The office was previously held by Rudi Anschober of the Green Party, who conducted his duties with a lot more dignity and respect for the rule of law than Hattmannsdorfer appears to have. (If you read further, that might sound like I’m “damning with faint praise,” so just to be clear: Anschober was an admirable and dedicated state Integration Minister and later a highly competent national Minister of Health.)
Austrian political rhetoric on immigration and refugees
As Michael Schäft reports:
Great Britain has shown the way, says Upper Austria's Integration Minister Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer (VP). In the United Kingdom, illegal refugees are flown out to Rwanda in East Africa. Sweden and Denmark have already a similar approach examined. And Austria should follow their example, according to him.Before getting to more factual information - which European xenophobes don’t care about - the messaging requires a bit of translating. The political conversation on refugees, and on immigrants more generally in Austria, is dominant by rhetoric and tired clichés that the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been pimping for three decades: immigrants are criminals: refugees are fakes who just want to lie around in Austria’s “social hammock”; they’re not our problem; they should be deported; they’re not working hard enough to “integrate” themselves into Austrian society; they’re endangering Austrian “culture” (never very clearly defined!); they have too many babies; they’re Muslims so they hate women and Jews and we hate Muslims so you can’t call us anti-woman or anti-Semitic; they’re violent; they wear funny clothes; and, “They can’t even speak German!”
Refugees whose application for asylum in Austria has not been definitively approved, who are housed in basic care quarters but cannot be deported, and those who have lost their residence permit because of a final conviction should also be accommodated in countries outside the EU, says Hattmannsdorfer. "Unfortunately, our current laws and supreme court interpretation prevent us from taking delinquent asylum seekers out of the country." This is "incomprehensible and unbearable".
The latter complaint is not infrequently expressed in some Austrian dialect unintelligible to most native German-speakers in the world, and often to most other Austrians.
And, of course: Poor Austria, we’re the real victims here! A popular and long-standing theme even beyond the refugee issue.
This anti-refugee political rhetoric in Austria is to a remarkable degree divorced from the realities of immigration and “integration”. The terms refugees, immigrants, and “foreigners” (the latter of which may mean third- or fourth-generation Austrians with one ancestor in the family tree who at some time in their life were not an Austrian citizen) are commonly used interchangeably. Which makes the already-stale and often just plain dumbs standard prejudices even less intelligible.
Realities of handling of refugees in Austria
Gerald Knaus is an Austrian migration expert and head of the European Security Initiative (ESI) whose views on immigration policy are anything but superficial or irresponsible. He was the architect of the EU-Turkey agreement of 2016, which was and remains the solution to the so-called “refugee crisis” of 2015-16. He patiently but insistently advocates for not only the EU but the also US and Australia to adopt more practical and humane refugee policies that are consistent with international law. (None of the three currently fully meet that standard.)
In his most recent book, Knaus looks at the 2018-2021 period, the "Kurz era," i.e., the time when Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) was Austrian Chancellor (except for a few months when his first government fell apart). Kurz constantly demagogued against refugees, promoting the kind of hostile rhetoric described above. He even criticized private civil-society groups for rescuing refugees in the Mediterranean Sea on overloaded boats from drowning. "We have to put a stop to the NGO insanity," he said of those missions in 2017.
But in what Knaus calls “the Austrian paradox,” the Austrian government actually did a decent job processing asylum cases and sticking to the rule of law:
The most important thing is therefore not only the laws that are largely the same throughout Europe, but also the seriousness with which they are implemented. Above all, it is about the state of the rule of law.
The Austrian peculiarity in recent years has been that it rulers spoke like [Hungary’s authoritarian President] Viktor Orbán - "the goal is zero irregular migration", “that is not possible without ugly pictures". At the same time, however, all relevant institutions acted in accordance with applicable law. And so it achieved the world's highest recognition figures of refugees in these years [proportional to population]. (my emphasis)But even in politics, a radical divergence between the standard political vocabulary and the reality can’t hold up forever. Because when politicians of the far-right party, the center-right party, and even the head of the center-left Social Democratic Party and stressing a false and fear-mongering narrative on refugees, policy is eventually going to move further in that direction. (And I think it’s fair to say that Knaus is not trying to claim Austria’s actual refugee policies are in no need of improvement.)
