AUSTRIA: Governement Trys To Stem The Numbers Of Economic Refugees By Redefining Their Countrys Status As Free From Political Persecution

Record ID: 274428

  • Title: AUSTRIA: Governement Trys To Stem The Numbers Of Economic Refugees By Redefining Their Countrys Status As Free From Political Persecution
  • Date: 20th November 2002
  • Summary: (L!2) TRAISKIRCHEN, AUSTRIA (RECENT) (REUTERS ) MV: TRAISKIRCHEN REFUGEE CARE OFFICE OF DIAKONIE SCU: DIAKONIE WORKER SCU: ASYLUM SEEKER, MANANA, 16-YEAR-OLD GIRL FROM GEORGIA VARIOUS: ASYLUM SEEKERS OUTSIDE THE OFFICE. (2 SHOTS) SCU: (SOUNDBITE) (German) ASYLUM SEEKER MANANA SAYING: "Tomorrow is our last day in our flat. I don't know if we will manage to get an exten
  • Embargoed: 5th December 2002 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: TRAISKIRCHEN AND VIENNA, AUSTRIA
  • Country: Austria
  • Topics: International Relations,Politics,People
  • Reuters ID: LVA9T5YEBINPLTFXRFSCORONDRAA
  • Story Text: Sixteen-year old Manana looks and acts like many Austrian girls her age: she giggles, flicks her hair, talks about pop music. But unlike most other girls, she is an asylum seeker, and about to become homeless.
    The Austrian government, trying to stem a tide of what it considers to be economic refugees, put Manana's homeland of Georgia and dozens of other poor countries on a list of safe countries deemed to be free of political persecution.
    The new rules that took effect on October 1 allow nationals of safe countries to apply for asylum, but put the decision on a fast track and make one crucial change: applicants no longer receive room and board while they await, or appeal, a decision.
    In less than a month, Austria has evicted hundreds of asylum seekers from state housing, leaving them to choose between a life on the streets, a government-paid ticket home, or the chance of a place in emergency shelters set up by private aid agencies.
    "Tomorrow is our last day in our flat. I don't know if well manage to get an extension, if were left out on the street, or where we should go," Manana said in the waiting room of aid group Evangelical Diaconie in Traiskirchen, south of Vienna.
    Christoph Riedl, refugee care coordinator for the Diaconie, said there were around 1,000 people across Austria already excluded from state care, with many more to come among the 7,000 living in state housing complexes.
    "It is a humanitarian problem of a scale that we have not seen before," he said. Although we have received housing help from emergency services like the Red Cross, there are still more people left on the streets, despite having pending asylum cases.
    A few hundred metres from the Diaconie building lies the Traiskirchen reception centre, Austria's largest such complex and home to many of the asylum seekers already queuing outside Riedl's office with eviction notices in hand.
    More than 1,000 people live behind the peeling paint and broken windows in what was built as a cadet school for the Austro-Hungarian empire. It became a Nazi youth club in the late 1930s and housed Soviet troops when Austria was occupied in 1945.
    Groups of young men mill around the station, or on the streets of the former industrial town, which shows little of the wealth that makes Austria the world's eighth richest nation.
    "When someone is kicked out of their accommodation, it really means that they are out on the street: no help, no subsidies, no shelter, they can either starve or freeze. It's really hard to survive under these circumstances," Riedl said.
    The asylum debate is used as political currency - the same as in 1999, when populist Joerg Haider's Freedom Party won over a quarter of the vote on an anti-immigration ticket.
    Interior Ministry General Director, Wolf Szymanski's policy includes what he calls voluntary repatriation of people who withdraw their claims and admit they are economic migrants, a majority, he says, of the more than 20,000 who sought asylum in Austria in 2002.
    With the new rules barring many ex-Soviet and African nationalities from aid while claims are assessed, and granting limited rights to others up to the appeal process, critics slate the rules for, effectively, starving people out of the country.
    For those with cases pending, there is some hope in the legal challenge mounted against the Austrian state by a lawyer whose client was living in state housing while appealing against the rejection of his asylum application.
    "I looked at the legislation and concluded that national and international agreements prevent the state from suddenly, and with no reason, putting out on the street people whom it had taken in for care and who fulfil the relevant criteria,"
    lawyer Nadja Lorenz said.
    "Simply put, apart from any other humanitarian considerations, the state is obliged to hold the end of the contract it entered into," she added.
    Nadja Lorenz won her case against the Austrian Government and they had to reinstate her client into state care.
    For many of the new arrivals, however, being kicked out of the shelters without right of recourse to the courts means the start of another journey, to yet another EU country.
    Many are lured by Germany's reputation for generosity, what one asylum seeker described as "hundreds of euros and a flat."
    Others brave the slow and stingy path through French bureaucracy, hoping to get a step closer to Britain. But, even for them, time might be running out, as the 15-nation bloc tries to agree common policies to avoid secondary movements of asylum seekers, so-called asylum shopping, among the estimated half a million attempting entry every year.
    One of the proposals which could be adopted is the Dublin II regulation, which allows a state to pass on a request by an asylum seeker who arrived from another EU country, back to the country of first arrival.
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