vox--2020-09-26--The promise and peril of the EU’s new asylum plan

The European Union has proposed an ambitious new plan to deal with the thousands of asylum seekers who continue to arrive on Europe ’ s shores .
But even top officials in the bloc acknowledge that the plan won ’ t make anyone happy .
On Wednesday , the European Commission ( the EU ’ s executive arm ) released more than 500 pages filled with proposals to change its years-long asylum policy .
The “ New Pact for Migration and Asylum , ” which is strongly backed by Germany , aims to convince EU member nations skeptical of letting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or angling for reform that a new compromise can be struck by the end of next year .
“ I am not asking you to like it , ” European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas told EU lawmakers on Thursday .
“ I am asking you to understand it.
” Under the plan , all 27 member states would agree to take in asylum seekers or take responsibility for sending those who are denied asylum back to their home countries .
The plan would end the quotas for the number of refugees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would set up a new , expedited system for processing and deporting people who are denied asylum back to their countries of origin .
The problem is that the plan has upset nearly everyone , likely dooming its prospects for full adoption .
“ These rules are not acceptable for us , ” Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said during a Thursday news conference alongside other leaders hostile to refugees .
“ The strategy should be that these people really should stay and live in their home countries , and we have to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have really to discuss it.
” Those who want to help asylum seekers and believe the EU ’ s migration laws should be more welcoming don ’ t support the plan , either .
“ There ’ s not a whole lot that ’ s actually new in this proposal , and the few things that are new are , on the whole , ghastly , ” said Judith Sunderland , the deputy director for Europe at Human Rights Watch ( HRW ) .
Simply put , for some the new migration policy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for others it isn ’ t humane enough — a divide that may be too wide to bridge .
“ The proposal is an attempt to reconcile two extreme positions among member states that can ’ t really be reconciled , ” Gerald Knaus , chair of the European Stability Initiative ( ESI ) think tank headquartered in Berlin , told me .
Such a challenge hasn ’ t stopped European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen from tackling the continent ’ s migration woes , an issue she has made a core @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The EU ’ s migration policy needs “ a fresh start , ” she told reporters in Brussels after releasing the reform package .
“ The old system to deal with it in Europe no longer works.
” She has a point .
European politics have roiled since more than a million people fleeing war and persecution sought asylum in the EU in 2015 — with hundreds of thousands arriving since , and others dying on the way — fueling the rise of far-right parties and the strongmen who lead them .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ issue , mainly by stashing those who await an asylum decision in sprawling refugee camps on the continent ’ s periphery , has deepened the humanitarian crisis .
The extent of the overall failure was underscored earlier this month when a fire destroyed Europe ’ s largest refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos , leaving the majority of its 12,000 residents homeless .
The lives of thousands of people , then , hang in the balance as European leaders debate the complex set of proposals over the coming year .
Unfortunately @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lead to any real progress .
“ Most of this is unlikely to work the way the European Commission says it will work , ” HRW ’ s Sunderland told me , “ but it is likely to cause a lot of suffering to people.
” How the EU ’ s new asylum proposals would work Within the 500-plus pages of proposals lie solutions to three interrelated problems the EU ’ s leaders aim to solve .
First , they want immigration officials in border states to adjudicate asylum claims much faster than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the number of people waiting for a decision and foster a more efficient process .
Second , they want to incentivize nations unwilling to assist with asylum claims to pitch in .
If they don ’ t , there is a mechanism by which the bloc can force those countries to do so .
Third , they want to expedite the return of people not granted asylum back to their home countries , ensuring they don ’ t linger too long in the temporary host nation .
The reason for tackling those three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ improve the situation for thousands of refugees , but also to satisfy the concerns of countries that don ’ t want to accept more asylum seekers , according to multiple European Commission staffers I spoke with .
They said top Commission officials have engaged every nation ’ s leader for months — including immigration hawks in Hungary , Austria , Poland , Slovakia , the Czech Republic , and more — to hear their views .
The suite of proposals is meant to assuage their worries .
But experts say the reform package @ @ @ @ @ @ @ however well-intentioned .
“ The end result , if adopted , wouldn ’ t make much of a difference , and it wouldn ’ t address the problems along the external border today , ” said ESI ’ s Knaus .
Let ’ s take a look at the proposals for those three problems : The current EU asylum directive gives member states up to six months to decide whether or not to accept someone ’ s asylum claim if they arrive at a European border irregularly — that is , illegally by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a long time , but consider what goes into such a decision .
The government must figure out if sending an applicant back home might lead to their persecution , imprisonment , or even death .
That ’ s a hard thing to do , made harder by the fact that some people have weak — or even fraudulent — asylum claims .
If the nation ’ s immigration agency is understaffed or overwhelmed by a large number of asylum seekers , delays inevitably ensue .
Many of the individuals and families come @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ethnic minorities facing persecution back home .
Fleeing for their lives , they may not have the requisite paperwork and evidence to prove they were recently in mortal danger .
They also may not have the funds to contract proper representation for a tricky legal matter .
International law states that someone who requests asylum at another nation ’ s port of entry should have their plea heard and fairly considered , and the EU as a whole abides by that .
But , of course , there are countries that don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ months in their territory , and most refugees would like an answer as quickly as possible .
To satisfy both needs , the EU has now proposed ways of making the entirety of the process faster .
Say an asylum seeker — let ’ s call him Alex — arrives in Greece irregularly from the United States .
Before Alex can pass a border checkpoint , local and EU asylum officials will put him through a five-day-long screening process .
He ’ ll have his ID and health checked , his background delved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ screening , Alex will be placed on one of two tracks : 1 ) where a negative decision is likely , or 2 ) where a positive decision is likely .
Alex is most likely not going to get his asylum claim granted .
The US is a safe country , he ’ s male , he ’ s in his 30s , and no one could find evidence that sending him back to his reporting job in Washington would put him in danger .
There ’ s also the chance that border @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Europe — perhaps he has an extremist acquaintance on Facebook — and that might also put him on the negative track .
In either case , under the new proposal , he will remain at Greece ’ s border in a facility constructed to house people going through the “ border procedure.
” He won ’ t be granted access into the country , he can ’ t leave the frontier , and he ’ ll only have 12 weeks total to make his case , including any needed appeals — about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If Greece still thinks Alex has a weak asylum claim by the end of that time period , he ’ ll be sent back to the US , though that ’ s easier said than done ( more on this in a minute ) .
At first blush , this all sounds well and good .
Asylum seekers would be in limbo for less time , and authorities can more quickly remove from the queue people unlikely to have their appeals granted .
But if all this sounds familiar , it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ basically the EU ’ s existing plan , known as the “ hotspot approach , ” to house asylum seekers in ramshackle facilities at borders .
The only real difference here is the handle-the-asylum-claims-faster twist .
The refugee camp in Lesbos that just burned down , for instance , was a so-called hotspot .
So it seems the EU doesn ’ t actually have a plan to move away from having places like it .
