The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) accuses the centre-right-green coalition government of deceiving Austrian citizens with its recent report on the deportation of illegal migrants.
According to Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP), 6,553 people were deported in the first half of this year: 3,080 of them were voluntary departures and 3,473 were forced deportations. That is 6 percent more than in the same period last year and the highest number since the Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum was founded in 2014.
According to the ministry, 44 percent of all forcibly deported people had been convicted of a criminal offense at least once.
Syrian and Afghan citizens were also deported, but to third countries. Without saying how many of them were affected, Karner said: “We must start negotiations on how we can deport them directly back to their home countries.”
The national conservative FPÖ MP Hannes Amesbauer was more than dissatisfied with Karner’s report. He told journalists that the government was deceiving the Austrians with “number tricks of the worst kind”. This year, only 15 Syrians and nine Afghans were deported, last year there were 36 Syrians but no Afghans. At the same time, citizens of these two countries submitted around 30,000 asylum applications in 2023.
Afghanistan and Syria are considered unsafe countries of origin and the return of their citizens “would violate EU law,” says Gerhard Karner. He advocates reconsidering an EU-wide ban on returns to these countries.
A recent German court ruling said there was no longer a general danger to the civilian population in Syria. A court ruling in Austria said the same about Afghanistan, stressing that the security situation had improved since the radical Islamic Taliban regime regained power in 2021.
In both Austria and Germany, there are intense political discussions about the need to resume deportations following the wave of brutal knife attacks in Germany, mostly carried out by Afghan and Syrian migrants.
Although the Austrian government insists it is successfully fighting illegal immigration, Amesbauer of the FPÖ believes that Gerhard Karner “has not secured our borders, but has degraded our police to a kind of ‘welcoming committee’ for illegal immigrants.” He added that 240,000 illegal immigrants have come to Austria since the current government took office in 2020.
Amesbauer said that if his party were elected to government after the parliamentary elections at the end of September, it would immediately suspend asylum applications, set up a real border protection system, enable pushbacks, consistently deport rejected asylum seekers, pay recognized asylum seekers in kind instead of cash and generally make Austria a less attractive destination country for illegal migrants and economic migrants.
The recent revelations that a Syrian family with seven children receives 4,600 euros in social assistance per month caused outrage in Austria.
Its strong commitment to curbing migration has catapulted the FPÖ to first place in opinion polls, which predict that the party will receive 28 percent of the vote in the September 29 elections. The People’s Party is currently in second place with 22 percent.
In a recent parliamentary debate, Amesbauer complained that 35 percent of primary school students in Austria are Muslims. “You don’t have to be a prophet to see that mass immigration leads to Islamization and, as a result, to an increased threat of terrorism,” he said.
Authorities canceled three planned concerts by US pop singer Taylor Swift in Vienna on Wednesday after police arrested two radical Islamists who were planning a massive terrorist attack on the venue.
