“Eight great measures” have been approved by the Council of Ministers today designed to ‘accelerate the expulsion of illegal migrants’.
The new ‘law of return’ was powered by the conundrum facing authorities last year when a boatload of 38 Moroccans arrived on the south coast on a balmy summer evening last year – and claimed asylum (even though they were not fleeing a war or any obvious persecution).
The legal process required to expel them took so long that they all managed to ‘disappear’ (no-one can tell where to, but more than likely to ‘another European country’). Exactly the same result has come in practically all cases of arrivals from Morocco: authorities have held them for as long as legally possible – and then lost track of them.
Announcing the new measures this afternoon, minister for the presidency, António Leitão Amaro, said “laws are to be complied with. Whoever does not will have to pay the consequences.”
It was Leitão who described the new measures as “great”. They are as follows:
- elimination of administrative duplication in the notification of voluntary departure;
- provision of incentives to prioritise voluntary departure and return;
- extension of detention periods in temporary accommodation centres – the current 60 days “are clearly unworkable”, said Amaro. “We propose six months, extendable by a further six months”;
- prevention of the use of asylum applications and refugee status as a delaying tactic to postpone or prevent removal;
- reduction of cases where appeals have suspensive effect;
- establishing that detention is a subsidiary measure, that is, the last resort to be imposed;
- review of the criteria preventing expulsion – “the range of reasons leading to requests not to proceed with expulsion is very broad”; it is necessary to require effective and permanent residence;
- extending periods of prohibition on re-entry into national territory for those who are forcibly removed.
Source: SIC Notícias/ Lusa