“ What they ’ re proposing would lead to more and more and more [ Lesbos-like camps ] @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said HRW ’ s Sunderland .
“ The whole logic of the hotspot approach hasn ’ t worked at all.
” There ’ s also a debate on the speed-of-decisions part .
Some experts fear plowing through asylum claims will lead to more errors .
For example , instead of delving more deeply into a refugee ’ s background , some details might be missed by authorities in an effort to rush , perhaps ending in a wrongful denial .
Others say certain European countries — namely the Netherlands and Switzerland — have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ modernizing procedures , increasing staff , and offering government-funded legal advice to claimants .
Either way , this part of the reform package doesn ’ t seem that different at all , save for trying to move things along more quickly .
2 ) Get other countries to help with asylum claims , even if they don ’ t want to This next change — having other nations chip in to help overwhelmed member states — is arguably the EU ’ s most controversial proposal and the one most likely to cause the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s south — Greece , Italy , Spain , Malta , and more — have by virtue of their geography seen hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers arrive on their shores in the last five years alone .
Nations elsewhere on the continent don ’ t see such high numbers of refugees because they ’ re not as easily accessible by land or sea .
During the 2015 crisis , those southern countries , especially Greece and Italy , were overwhelmed with asylum claims and asked other nations to help them .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ them to handle the influx mostly by themselves .
In the following years , some southern European nations have forced boats of migrants and refugees to turn away , in violation of international and EU law , in order to keep the number of asylum-seekers down because they feel they can ’ t take anymore .
The EU ’ s leadership knows this is a problem and has long made boosting solidarity on this issue — that is , getting all member states to help with migration and asylum claims — a main @ @ @ @ @ @ @ offer a remedy , basically by forcing other states to help .
Here ’ s how it would work : Say Alex is joined by thousands upon thousands of refugees awaiting asylum decisions in Greece .
Like in 2015 , the influx is so large that it ’ s overtaking what Greece could handle , even with the EU ’ s assistance .
At that point , either the EU or Greece may realize other countries in the bloc need to help with the situation and officially call for help .
This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ put , EU countries would have to pledge how many asylum seekers they ’ re willing to care for .
If the number of pledges falls below 70 percent of the determined need ( i.e.
, countries in total are only willing to take 600 of 1,000 claimants ) then the EU can force those who have under-pledged — determined by how rich and populous a nation is — to take more people .
( More on the forcing mechanism , and the problems with it , in a moment . )
Countries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of two ways .
First , they can choose to relocate an asylum seeker .
In this case , a country like Sweden would take Alex from Greece and continue to process his asylum claim there , in Sweden .
That option is straightforward and appeals to nations not skeptical of bringing in new migrants .
The second option is geared toward refugee-skeptic countries .
Instead of taking in Alex , a country like Hungary could sponsor his return back to the US once his asylum claim is denied .
Alex would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ handle the negotiations with Washington to send him back and pay for the flight to the US .
That makes Greece happy by taking Alex ’ s return issues out of its hands , and makes Hungary happy by allowing it to help without having to take Alex in .
There ’ s a catch , though : If Alex isn ’ t returned to America within eight months , he would be sent to Hungary as the process continues .
The reason for that is to ensure Alex doesn ’ t grow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ familial roots by getting married or having kids — which would make his eventual return home harder — and also to incentivize Hungary to handle Alex ’ s case quickly instead of letting him languish in Greece .
But what if Hungary doesn ’ t want to pay for Alex ’ s , or any asylum seeker ’ s , return ?
After all , Hungary already passed a law making asylum assistance harder , and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is deeply hostile to refugees .
This is where the enforcement mechanism comes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spoke to and the proposal documents , the European Commission would have the right to adopt an “ implementing act ” — a law — that would force a member state to assist whatever country is in need .
Since such a measure would be official EU law , the strong belief is that EU member states would abide by it .
After all , the bloc is governed by the rule of law , and Hungary would have no choice but to choose either the relocation or return-sponsorship option .
But EU @ @ @ @ @ @ @ answer for what would happen if Hungary , or another refugee-hostile government , were to defy such a law .
If that were to happen , the EU could find itself in a deep political crisis .
“ It ’ s hard to see how the Hungarian government is going to suddenly participate in schemes that would see more migrants move to Hungary , ” said Andrew Geddes , director of the Migration Policy Center ( MPC ) in Florence , Italy .
That said , EU officials remain confident that even the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as they could be taken through the bloc ’ s judicial process for redress .
It ’ s therefore possible these proposals would work just fine if implemented and that cynicism is unwarranted .
But what bothers some experts most is that the proposed reforms are the EU effectively cowing to refugee hardliners .
“ The lowest common denominator has been lowered , ” Geddes told me .
And even then , statements by Hungary ’ s government and other EU countries make it clear that those concessions still aren ’ t enough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ return-to-the-home-country part .
Let ’ s stick with our example : Alex ’ s asylum claim in Greece was denied , and now he ’ ll be forced to go back to America .
Greece can ’ t handle the return home because it ’ s overwhelmed , so Hungary — either willingly or forced by the EU — is taking care of it .
In this case , Alex ’ s return is quite simple .
The US can easily absorb him back into society and his life won ’ t be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Alex was from Tunisia — now the situation gets trickier .
Tunisia is currently in an economic crisis and is struggling with the coronavirus .
Because of that , thousands are crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Italy and other southern European countries to claim asylum .
The problem is that not everyone is going to have their claim accepted , and Tunisia doesn ’ t necessarily want to take certain people back since they already wanted out ( among other reasons ) .
As a result , there ’ d be a standoff @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what to do .
Multiply that by thousands of cases , and you can see the scale of the problem : thousands of men , women , and children just languishing at European borders waiting for a resolution .
This is a common problem in the EU .
Its own statistics show only 40 percent of asylum seekers are successfully returned to their home countries , and that number plummets if the home nation is outside of the European continent , experts told me .
ESI ’ s Knaus said Germany could only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first half of this year , well below last year ’ s rate , when 4,000 people total were sent back to their non-European home nations .
It ’ s this issue countries like Hungary cite often , and it is partly why they ’ re opposed to even the return-sponsorship option .
Remember , if the Hungarian government can ’ t send Alex to his home country within eight months , it has to bring him to Hungary as it further works on sending him out of the EU .
That ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want hanging over them .
Put together , the EU tried to tackle three key problems with its new reforms , but it seems they either repackaged old solutions or didn ’ t offer appealing remedies .
It ’ s for those and other reasons experts feel the proposals won ’ t make it through a year or more of deliberations .
What would make the EU ’ s migration policy better ?
To be adopted , every proposal must make it through the European Parliament — which is made up of representatives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Council , a decision-making group made up of heads of state or ministers from each EU nation .
Unanimity isn ’ t required , but it will take a large portion of each body to approve the new measures .
That ’ s a big task , and few believe most of the proposals will make it through the process .
“ The European Commission is basically saying ‘ these are our ideas , ’ but it doesn ’ t mean member states will like them , ” said MPC ’ s Geddes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the EU to see if it can put in place agreements for such issues of high politics .
