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IMMIGRATION

Norway to limit asylum grants to five years

Norway’s right-wing government is to limit grants of asylum to a five-year term, after which refugees will be automatically sent home if the situation in their country has changed for the better.

Norway to limit asylum grants to five years
Joran Kallemyr announced the tough new policy on Thursday. Photo: NTB Scanpix/Terje Pedersen / NTB scanpix
“If the war in Syria ends, or conditions in Iraq improve, they will have to prepare for the return trip,” State Secretary Joran Kallemyr, a senior official from the Progress Party in the Ministry of Justice told Norway’s state broadcaster NRK on Thursday evening. 
 
“If there are changes in the country that means you no longer need protection in Norway, you should basically be returned.” 
 
Kallemyr said the government had put the policy out for consultation, and hoped to get it through parliament before Christmas. 
 
He said the policy would also apply to families. 
 
“If anyone gets a family reunion and the asylum applicant who is the reference person can no longer stay in Norway, the whole family will return,” he said. 
 
“What we are obligated to do under international law is to not prevent families being together, but we are not obliged to arrange for the family to come to Norway.” 
 
He said that, unlike Sweden, Norway had already stopped paying the flights and other expenses of those coming to Norway for family reunion. 
 
Kallemyr said that in bringing in temporary asylum, Sweden was following in the footsteps of Germany, which has brought in three year temporary asylum for Syrian fleeing the civil war. 
 
Norway’s immigration department is now expecting over 30,000 new asylum applications to come next year, after receiving a record
5,000 asylum seekers in September. 
 
 

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IMMIGRATION

France ‘will not welcome migrants’ from Lampedusa: interior minister

France "will not welcome migrants" from the island, Gérald Darmanin has insisted

France 'will not welcome migrants' from Lampedusa: interior minister

France will not welcome any migrants coming from Italy’s Lampedusa, interior minister Gérald Darmanin has said after the Mediterranean island saw record numbers of arrivals.

Some 8,500 people arrived on Lampedusa on 199 boats between Monday and Wednesday last week, according to the UN’s International Organisation for
Migration, prompting European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to travel there Sunday to announce an emergency action plan.

According to Darmanin, Paris told Italy it was “ready to help them return people to countries with which we have good diplomatic relations”, giving the
example of Ivory Coast and Senegal.

But France “will not welcome migrants” from the island, he said, speaking on French television on Tuesday evening.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has called on Italy’s EU partners to share more of the responsibility.

The recent arrivals on Lampedusa equal more than the whole population of the tiny Italian island.

The mass movement has stoked the immigration debate in France, where political parties in the country’s hung parliament are wrangling over a draft law governing new arrivals.

France is expected to face a call from Pope Francis for greater tolerance towards migrants later this week during a high-profile visit to Mediterranean city Marseille, where the pontiff will meet President Emmanuel Macron and celebrate mass before tens of thousands in a stadium.

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