Home Office backs hardline Greek tactics to end ‘mass migration crisis’
PRITI PATEL sees Greece as a model for how the UK will tackle the Channel migrant crisis that has already seen a record 24,500 reach the UK this year.
The Greeks have decided to disregard the EU’S “open borders” policy and adopt a hardline approach to what the Home Secretary described this week as a “mass migration crisis”.
It is not only on border measures and treatment of asylum seekers where Ms Patel and Greece share a vision, but also in their concerns about the lack of border checks which has allowed migrants to sweep across the Continent.
The philosophy
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the prime minister of Greece, is demanding tough border controls and has warned that freedom of movement will be “finished” in the EU if its leaders fail to protect the bloc from illegal migration.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said: “We will not just throw open the doors and let the migrants in. EU leaders know that if that happens then Schengen is finished.” Ms Patel and Boris Johnson have similar demands that the EU needs to fortify and close its southern borders to shut the “corridor”. But this week the Home Secretary went further with an assault on the lack of border checks in the Schengen zone. “The real problem on illegal migration flows is [that] the EU has no border protections whatsoever,” she said.
Border security
Greece this summer completed a 25-mile fence and surveillance system on its border with Turkey amid concerns over a surge of migrants.
The EU is also handing Turkey £2.5 billion to fund controls on its border and stem the flow of migrants.
The UK is providing the French with £54 million for extra police patrols, surveillance equipment and asylum centres.
Push back tactics
The Greeks have already deployed controversial “push back” tactics at sea where videos have shown coastguards firing gunshots into the sea and using long metal sticks to hit migrants over the head and prod their boats.
Ms Patel has also sanctioned the strategy, where Border Force officers on jet skis will nudge boats back towards northern France when it is deemed safe to do so.
Accommodation
The Greeks are constructing a new asylum camp, protected by razor wire, on the island of Samos to hold 3,000 migrants. Migrants can leave it only if they use their fingerprints to pass through checkpoints so the authorities know exactly where they are at any time. There are strict rules including an 8pm curfew with all counted in at night.
Ms Patel has launched a bidding process for companies to build reception centres in the UK to house at least 8,000 migrants and asylum seekers, which are expected to have a similar regime of checks as the Greeks.
She also confirmed this week that plans for offshore processing centres are also “still on the table” and to which Channel migrants could be flown within seven days of their arrival.
Digitisation, returns and deportations
The Greeks have streamlined their asylum system by creating an “app” for migrants that digitises the application process from start to finish.
It means decisions are made more quickly and easily, avoiding the backlogs bogged down by paperwork in the UK.
Failed asylum seekers are deported directly to “source “countries in Africa or Asia.
Ms Patel also wants to adopt a similar digitisation to speed up the process and save costs.
Most of the migrants arriving across the Channel should have claimed asylum in the first “safe” EU country they passed through but Ms Patel has yet to negotiate a new agreement to return them to those nations.