A lot is at stake.
” What ’ s more , most experts I spoke to believe debating these issues amounts to a wasted opportunity .
If passed , the reforms would lock in most of the failures of the EU ’ s asylum and migration policies of the last few years .
And if they fail to pass , vulnerable people will have continued to suffer while politicians spent time fruitlessly debating and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ solutions the EU should focus on instead .
First , the EU shouldn ’ t try to force countries to take in migrants they simply don ’ t want .
The bloc ’ s focus should shift from finding a common policy to creating a “ coalition of the willing ” — a group of EU nations that actually do want asylum seekers .
As a reward , they might receive more funding or perhaps even greater voting power inside the EU .
The downside is the bloc won ’ t be as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But some feel giving people a welcoming place to stay should be the priority , not creating an artificial sense of unity .
“ I don ’ t think Europe should be held hostage by a hostile minority , ” HRW ’ s Sunderland told me .
Second , the EU should work on enforcing existing asylum and migration laws instead of trying to sell new ones .
That means ensuring countries don ’ t push asylum seekers back on boats and actually take in refugees from hotspots to lessen the burden on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Furthermore , the EU should find a way to punish countries like Hungary for making it harder for asylum seekers to enter there .
“ The fundamental problem right now is that we have a lot of laws that are being broken already , ” said ESI ’ s Knaus .
“ If laws are being broken with impunity , isn ’ t the first step toward change making the laws already in force count ?
Why would changed laws be any better ?
” Third , the EU must get creative with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For example , Moroccans and Tunisians don ’ t have visa-free travel in the EU .
The EU could offer visa-free travel to citizens — making tourism and commerce easier — in exchange for their willingness to expedite the return of nationals denied asylum in Europe .
Such a trade worked with Ukraine , and the EU has found it easier to send back asylum-seekers there ever since a deal was struck .
None of these solutions is perfect , but many believe they ’ ll serve the interests of both refugees and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proposed .
“ There ’ s a big question mark about whether or not all this will actually help asylum seekers , ” MPC ’ s Geddes told me .
That said , he understands why EU leadership wants to settle this problem now before it gets any worse .
“ Something has to get done , or else the EU is never going to make an agreement.
” Correction 9/26 : Knaus ’ s statistic about deportations from Germany were to outside Europe , not the EU .
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The European Union has proposed an ambitious new plan to deal with the thousands of asylum seekers who continue to arrive on Europe’s shores. But even top officials in the bloc acknowledge that the plan won’t make anyone happy.
On Wednesday, the European Commission (the EU’s executive arm) released more than 500 pages filled with proposals to change its years-long asylum policy. The “New Pact for Migration and Asylum,” which is strongly backed by Germany, aims to convince EU member nations skeptical of letting in migrants, already overburdened with refugees, or angling for reform that a new compromise can be struck by the end of next year.
“I am not asking you to like it,” European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas told EU lawmakers on Thursday. “I am asking you to understand it.”
Under the plan, all 27 member states would agree to take in asylum seekers or take responsibility for sending those who are denied asylum back to their home countries. The plan would end the quotas for the number of refugees each country should take in, and would set up a new, expedited system for processing and deporting people who are denied asylum back to their countries of origin.
The problem is that the plan has upset nearly everyone, likely dooming its prospects for full adoption.
“These rules are not acceptable for us,” Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said during a Thursday news conference alongside other leaders hostile to refugees. “The strategy should be that these people really should stay and live in their home countries, and we have to do the maximum for this and we have really to discuss it.”
Those who want to help asylum seekers and believe the EU’s migration laws should be more welcoming don’t support the plan, either. “There’s not a whole lot that’s actually new in this proposal, and the few things that are new are, on the whole, ghastly,” said Judith Sunderland, the deputy director for Europe at Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Simply put, for some the new migration policy isn’t tough enough, and for others it isn’t humane enough — a divide that may be too wide to bridge. “The proposal is an attempt to reconcile two extreme positions among member states that can’t really be reconciled,” Gerald Knaus, chair of the European Stability Initiative (ESI) think tank headquartered in Berlin, told me.
Such a challenge hasn’t stopped European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen from tackling the continent’s migration woes, an issue she has made a core concern during her first year in charge. The EU’s migration policy needs “a fresh start,” she told reporters in Brussels after releasing the reform package. “The old system to deal with it in Europe no longer works.”
Migration has always been a fact for Europe – and it will always be.#MigrationEU pic.twitter.com/hMMB0fDeru — Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) September 24, 2020
She has a point. European politics have roiled since more than a million people fleeing war and persecution sought asylum in the EU in 2015 — with hundreds of thousands arriving since, and others dying on the way — fueling the rise of far-right parties and the strongmen who lead them. The bloc’s mishandling of the issue, mainly by stashing those who await an asylum decision in sprawling refugee camps on the continent’s periphery, has deepened the humanitarian crisis.
The extent of the overall failure was underscored earlier this month when a fire destroyed Europe’s largest refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, leaving the majority of its 12,000 residents homeless.
The lives of thousands of people, then, hang in the balance as European leaders debate the complex set of proposals over the coming year. Unfortunately, very few believe it’ll lead to any real progress.
“Most of this is unlikely to work the way the European Commission says it will work,” HRW’s Sunderland told me, “but it is likely to cause a lot of suffering to people.”
How the EU’s new asylum proposals would work
Within the 500-plus pages of proposals lie solutions to three interrelated problems the EU’s leaders aim to solve.
First, they want immigration officials in border states to adjudicate asylum claims much faster than they do now, hoping to reduce the number of people waiting for a decision and foster a more efficient process.
Second, they want to incentivize nations unwilling to assist with asylum claims to pitch in. If they don’t, there is a mechanism by which the bloc can force those countries to do so.
Third, they want to expedite the return of people not granted asylum back to their home countries, ensuring they don’t linger too long in the temporary host nation.
The reason for tackling those three issues is not only to attempt to improve the situation for thousands of refugees, but also to satisfy the concerns of countries that don’t want to accept more asylum seekers, according to multiple European Commission staffers I spoke with.
They said top Commission officials have engaged every nation’s leader for months — including immigration hawks in Hungary, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and more — to hear their views. The suite of proposals is meant to assuage their worries.
Good discussion with Viktor Orbán, @AndrejBabis
and Mateusz @MorawieckiM, on EU Budget and Recovery Plan, climate, migration, rule of law and on the economic plan for #Belarus which they presented. We agreed to work closely together on these important issues. pic.twitter.com/0MuLSJr44Q — Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) September 24, 2020
But experts say the reform package falls well short of the mark, however well-intentioned. “The end result, if adopted, wouldn’t make much of a difference, and it wouldn’t address the problems along the external border today,” said ESI’s Knaus.
Let’s take a look at the proposals for those three problems:
1) Approve or deny asylum claims faster
The current EU asylum directive gives member states up to six months to decide whether or not to accept someone’s asylum claim if they arrive at a European border irregularly — that is, illegally by land or sea.
