What You Need to Know about the European Refugee Crisis: 2018 Edition
I spent part of Summer 2018 volunteering in and around a refugee camp in Greece, on one of the most-traveled routes into Europe across the broader Mediterranean. Here’s some of what I’ve learned, with a concentration primarily on refugees seeking asylum. Note: there is an important legal distinction between “migrant” and “refugee”. Since the majority of asylum-seekers crossing the Mediterranean come from the top 10 refugee-producing countries, I use “refugee” below. For a recommended summary on the differences between terms, click here.
The refugee crisis in 2015 made headlines around the world. We saw pictures in newspapers of crowds of people on rickety boats, of the ramshackle migrant towns in Calais, and perhaps most heartbreaking, the photo of the deceased 3-year old Syrian child facedown on a beach. 2015 was a horrible year for global crises: it was the peak of the Syrian civil war, ISIS was terrorizing the middle east, Nepal had a 7.8 magnitude earthquake, and severe droughts in the horn of Africa caused major famine in countries like Somalia, exacerbating political instability. In short, a lot was going on that would precipitate many people desperately trying to relocate their families to safer harbors.
But the refugee crisis is in the news again, and this time for a different reason. Despite a lower total overall number of refugees coming into Europe than in prior years, 2018 is on track to be the deadliest year since 2015 for refugees crossing the broader Mediterranean. As of this writing, 1,586 lives have been lost trying to get to Europe since January, and that number goes up day by day.
Why is the death toll so high?
There are a few contributors here, but the outstanding reason is that some EU governments have stopped saving drowning people, and are largely prohibiting NGOs from performing search and rescue operations. It used to be that sinking boats would call the coast guard, and the coast guard would pick up the passengers and take them either to a refugee camp for processing or back to the shore they came from. These days, many of those distress calls are going unanswered. In June, refugees coming from North Africa had a 1 in 7 chance of dying on the journey across the Mediterranean, and in the first 7 months of 2018, over 1,500 people drowned.
So, why are refugees choosing the most dangerous ways to get to Europe? And isn’t the way they’re doing it also illegal?
While there are major refugee populations in many other parts of the world, most of those crossing the Mediterranean want to get asylum in a European country. Being granted asylum means being allowed to remain in a certain country without fear of deportation back to a dangerous country. As an asylum seeker, you have to prove that you have a real fear of future persecution in your country of origin. This can be difficult, and on top of it, European countries vary wildly on the percentage of asylum applications they approve. It also matters hugely where you’re coming from as a refugee. But here’s the real kicker:
You cannot apply for asylum in any European country without first being in or on the border of that country. The same rule applies to the United States.
In Europe, you have the right to apply for asylum in any country you want. The trick is, you have to get there first. You cannot apply for asylum at that country’s embassy or at a consulate. You have to be in that country, in person*. Preferably, at the border or a processing center.
If for some reason a Canadian wants to be granted asylum in France, they can likely fly to Paris and apply for asylum in the airport, since Canadians don’t need a visa to visit France. However, most refugees are coming from countries where they need a visa to visit Europe, and EU nations are not at all obligated to give applicants the visas they need to come to their country to apply. While technically everyone has the right to apply for asylum, EU countries do not have to help secure passage to be able to submit their applications.
This was actually recently ruled upon in a European court: a Syrian family of four applied for visas to fly to Belgium in order to apply for asylum: taking a plane may have been the safest way out of Syria. Their visa applications were rejected, and a European court held that Belgium is under zero obligation to help that family get to a position where they can apply for asylum in-country. So what does that mean for that Syrian family? They’re forced to travel a much more dangerous route.
Ok, lets say you’re trying to get out of Syria, destined for Belgium. You can’t take a plane, because you need a visa of the destination country before the airline will let you board. You also can’t take a train, which requires you to have a visa to cross borders legally, and you also can’t take registered boats, for the same reason. Can’t drive, also, because of, you guessed it, needing a visa.
Realistically (unless you’re a Nobel prize winner or a millionaire), your options now are to stay in-country, where presumably you have a high risk of death, torture, or persecution, or to try and cross into Europe illegally (not to mention the other countries you need to go through on the way). Many people in dire situations understandably choose the latter. Perhaps, sadly, even a 1 in 7 chance of death crossing the Mediterranean may still represent a lower probability of harm to your or your family than staying at home.
Lets make a lot of assumptions and say that you successfully got to the EU border. Maybe a smuggler got you into Greece, or Spain, or Italy. You made it to the EU! That’s the good news. Bad news: you still need to get to Belgium, which means you have to get through however many countries lie in-between. If the authorities catch you midway through your trip, you’ve now just been caught having illegally entered Europe; even if you tell them you’re just trying to get to Belgium, too bad — what you’re doing is against the law. A few things might happen at this point. Likelihoods are increasing that you’ll be sent back to your EU port of entry to apply for asylum there, or you may be able to apply for asylum in whichever country you’ve been apprehended in.
These options might sound better than they are. If you are destined for Ireland and make it there, for example, you have an over 75% chance of receiving asylum your first try. However, if you’re in the Czech Republic, your chances drop to under 5%. So, if you are forced to apply in the Czech Republic, there’s an extremely high chance you’ll be rejected.
