EU Accused of ‘Tackling’ Illegal Migration by Simply Making it Legal: MEP

BARI, ITALY - DECEMBER 11: Migrants waiting for the usual checks after arriving on the Hum
Donato Fasano/Getty Images

The European Parliament has voted in favour of importing “millions of migrants” by approving a rework of the EU asylum system, an MEP has claimed.

A number of MEPs serving within the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) committee have denounced planned reforms of the EU’s asylum process, with one representative arguing that it amounts to parliamentarians deciding to “import millions of migrants” into the bloc.

Representatives also raised a number of serious concerns regarding the events leading up to the vote, with multiple politicians telling Breitbart Europe of “chaotic” scenes during the vote, with a variety of alleged errors said to have left many MEPs unsure of what they were actually voting on.

According to a press release by the European Parliament, the reforms voted through by the LIBE committee will help the bloc manage the ongoing migrant crisis, with POLITICO characterising the changes as enabling faster deportations for migrants who enter the EU illegally.

Such an understanding of the reforms however has been totally rejected by several members of the committee, who have instead said the plan aims to tackle illegal immigration by simply making it legal for large swathes of migrants to come to Europe.

“To tackle illegal migration, they wanted to create new legal avenues,” Flemish representative Tom Vandendriessche said in a statement to Breitbart Europe, describing the reforms as simply removing a wide variety of barriers to entry for would-be illegals.

“That is like legalizing burglary because there are too many burglaries,” he went on to explain, accusing left-wing parties within the parliament of sabotaging any attempt to actually tighten the EU’s borders.

This sentiment was echoed by German representative Dr Nicolaus Fest, who said in a statement that the asylum system rework is just the EU’s attempt to bring in even more migrants from abroad.

“The EU Parliament has now voted to import millions of migrants, a decision firmly opposed by the vast majority of citizens in member states,” he said in a statement handed to Breitbart. “This is both a disregard for democracy and an egregious betrayal of ordinary citizens.”

Both men went on to compare the agreement to the UN Global Compact for Migration agreed in Marrakesh back in 2018, which has previously been characterised as an attempt to “legalise illegal immigration” by opponents.

“If you think this is a copy of the 2018 Marrakesh Pact on Global Migration, then you’re right: it’s exactly the same,” Dr Fest said, while Vandendriessche described the reforms as “Marrakesh 2.0”.

The two politicians also raised concerns about the committee session on which the reforms were adopted, with both alleging that the parliamentary meeting was plagued by a number of procedural errors before ballots were even being cast.

“Some voting lists were not circulated until late in the evening the day before the vote, some even a few hours before it,” a statement by Fest explained. “The session was correspondingly chaotic, with MEPs barely able to determine what they were voting on.”

Such concerns were even voiced by the German representative during the beginning of Tuesday’s voting session, though Fest — along with a number of other committee members from the ECR and ID group who also questioned the procedural integrity of the forthcoming votes — were quickly shot down by a majority of their colleagues.

Voting did not go smoothly however, with the roughly 30-minute session being repeatedly disrupted as a result of confusion related to what exactly was being voted on, as well as what procedures were even up for vote in the first place.

“You’re lost,” the increasingly exasperated chair of the meeting, Juan Fernando López Aguilar MEP, eventually exclaimed to the room, wiping his brow in frustration as others rapidly tried to get the body of confused MEPs back on track.

Nevertheless, after the meeting finally concluded, the Spanish leftist later insisted that the approved reforms would enable EU states to show “real solidarity” in the face of ongoing mass migration, even if not all national representatives in the room understood exactly what was to be decided upon when they entered.

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