That’s a long time, but consider what goes into such a decision. The government must figure out if sending an applicant back home might lead to their persecution, imprisonment, or even death. That’s a hard thing to do, made harder by the fact that some people have weak — or even fraudulent — asylum claims. If the nation’s immigration agency is understaffed or overwhelmed by a large number of asylum seekers, delays inevitably ensue.
Many of the individuals and families come from war-torn nations or are religious and ethnic minorities facing persecution back home. Fleeing for their lives, they may not have the requisite paperwork and evidence to prove they were recently in mortal danger. They also may not have the funds to contract proper representation for a tricky legal matter.
International law states that someone who requests asylum at another nation’s port of entry should have their plea heard and fairly considered, and the EU as a whole abides by that. But, of course, there are countries that don’t want migrants awaiting asylum decisions for months in their territory, and most refugees would like an answer as quickly as possible.
To satisfy both needs, the EU has now proposed ways of making the entirety of the process faster.
Say an asylum seeker — let’s call him Alex — arrives in Greece irregularly from the United States. Before Alex can pass a border checkpoint, local and EU asylum officials will put him through a five-day-long screening process. He’ll have his ID and health checked, his background delved into, and more. After the screening, Alex will be placed on one of two tracks: 1) where a negative decision is likely, or 2) where a positive decision is likely.
Alex is most likely not going to get his asylum claim granted. The US is a safe country, he’s male, he’s in his 30s, and no one could find evidence that sending him back to his reporting job in Washington would put him in danger. There’s also the chance that border guards find Alex poses some security threat to Europe — perhaps he has an extremist acquaintance on Facebook — and that might also put him on the negative track.
In either case, under the new proposal, he will remain at Greece’s border in a facility constructed to house people going through the “border procedure.” He won’t be granted access into the country, he can’t leave the frontier, and he’ll only have 12 weeks total to make his case, including any needed appeals — about half the time of the current deadline. If Greece still thinks Alex has a weak asylum claim by the end of that time period, he’ll be sent back to the US, though that’s easier said than done (more on this in a minute).
(To be clear, if Alex were an unaccompanied minor, part of a family from a war-torn nation, or an individual from a country that might harm him upon return — say, Syria — he might be put in the positive decision track and the normal six-month process remains in effect.)
At first blush, this all sounds well and good. Asylum seekers would be in limbo for less time, and authorities can more quickly remove from the queue people unlikely to have their appeals granted.
But if all this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. This is basically the EU’s existing plan, known as the “hotspot approach,” to house asylum seekers in ramshackle facilities at borders. The only real difference here is the handle-the-asylum-claims-faster twist.
The refugee camp in Lesbos that just burned down, for instance, was a so-called hotspot. So it seems the EU doesn’t actually have a plan to move away from having places like it. “What they’re proposing would lead to more and more and more [Lesbos-like camps] in more and more places,” said HRW’s Sunderland. “The whole logic of the hotspot approach hasn’t worked at all.”
There’s also a debate on the speed-of-decisions part. Some experts fear plowing through asylum claims will lead to more errors. For example, instead of delving more deeply into a refugee’s background, some details might be missed by authorities in an effort to rush, perhaps ending in a wrongful denial. Others say certain European countries — namely the Netherlands and Switzerland — have successfully expedited decisions on asylum claims by modernizing procedures, increasing staff, and offering government-funded legal advice to claimants.
Either way, this part of the reform package doesn’t seem that different at all, save for trying to move things along more quickly.
2) Get other countries to help with asylum claims, even if they don’t want to
This next change — having other nations chip in to help overwhelmed member states — is arguably the EU’s most controversial proposal and the one most likely to cause the greatest political strife.
Countries in Europe’s south — Greece, Italy, Spain, Malta, and more — have by virtue of their geography seen hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers arrive on their shores in the last five years alone. Nations elsewhere on the continent don’t see such high numbers of refugees because they’re not as easily accessible by land or sea.
During the 2015 crisis, those southern countries, especially Greece and Italy, were overwhelmed with asylum claims and asked other nations to help them. But many didn’t, leaving them to handle the influx mostly by themselves.
In the following years, some southern European nations have forced boats of migrants and refugees to turn away, in violation of international and EU law, in order to keep the number of asylum-seekers down because they feel they can’t take anymore.
The EU’s leadership knows this is a problem and has long made boosting solidarity on this issue — that is, getting all member states to help with migration and asylum claims — a main focus. The new proposals this week offer a remedy, basically by forcing other states to help.
Here’s how it would work: Say Alex is joined by thousands upon thousands of refugees awaiting asylum decisions in Greece. Like in 2015, the influx is so large that it’s overtaking what Greece could handle, even with the EU’s assistance. At that point, either the EU or Greece may realize other countries in the bloc need to help with the situation and officially call for help.
This is where it gets tricky. Most simply put, EU countries would have to pledge how many asylum seekers they’re willing to care for. If the number of pledges falls below 70 percent of the determined need (i.e., countries in total are only willing to take 600 of 1,000 claimants) then the EU can force those who have under-pledged — determined by how rich and populous a nation is — to take more people. (More on the forcing mechanism, and the problems with it, in a moment.)
Countries pledging to help can do so in one of two ways.
First, they can choose to relocate an asylum seeker. In this case, a country like Sweden would take Alex from Greece and continue to process his asylum claim there, in Sweden. That option is straightforward and appeals to nations not skeptical of bringing in new migrants.
The second option is geared toward refugee-skeptic countries. Instead of taking in Alex, a country like Hungary could sponsor his return back to the US once his asylum claim is denied. Alex would stay in Greece, but Hungary would handle the negotiations with Washington to send him back and pay for the flight to the US. That makes Greece happy by taking Alex’s return issues out of its hands, and makes Hungary happy by allowing it to help without having to take Alex in.
There’s a catch, though: If Alex isn’t returned to America within eight months, he would be sent to Hungary as the process continues. The reason for that is to ensure Alex doesn’t grow too fond of Greece or set up familial roots by getting married or having kids — which would make his eventual return home harder — and also to incentivize Hungary to handle Alex’s case quickly instead of letting him languish in Greece.
But what if Hungary doesn’t want to pay for Alex’s, or any asylum seeker’s, return? After all, Hungary already passed a law making asylum assistance harder, and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is deeply hostile to refugees.
This is where the enforcement mechanism comes in.
Per European Commission officials I spoke to and the proposal documents, the European Commission would have the right to adopt an “implementing act” — a law — that would force a member state to assist whatever country is in need. Since such a measure would be official EU law, the strong belief is that EU member states would abide by it. After all, the bloc is governed by the rule of law, and Hungary would have no choice but to choose either the relocation or return-sponsorship option.
But EU officials don’t yet have an answer for what would happen if Hungary, or another refugee-hostile government, were to defy such a law. If that were to happen, the EU could find itself in a deep political crisis. “It’s hard to see how the Hungarian government is going to suddenly participate in schemes that would see more migrants move to Hungary,” said Andrew Geddes, director of the Migration Policy Center (MPC) in Florence, Italy.
