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France struggles to deport rejected asylum claims, says auditor

France’s national auditor has slammed the country’s asylum policies, saying too much money is being spent on asylum seekers and too few people whose claims are rejected are being deported. It says the problems are linked to the excessive length of time it takes to process a claim.

Migrants cue for a meal in Calais, some will ask for asylum in France.
Migrants cue for a meal in Calais, some will ask for asylum in France. Reuters/Pascal Rossignol
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The Cour des comptes, which conducts financial and legislative audits of public institutions, says the two years on average it takes for an asylum seeker to get an answer in France is too long.

“Compared with its neighbours, France stands out because its procedure is too long,” the court’s president, Didier Migaud, told the AFP news agency. “This excessive amount of time means additional costs in terms of welfare benefits and housing.”

The auditor’s report, published Tuesday, said that France spent 690 million euros on asylum cases in 2013, on top of which are health and education costs that it said “are difficult to evaluate precisely”.

The amount spent increased 52 per cent between 2009-2014, while the number of asylum seekers in rose only 36 per cent in the same time period.

Gerard Sadik, coordinator of the asylum programme for the Cimade, an NGO that works with undocumented migrants, explains the rising costs as a redress of previous policies.

“There was not enough investment in the asylum system for many years,” he told RFI. “What the government is doing now is trying to get back to a normal situation. It’s just catching up.”

Deporting rejected claims

In one of the more controversial points of the report, the Cour des comptes said that France fails to deport the vast majority of people whose asylum claims have been rejected.

Using interior ministry figures, it said that 40.206 asylum claims were rejected in 2014 and only 1.432 people were deported.

In a response to the auditor, Prime Minister Manuel Valls protested the figures, saying they do not take into account those whose asylum claims are rejected but who find valid papers another way. Nor do they take into account people who leave France voluntarily.

Sadik says it is impossible to connect specific deportations with specific rejections: “For more than 25 years they say we have to have a better removal rate of rejected asylum seekers, but for 25 years there’s no instrument to calculate it. Nobody really knows.”

In addition, not everyone whose asylum claim is rejected should be deported. There are other ways to stay legally in France.

“Some people have a second, subsidiary protection, because they fear the death penalty, inhuman treatment, or they are fleeing a country with a civil war, for instance,” says Sadik. “And some people, maybe they don’t need protection, but they can stay because they have health problems, or they have family links in Europe.”

The report blamed the low rate of deportations on the length of time of the asylum procedure, which makes it difficult for people to leave. Reducing that amount of time would solve many of the problems in the system.

“If it is effective, this reduction would mechanically reduce the costs of processing and housing asylum seekers; it would relieve the welcome centres and improve the efficiency of the entire asylum policy,” said Didier Migaud.

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