The “Africa” solution
This is an example of how xenophobic politicians can do a nudge-nudge-wink-wink version of advocating illegal handling of refugees:
Refugees whose application for asylum in Austria has not been definitively approved, who are housed in basic care quarters but cannot be deported, and those who have lost their residence permit because of a final conviction should also be accommodated in countries outside the EU, says Hattmannsdorfer. "Unfortunately, our current laws and supreme court interpretation prevent us from taking delinquent asylum seekers out of the country." This is "incomprehensible and unbearable".At least the newspaper report gives an explanation of what the Upper Austrian Integration Minister finds just "incomprehensible and unbearable."
Despite negative asylum status, deportations to the countries of origin usually fail because it is not possible to deport to the countries of origin at all. For example, if there is a threat of torture or serious human rights violations in a state – this is stated in the European Convention on Human Rights. Such countries include Syria [and] Afghanistan. [my emphasis]
But Herr Hattmannsdorfer finds it not just “incomprehensible” but unbearable that Austria is expected to obey its own laws, much less this European Convention on Human Rights thing, whatever that might be. His constituents could be excused for thinking that he thinks why Austrian official should be expected to follow their own laws in dealing with them thar foreigners. It’s incomprehensible to him!
Where does he want them sent? The report says he suggested Egypt, Morocco, Libya, and Tunisia. According to the widely used Freedom House rankings, with 1 representing the least free and 100 the most, current country rankings are as follows:
- Afghanistan (10-Not Free)
- Austria (93-Free)
- Egypt (18-Not Free)
- Morocco (37-Partly Free)
- Libya (9-Not Free)
- Syria (1-Not Free)
- Tunisia (64-Partly Free)
Is he looking for some practical alternative to what he sees as a completely bewildering condition where Austria has to follow the law? Or is he just advertising to all the non-Austrians who he is supposed to be in charge of “integrating” that he really, really hates them?
If actual policy were being discussed, Herr Hattmannsdorfer might have suggested that Austria should pursue a diplomatic initiative to get all EU countries to agree to share responsibility for those whose asylum requests are declined but who are eligible for “protected status” for the reasons that he finds incomprehensible and unbearable. But that suggestion is taboo among Austrian xenophobes. It implies that laws matter, that is actually part of the European Union, and that Austria actually has some responsibility for refugees in Austria and not just: Not our problem! Criminal foreigners! Barbed wire on the borders! Deport them, deport them, deport them!!
In the very last part of his story, Schäft does manage to find a member of Hattmannsdorfer’s party that isn’t totally besotted with the let’s-ignore-reality mentality on refugee issues, though from a different Austrian state:
Tyrol's Chamber of Commerce President Christoph Walser (VP) is critical of his party's asylum policy. "I am not satisfied with what is happening in the ÖVP," he told the Tiroler Tageszeitung. One should not constantly stir up fear of asylum seekers and believe that they only come to Austria because of social benefits. Walser referred to the need to combat labor shortages through immigration and criticized the long asylum procedures. Once again, he called for a work permit for asylum seekers. (my emphasis)But he apparently didn’t want to let the reporter get away without mentioning some new imposition on asylum recipients: "‘I'll go one step further and say: Already when applying for asylum, it should be mandatory to state that asylum seekers have to work,’ said Walser.”
Most asylum-seekers would be happy to be able to do that, i.e., legally work before being formally approved for asylum. But, of course, it requires government-sponsored support for language training in particular, though there are private initiatives that can contribute to that.
And I’ll give Walser credit for doing what far too few Austrian politicians and public figures are willing to do: call out the xenophobic demagoguery directly. In this case, specifically the brand coming from his own political party.
(All translations from the German here are mine.)
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