That said, EU officials remain confident that even the migration-skeptic nations would follow the law, as they could be taken through the bloc’s judicial process for redress.
It’s therefore possible these proposals would work just fine if implemented and that cynicism is unwarranted. But what bothers some experts most is that the proposed reforms are the EU effectively cowing to refugee hardliners. “The lowest common denominator has been lowered,” Geddes told me. And even then, statements by Hungary’s government and other EU countries make it clear that those concessions still aren’t enough.
1/5 Since 2015, the stance of the HU Gov’t on migration has been clear and unchanged. We have presented this stance and our proposals on several occasions. We believe that the EU and its member states must cooperate in keeping the looming migration pressure outside our borders. — Zoltan Kovacs (@zoltanspox) September 23, 2020
3) Send denied asylum seekers back to their home countries faster
Finally, we arrive at the return-to-the-home-country part.
Let’s stick with our example: Alex’s asylum claim in Greece was denied, and now he’ll be forced to go back to America. Greece can’t handle the return home because it’s overwhelmed, so Hungary — either willingly or forced by the EU — is taking care of it.
In this case, Alex’s return is quite simple. The US can easily absorb him back into society and his life won’t be in danger upon return. But say Alex was from Tunisia — now the situation gets trickier.
Tunisia is currently in an economic crisis and is struggling with the coronavirus. Because of that, thousands are crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Italy and other southern European countries to claim asylum. The problem is that not everyone is going to have their claim accepted, and Tunisia doesn’t necessarily want to take certain people back since they already wanted out (among other reasons).
As a result, there’d be a standoff as both Hungary and Tunisia work out what to do. Multiply that by thousands of cases, and you can see the scale of the problem: thousands of men, women, and children just languishing at European borders waiting for a resolution.
This is a common problem in the EU. Its own statistics show only 40 percent of asylum seekers are successfully returned to their home countries, and that number plummets if the home nation is outside of the European continent, experts told me. ESI’s Knaus said Germany could only deport 1,000 people outside Europe in the first half of this year, well below last year’s rate, when 4,000 people total were sent back to their non-European home nations.
It’s this issue countries like Hungary cite often, and it is partly why they’re opposed to even the return-sponsorship option. Remember, if the Hungarian government can’t send Alex to his home country within eight months, it has to bring him to Hungary as it further works on sending him out of the EU. That’s just not a scenario refugee-hostile nations want hanging over them.
Put together, the EU tried to tackle three key problems with its new reforms, but it seems they either repackaged old solutions or didn’t offer appealing remedies. It’s for those and other reasons experts feel the proposals won’t make it through a year or more of deliberations.
What would make the EU’s migration policy better?
To be adopted, every proposal must make it through the European Parliament — which is made up of representatives from member states — and the European Council, a decision-making group made up of heads of state or ministers from each EU nation. Unanimity isn’t required, but it will take a large portion of each body to approve the new measures.
That’s a big task, and few believe most of the proposals will make it through the process. “The European Commission is basically saying ‘these are our ideas,’ but it doesn’t mean member states will like them,” said MPC’s Geddes. ”This is a big test for the EU to see if it can put in place agreements for such issues of high politics. A lot is at stake.”
What’s more, most experts I spoke to believe debating these issues amounts to a wasted opportunity. If passed, the reforms would lock in most of the failures of the EU’s asylum and migration policies of the last few years. And if they fail to pass, vulnerable people will have continued to suffer while politicians spent time fruitlessly debating and posturing.
The experts offered three general solutions the EU should focus on instead.
First, the EU shouldn’t try to force countries to take in migrants they simply don’t want. The bloc’s focus should shift from finding a common policy to creating a “coalition of the willing” — a group of EU nations that actually do want asylum seekers. As a reward, they might receive more funding or perhaps even greater voting power inside the EU.
The downside is the bloc won’t be as cohesive on asylum and migration issues. But some feel giving people a welcoming place to stay should be the priority, not creating an artificial sense of unity.
“I don’t think Europe should be held hostage by a hostile minority,” HRW’s Sunderland told me.
Second, the EU should work on enforcing existing asylum and migration laws instead of trying to sell new ones. That means ensuring countries don’t push asylum seekers back on boats and actually take in refugees from hotspots to lessen the burden on the Greeces and Italys of Europe. Furthermore, the EU should find a way to punish countries like Hungary for making it harder for asylum seekers to enter there.
“The fundamental problem right now is that we have a lot of laws that are being broken already,” said ESI’s Knaus. “If laws are being broken with impunity, isn’t the first step toward change making the laws already in force count? Why would changed laws be any better?”
Third, the EU must get creative with how it deals with home nations. For example, Moroccans and Tunisians don’t have visa-free travel in the EU. The EU could offer visa-free travel to citizens — making tourism and commerce easier — in exchange for their willingness to expedite the return of nationals denied asylum in Europe. Such a trade worked with Ukraine, and the EU has found it easier to send back asylum-seekers there ever since a deal was struck.
None of these solutions is perfect, but many believe they’ll serve the interests of both refugees and the EU more than what was just proposed.
“There’s a big question mark about whether or not all this will actually help asylum seekers,” MPC’s Geddes told me. That said, he understands why EU leadership wants to settle this problem now before it gets any worse. “Something has to get done, or else the EU is never going to make an agreement.”
Correction 9/26: Knaus’s statistic about deportations from Germany were to outside Europe, not the EU. The change has been made.


vox--2020-09-26--President Trump nominates Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court

Barrett has been nominated to fill the seat held by the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg .
President Donald Trump has @ @ @ @ @ — who is currently serving on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh @ @ @ @ @ Supreme Court seat previously held by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg .
Barrett was @ @ @ @ @ by President Trump in 2017 .
Barrett is a staunch Catholic , a favorite of @ @ @ @ @ a former law clerk to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia .
Her judicial record is fairly @ @ @ @ @ fact that she ’ s only been a judge for about three years , but @ @ @ @ @ ’ ll be a reliable conservative if confirmed to the Supreme Court .
Follow this @ @ @ @ @ ’ s coverage of Barrett ’ s nomination , her record on policy issues , @ @ @ @ @ and more .

Barrett has been nominated to fill the seat held by the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
President Donald Trump has chosen Judge Amy Coney Barrett — who is currently serving on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit — to fill the Supreme Court seat previously held by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Barrett was nominated to the Seventh Circuit by President Trump in 2017.
Barrett is a staunch Catholic, a favorite of the religious right, and a former law clerk to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Her judicial record is fairly thin, owing to the fact that she’s only been a judge for about three years, but that short record suggests she’ll be a reliable conservative if confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Follow this storystream for all of Vox’s coverage of Barrett’s nomination, her record on policy issues, her Senate confirmation process, and more.


