Immigration in Europe - HumanitarianNet - Universidad de Deusto

INTRODUCTION 13introducing a new Immigration and Refugee Protection Bill in May2000, stated that,…closing the back door to those who would abuse the system willallow us to open the front door wider —both to genuine refugees,and to the immigrants Canada will need to grow and prosper in thefuture (quoted in VAN KESSEL, 2001, p. 13).This sounds reasonable enough, until one recognises that, by focusingattention on their “back doors”, as a condition for opening their “frontdoors”, the rich industrialised countries are making asylum policy afunction of immigration policy. Their obligation under international law toprovide protection for refugees is being subsumed under their overridingdomestic agenda, which is to control the movement of people and,above all, to pursue the “fight” against illegal immigration. Hence,“refugee protection in the North has almost entirely been taken overby the strengthening of the immigration control regime” (COLLINSON,1999, p. 16). Asylum, in other words, has come to be treated, to allintents and purposes, as a loophole to be closed, rather than as a rightto be protected.The danger this poses for refugee protection is a recurrent theme ofthe contributors. Gallagher writes of the need for governments to“separate out” the issues of immigration and asylum in order to meettheir obligations under international refugee law. Vinuesa, whilerecognising that most refugees arriving in Europe today do not conformto the traditional profile of a “Convention refugee”, makes the samepoint: defending the rights of refugees is a matter of international law,not of the discretionary immigration policies of states. Boutruchepoints out that the restrictive measures introduced by Europeangovernments to deter the arrival of undocumented migrants (such ascarrier sanctions and visa requirements) not only fail to take intoaccount the particular situation of asylum seekers but have providedfertile ground for the growth of a huge international business inpeople smuggling and trafficking. His call for a “more balanced” and“complementary” EU asylum and immigration regime appears to rest onthe hope that an expansion of legal immigration would help to reducethe pressure on the asylum route. This in turn would open up the spaceneeded for states to meet their obligations under international law torefugees, a specific group of immigrants in need of internationalprotection.As Boutruche admits, it is by no means certain that the expansionof opportunities for legal immigration would have a downward impacton asylum applications. If it is indeed the case that most asylum seekers