Hi! Thanks for the question.
I have found the following articles which provide criticisms on the
Immigration Policies of the EU and the issue of human rights. Most of
them came from the Human Rights Watch website. I will provide small
snippets from the articles so as to save you time.
“The European Union unfortunately failed to play the role of a
mediating force in this frenzy of labeling migrants and refugees. The
week after the attacks, the E.U. issued a set of documents; including
two directives dealing with terrorism and a "plan of action against
terrorism." The minutes from an Extraordinary Justice and Home Affairs
Council Meeting of September 20 called for the European Commission "to
examine urgently the relationship between safeguarding internal
security and complying with international protection obligations."
This appeared to be an attempt to explore ways to circumvent
international protection obligations and to seek additional means to
exclude people from the provisions of the 1951 Refugee Convention.”
“The Aftermath of September 11 - The Tightening of Immigration
Policies”
http://hrw.org/press/2002/04/valenciaspeech0413.htm
“In the letter, Human Rights Watch detailed its research findings on a
range of serious and widespread migrants' rights violations in a
number of E.U. member states, including the United Kingdom, Belgium,
Spain, and Greece. Five key areas were addressed, including abuses
related to immigrant detention; human trafficking; the return of
undocumented migrants and rejected asylum seekers; the treatment of
unaccompanied migrant children; and refugee protection. The letter
identifies how current E.U. policy proposals fail to address and even
exacerbate these concerns, and puts forward measures to remedy these
gaps.”
"’Senior E.U. officials must live up to the promises made at the
Tampere European Council in 1999," said Andersen. "That meeting
reaffirmed the very principles upon which the E.U. was founded - human
rights, democratic institutions, and the rule of law. The current
treatment of migrants and refugees in Western Europe betrays those
principles.’"
“Seville Summit: Serious Abuses Against Migrants and Asylum Seekers
Detailed”
http://hrw.org/press/2002/06/eu0613.htm
“E.U. member states must consider their international refugee
protection obligations not simply in light of the Refugee Convention,
however, but also with respect to their obligations under European and
international law. The principle of nonrefoulement is enshrined in
Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), Article 7
of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),
Article 3 of the U.N. Convention against Torture (CAT), and it has
risen to the level of customary international law.”
“Human Rights Implications of European Union Internal Security
Proposals and Measures in the Aftermath of the 11 September Attacks in
the United States”
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/11/eusecurity-memo.htm
“In April 2002, the European Commission published a Green Paper on a
Community Return Policy on Illegal Residents, aimed at stimulating
policy debate and the eventual development of new European Union
(E.U.) policies
establishing guidelines for member states’ efforts to return
undocumented migrants and rejected asylum seekers to their countries
of origin.”
“The Green Paper does not include direct reference to any regional or
international obligation to protect the right to life.5 Migrant deaths
in the process of forced deportation, allegedly at the hands of law
enforcement and immigration officials, occurred during the 1990s in
Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the United
Kingdom. 6 Although some countries discontinued the use of specific
forms of restraint during forced deportations, or conducted reviews of
procedures for forced deportations in the immediate aftermath of a
migrant’s death, until recently there was little attempt to hold law
enforcement or immigration officials accountable for these deaths.”
“Treating “Illegals” Legally: Commentary regarding the European
Commission Green Paper on a Community Return Policy on Illegal
Residents”
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/migrants/docs/ec-green-paper0802.pdf
“The flaw in the E.U. approach—as aptly identified by Helga Konrad,
Chair of the Task Force against Human Trafficking of the South-East
European Stability Pact—is its orientation toward the problem of
trafficking solely as an element of efforts to combat illegal
immigration. This approach gives rise to two categories of victims:
those who cooperate with the authorities and those who do not or
cannot—without any attention to the needs for protection common to all
of these victims, regardless of the level of their cooperation with
the fight against illegal immigration.26”
“The Human Rights Dimension of E.U. Immigration Policy:
Lessons from Member States”
http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/eu-immigration.pdf
“Amnesty International deplores the duplicity of the EU's approach
which asserts that "genuine" refugees will be protected, while at the
same time the EU raises all kinds of obstacles for them not only to
get a fair hearing of their application, but to gain access to Europe
at all.”
“War Against "Illegal Immigration" Puts Human Rights At Risk”
http://news.amnesty.org/MAVP/news.nsf/VwDocId/215B5BE9D64E990880256BD80053FD14?Opendocument
“But the human rights agenda for further development of E.U. asylum
and migration policy needs to extend beyond shoring up the refugee
convention and related protection norms. The entire project of
developing a harmonized and more restrictive E.U. asylum policy
appears to have been based on the false assumption that if a
government can whittle down the number of "asylum seekers" and put
more of those migrants in the category of "illegal immigrants," it can
treat them as it wishes, detain them indefinitely or expel them
summarily, and be rid of the problem. To the contrary, though European
governments may prefer to ignore them, human rights conventions to
which they are parties accord migrants a range of fundamental rights,
regardless of their status.”
“Fix It First: A Human Rights Agenda for Extending E.U. Asylum and
Migration Policy”
http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/08/euasylum0820.htm
Search terms used:
EU "Immigration policy" "human rights"
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Easterangel-ga
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