Already in the debate about granting the urgency of the relevant motion, the Greens and the SP had made one thing clear: the resolution was superfluous; rather, existing law should be executed.
The reason for the resolution was the case of 13-year-old Leonie who was killed in Vienna. FP club chairman Herwig Mahr said that in asylum policy it was already five past twelve o’clock, and that “archaic law of the thumb is celebrating a happy birth on Austria’s streets”. Therefore, strangers with serious offenses would have to be consistently deported. The current case shows the “errors in the asylum system” that lead to a “de facto incapacity to act”. Therefore, the FP and the VP pleaded for a joint alliance in Upper Austria “to adapt the legal provisions so that the asylum status is revoked in an urgent procedure or a continuation of the proceedings is refused”. In addition, ongoing asylum procedures for those seeking protection who have committed criminal offenses are to be stopped so that “the deportation can be initiated immediately,” according to the resolution to the federal government.
VP country manager Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer emphasized that “an abuse of hospitality rights” should be punished. “Austria is a constitutional state, if the means fall short, it needs an expansion,” he said, explaining the need for stricter laws. This also includes the fact that preventive detention is imposed in the event of “imminent danger”.
The Green Member of the State Parliament Ulrike Schwarz, like her SP colleague Peter Binder, left no doubt that “criminals should be unconditionally deported”. But: Rapid withdrawal procedures are already possible, so tightening the asylum laws is not necessary. One should rather ask oneself why offenders strangers “slip through” again and again in Austria, so Schwarz. Binder sees the culprit in the Ministry of the Interior, which has been led by the People’s Party for years. For him, the resolution was nothing more than “throwing sand in the eyes of the Austrians in order to divert attention from their own failures”.
