Detention of Asylum Seekers

Last week I attended a presentation by NOAS (Norwegian Association of Asylum Seekers, www.noas.no/en ), regarding the detention of asylum seekers. The presentation was of a report, Freedom First (Frihet først) which was looking into to what extent detention was being used as a method for asylum seekers in Norway. There were many interesting findings of the report itself an I will not spend time to go through all of them. There were, however, some that stuck with me.

The first was that detention is primarily used in relation to forced return (tvungen retur) of asylum seekers after their application for asylum has been first rejected and they have then not followed the instruction of the government to leave the country within a certain period of time voluntarily. Here, the report highlighted that one of the key reasons for that is because many Asylum seekers perceive that the "real fight" to stay in Norway only starts after their application has been rejected, whereas in a legalistic country like Norway the "real fight" is the one that goes until your application is rejected. In fact, statistics show that very few asylum seekers have any chance of staying in Norway after the rejection of their application, and the majority will be returned to their country of origin, either voluntarily of through force.

This reminded me a lot about challenges regarding both expectation setting, cultural and systemic understanding, and channels of influence I learned about and discovered while in AIESEC. The very concept at the basis of this process is the "rule of law", where a society like Norway is principally based upon the idea that the law is the primary and only basis of the use of force by government, and therefore the neutral an objective treatment of all subjects according to that. For most parts of the world, while this may be something people subscribe to principally on individual level, most people have just never experienced what this means in practice. It means there is no or almost no room for individual wriggle room, subjective influence through people, back channels of this process etc. This is in stark contrast to how 90% of the world works, and for sure in contrast to how the world works in countries and areas where asylum seekers come from, where the very lack of "rule of law" is often the primary reason for the esacape in the first place. So while the "rules of the game" may be very clear to Norwegians, these rules are almost impossible to understand for someone who has never experienced it. This is a very difficult paradox, because it means that Norway seeks to treat asylum seekers according to a system they have no basis to understand in practice. And the approach to explain through that same language and process only leaves the asylum seeker more alienated to his own process of applying for asylum.

This goes back to the very challenges of culture and background ,whether in business interactions or misunderstandings.

The second thing struck me in the presentation was the question and input of one of the audience. She worked for the Foreigner Section of the police and described herself as a "practitioner" of the system that was being described. She was genuinely in disagreement with some of the conclusions, because as she described the forced detention (typically 24 to 48 hours before forced return - which practically means people are forcefully put on a plane home with police escort), often is less traumatic and stressful, than a pickup at 4 am in the morning, 2 hours to pack, and direct accompanying of the rejected asylum seeker (+family) to the airport. This became particularly difficult in the case of children (usually applying with their parents), where the children too are detained for the 24h- 48h. (The report also goes into the unacceptable detention of children for longer periods than this, which I will not go into in this blog post, but talk about at a later point).

How do you solve this problem? The report was talking about the need for children to be treated as independent legal subjects, as according to the UN Convention of Children's rights, but here we run into real complications, both related to culture, and what is the "child's best". Picture the moral dilemma

1. A family of asylum seekers (f. ex. two parents and two children) have had their application rejected and have been told to go home.
2. They have chosen "to fight" (see the first point), and stay in the country.
3. After a period of time, government decides that they will be forcefully deported as they are not following the rule of law that has been applied. The police make the assessment that they cannot tell the family exactly "when" they will send them abroad, as typically asylum seekers who have decided to stay of course do not want to return home. If they know they will be picked up, the police fears, they will disappear and go underground. (and yeah, wouldnt you?)
4. Based on this the police have to decide whether to
1. Turn up at 4 am, pick up the family, tell them to pack, escort them straight to the airport and airplane

(the problem being according to the police woman, that this is extremely traumatic and brutal for the family and the kids)

2. Turn up the day before, give the family some hours to pack and call without a "departing plane waiting", and then take the family to a detention center (in practice a prison, although never described as such) for 24-48 hours until the plane is booked. This includes detaining children and people who have not committed any other crime than to seek asylum and then to not accept that their application has been rejected

In either case, the solution is brutal and heart wrenching. I don't know the answer. And again, somehow how do we end up as a society where we have to chose between two solutions which we don't want to? It's like the "given a gun and asked to choose between shooting your mother and father".

There are many points of entry, politically and policy wise

• Politicians are looking to limit the numbers that enter in the first place. If we never see them, then we don't have to make difficult choices at home politically. This is clearly immoral and unacceptable - Norway proudly announced we are taking a few thousand more Syrian refugees this year - out of 13 million (!) who have escaped, of which more than 1 million are in Lebanon. Clap, clap, clap Norway. Yet, such is the political reality, that a problem not seen is a problem solved, right?
• Build asylum centres in the countries of origin or transit country- if they apply there, get rejected, they never have to be returned FROM Norway. This is an advanced version of the same absurdity. Lets keep "their problems" over there
• Change the number of refugees we take by a little bit - this is a bit like the "temporary opening of the Berlin Wall" on the night of the 9th of November 1989..
• Change the processing rules, application process, way we detain etc. This is treating symptoms, definitely not causes. It might make some things less painful, and hopefully more humane, but morally it doesn't address the issue

My main thinking is that we are in the wrong place of discussion in the first place. There are some principles that have to be challenged.

• Our way of life and culture cannot be maintained/will die if we accept many people from other cultures & countries into our country
• It is not our problem / responsibility / fault
• Immigrants and asylum seekers come to exploit and destroy our societies

I have some concrete ideas regarding these, but I will not go into them now. To start, just with the challenge, that these premises, which are at the very basis of why we end up with these horrendous moral choices, must be challenged.

Why must either my mother or father die, the kid may ask you? Do you have a good answer?