vox--2020-09-26--The false link between Amy Coney Barrett and The Handmaid’s Tale, explained

On Saturday , President Donald Trump chose Notre Dame law professor and federal appellate judge Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee to take Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’ s seat on the Supreme Court .
The news threatens to reignite a storm of controversy around Barrett ’ s religion that has been building since 2017 .
Barrett is a devout Catholic .
She has written before about her belief that Catholicism should affect a judge ’ s jurisprudence , and Democrats discussed her views widely when she was nominated to the federal bench in 2017 .
In a moment that has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dianne Feinstein declared that “ the dogma lives loudly within you ” during Barrett ’ s hearing , a phrase some conservatives took to be an attack on Barrett ’ s Catholicism .
Barrett is also part of a small Catholic group known as People of Praise , and that ’ s where her religious affiliations get especially touchy .
Some liberals argue Barrett ’ s membership in this group , which teaches that husbands are the heads of families and have authority over their wives , signals that she will hand down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Supreme Court , particularly when it comes to women ’ s reproductive freedom and the rights of the queer community .
Meanwhile , conservatives reply that Barrett is a high-powered federal judge who is also married , so she can ’ t be all that oppressed by her husband , and that liberal critiques of the way Barrett ’ s religion affects her judicial obligations are nothing more than anti-Catholic prejudice at work .
One of the weirder ways this debate has played out since Barrett was first discussed as a potential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whether or not People of Praise , the group she belongs to , is also one of the inspirations for The Handmaid ’ s Tale .
In Margaret Atwood ’ s 1985 dystopian novel ( and its recent TV adaptation ) , fertile women are forced to live as childbearing slaves called handmaids .
The group isn ’ t an established inspiration for the book — but the story has developed legs anyway .
The inaccurate link between the People of Praise and Atwood ’ s story , perpetuated by a series of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emerged in a Newsweek article and was later picked up by Reuters .
Both articles have since been corrected , but the right was furious at both .
The Washington Examiner called it a “ smear that just won ’ t die.
” Fox News noted several other outlets have mentioned Barrett and The Handmaid ’ s Tale in the same story .
To be absolutely clear : People of Praise is not an inspiration for The Handmaid ’ s Tale , and the group does not practice sexual slavery or any of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in her novel .
But the argument over whether or not the two are connected reflects the deeply contentious atmosphere in which Barrett ’ s nomination to the Supreme Court occurs — and the immense symbolic weight The Handmaid ’ s Tale carries in American popular culture .
The Handmaid ’ s Tale is actually inspired by People of Hope .
They ’ re different from People of Praise .
Two coincidences led to the idea of a People of Praise–Handmaid ’ s Tale connection .
The first coincidence is that the People @ @ @ @ @ @ @ called “ handmaid.
” As reported by the New York Times in 2017 , People of Praise members are all accountable to a personal adviser .
Those advisers offer guidance on major life decisions , including , per the Times , “ whom to date or marry , where to live , whether to take a job or buy a home , and how to raise children.
” And these advisers used to be called “ heads ” when they were men and “ handmaids ” when they were women .
They have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ second coincidence is that when Margaret Atwood explained her Handmaid ’ s Tale inspirations to the New York Times in 1987 , she described one of them as “ a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect , which calls the women handmaids.
” Atwood did not at the time name the sect , so when her quote resurfaced in 2020 , it was very easy for some readers to think , Well , People of Praise is a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect that calls the women handmaids , so there you go .
Accordingly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ People of Praise was one of Atwood ’ s inspirations for The Handmaid ’ s Tale .
Asked about her inspiration for The Handmaid ’ s Tale by Politico as the controversy heated up , Atwood said she wasn ’ t sure which group she was talking about in 1987 .
Her archive of work and research is at the University of Toronto , where she can ’ t currently access it due to Covid-19 restrictions .
But she ’ s on the record as going through her Handmaid ’ s Tale archives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ past , and during those interviews , she ’ s always cited People of Hope , a different Catholic charismatic spinoff that calls women handmaids .
Specifically , People of Hope is a fundamentalist group in New Jersey that some former members have said behaves like a cult and which has allegedly arranged marriages between teenagers .
The People of Hope call wives “ handmaids , ” and when Atwood saw that word in an Associated Press clipping about the group , she underlined it in pen .
It ’ s rumored that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the idea of using the name to begin with .
In a weird wrinkle , the timing of the lore here doesn ’ t quite work out .
Reporting for the Star-Ledger in 2017 , Tom Deignan found that the story didn ’ t hit the AP until after The Handmaid ’ s Tale came out in 1985 , meaning that Atwood couldn ’ t have pulled the word “ handmaid ” from that mythical news article after all .
But regardless , the AP clipping in Atwood ’ s archives , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is about People of Hope .
And while it ’ s plenty plausible that Atwood has indulged in a little self-mythologizing about her creative process over the years , it ’ s not really that relevant to any questions about Amy Coney Barrett and her religious leanings today .
The outrage over the controversy speaks to the symbolic weight Handmaid ’ s Tale holds today in American pop culture The slippage between People of Praise handmaids , People of Hope handmaids , and Margaret Atwood handmaids is where this whole misunderstanding originated .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ way , telling about the world Atwood was writing about in 1984 when she built Gilead , her theocratic dystopia .
Atwood was drawing from the cultural norms of lots of different North American charismatic Christian groups at the time , including harmless ones .
The reason there ’ s so much confusion about exactly where she took the word handmaid from is that handmaid is the kind of word a lot of North American charismatic Christian groups were into in 1984 : suggestive of purity , duty , and feminine obedience to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not mean these groups were practicing sexual slavery .
It means they were working with a very specific vocabulary , and the way Atwood made her dystopia feel real was by skillfully mimicking them .
But that this slippage occurred in 2020 is also telling about how immensely fearful people are , on both the right and the left , about America ’ s future — and how powerful The Handmaid ’ s Tale is as a symbol of what that future might look like .
People on the left look at Amy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ denounced both abortion and marriage equality in explicitly religious terms , someone who they fear will , if seated on the Supreme Court , turn back the clock on both those issues .
They see a symbol of the same fear that drove protesters to don Handmaid robes at the Kavanaugh hearings in 2018 : the fear that women are going to lose control of their bodies , and that when that day comes , we might just as well be in Gilead .
So they have linked Barrett to The Handmaid ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tale is now our culture ’ s most potent symbol for the idea of a world in which women ’ s bodies are not their own .
People on the religious right , meanwhile , see the left ’ s focus on Barrett ’ s Catholicism as confirmation that American Christianity is losing its cultural power , and that they may soon become a persecuted minority .
Articles that mistakenly link Barrett ’ s People of Praise to The Handmaid ’ s Tale , seen through this lens , become examples of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ religion a disqualifying mark against her , and by extension to make all Christian faith disqualifying for higher office .
The result is a controversy about two political parties that increasingly see themselves as pushed to the breaking point — and who believe they have no space left to interact with the other side in good faith .
Will you help keep Vox free for all ?
The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes .
It ’ s essential that all Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ information on what the outcome of the election could mean for their lives , and the lives of their families and communities .
