Failed Afghan asylum seekers need to go back home: Johan

Sweden’s migration minister on Thursday urged the European Union to come up with a common procedure to issue ID and travel documents to Afghan nationals whose asylum applications have either been rejected or who have committed crimes in their host countries.

Minister Johan Forssell said it’s “more or less impossible” to deport Afghan nationals who don’t fulfill asylum criteria now because they don’t have either ID or travel documents.  He said even though there’s no EU interest to make “any political arrangements” with Afghanistan that would offer “legitimacy” to the Taliban regime, it’s possible for the 27-member bloc to agree at a technical level on issuing Afghan nationals documentation that would expedite their deportation.

“It is a major concern for us that we are seeing quite a few cases of people that have committed crimes, Afghan people that committed crimes in Sweden and it is more or less impossible to expel them today,” Forssell told The Associated Press on the sidelines of an informal meeting of EU Justice and Home Affairs ministers in the Cypriot Capital.