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Matthew Vella
A European Union Directive whose provisions come into force on Sunday 6 February, is expected to allow asylum seekers access to the labour market after a stipulated period of time from the date of their application for asylum.
Directive 2003/9/EC, which lays down minimum standards for the reception of asylum seekers, comes into force within seven days, obliging Tonio Borg as Home Affairs minister to grant asylum seekers applying for refugee status access to the labour market within a year of their application.
According to the directive, Malta has to determine a period of time from the date on which asylum seekers apply for refugee status, “during which an applicant shall not have access to the labour market”.
If a decision is not taken within one year of applying and the delay is not attributable to the applicant, Member States shall “decide the conditions for granting access to the labour market for the applicant”.
The directive will also allow Member States to ask asylum seekers to contribute towards the costs of their material reception conditions or healthcare needs if they are in possession of sufficient resources to do so, as could be the case if they have been working for a reasonable period of time.
At present, the Immigration Act states that anyone entering Malta illegally is held in detention until their application for asylum is decided, and will only be allowed to work if the person is granted refugee status or given temporary humanitarian protection.
The new directive also allows asylum seekers to seek vocational training as they await permission to enter the labour market. Asylum seekers will also keep their right to work if their unsuccessful application for refugee status is appealed, until the appeals process is finalised. Rejection will mean that the asylum seeker will be repatriated.
However the directive also states that EU citizens and legally resident third-country nationals will still retain priority over access to the labour market.
Change in policy?
The new EU directive could effectively mean an overhaul of the severely-criticised detention policy employed by the Maltese government, in which asylum seekers spend up to a maximum of eighteen months in detention at army and police-manned camps.
The government’s recently published policy on irregular immigrants grants them the right to request provisional release from detention if they believe that they have been detained for an unreasonably long time. Despite acknowledging most aspects of the new directive, the policy paper makes no mention of granting asylum seekers access to the labour market.
The new rules are expected to effectively condition the Maltese government to address the state of asylum camps, often the subject of criticism by Maltese and international NGOs but also from the scathing critique of the UNHCR and the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles.
Under the new directive, although asylum seekers may still be confined to particular areas, the assigned area “shall not affect the unalienable sphere of private life”, a condition which is expected to affect the state of accommodation at the Hal-Safi camp, where asylum seekers are housed in tents, with no separation between men and women. Authorities manning reception systems will also have to receive necessary basic training with respect to the needs of both male and female asylum seekers.
Such conditions will however be reduced if asylum seekers abandon their place of residence without permission, fail to comply with reporting duties, breach the rules of accommodation centres, or for seriously violent behaviour.
Decisions for such reductions in conditions will have to be taken “individually, objectively and impartially”, and based “on the particular situation of the person concerned”, taking into account the principle of proportionality.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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