(AFP) Poland’s parliament on Thursday passed a legal amendment allowing migrants to be pushed back at the border and for asylum claims made by those who entered illegally to be ignored.
Lawmakers also gave the green light to a government plan to build a wall to prevent migrants from crossing the border from Belarus, a project estimated to cost 353 million euros ($410 million).
Thousands of migrants, most of them from the Middle East, have sought in recent months to cross from Belarus into Poland or fellow EU member states Latvia and Lithuania.
Under the newly amended law, a foreigner stopped after crossing the Polish border illegally will be obliged to leave Polish territory and will be temporarily banned from entering the country for a period ranging from “six months to three years.”
