Word: europeanizing
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When police demolished the illegal refugee squatter camp known as "the Jungle" in northern France in September, the French intended to make a statement - that European governments were finally getting serious about stemming the constant tide of asylum seekers who have fled war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan for the continent. A month later, French and British officials have begun to forcibly deport some of the tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan refugees whose epic journeys have ended in detention camps in Europe - making good on a threat they have voiced for months...
...European Commission in Brussels also took steps to address the problem from a procedural standpoint by issuing new rules for dealing with asylum seekers. Officials set a six-month time limit for governments to hold refugee application hearings and advised all 27 European Union countries to introduce the same asylum procedures, rather than wildly varying standards. Jacques Barrot, the commission's vice president, said the changes aimed to offer "a more level playing field" to the huge numbers of people from Africa, Asia and elsewhere flooding into Europe. (See pictures of the French cracking down on migrants...
...Afghanistan war drags into its ninth year and the Iraq war its seventh year, the European Union faces a unique challenge in trying to stop refugees from these countries. Unlike the huge numbers of Africans trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, Iraqi and Afghan migrants face only an overland journey - though one that can take months. Once they reach the E.U., usually by crossing from Turkey into Greece, migrants can easily slip over internal E.U. borders, crossing numerous countries without detection. Many of them attempt to make it Britain, where they speak the language and have relatives. Those...
...Europe is clamping down: "For the first time since 2002, the press freedom index's top 20 is not quite so European. Only 15 of the 20 leading countries are from the Old Continent, compared with 18 in 2008. Eleven of these 15 countries are European Union members. They include the top three, Denmark, Finland and Ireland. Another E.U. member, Bulgaria, has been falling steadily since it joined in 2007 and is now 68th (against 59th in 2008). This is the lowest ranking of any member of the union." (Read about the future of Europe's newspapers...
...European officials also face a deeper question over what constitutes a refugee these days. The international refugee rules were drafted during the Cold War in order to offer asylum to those who risked individual persecution for their political or religious beliefs. That now seems dated, with migrants fleeing everything from wars to famine and ecological disasters like droughts. Still, many immigration officials have stuck to the original definition. "They say, 'You weren't really fleeing persecution, just fleeing bullets,' " says Bill Frelick, director of the Human Rights Watch refugee-policy program in Washington. "But those distinctions are rapidly fading...