SVP accuses Federal Councillor Jans of failing in asylum policy
Published: Tuesday, Jul 30th 2024, 10:40
Updated At: Tuesday, Jul 30th 2024, 15:20
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For the SVP, Switzerland's asylum and migration policy has failed and is harming the Swiss population. At a media conference near the Guglera federal asylum center in Giffers FR, party representatives reiterated their accusations against the responsible SP Federal Councillor Beat Jans.
Instead of considering how migration routes could be interrupted, the Federal Council wants to sign the UN migration pact. Instead of reintroducing border controls, the Federal Department of Justice and Police (FDJP) is calculating in which gymnasium additional beds could be set up.
This is what Gregor Rutz, SVP National Councillor from Zurich, said at the media conference. He presented a position paper from the SVP Switzerland entitled "Federal Councillor Jans' assessment: 200 days of failure". This paper also states that the 24-hour asylum procedure announced by Federal Councillor Jans in April for asylum seekers with no real prospect of asylum takes far longer than one day, namely at least one month. Jans' measure is therefore a "pure marketing stunt".
FDJP denies longer duration of proceedings
Since the introduction of this 24-hour rule in May, asylum applications from people from Maghreb countries have decreased compared to the winter months of 2023/24, but those from May 2024 are higher than those from the same month last year. According to Rutz, Switzerland's asylum policy lacks a concept and the strength to "enforce its own rules".
At the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency on Tuesday, the FDJP denied that the 24-hour procedures for asylum seekers without any real prospect of asylum should take at least one month. The procedures would take significantly less than a month. In the period from May to June of this year, i.e. since the introduction of the 24-hour procedure throughout Switzerland, such procedures took an average of twelve days, it added.
In the same period last year, the figure was 51 days. This corresponds to a reduction in the duration of the procedure of over 75 percent. The 24 hours also referred to the main procedural steps that the State Secretariat for Migration (Sem) completed within this period.
Exploding Costs complains
SP Federal Councillor Beat Jans is continuing the "asylum chaos" of his predecessor and party colleague Elisabeth Baume-Schneider "seamlessly", said SVP party president Marcel Dettling in an interview with Keystone-SDA. "Unfortunately, after 200 days of Beat Jans in office, we have realized that he has not found any solutions. The number of asylum seekers continues to rise."
"We have costs that are exploding in this area," continued Dettling. 3.5 billion francs at federal level, the SVP party leader calculated, which is almost as much as for the army or agriculture. In response to an inquiry, the FDJP stated that 2023 was a year with extraordinary costs for people in need of protection from Ukraine. CHF 1.3 billion out of CHF 3.5 billion would be spent on Ukraine alone.
Furthermore, no one knows how high the burden on Swiss taxpayers really is as a result of communal social assistance for asylum seekers, healthcare measures or education. According to the SVP position paper, there is a need for accounting transparency of all asylum-related costs.
In response to an inquiry, the FDJP replied that asylum seekers accounted for 0.56% of the total costs of compulsory healthcare insurance according to a survey conducted by the Federal Office of Public Health in 2021.
Symbolically chosen conference venue
The SVP held the media conference in Giffers, Fribourg, because it believes that the Guglera federal asylum center there has become "an unbearable burden" for the population. Referring to Switzerland as a whole, the party speaks in its press release of "massively more break-ins, thefts and violent crimes", of mobbing and harassment. The police are constantly having to intervene.
Two Fribourg SVP councillors recently asked a question in the Fribourg cantonal parliament about the burglary statistics in the Sense district, which includes Giffers. In mid-June, the Fribourg State Council wrote in its answer that there had been a significant increase in crimes committed by a minority of asylum seekers throughout the canton since 2023.
This mainly involves harassment, but also theft. However, it is mainly the greater Fribourg area that is affected, which does not include the area around the Guglera Federal Asylum Center.
©Keystone/SDA
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