(Reuters) Austria, which has insisted that it plans to keep deporting illegal immigrants back to Afghanistan even as the Taliban seized Kabul, on Monday suggested setting up “deportation centres” in nearby countries as an alternative.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s conservatives have made a hard line on immigration central to their agenda, and they have won every parliamentary election since the 2015-2016 migration crisis, in which the small country took in more than one percent of its population in asylum seekers.
Austria was one of six European Union member states that warned the European Commission last week against halting the deportation of rejected Afghan asylum seekers arriving in Europe despite the Taliban’s advances. Since then, three of the six — Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands — have reversed course.
