London – Amid scenes of frantic Afghans hanging on planes trying to escape the Taliban, some European leaders said this week they would do so to prevent migrants and refugees from traveling to the mainland without permission.
Europe ‘deserves not to wait for other people to be at our external border. We want to help them before that,’ EU Internal Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said on Wednesday, adding that other people in immediate danger deserve to be resettled within the EU, however, “it is vital that we can help those other people in Afghanistan, when possible, to return home. We will also have to help the neighbouring countries and the Afghans and the neighbouring countries in the region.
Johannsson also said That Afghans whose asylum claims are rejected in Europe will not be returned to their country at this time.
“We will have to anticipate and protect ourselves from the gigantic abnormal migration flows that would endanger those who use them and fuel trafficking of all kinds,” French President Emmanuel Macron said On Monday, who said Europe would coordinate with transit countries like Turkey.
“We will have to not send the signal that Germany can welcome all who want it,” said the leader of the German Christian Democratic Party, Armin Laschet. “The concentrate will have to be on humanitarian aid on the ground, unlike in 2015. »
Many European countries have been increasingly hostile towards migrants and asylum seekers in recent years. This trend was partly a reaction to the fact that as of 2015, more than a million migrants and refugees travelled to Europe on foot or by boat, many of them fleeing. the war in Syria.
Since then, many countries have tightened border controls and the leaders who won over asylum seekers at the time, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, faced political backlash.
Germany and France, the EU’s two largest economies, have upcoming elections.
“We have noticed this populist wave that has passed day after day, month after month, year after year, demonizing refugees and migrants. It’s had an effect,” Daniel Balson, Amnesty International’s defence director, told CBS News. effect in the United States, had an effect in Europe. “
Last week, before the Taliban completely took over Afghanistan, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and Germany suggested to EU leaders that they continue to send Afghan asylum seekers whose programs had been rejected.
“Stopping returns sends the signal and is very likely to motivate more Afghan citizens to leave their homes for the EU,” the countries said in a joint letter to the European Commission.
The United Nations has called for a moratorium on expulsions, and Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands have replaced course, ending deportations to Afghanistan following the dramatic takeover by the Taliban. But Austria urges the status quo of deportation centers in countries near Afghanistan as an option to allow Afghans whose asylum claims are rejected to remain where they are.
“It’s just about Merkel and Macron saying, ‘we’re going to accept refugees. ‘They’ve been acting on this for several years,” Amnesty’s Balson told CBS News. “We have to take them at their word. “
Afghans were already the largest asylum seekers’ organisation at the time in Europe, with 570,000 asylum seekers in the European Union since 2015, a figure that has risen in recent months as it has become transparent that the US made the decision to withdraw us en masse from the country.
The UK is the only European country that has pledged to take in a significant number of additional Afghan refugees so far, but the past government says it will do so over a five-year period. Critics say the plan doesn’t go far enough, and a Scottish MP urged British lawmakers on Wednesday to double the figure.
Canada has pledged to resettle 20,000 refugees.
But Balson said Afghans who can’t get permission to leave through an official resettlement program will most likely leave by land, fleeing to neighboring Pakistan or Iran, the latter of which has already begun setting up emergency tents along its border, according to Al Jazeera.
For many, these countries would not be planned final destinations, but first stops on long and damaging journeys to visit and succeed on European soil.
“People are going to look to get out by any means,” Balson told CBS News. “Those who have cash will look to catch a planeArray. One of the things Biden’s management can do is protect the airport and protect it as long as it is imaginable and grants landing rights and landing privileges to aircraft that have already been organized through nongovernment organizations or other organizations to remove other people.
He also called on the foreign network to put pressure on Afghanistan’s neighboring countries to keep their borders open.
“None of us can wait for the future, but it would be ridiculous to say that no one can foresee a massive need for help for refugees on Afghanistan’s borders in the near future,” Balson told CBS News.