If I were a Syrian citizen and reached my breaking point due to living conditions in my country, if I saw no glimmer of hope, if I disagreed with the governing regime, if I could gather enough money to board one, two, or three boats to reach EU soil, and if I were determined enough to risk my life to leave, the decision of the Republic of Cyprus not to consider asylum applications wouldn’t deter me.
Obviously, I’d know that the longer my application remained unprocessed, the longer I’d stay legally in Cyprus, far from the conditions that drove me to leave my country in the first place.
And the longer the Cypriot authorities delay processing my application, the longer it takes for an unpleasant decision to reject my application or grant subsidiary protection. Which can be contested or abolished by an EU policy decision tomorrow, putting me back at an undesirable starting point.
Regardless, the flow of migrants-refugees from other troubled countries and societies hasn’t stopped, even if the majority of decisions are negative regarding asylum applications. Even when the waiting time was enormous, the flow didn’t cease. Everyone wants to try their chances.
For years, the main criticism from the opposition against governments was the delay in processing asylum applications. Precisely because delays extended the stay period for applicants, without proving to be a deterrent for migration.
Plus, the time for “appeals” and challenging decisions using available legal means. For many, the priority wasn’t to obtain asylum but to avoid deportation.
The continuous refrain of the opposition was the acceleration of application processing and decision-making to prevent a backlog of pending applications and migrants-refugees legally waiting for decisions.
And the government’s response was, “We sped up the processes, last year we processed X applications, this year 2X.” Even this Government boasted until recently about reducing the processing time for applications to three months.
Now, the Government has decided to suspend the processing of applications from Syrians.
Perhaps because it’s harder to reject their asylum applications, given the clearly chaotic situation in Syria, both economically and politically. If state services find it challenging to dismiss their applications, they will find it even harder to refuse to review them.
Where we all accepted that a solution for better migration management was faster application processing and repatriation in case of a negative decision, suddenly the solution proposed is not processing the applications.
Where people will accumulate daily, and the number of migrants in so-called reception facilities will increase. Living conditions and anti-social behaviour will deteriorate, assaults, injuries, thefts in the surrounding areas, etc.
And when the situation reaches an impasse again, someone will think that since there’s no way to prevent informal migration – many call it population movement – what remains is to fairly and legally review applications and focus on repatriating rejected applicants. Of course, this doesn’t offer real solutions, especially for Syrians.
Let the Government try this bright idea as well. It should know it’s dealing with numbers. And people’s patience.
At some point, the sum will add up, and it will become evident whether this decision will limit the arrivals of Syrians or increase those staying in the makeshift camps of so-called hospitality and test everyone’s endurance.
