Our View: Cyprus is not powerless to deal with the irregular migrants

The European Union’s report on migration and asylum, released on Thursday, said that Cyprus has seen a 122 per cent increase on 2021 in the number of irregular arrivals in the first seven months of this year.

Irregular arrivals along the eastern Mediterranean route doubled compared to 2021, “mostly due to heightened migratory pressure in Cyprus, which currently accounts for roughly 60 per cent of arrivals along the route,” said the report, adding that Syrians, Nigerians and Turks were the main nationalities on this route.

It also acknowledged that Cyprus “has the highest number of asylum seekers per capita in the EU.”

The European Commission stepped up its support to Cyprus with an action plan on migration management agreed at the start of this year, which has 160 experts deployed on the ground by the commission, Europol, Frontex and the EU Asylum Agency. The action plan has already yielded some results, with Cyprus being third among member states for non-EU nationals returned by commercial flights to their countries of origin.

While this is a positive step, the failure of our authorities to tackle the problem effectively cannot be ignored. The processing of asylum applications and ensuing legal procedures are still taking far too long, three to five years are often needed for an appeal to be heard and final decision taken. In 2020, the last year on which the Asylum Service provides figures, there were 18,995 ‘pending persons’. In 2018, the ‘pending persons’ were 8,500 and since then the government announced a speeding up of the processes by the hiring of more personnel to deal with applications. Numbers suggest this has not had the desired effect, even though the influx has increased.

The government’s latest plan is to set up fences and gates along the buffer zone to stop foreign nationals crossing from the north, which accounts for the biggest number of irregular arrivals to the Republic. The locked gates, incidentally, restrict the freedom of movement of citizens of the Republic, who have justifiably been protesting about the imposition of this measure. Apart from the fences, the government has also decided to hire 300 special police officers, who will be allowed to carry guns, to patrol the dividing line. Whether this will stop the flow of migrants from the north is questionable.

There are administrative measures that can be taken to alleviate the problem. Instead of 300 special officers, the government could have employed 50 judges and set up special courts to deal exclusively with asylum applications. These special courts could issue a ruling on an application within a month and a special appeal court could issue a final decision a month later. Even if the court procedures take a total of four months, it is no comparison to the four or five years needed at present. The staffing at the Asylum Service should also be increased, with workers having to undergo training and then having to meet monthly targets. If the state is incapable of doing this effectively and efficiently, perhaps it should consider contracting out the work.

More effective methods for dealing with foreign students could also be introduced. For example, in the last four years for which the Asylum Service provides data there were about 4,000 asylum seekers from India, the overwhelming majority of whom came to Cyprus on student visas. India is a democratic country so why do its citizens seek asylum here, as soon as their student visa expires? This would not have been an option if all foreign nationals on student visas, were obliged to provide migration officials on arrival with information about their background, whether they had been persecuted in their country and so forth. All this information could be kept in a database to which the asylum service would have access; this would speed up the work of the service.

Would this stem the flow of irregulars from the north? Not directly, but if applications were processed in a few months, and people rejected were speedily repatriated, fewer would take the risk of coming here. Word would be out that asylum seekers were no longer able to live and work here or be paid state benefits for several years before being put on a flight home. Perhaps, the government should pay for campaigns in countries from which the majority of irregulars come, to inform people – usually exploited by traffickers that promise them a better future – that the asylum applications regime has changed and that nobody stays long enough to work. The EU already funds such campaigns in countries of origin.

Everything can be done lawfully, and Cyprus would be fully compliant with EU directives and regulations. Doing everything by the book would also boost our trustworthiness with the commission, which would provide additional assistance and funding. The commission could also put more pressure on Turkey and the regime in the north to end practices that facilitate irregular arrival. So far, these attempts, mentioned in the report, have been unsuccessful.

Cyprus is not as powerless as our authorities claim to deal with the irregulars. With an administrative overhaul that would speed up the processing of applications, not only would the pending cases be drastically reduced, but they would also discourage many from arriving here. This is what will reduce the inflow of irregulars, not special police officers.