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(7)
The approximation of rules on the recognition and content of refugee and subsidiary protection status should help to limit the secondary movements of applicants for asylum between Member States, where such movement is purely caused by differences in legal frameworks.
-----

Such that, even if we tweak our laws to make it harder to get in, the above gives them a workaround.

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(9)
Those third country nationals or stateless persons, who are allowed to remain in the territories of the Member States for reasons not due to a need for international protection but on a discretionary basis on compassionate or humanitarian grounds, fall outside the scope of this Directive.
-----

So this directive is not applicable to 'human rights' cases.

I am willing to bet that nowhere in these directives will there be any mention of numbers of applicants anticipated, nor any upper limit. Clearly nobody envisaged that half the bloody planet would try to come here, for 6 months' free money while their claim is processed. Previously, I have said that asylum, as a concept, was a cold-war era thing concerning handfuls of defectors (and Berlin Wall escapees etc, who no-one begrudged) and no-one challenged that, even though Jewish refugees came here by the thousand, pre-WWII.


I tried to Google search terms "walked from greece tp uk asylum syria" but no matching story came up. Not even from ITV website.


Among the results, though, This story, from March, was about UK quietly turning Syrians away but the numbers involved are only in the tens.

It then goes into one case history which begins with a student, in UK when Syria conflict broke out, who has funded all his siblings and his mother here ("family reunification" regs) but his dad was fingerprinted in Italy (boat rescued) and is thus stuck there. "Uneducated and can't speak Italian… misses his wife of 30 years' marriage". A sorry tale.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/11/syrian-refugees-uk-visa-asylum-seekers-visa

The page also points out that work visas cannot be approved, as long as the country of origin is a war zone because the standard condition of "expectation of return to country of origin" cannot be met, within reason.

Thus work visa/asylum are mutually exclusive things.

Why can't they simply bring in a law that no one can seek asylum in the UK, unless it is someone from a neighbouring country who is in danger, such as the Jews and others during the Nazi occupation of Europe during WW2?
http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/asylum/index_en.htm

It would seem from this that the only way out is 'out of Europe'.

But then that is the answer to almost all our problems.
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From what I see the old premise that asylum must be claimed in the first safe country that is a signatory to the agreement is now a Myth.I read that if an asylum seeker could not physically jump out a locked container in the first friendly country then that would be excused.
Seems now that the whole treaty is so full of holes we are going to end up with them in any case unless,as aog says,we get this yoke off our neck and get out the ruddy EU who are taking us for a ride.
Getting out of the EU is a red herring in this instance.

Asylum seekers would still get here, and we would still have to listen to their pleas. The Home Office decides asylum claims, not the EU. We have opted out of the Schengen Agreement, so there would be very little difference in or out.

The first safe country came from WWII and the world has changed.
I could swear I read the UN convention on Asylum Seekers recently and that still says something about 'the first safe country'.
Among the EU reasons for granting Asylum; Economic Hardship.
Tells me a lot about that ship of fools.
They could arrive here and claim they fear persecution in the EU.

The criterion is merely "fear of persecution", never evidence of persecution.
I would fear persecution in my own country (the UK) - it's a natural thing to fear. If it is such a universal fear, how can it be made into the sole entry criterion?

There's nothing to stop the entire planet making up their own sob story and coming here.

I am convinced there are genuine cases out there but they are swamped by the rest of the flood.


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