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The federal government wants to expand the 24-hour accelerated procedures against asylum seekers from North African countries to all federal asylum centers. These countries have a very low recognition rate for asylum seekers. A corresponding pilot project has been running in Zurich since autumn 2023.
The trigger is the rapid increase in the number of requests, which always fall on the weekend. From Monday to Friday, the Federal Asylum Center in Zurich has received three to four asylum applications from the Maghreb states in recent months, the “Tagesanzeiger” writes. From Friday to Sunday, the number of applications shot up from 20 to 35.
The numbers rise on weekends
The people left before their asylum application was officially registered, because some seemed not to want an asylum procedure at all. For reasons of resources, people are not actually registered on weekends.
The number of searches increases above average, especially on weekends with sales on Sunday, during the Zurich Festival or the Street Parade. “Unfortunately, some of them stand out for criminal behavior,” the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) writes to the “Tagesanzeiger”. The suspicion: The applicants use the center as a ‘bed and breakfast’ and then disappear without a trace. “In many cases it is of course about having accommodation for the weekend,” the SEM confirms.
The pilot project has had an impact: the number of asylum seekers from the Maghreb countries has since fallen by approximately 34 percent, the Federal Ministry of Justice and Police (FDJPD) confirmed to the Keystone-SDA news agency. However, in other federal asylum centers the number increased by more than eight percent in the same period. As a result, some asylum seekers evade.
Expansion to other centers
That is why Minister of Justice Beat Jans now wants to extend the 24-hour procedure for asylum seekers from the Maghreb countries to all federal asylum centers.
These are the six centers with procedural functions in Zurich, Bern, Boudry NE, Altstätten SG, Chiasso TI and Basel. According to SEM, it is not known where people will be before and after the weekend.
(SDA/smt)
Source:Blick
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