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Sweden’s immigration minister urged on Thursday European Union Develop a common procedure for the issuance of identity documents and travel documents to Afghanistan Nationals whose asylum applications have been rejected or who have committed crimes in the host country.
Minister John Fussell said it is now “more or less impossible” to deport Afghan nationals who do not meet asylum criteria because they have no identity documents or travel documents.
He said that although the EU has no interest in making “any political arrangement” with Afghanistan to provide “legitimacy” to Afghanistan. Taliban regime, the 27-member bloc is likely to agree at a technical level on issuing documents to Afghan nationals to speed up their deportations.
“What concerns us most is that we see a lot of cases of people committing crimes, Afghans Sweden It is more or less impossible to deport them today,” Fussell told The Associated Press on the sidelines of an informal meeting of EU justice and interior ministers in the Cypriot capital.
“If you come to Europe and commit a crime, you choose not to be part of our society. We need to do everything we can to ensure you are deported,” he said.
He also said the same applies to failed Syrian asylum seekers, but priority remains Afghan nationals.
Fussell said it was impossible for Afghan nationals to obtain identity cards or passports from their home country because most Afghan embassies in Europe were not recognized by the country’s Taliban rulers.
He said the EU executive had recently been in contact on the issue in the Afghan capital, which he called a “very positive first step”. But he said there was “broad consensus” among many EU countries facing similar problems that more needed to be done to expedite the deportation of failed Afghan asylum seekers or criminal offenders.
Fussell said more than half of Afghan asylum seekers will have their applications rejected and “they need to go home” or public support for admitting those who meet asylum criteria will diminish.
Swedish officials have also proposed that Afghan nationals scheduled for deportation in different EU countries could be pooled together and repatriated on chartered flights.
EU Interior and Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner said EU member states were engaging at a technical level with “effective authorities” in Afghanistan to better facilitate repatriations.
Forssell said Sweden’s traditionally generous welcome to asylum seekers had suffered over the past decade, with Forssell saying ordinary Swedes were alarmed by the many “problems” mass immigration had caused in the country.
He said these concerns were a key reason for the formation of the current government three years ago with the support of the far-right anti-immigration party Sweden Democrats.
According to Fussell, the number of asylum applications is the lowest since 1985. “So I think we did a good job and we did deliver what the Swedish people wanted to see from us,” he said.