Some European countries are working together to make the passage to the destination country smoother, but overall, restrictions are getting tighter, and more desirable destination countries (like Germany) are paying border countries (like Greece and Spain) more money to keep refugees from coming further into the EU, and are exercising provisions from a document called the Dublin Agreement, and sending refugees back to port of entry countries. Short story, it’s getting a lot harder to get into Europe, period, and it’s getting especially hard to make it to western Europe.
But Belgium’s line — and all the European countries, for that matter — is that it’s still your right to apply for asylum with them. It’s just that practically, all the steps you’d need to take to do that are either illegal or incredibly dangerous.
Hm, that sounds like a Catch-22.
It sure does. And it means we need to really consider what we mean when we say “illegal immigration”. If it’s illegal (border crossings), but represents the only way to do a legal activity (apply for asylum) how does it change the way we think about legality? The way the system is currently set up, if everyone played by the stated rules, the only countries that would be able to receive asylum seekers would be border countries, since to get to any other country it would necessitate an “illegal” border crossing. So, even though Belgium or Germany say it’s absolutely your right to apply for asylum with them, if everyone followed the laws, almost no one would be able to physically get there to actually apply.
It’s very similar in the US, with a couple notable changes. To apply for asylum in the US, there are two ways to do it: one is to go to border control at an official US point of entry and to declare yourself as a person seeking asylum. This is considered the “right way”. The other is to cross the US border between official points of entry, and once seen by a border patrol officer, to declare yourself seeking asylum. In this case, the border crossing was illegal, but the asylum claim is still legal and valid. This is what is being generally referred to as the “wrong way”.
But, like in Europe, the “right way” can quickly become quite difficult. In 2017, a suit was filed by advocacy groups against U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which claims that refugees trying to claim asylum the “right way” are being unlawfully lied to or turned away at official ports of entry. The suit claims that asylum-seekers are being told various pieces of intentionally wrong information: that the US isn’t granting asylum anymore, that certain countries weren’t allowed to apply anymore, that they should come back later (often being told this for months) or that pursuing their claims would result in being separated from their children. Even more recently, it’s been claimed that US officials are physically blocking asylum seekers from approaching the official ports of entry, thereby not allowing them the right to claim asylum (remember, they have to be on the border or in the country). Given these conditions, the “right way” is looking less like an honest pathway to applying for asylum, and more like a trap door.
Is this all an intentionally paradoxical system designed to discourage many refugees as possible from applying for asylum, even though it’s internationally recognized as a right?
Maybe.
What are some possible policy proposals to ease the situation?
One solution which has been proposed multiple times is to allow people to apply for asylum at an embassy rather than needing to be in-country. This would do a number of things:
- It would mean that a family seeking safe harbor would not have to undertake an extremely dangerous, unavoidably illegal journey to their destination country, which they may be rejected from anyway. More than 25,000 people have died in the Mediterranean trying to get to Europe in the past 10 years. And that’s just at this one stage in the journey; that doesn’t factor in the dangerous circumstances that occur before that point.
- It would spread out the burden of processing asylum applications across the EU. Right now, Greece, Italy, Spain, and other border countries are having to process a disproportionally high number of applications. If asylum seekers could apply to their desired countries without having to go through border countries first, you’d see applications for countries like Ireland likely increase (which gets a relatively low number of applicants as is) and ones for countries like Greece go down.
- If a person is denied asylum, they could try applying again, or try applying to another EU (or non-EU) country. This would cut down tremendously on costs both to the individual as well as deportation costs to the destination country.
- You’d also likely find a drastic reduction in the number and size of refugee camps, which are largely overcrowded, underfunded, and in very poor condition.
Another thing the EU could do would be is to facilitate safe travel within Europe for refugees to make it to their desired destination. This would also more evenly spread the asylum application burden, though it would still require dangerous travel and would take a lot of coordination.
New pan-European uniform standards would also drastically lessen the pressure on certain countries to provide for the vast majority of incoming refugees. There are large differences across EU member states regarding asylum acceptance rates, or even extending certain humanitarian protections; these difference causes uneven resource strain.
The EU could encourage member states to approve visas for individuals who intend to apply for asylum to travel to the destination country.
At a minimum, member states should lift prohibitions on international search and rescue teams, and resume full rescue operations themselves. The degree of loss of life in the Mediterranean today is completely preventable. This situation calls for a diplomatic or political solution; letting refugees drown is a cruel way to lower the inflow to Europe.
Where can I find more resources to learn more about this?
For data, take it right from the source and go to Eurostat. They’ve got a wealth of statistics on asylum applications over time, as well as broken down by country. The Missing Migrant Project, part of the International Organization for Migration, has some powerful data visualizations showing mortality statistics and a wide variety of interactive maps.
For updates on boat activity in the Mediterranean, check out WatchTheMed.net which maintains up to date reports on relevant maritime activity.
The Open Society Foundations produced an in-depth overview of the situation in June, for some deep reading and context.
To help, you can donate to Refugee Rescue, a Northern Irish NGO that operates the last search and rescue boat in the Aegean. Alternatively, Médecins Sans Frontières is a great choice: when allowed to, it operates the last search and rescue operation off the Italian coast.
*In a rare case, Julian Assange applied for asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London and they gave him protection, but here’s the catch: he can’t leave the embassy grounds. Embassies can provide shelter, but those protections do not extend to the home country. As you probably imagine, this is not a sustainable solution for more than a couple people (not even Julian Assange, it turns out).
