France: The Afghans Have Arrived

With all the other problems France is facing, not to mention, Covid, it seems a major portion of Afghan men leaving that country are arriving in France and requesting asylum. The below article by Francis Gruzelle in the conservative French blog, Riposte Laique, is translated by Fousesquawk.

 https://ripostelaique.com/les-refugies-afghans-de-plus-en-plus-nombreux-en-france.html

More and more Afghans in France

24 January 2022, Francis Gruzelle   Migratory invasion

The great majority of Afghan refugees are young men, arriving alone, and not speaking French. Almost all are of the Muslim faith and are very religious.

Afghans have become the principal population of refugees in France. A population principally male, and between 20-30 years of age. A great majority are male, young, and arrived alone.

The Afghan refugee community in France is very young, and very male-dominated, with a ratio of men to women extremely unbalanced. Only 12.5% are women, and the average age of the entire group is 27.2 years. As Gerard Sadik explains, migration to Europe is made principally overland and is mostly by, "mostly unqualified youths who have worked at odd jobs in the countries they have crossed." He also reminds us that these youths are, "especially fragile due to the traumatic situations encountered in their countries of origin or during migration, and due to severe economic insecurity," and that they, "don't fit well into the guidelines for reception of asylum-seekers and settle in frequently evacuated migrant encampments, for example in Ile-de-France." 

It would seem that these Afghan refugees would be difficult to integrate given the Afghans in France, a growing and fragmented community.

In the same way that Professor Remi Chauvin was passionate about the life and the habits of bees, many researchers study the evolution of the invasive species in a real way. Thus, the researcher Francois Gemenne evokes the fear that henceforth, asylum will be reserved, "for the most-connected Afghans, the richest, who were able to leave the country while those who stay risk finding themselves in an open-air prison." He offers the hypothesis that those who wish to flee but don't immediately have the means, will not be considered, in the coming months, as candidates for asylum, but as "economic migrants", which will reduce their chances of seeing their requests accepted in the receiving country.  

Who grants resident permits?

In France, it is the French Office of Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra) which handles asylum applications and granting of refugee status or beneficiaries of subsidiary protection (given to persons who cannot benefit from refugee status but who risk suffering serious harm in their countries; death penalty, torture, inhuman treatment, general violence resulting from a situation of armed conflict, etc.)

Even if the official numbers are undercounted, Ofpra counts 41,174 Afghan nationals under its protection (refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection) as of 30 June 2021, and 8,000 applications are being processed.  Suddenly, without the average French person realizing it, Afghans constitute the main population of refugees in France, ahead of Syrians (35,327) and Sri Lankans (33,675). The number of applications on the part of the Afghans has increased ten-fold recently due to the migratory crisis (616 initial applications in 2014, 6087 in 2016), and they constitute the first community in the number of applications for protection filed and for protection granted.

For Gerard Sadik, national manager of Cimade, an association of solidarity with migrants, "these numbers are explained by the policy conducted by Ofpra, particularly in Calais, to convince Afghans to ask for asylum in France, which they were not doing much till then, preferring to continue their journey to the United Kingdom.

Is it France's calling to receive most of the Afghan refugees after a lost war on the ground by Western armies? Is it France's calling to lodge these Afghan refugees in castles, former police stations, or hotels?

In the majority of municipalities where the "Afghan refugees" have been placed, the concerned elected officials, either on the left or the right, have the bitter impression of being, "taken for idiots". It is hard to fault them.

Francis GRUZELLE

Journalist and writer

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