That is our mission at Vox .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
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On Monday, Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump’s nominee to take Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court, was officially confirmed and sworn in. Barrett’s controversial confirmation was the final chapter of the spectacle surrounding her rapid nomination and confirmation, especially so close to a presidential election. And it only further served to reignite the extremely polarized conversation around Barrett’s religion that has been building since 2017.
Barrett is a devout Catholic. She has written before about her belief that Catholicism should affect a judge’s jurisprudence, and Democrats discussed her views widely when she was nominated to the federal bench in 2017. In a moment that has become infamous on the right, Sen. Dianne Feinstein declared that “the dogma lives loudly within you” during Barrett’s hearing, a phrase some conservatives took to be an attack on Barrett’s Catholicism.
Barrett is also part of a small Catholic group known as People of Praise, and that’s where her religious affiliations get especially touchy. Some liberals argue Barrett’s membership in this group, which teaches that husbands are the heads of families and have authority over their wives, signals that she will hand down religiously motivated conservative opinions as a Supreme Court justice, particularly when it comes to women’s reproductive freedom and the rights of the queer community.
Meanwhile, conservatives reply that Barrett is a high-powered judge who is also married, so she can’t be all that oppressed by her husband, and that liberal critiques of the way Barrett’s religion affects her judicial obligations are nothing more than anti-Catholic prejudice at work.
One of the weirder ways this debate has played out since Barrett was first discussed as a potential Supreme Court nominee is the fight over whether or not People of Praise, the group she belongs to, is also one of the inspirations for The Handmaid’s Tale. In Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel (and its recent TV adaptation), fertile women are forced to live as childbearing slaves called handmaids. The group isn’t an established inspiration for the book — but the story has developed legs anyway.
The inaccurate link between the People of Praise and Atwood’s story, perpetuated by a series of confusing coincidences and uneven fact-checking, first emerged in a Newsweek article and was later picked up by Reuters. Both articles have since been corrected, but the right was furious at both. The Washington Examiner called it a “smear that just won’t die.” Fox News noted several other outlets have mentioned Barrett and The Handmaid’s Tale in the same story.
To be absolutely clear: People of Praise is not an inspiration for The Handmaid’s Tale, and the group does not practice sexual slavery or any of the other dystopian practices Atwood wrote about in her novel. But the argument over whether or not the two are connected reflects the deeply contentious atmosphere in which Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court occurred — and the immense symbolic weight The Handmaid’s Tale carries in American popular culture.
The Handmaid’s Tale is actually inspired by People of Hope. They’re different from People of Praise.
Two coincidences led to the idea of a People of Praise–Handmaid’s Tale connection. The first coincidence is that the People of Praise once had a religious rank called “handmaid.” As reported by the New York Times in 2017, People of Praise members are all accountable to a personal adviser. Those advisers offer guidance on major life decisions, including, per the Times, “whom to date or marry, where to live, whether to take a job or buy a home, and how to raise children.” And these advisers used to be called “heads” when they were men and “handmaids” when they were women. They have since been renamed “leaders.”
The second coincidence is that when Margaret Atwood explained her Handmaid’s Tale inspirations to the New York Times in 1987, she described one of them as “a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect, which calls the women handmaids.” Atwood did not at the time name the sect, so when her quote resurfaced in 2020, it was very easy for some readers to think, Well, People of Praise is a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect that calls the women handmaids, so there you go. Accordingly, on September 21, Newsweek reported that People of Praise was one of Atwood’s inspirations for The Handmaid’s Tale.
Asked about her inspiration for The Handmaid’s Tale by Politico as the controversy heated up, Atwood said she wasn’t sure which group she was talking about in 1987. Her archive of work and research is at the University of Toronto, where she can’t currently access it due to Covid-19 restrictions. But she’s on the record as going through her Handmaid’s Tale archives for journalists plenty of times in the past, and during those interviews, she’s always cited People of Hope, a different Catholic charismatic spinoff that calls women handmaids.
Specifically, People of Hope is a fundamentalist group in New Jersey that some former members have said behaves like a cult and which has allegedly arranged marriages between teenagers. The People of Hope call wives “handmaids,” and when Atwood saw that word in an Associated Press clipping about the group, she underlined it in pen. It’s rumored that it’s here that she developed the idea of using the name to begin with.
In a weird wrinkle, the timing of the lore here doesn’t quite work out. Reporting for the Star-Ledger in 2017, Tom Deignan found that the story didn’t hit the AP until after The Handmaid’s Tale came out in 1985, meaning that Atwood couldn’t have pulled the word “handmaid” from that mythical news article after all. But regardless, the AP clipping in Atwood’s archives, the one that she always shows reporters, is about People of Hope. And while it’s plenty plausible that Atwood has indulged in a little self-mythologizing about her creative process over the years, it’s not really that relevant to any questions about Amy Coney Barrett and her religious leanings today.
The outrage over the controversy speaks to the symbolic weight Handmaid’s Tale holds today in American pop culture
The slippage between People of Praise handmaids, People of Hope handmaids, and Margaret Atwood handmaids is where this whole misunderstanding originated. And it is, in its own way, telling about the world Atwood was writing about in 1984 when she built Gilead, her theocratic dystopia.
Atwood was drawing from the cultural norms of lots of different North American charismatic Christian groups at the time, including harmless ones. The reason there’s so much confusion about exactly where she took the word handmaid from is that handmaid is the kind of word a lot of North American charismatic Christian groups were into in 1984: suggestive of purity, duty, and feminine obedience to divine will.
Again, that does not mean these groups were practicing sexual slavery. It means they were working with a very specific vocabulary, and the way Atwood made her dystopia feel real was by skillfully mimicking them.
But that this slippage occurred in 2020 is also telling about how immensely fearful people are, on both the right and the left, about America’s future — and how powerful The Handmaid’s Tale is as a symbol of what that future might look like.
People on the left look at Amy Coney Barrett and see someone who has denounced both abortion and marriage equality in explicitly religious terms, someone who they fear will, now that she is seated on the Supreme Court, turn back the clock on both those issues. They see a symbol of the same fear that drove protesters to don Handmaid robes at the Kavanaugh hearings in 2018: the fear that women are going to lose control of their bodies, and that when that day comes, we might just as well be in Gilead. So they have linked Barrett to The Handmaid’s Tale because The Handmaid’s Tale is now our culture’s most potent symbol for the idea of a world in which women’s bodies are not their own.
Related What Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court means for abortion rights
People on the religious right, meanwhile, see the left’s focus on Barrett’s Catholicism as confirmation that American Christianity is losing its cultural power, and that they may soon become a persecuted minority. Articles that mistakenly link Barrett’s People of Praise to The Handmaid’s Tale, viewed through this lens, become examples of the left trying to make Barrett’s religion a disqualifying mark against her, and by extension to make all Christian faith disqualifying for higher office.
The result is a controversy about two political parties that increasingly see themselves as pushed to the breaking point — and who believe they have no space left to interact with the other side in good faith.


