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Originally Posted by Texpat

The EU incarcerates illegal immigrants for eight years.

Originally Posted by Texpat

Since I'm such a nice guy and a good sport, I've fetched it for you. See, who says it's all blood and brimstone in issues?

Originally Posted by Texpat

I believe the thread started when you were out on your Stroller.

Since I'm such a nice guy and a good sport, I've fetched it for you. See, who says it's all blood and brimstone in issues?

By Caroline Brothrs
International Heradl Tribune
June 18, 2008

STRASBOURG -- European Union lawmakers voted Wednesday to allow countries in the bloc to hold undocumented migrants in detention centers for up to 18 months and ban them from EU territory for five years.

Approved in this medieval French border city, which is home to a significant population of North Africans and Turks, the legislation establishes common rules for expelling foreigners who are detained on EU territory without permission to be there.

Described by critics like Amnesty International as "severely flawed" and an erosion of human rights standards, but by supporters as a balanced approach, the so-called return directive passed in the European Parliament by a vote of 369 to 197, with 106 deputies abstaining.

"The member states must decide whether they need them - if so, then please legalize them," Manfred Weber, the German center-right legislator from Bavaria who shepherded the measures through the European Parliament, said of undocumented migrants in Europe. "If you don't need them for your labor markets, then send them home."

Europe, which has freedom of movement within its 25 Schengen states but no overarching policy on immigration, sees the law as a means to unify a patchwork of systems governing treatment of migrants who overstay their visas or who, in far lesser numbers, slip clandestinely across its borders.

EU countries currently deal with these migrants by placing them in 224 detention centers, with capacity for 30,871 people, across the bloc. The length of their confinement varies from 32 days in France to 18 months in Germany. In eight EU countries there is no upper limit on detention. European legislators visiting Denmark in April said they were concerned about some detainees who had been held for eight years. (oh goodness!)

Weber said the decision Wednesday provided a limit on detention in those eight countries - though two of them, Denmark and Britain, have opt-outs from the legislation.

But opponents of the law, like Cimade, the only French nongovernmental organization authorized to work in the 23 detention centers in France, fear that it will encourage countries with shorter detention lengths to extend them.

Cimade released a statement Wednesday saying that it deplored the passage of what civil liberties groups have called "the directive of shame," and said it was studying the possibility of contesting it before the European Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights.

Ten amendments proposed by European Socialists were rejected Wednesday.

They included the necessity for a judge's approval for detention within 72 hours of an arrest, the obligation to provide detainees with legal counsel and the possibility of making the five-year re-entry ban optional. Other amendments would have reduced the maximum detention period to six months rather than 18 and insisted on greater assurances for the protection of unaccompanied children.

Weber denied that the European Parliament had caved in to the council made up of EU interior ministers during three-way negotiations between the Parliament, the council and the EU's executive branch, the European Commission.

Dragutin Mate, the interior minister of Slovenia who is the council's president, warned lawmakers Tuesday that the failure to approve the directive meant there would be no EU agreement on immigration for at least three years, which would jeopardize pending legislation on workers' rights.

The vote came a day after António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said that the world was dealing with "a complex mix of global challenges" that could threaten even more forced displacements than the 37.4 million people last year.

The UN refugee agency is concerned about those fleeing conflict or persecution who have the right under international law to seek asylum in safe countries but opt for undocumented entry to Europe because of a lack of legal channels.

It says that large numbers of people will be subject to the directive's five-year re-entry ban, which does not take account of changes in their home countries that could force them to leave again.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/18/europe/migrant.php

Poor, oppressed folks just looking for a scrap of schnitzel or a bite of baguette. Banged up for eight years. Shameful.

Makes Guantanamo look like a walk in the park -- with better weather.

Originally Posted by Texpat

Actually the EU has the old USA bested by two years in the detention stakes.

The only difference is, we bang up battlefield para militaristic terrorists and the EU locks up illegal migrants.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

why would stop another country from kidnapping US soldiers and put them in detention for ever ? nobody according to Tex.

I guess Vietnam did that already, and it was all "legal" and "justified"

Originally Posted by Texpat

Is it? I'll bet those poor migrants who just wanted a better life for their hardworking selves and their poor, poor families are wondering why they've been locked up longer than the hardest meanest baddest terrorists on the planet ...

I wonder if EU Central has all-you-can-eat halal buffet?

Originally Posted by Panda

Still trying to change the subject there hey Tex.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

That's the final irony of it all as far as I can see too. If Tex and others, as American citizens, are prepared to deny the rights of others then they, also as American citizens, cannot expect to be accorded any rights in return. But they do.

Originally Posted by Panda

To extrapolate the situation a bit further, according to Texs logic every captured US soldier should be charged with murder or at the very least, conspiriosy to comit murder.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

Gets quite tedious, doesn't it. You can throw a blanket over some of the American posters in Issues at times. All the name-calling, disingenuous and constant shifting of the posts, lack of intellectual-honesty and integrity kinda blurs together after a point. Doesn't matter who it's coming from it sounds the same.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

Yep, only they can't actually be 'charged'. Just held on the principle of maybe, someday, applying a charge. No actual process or trial in the interim.