The UK has suspended asylum claims from Syrians after the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime.
The Home Office has followed France, Germany, Sweden and Austria in pausing decisions while it “monitors” the situation.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “We know that the situation in Syria is moving extremely fast after the fall of the Assad regime.
“We have seen some people returning to Syria, but we also have a very fast moving situation that we need to closely monitor, and that is why, like Germany, like France and like other countries, we have paused asylum decisions on cases from Syria while the Home Office reviews and monitors the current situation.”
Former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick said: “Many of the asylum claims of Syrian nationals will now be baseless. The Government should be immediately facilitating the returns of Syrians here whose asylum claims are now groundless.”
Germany and several other European countries said that they are suspending decisions on asylum claims by Syrian nationals on Monday.
Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees said Monday that more than 47,000 applications are pending. It said it would reassess the situation and resume decisions once things in Syria have stabilised.
Interior Ministry spokesperson Sonja Kock noted that asylum decisions take account of the circumstances of each case, which involves assessing the situation in the applicant’s country. She said the migration authority has the option of prioritising cases from other places if a situation is unclear, as it currently is in Syria.
More broadly, German officials said it’s too early to tell what the fall of Assad will ultimately mean for the many Syrians who sought refuge in Germany in recent years, particularly in the mid-2010s.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said it’s impossible to predict “concrete possibilities to return” and “it would be unserious to speculate about this in such a volatile situation.”
Her ministry said that, as of Oct. 31, 974,136 Syrian nationals were in the country, the majority of whom had some kind of refugee or other protected status.
The Austria Press Agency reported that Chancellor Karl Nehammer also tasked his interior minister with suspending decisions on current asylum applications by Syrians in neighboring Austria.
“It is important to first establish facts, to put asylum and family reunion procedures on hold,” Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said. “We need to wait until the dust settles, so we can see what is happening, what the next points are.”
Sweden’s Migration Agency said it would also pause decisions on Syrian asylum cases, arguing that it isn’t possible at present to assess applicants’ reasons for seeking protection. It didn’t specify how long the pause would last but said a similar decision was made in connection with the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in 2021.
In Finland, the director of the Department for International Protection at the Finnish Immigration Service, Antti Lehtinen, told public broadcaster YLE that decisions have been suspended there, and he can’t immediately estimate when they will resume.
In Norway, the Directorate of Immigration announced a similar decision, saying that it has put asylum applications from Syria on hold “until further notice.”
France says it was considering following Germany’s example.
“We are working on a suspension of ongoing asylum files from Syria,” the French Interior Ministry said. “We should reach a decision in the coming hours.”
The ministry said 450 applications from Syrian citizens are pending in France.
