Austria's New Asylum Law

Kevin Chalu

Austria has recently passes a new law that restrict the right of asylum that would allow authorities to turn away migrants at the border in a state of emergency. This means that when Austria declares a state of emergency, people who are seeking asylum can be turned at the border. This is important because if people are running away form their home land because it is not safe or they are being persecuted there, they can be tuned away even if asylum Austria is their last option. If they are turned away they can only go back to their home land and hope no one will go after them and try to kill them.

            This law can be considered  dystopian if this is taken even farther. It may just start off as people who are seeking asylum in Austria can be tuned away in a state of emergency. Then the law can become, Austria can turn away anyone seeking asylum in their country. This is basically sending someone back to be killed by their own home land. If they are running away they have already given up everything that they had and everything that they built up in their life in order to survive. They are trying to start a new life where they can just live in safety, and Austria’s laws just force them back to get killed. Another way that  this law can be dystopian is that the government could abuse it. A way that this could happen is if a larger scale war breaks out forcing mass amounts of people to move from their home lands to other places that are safe, the Austrian government could declare a state of emergency and turn away migrants. This is almost sentencing these people to death by forcing them back to their original country. This law could also be considered xenophobic because, in the Middle East there are many migrants who are seeking asylum in European countries. To get to these major European countries they need to make their way through Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey, and a few others. Some of these migrants will end up stopping and just seeking asylum in any of these countries that they are passing through. This could lead to the people of Austria discriminating anyone who are foreigners

in their country.

            This law can be considered utopian because, it is said that Austria cannot support the amount of refuges seeking asylum. They do not have the housing needed to support these migrants. They can be looking at what is best for their people. If this law continues to become more stringent, Austria could end up closing themselves off from the rest of the world. Thus having their people not be able to leave and possibly developing specialty from the entire world. This could either be good or bad depending on other laws that are place in this time.

            In general, this law that Austria passed allows them to refuse asylum to all migrants if they are in a state of emergency. This could be due to many causes, some being the country not having the proper supplies to take on more migrant seeking asylum or the country discriminating against people who are just trying to make a better life for them and their families. This law seems to have a lot of power behind it but, it can be spun in different was by the Austrian government in order to fulfill different tasks.