Suffers Frp’s Rwanda plan

The Progress Party’s new plan for asylum arrivals is presented in the Storting today. They will send asylum seekers who come to Norway abroad and let asylum centers there process their application.

If they are granted residence, they must stay in the country. FRP relies on agreements that Denmark and the United Kingdom are already in the process of concluding with Rwanda.

Sier nei

The question is whether such a proposal can get a majority in the Storting. The answer is no, says leader of the municipal committee Lene Vågslid (Labor).

– The Labor Party will vote against the proposal to FrP and reject a Danish model for sending refugees to Rwanda, Vågslid states to Dagbladet.

It has been speculated whether the Labor Party may support the FRP’s Rwanda solution. In the party’s Migration Manifesto from 2019, they write that “Asylum seekers should be able to be referred to safe countries in and outside Europe as long as their need for protection is well taken care of.”

Without the Labor Party’s support, the FRP will not be able to gather a majority in the Storting on its controversial proposal.

– Denmark has tried for several years, without success with an agreement. They want to send all asylum seekers to an asylum reception center in Africa, no matter where they come from or where they have stayed before. The Labor Party does not want such a solution, Vågslid explains.

– Something completely different

In a comment in Dagbladet, Sondre Hansmark writes that the proposal to send asylum seekers to other countries is an expression of inhuman asylum policy.

In the Hurdal platform, the Labor / SP government opens up to “use the room for maneuver in current legislation to refer asylum seekers to safe countries outside Europe if they have come to Norway via this country”.

The Labor Party profile believes that the government’s policy is far from what the FRP wants.

– However, this is about something completely different than establishing Norwegian asylum reception centers in Africa. It is about refugees who come to Norway via another safe country, being able to be referred back there, says Vågslid.

Simple logic

Storting representative Erlend Wiborg (Frp) explained the proposal, which he himself presents to the Storting this week, as follows:

– The logic is quite simple.

– People who apply for asylum do so because they are on the run. The goal must then be security in anticipation of an asylum application being processed. And Norway can provide that security in a third country. Then FRP believes that it will be less tempting for asylum seekers who do not have a real need for protection to seek asylum in Norway, he adds, Wiborg says.

But the proposal provoked strong reactions from the Norwegian organization for asylum seekers.

– It’s completely meaningless. Norway can not be the country that undermines the UN’s mandate on human rights, says Secretary General Pål Nesse to Dagbladet.

– The logic does not hang in the balance. The FRP, which is so concerned with helping in the neighboring areas, must understand that countries like Rwanda will not have the opportunity to help in their neighboring areas if we send our asylum seekers to them. And then the whole asylum institute falls, Nesse adds.

– Tasty

Recognized Foreign Policy has revealed that a large number of refugees from Israel sent to Rwanda ended up with human traffickers or in slavery.

Rwanda ranks 160th on the UN HDI index. Norway is in first place. On average, life is 13 years shorter in Rwanda than in Norway.

KrF deputy leader Dag Inge Ulstein believes Frp makes people flee war to goods that can be sent abroad for processing.

– The FRP’s proposal may in the long run threaten the entire asylum system. It is part of a distasteful race to deter people fleeing from seeking protection in the individual country, Ulstein tells Dagbladet.

Despite the fact that the Labor Party now clearly rejects the FRP proposal, they have thus adopted a policy of being able to send asylum seekers to other, safer countries.

The Labor Party’s leading immigration politicians are keeping the door open for new solutions in the same direction as the FRP’s Rwanda plan.

– We must not close our eyes to the fact that the current asylum system has major weaknesses. But this must first and foremost be resolved through international cooperation, to ensure better handling of the migration challenges, both at European level and at the UN. A Norwegian-Danish lone move to establish asylum centers in Africa is not a good solution, says V

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