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| Ruben Wissing |
Ruben Wissing is a lawyer, who has had experience working with Refugee issues relating to asylum and immigration. His experience shows him that the refugee crisis is more a crisis of solidarity than anything else. Read on to know his story.
I started with law school, when nothing
interested me as much as international law, migration and human rights. I
started working about ten to twelve years ago in the field as an intern, and
then as an independent lawyer in Antwerp. I was involved in working on asylum
cases out of passion, but it was not high paying. I did that for about four or
five years, and then switched over to the Belgium Refugee Council, an Ngo,
which is partnered with the UNHCR to assist them. Part of what the NGO does is
to offer free legal aid and legal support to asylum seekers and family
reunification programs. We have a special status as operational partner of the
UNHCR, which allows us to interfere directly with the authorities without being
the lawyers of the asylum seekers themselves. We can intervene in asylum
procedures, and we use it selectively to help complicated cases. We also do a
lot of work around policy and advocacy issues. Recently, though, we lost a lot
of funding – the point is that now, the focus is centered around the refugee
crisis in Europe, and in getting material aid out there, not legal aid.
The refugee issue in Europe is not a crisis
in numbers. It is true that the number of people asking for asylum is high, but
it is not true that it has never happened before in these proportions. Look at
the Second World War or the Yugoslavia War in 1999. The numbers continue to
rise now, dramatically, but the point is that the crisis is really one of
politics and solidarity. The European Union was a project of integrating
countries – but now, that is falling apart. We could deal with this crisis – I
mean, look at Germany. They said we can do this together, and now it is one
country that is doing it entirely on its own! Instead of building an integrated
asylum procedure, we are going against the greatest advantage of the European
Union – which is a community of people living without internal borders. Now,
there are these very countries that are putting up borders. Now, there is more
and more funding going into control, detention and return of refused refugees.
In Belgium, we had a good system before, but now, public funding for NGOs has decreased,
as has the remuneration for lawyers defending refugees.
The asylum procedure in Belgium is not very
rigorous. One has to go to the Alien’s Office at the Immigration Services and
apply for asylum. You have a short interview. They register you and have your
fingerprints checked for security reason, and then check them against a
database to see if you have claimed asylum elsewhere, to be send back to that
member state (the so called Dublin Procedure). This is the basis of the current
crisis – you have the criteria applied different and a lack of unity. . Then,
most applications go to the Commissary General for Refugees and Stateless
Persons that have the authority to interview applicants and check their
credentials, They then apply the Geneva Convention or the Subsidiary Protection
for War Refugees as a general protection. Judicial appeals are allowed as well.
The legal definition of refugees may not
cover all situations where people may need protection. But, there is something
in the right wing political discourse that suggests that the convention was
made for a different time and situation. While I would agree that its articles
may be discussed and debated, I don’t think that the definition is too broad.
It can be interpreted differently at different times. The thing is, people have
not heard asylum seekers tell their personal stories. We assume that they
invent political stories to claim asylum. The truth is, in many places they do
escape poverty, and isn’t poverty created by politics, after all? The anti
refugee and anti migration view is that the Geneva Convention is a migration
issue , while it is actually about protection. The truth is that even if you
take away this international treaty, there are other international and European
laws that protect and offer these very rights.
There are many aspects to the problem as it
stands. The public and political debate is still about whether we want
migration or not – and that is a pity because people will continue to come in this globalized world. People will do it the
other way if there is no legal route or if we keep them out, risking their
lives. We should start investing in integration of newcomers. It is a big
problem in Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany that we have never truly
focused on integrating those who came in two generations ago. We have had North
African migrants who came in after World War II, in fact, they were asked for,
to help rebuild the war torn land. But, we never integrated them, because we
thought they would return.
Now their children and grandchildren feel
discriminated against. This has
indirectly lead to security issues. Thus, integration should be a focal point.
Announcing measures against smugglers only creates more of them, new routes.
For over a decade, the UNHCR has been asking the EU to handle resettlements. We
can do it, but we don’t seem to be doing so. We can manage these things so that
people don’t have to lose lives in the Mediterranean Sea.
