Immigration - in brief (9)
01 March 2005
Austria: Constitutional Court partially revokes Asylum Act: In October last year, the Constitutional Court in Vienna partially revoked restrictive parts of Austria's asylum legislation and ordered them to be redrafted. The judge further criticised the Act as incoherent as it referred to regulations that did not exist in law. Revoked were the clauses that laid down that no new evidence was allowed in an asylum appeal procedure, that asylum seekers were not protected from deportation once a first negative decision was taken (safety from deportation during appeal proceedings), that the Dublin Convention was applicable without individual case examination and that asylum seekers could be taken into immigration detention when submitting a second asylum application after their first application was rejected. The safe third country and country of origin principles were declared constitutional as were some exceptional social security provisions.
http://www.aufenthaltstitel.de/zuwg/0566.html, http://no-racism.net/article/985/, Süddeutsche Zeitung 16 & 17.10.04.
Italy/Libya/Malta/Spain: Migrant deaths at sea continue: On 24 March 2005, six Chinese migrants who attempted the sea-crossing from Malta to Italy after entering Malta for the purpose of studying, died, allegedly after they were thrown into the sea by the people who were smuggling them into Italy. On 31 March,
Salvamento Marítimo (the Spanish sea rescue service) rescued a dinghy in which 23 migrants had attempted the sea crossing to the Canary Islands, thirteen of whom died, and the remaining ten were found in critical conditions. On 19 April, a three-month old baby died of hypothermia in a dinghy that arrived in Tarifa (Cádiz) after crossing the Strait of Gibraltar that separates Spain from Morocco. On 3 May, one dead migrant arrived in a boat that carried another 19 migrants and was spotted by the police on the coast of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, in the Canary Islands. Fourteen African would-be migrants drowned, and three disappeared as they set off on the sea crossing from Libya to Italy on 15 May in a boat carrying 23 people, after the vessel sunk in the high sea 30 km to the west of Tripoli.
Reuters 16.5.2005; La Sicilia online, 7.4.2005, www.korazym.org, 25.3.2005; Sur, 20.4.2005; Diario Vasco, 4.5.2005; La vanguardia, 1.4.2005.