Fierce Patriots

Conservative Political News

  • Subscribe

France

France Sees Near-Record High 137,000 Migrant Asylum Claims in 2022

by Leave a Comment

First-time asylum claims rose to near pre-pandemic highs in France in 2022, with over 137,000 migrants applying for international protection in the country that year.

Authorities in France have reported that asylum claims in France spiked in 2022 after a lull over the COVID pandemic, with just over 137,000 migrants claiming international protection in the country for the first time last year.

Other EU countries have reportedly seen considerable spikes, with Germany seeing its highest number of asylum claims since the 2016 migrant crisis, while even Ireland — an island nation to the far west of the European continent — has struggled to deal with the wave of foreign arrivals.

According to the data released by the French Ministry of the Interior on Thursday, 137,046 asylum claims were made in total in 2022, representing a 31.3 per cent increase in the number of asylum claims over 2021. The number is also higher than the provisional numbers put out by the Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless people (Ofpra) earlier this month which put the figure at around 131,000.

The number falls just short of the first-time asylum claims made in 2019, which saw asylum claims peak to just over 138,000. However, when including all cases, such as re-examinations, minors, and those applied under the Dublin regulation, it actually surpassed the pre-pandemic record, with a total of 156,103 applications recorded in 2022  compared to 151,283 in 2019.

Afghans were the single greatest population claiming asylum in the country in 2022, with 22,570 migrants in total claiming to be from the now Taliban-run nation seeking international protection in the country.

Bangladesh was the second largest supplier of migrants, with just over 10,554 people claiming asylum from the country, while there were also a significant number of applicants by migrants from Turkey, Georgia, Albania and Nigeria.

Despite the record numbers, some authorities in France are seemingly trying to give the impression that they are getting on top of the crisis by increasing deportations.

According to a report by Le Figaro, the country’s Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, took to Twitter to brag about the increasing number of migrants being deported from France, which reportedly increased by 15 per cent over last year.

“In accordance with my instructions, priority has been given to delinquent foreigners: 3,615 delinquent foreigners were deported in 2022, compared to 1,834 in 2021,” he claimed, noting that this was “twice as many” as last year.

However, a 15 per cent rise is not all that impressive considering overall asylum claims saw an over 30 per cent increase, largely wiping out any gained ground made by the French government assuming a similar proportion of deportations to asylum seekers as in previous years.

The French government are not the only authorities that now seem to be aiming to look tough on the issue of immigration, with even the European Commission in Brussels pushing for a bloc-wide increase in migrant removals.

With the likes of France, Germany, Ireland and many others seeing a significant uptick in asylum claims in 2022, the Commission has demanded that the EU unites to increase the number of migrants deported from the bloc annually.

“We are experiencing now an increase of irregular arrivals,” EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson remarked during a press conference earlier this week, describing the latest migrant surge as endangering the EU’s ability to look after real refugees.

“Of course, those that are not eligible to stay in the European Union have to be returned to their country of origin,” she concluded.

Follow Peter Caddle on Twitter: @Peter_Caddle
Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London

EU Mulls Restricting Visas to Countries Not Accepting Deportations

by Leave a Comment

The European Union is considering restricting visas to countries that do not accept deportations of their nationals in an effort to increase returns of illegals following a meeting in Sweden on Thursday.

European Union member state interior ministers met Thursday in Stockholm to discuss issues of immigration and agreed to use a tool enacted in 2020 that could allow for tighter visa restrictions on countries which do not accept the return of their nationals who have been flagged for deportation from the bloc.

“Should intensified political and diplomatic efforts not produce the desired results, member states call on the Commission to come back to the Council with proposals on visa restrictions,” Swedish migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said, France24 reports.

The new tougher migration position of the European Union was also reflected in a letter sent to EU leaders by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday ahead of a summit on February 9th and 10th.

The letter stated that Ms von der Leyen wants the EU to create a list of safe countries for immediate deportations and invited member states to sign up for a scheme in the first six months of 2023 to increase the speed of asylum procedures and process immediate deportations for those who do not meet asylum requirements.

Thursday’s meeting comes after comments from EU Home Affairs Commissioner, Ylva Johansson, who stated on Wednesday, “Of course, those that are not eligible to stay in the European Union have to be returned to their country of origin,” and added that the number of successful deportations “needs to be increased.”

Last year, the European Union saw the largest number of illegal entries since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015 and 2016, with the border agency Frontex reporting around 330,000 illegal entries in 2022.

