Taking the Blame for Closing Fort Europe

A Kurdish girl of 18 has to leave Denmark because the authorities feel she will not integrate to be a successful member of the Danish community. Her family lives in Denmark, yet she will be deported to Turkey where the old grandmother she hardly knows should look after her.

Songul Yuksel is by far not the only victim of the overtly strict way civil servants, institutions and courts in many European countries are handling the already very tough rules on asylum and immigration.

Recently, a very sick African asylum seeker was deported from the Netherlands, even though he will go blind without medical care and he has a three-year-old child there. Again, one of many.

It makes me, as a Dutch national, feel very sad for the tolerance lost, and ashamed for the inhumane situations that arise.

Lawyers and others work hard to make sure asylum seekers get their human rights. But their fight is getting tougher all the time, because of the negative atmosphere that surrounds the problem and influences even the courts.

Often now, it seems more important to prevent juridical loopholes for those who are fighting negative decisions, than to apply the international human rights. Courts are scared that if they are lenient in one case, this will be used by others fighting to stay.

It is the bottom of a development that has been on a downward spiral for years. A number of developments are to blame for the present situation. Amongst them is the general political shift to the right, leading to parties putting “the migrants issue” high on their agendas. In the struggle for votes, many politicians are playing a more nationalistic card.

In recession time, when many people lose their jobs, negative feelings against foreigners get stronger, from the sentiment that foreigners take the jobs of the locals. And when, at the same time, social security allowances are scaled down to help decrease government spending, the feeling surfaces that too many foreigners just came to Europe to get money without working for it.

And even though I feel saddened by this development, I can see what caused it. It is not only the fact that communities felt lost with so many strangers in their midst they could not connect to. And it is also not only because of the fear of criminals -- as the word foreigner for many has become a synonym for “criminal” after reports that the prison communities have a relatively high number of foreigners.

Part of the cause lies with migrants themselves, who used all the tricks in the book to force entry into Fort Europe. They came in on the passports of others, on names that were not theirs, on asylum stories that were made up, from dangerous places where they did not really live. How many asylum seekers said they came from Kirkuk, but were from Sulaimani or Erbil?

And a fair number of immigrants tried to get an asylum mainly to be able to do just what the local communities now are blaming all foreigners for: To harvest social security benefits without putting in any labor. It is an unpopular subject and almost a taboo to discuss; but I have heard too many stories and seen too much evidence.

My country has always been proud of its good social security system. Nobody has to die of hunger in the Netherlands, because we all pay part of our salaries into the system. But when too many people start using it without making any input, the system will go bankrupt.

So this insurance for all had to be changed to make sure it could survive; a measure that has hit all and everybody, and caused much bad feeling. One can say: the system could easily be misused, and needed to be secured better anyway. But many locals only blame foreigners for milking it.

At the same time, recession has its toll. The fact that the low birth rate in Europe will eventually make it necessary to bring in workers from outside, is considered non-valid when people still lose their jobs. Europe does not have a green card system, and for knowledge-migrants the procedure is tough, too, in order to keep out the fraudulent. For the same reason, even businessmen have a hard time getting a visa, and for many asylum seekers the walls of Fort Europe have become too high.

Whoever is to blame, the price of the fraud and tricks of some is now paid by all. Will the clock ever turn back again? Perhaps after security benefits have been made unavailable for newcomers. But probably only when the European economy needs the foreign labor again. Until then, sadly, girls like Songul will remain the victims of the negative tendency towards all foreigners.