Failed Afghan asylum seekers need to go back home, Sweden’s migration minister urges

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Sweden’s migration minister on Thursday urged the European Union to come up with a common procedure to issue ID and travel documents to Afghan nationals whose asylum applications have either been rejected or who have committed crimes in their host countries.

Minister Johan Forssell said it’s “more or less impossible” to deport Afghan nationals who don’t fulfill asylum criteria now because they don’t have either ID or travel documents.

He said even though there’s no EU interest to make “any political arrangements” with Afghanistan that would offer “legitimacy” to the Taliban regime, it’s possible for the 27-member bloc to agree at a technical level on issuing Afghan nationals documentation that would expedite their deportation.

“It is a major concern for us that we are seeing quite a few cases of people that have committed crimes, Afghan people that committed crimes in Sweden and it is more or less impossible to expel them today,” Forssell told The Associated Press on the sidelines of an informal meeting of EU Justice and Home Affairs ministers in the Cypriot capital.

“If you come to Europe and you commit crimes, you have chosen yourself not to be part of our society. And we need to do everything we can to make sure that you are expelled,” he said.

He also said the same applies for failed Syrian asylum seekers but that the priority remains Afghan nationals.

According to Forssell, it’s impossible for Afghan nationals to get either ID or a passport from their homeland because most Afghan embassies in Europe aren’t acknowledged by the country’s Taliban rulers.

He said the EU’s executive arm recently had contacts in the Afghan capital on the issue which he called a “very positive first step.” But he said there’s “broad consensus” among many EU countries that face similar issues to do more to expedite the deportation of failed Afghan asylum seekers or those who’ve committed crimes.

Forssell said more than half of Afghan asylum seekers will have their applications rejected and “they need to go back home,” otherwise public support for admitting those who meet the asylum criteria will diminish.

The Swedish official also proposed that Afghan nationals slated for deportation in different EU countries could be grouped together and repatriated aboard chartered flights.

European Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner said EU member states are engaging on a technical level with Afghanistan’s “effective authorities” to better facilitate repatriations.

Sweden’s traditionally generous welcome of asylum seekers frayed over the last decade amid what Forssell said was the alarm felt by ordinary Swedes over the many “problems” that mass migration created in the country.

He said those concerns were a key reason why the current government was formed three years ago with support from the hard-right anti-immigration party the Sweden Democrats.

According to Forssell, asylum applications are the lowest they’ve been since 1985. “So I think we are doing very well and we are really delivering what the Swedish population wants to see from us,” he said.