The bloc has struggled to deport migrants, with just 21 per cent of the 340,500 removal orders seeing migrants removed to their country of origin in 2021.

The topic of deportation has also been discussed in France in recent months, with a media report noting that during the coronavirus pandemic, less than 10 per cent of deportation orders were carried out.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.

AP Stylebook recommends against ‘dehumanizing ‘the’ labels,’ like ‘the French,’ then deletes post due to ‘inappropriate reference to French people’

by Leave a Comment

The Associated Press Stylebook’s Twitter account has deleted a tweet that used the term “the French.”

The post suggested that writers should avoid using “the” in front of words describing groups of people, advising against phrases such as “the French.”

“We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing ‘the’ labels such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled, the college-educated. Instead, use wording such as people with mental illnesses. And use these descriptions only when clearly relevant,” the now-deleted post read.

But the Associated Press has said that including the phrase “the French” was not appropriate — ironically, while issuing the mea culpa, the AP still included the supposedly unacceptable phrase: “The use of ‘the French’ in this tweet by @AP was inappropriate and has caused unintended offense. An updated tweet is upcoming.”

“We deleted an earlier tweet because of an inappropriate reference to French people. We did not intend to offend,” the APStylebook account tweeted. “Writing French people, French citizens, etc., is good. But ‘the’ terms for any people can sound dehumanizing and imply a monolith rather than diverse individuals.”

The now-deleted post caught the attention of the French Embassy in the U.S., which posted a screenshot in which it had typed “Embassy of Frenchness in the US” into the name form on its Twitter profile editing box.

Wealthy business tycoon Elon Musk wrote, “So then why do call yourself ‘The’ Associated Press.'”

“I agree, these days we probably should label ‘the college-educated’ people with mental illnesses instead,” Ben Shapiro tweeted.

“The AP has declared the word ‘the’ offensive. I thought this was a @TheBabylonBee story for a second – and I run The Babylon Bee,” the satire website’s editor-in-chief Kyle Mann tweeted.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

WW3 Watch: German Foreign Minister Declares ‘We Are Fighting a War Against Russia’

by Leave a Comment

In a stunning statement contradicting her own government and the official line from NATO, Germany’s Foreign Minister declared that her country and Europe as a whole is in a “war against Russia” in Ukraine.

Speaking before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on Tuesday, Annalena Baerbock of the German Green Party and a top member of the traffic light coalition government of Olaf Scholz, publicly contradicted the head of her government by saying that they are at war with Russia.

“I’ve said already in the last days – yes, we have to do more to defend Ukraine. Yes, we have to do more also on tanks,” Baerbock said. “But the most important and the crucial part is that we do it together and that we do not do the blame game in Europe, because we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.”

The comments from the foreign minister came just hours before Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany would indeed be sending military tanks to Ukraine. However, the German leader expressly said that this did not represent an act of war against Russia, maintaining the Western line that the tanks are allegedly only intended for defensive purposes.

“We must always make it very clear that we are doing what is necessary and possible to support Ukraine, but at the same time preventing an escalation of the war to a war between NATO and Russia, and we will continue to observe this principle,” he said.

Aside from being contradicted by the chancellor, Germany’s chief military ally in the European Union, France also rejected Baerbock’s declaration, with a spokeswoman for the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs at the Quai d’Orsay, Anne-Claire Legendre saying: “We are not at war with Russia and none of our partners are.”

“The delivery of military equipment as part of the exercise of its self-defence… does not constitute a co-belligerence,” she said. “We deny these statements made by the Kremlin.”

On Thursday, Germany’s Federal Foreign Office also attempted to walk back the comments from Baerbock, telling the Bild newspaper that supporting Ukraine’s defensive effort against Russia “does not make Germany a party to the conflict.”

Yet, the comments were not missed by the Kremlin, with Moscow likening the statement to a recent interview from former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who suggested last year that the 2014 Minsk peace agreement was intended to buy Ukraine time in order to build up armaments to fight Russia.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: “If we add this to Merkel’s revelations that they were strengthening Ukraine and did not count on the Minsk agreements, then we are talking about a war against Russia that was planned in advance. Don’t say later that we didn’t warn you.”

Despite the Green Party’s traditionally anti-war stance, Baerbock has been one of the most vociferous voices in Germany on behalf of the Ukrainian war effort against Russia. Indeed, speaking from Prague in September, the foreign minister said that her government would be willing to support Ukraine for years “no matter what my German voter thinks.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka