German Court Rules in Favor of an Immigrant Family

A German court recently ruled in favor of a Palestinian asylum seeking family to continue their asylum process in Germany and not to send them back to Italy.

The court said that asylum seekers in Italy have to face inhuman and humiliating treatment by the locals and the authorities. Therefore, it would be injustice to send the asylum-seeking family to Italy.

The court further said that the Italian administration was not meeting the obligations set by the European and International Law. It said that asylum-seekers are living in terrible conditions in Italian areas, with little food resources, negligible shelter availability and are mostly deprived of other basic necessities like electricity.

The Palestinian family seeking asylum in Germany had arrived from Syria to Italy. According to the Dublin rule, applying to all European Union (EU) member states, a country has the authority to deport any asylum seeker back to the country of his first entry in the European Union region. That is, the asylum seekers can only get their asylum permits in the first countries of their entry.

This means that the German authorities are permitted to send back any asylum seeker without even considering or verifying their asylum requests, to the countries in EU region they first arrived at.

Now the current conditions of asylum seekers in Europe is one of the biggest immigration problems European countries are facing these days.

For instance, Germany has decided not to operate on the Dublin rule while handling asylum seekers whose first country of entry is Greece. The reason is same as in Italy’s case. The German government and the European Court for Human Rights have decided not to send back asylum seekers to Greece as the living conditions of those already staying there are terrible. Until the situation in Greece gets better, the German authorities have imposed a one year temporary ban on sending the asylum seekers back to it.

But such ruling of the Palestinian family’s case in respect of Italy’s conditions came unprecedented.

Although, in some areas in Italy conditions are unfit for sending back the asylum seekers, yet it does not spread to the whole of the country.

Robert Drew of Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees also thinks the same way. He said that certain conditions, for instance, of accommodation depravity in some areas of Italy does not mean that the whole country can’t provide shelter. “Our office has no reason to altar the current practice,” said Drew.

Some refugee pro organizations have said that the location of these countries make it impossible for them to take strict measures to avoid such heavy inflow of asylum seekers. They said that countries like Greece and Italy might start doing everything right in respect of this issue. But still they would remain responsible for most of the asylum seekers entering European Union region.

The countries are not systematically prepared to handle such situations of heavy inflows.

Due to the Dublin rule, pressure on the societies and the administration in these countries gets doubled.

In Germany, right now, the situation of creating any firm rule regarding Italy or Greece is not expected as the rulings are different in different cases, making it a case-to-case judgment on the issue.

In the case of the Palestinian family, the court’s verdict on the case cannot be appealed.

Tags: Asylum, Asylum Seeker, Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, Germany, Italy, Refugee