vox--2020-09-26--How Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court could affect LGBTQ rights

President Donald Trump nominated federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court Saturday , a choice LGBTQ rights groups are concerned could lead to a reduction in the rights of LGBTQ Americans .
The Supreme Court has historically been important for the advancement of LGBTQ rights , with its rulings giving gay and lesbian people marriage equality and recently , protecting queer and trans people from employment discrimination under federal law .
And there are a number of important cases soon to come before the court ; for example , Fulton @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be heard the day after Election Day .
That case , in which a religious adoption agency is seeking the right to turn away LGBTQ couples , will determine whether taxpayer-funded organizations are allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ people .
Senate Republicans have already promised a speedy confirmation process to install Trump ’ s nominee before the election , suggesting Barrett will soon be on the Supreme Court .
Barrett is a Catholic and former Notre Dame law professor ; she has not said how she would rule in cases about LGBTQ rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extensively about her conservative view on reproduction and sexuality .
And these past remarks have some of her critics concerned that she will swing the balance of the court toward a more conservative agenda on issues of LGBTQ rights .
What we know about Barrett ’ s record on LGBTQ rights As Vox ’ s Ian Millhiser has explained , while Barrett has not served long as a federal judge , and thus does not have as long a judicial record as many Supreme Court nominees .
However , as a law professor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ she frequently weighed in on many of the cultural fights that animate religious conservatism.
” One of these is the issue of LGBTQ rights , which has been a long and evolving debate for conservatives , many of whom have fought against policies such as trans people using the bathrooms that align with their gender identity and transition care for trans teens .
Some of Barrett ’ s most notable comments on the issue came during a lecture she gave at Jacksonville University ahead of the 2016 presidential election , while she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In that lecture , she defended the dissenters in Obergefell v. Hodges , the landmark Supreme Court ruling which made marriage equality the law of the land , as well as suggesting the Title IX rights afforded to transgender people ought to be reviewed by lawmakers .
“ Maybe things have changed so that we should change Title IX , ” Barrett said during the lecture .
“ Maybe those arguing in favor of this kind of transgender bathroom access are right .
...
But it does seem to strain the text of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demands it , so is that the kind of thing that the court should interpret the statute to update it to pick sides on this policy debate ?
Or should we go to our Congress ?
” Also concerning LGTBQ advocates is that Barrett — who is Catholic — signed a letter in 2015 addressed to Catholic bishops that detailed her personal beliefs , and that included a statement about “ marriage and family founded on the indissoluble commitment of a man and a woman.
” This , Millhiser notes , would seem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ marriage equality — and potentially opposes extending other rights to LGBTQ people.
” In her Jacksonville University lecture , Barrett similarly deployed language suggesting an adversarial stance toward trans issues by misgendering transgender women , calling them “ physiological males.
” This is one statement , but to many advocates her words seem ominous for the nascent transgender rights movement , which scored a big win at the high court this June in Bostock v. Clayton County , which determined that trans people are protected from employment discrimination under federal civil rights law @ @ @ @ @ @ @ instance , took issue with Barrett ahead of her official nomination , highlighting her Jacksonville University speech .
In a statement Friday , Alphonso David , president of the Human Rights Campaign , said , “ If she is nominated and confirmed , Coney Barrett would work to dismantle all that Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for during her extraordinary career.
” Of concern to activists like David is that Bostock isn ’ t the only trans rights case that will hit the Supreme Court under the next justice ’ s tenure .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on several big legal battles brewing for years , over issues such as transgender student bathroom rights , or trans women participating in women ’ s sports .
Should Barrett be confirmed , her work on the court may depart from her personal views .
However , as Millhiser writes , her personal and professional thinking has aligned in the past : And it is this judicial record , limited though it is , that has led activists to express concern Barrett ’ s appointment could limit LGBTQ rights in future rulings .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ all ?
The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes .
It ’ s essential that all Americans are able to access clear , concise information on what the outcome of the election could mean for their lives , and the lives of their families and communities .
That is our mission at Vox .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone understand this presidential election : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

President Donald Trump nominated federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court Saturday, a choice LGBTQ rights groups are concerned could lead to a reduction in the rights of LGBTQ Americans.
The Supreme Court has historically been important for the advancement of LGBTQ rights, with its rulings giving gay and lesbian people marriage equality and, recently, protecting queer and trans people from employment discrimination under federal law.
And there are a number of important cases soon to come before the Court; for example, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia is set to be heard the day after Election Day. That case, in which a religious adoption agency is seeking the right to turn away LGBTQ couples, will determine whether taxpayer-funded organizations are allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ people.
Senate Republicans have already promised a speedy confirmation process to install Trump’s nominee before the election, suggesting Barrett will soon be on the Supreme Court.
Barrett is a Catholic and former Notre Dame law professor; she has not said how she would rule in cases about LGBTQ rights, but she has spoken and written extensively about her conservative view on reproduction and sexuality.
And these past remarks have some of her critics concerned that she will swing the balance of the Court toward a more conservative agenda on issues of LGBTQ rights.
What we know about Barrett’s record on LGBTQ rights
As Vox’s Ian Millhiser has explained, while Barrett has not served long as a federal judge, and thus does not have as long a judicial record as many Supreme Court nominees, as a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, “she frequently weighed in on many of the cultural fights that animate religious conservatism.”
One of these is the issue of LGBTQ rights, which has been a long and evolving debate for conservatives, many of whom have fought against policies such as trans people using the bathrooms that align with their gender identity and transition care for trans teens.
Some of Barrett’s most notable comments on the issue came during a lecture she gave at Jacksonville University ahead of the 2016 presidential election, while she was a professor at Notre Dame. In that lecture, she defended the dissenters in Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark Supreme Court ruling which made marriage equality the law of the land, as well as suggesting the Title IX rights afforded to transgender people ought to be reviewed by lawmakers.
“Maybe things have changed so that we should change Title IX,” Barrett said during the lecture. “Maybe those arguing in favor of this kind of transgender bathroom access are right. ... But it does seem to strain the text of the statute to say that Title IX demands it, so is that the kind of thing that the Court should interpret the statute to update it to pick sides on this policy debate? Or should we go to our Congress?”
Also concerning LGTBQ advocates is that Barrett — who is Catholic — signed a letter in 2015 addressed to Catholic bishops that detailed her personal beliefs, and that included a statement about “marriage and family founded on the indissoluble commitment of a man and a woman.”
This, Millhiser notes, would seem to “suggest that Barrett personally opposes marriage equality — and potentially opposes extending other rights to LGBTQ people.”
In her Jacksonville University lecture, Barrett similarly deployed language suggesting an adversarial stance toward trans issues by misgendering transgender women, calling them “physiological males.”
This is one statement, but to many advocates, her words seem ominous for the nascent transgender rights movement, which scored a big win at the high court this June in Bostock v. Clayton County, which determined that trans people are protected from employment discrimination under federal civil rights law.
The Human Rights Campaign, for instance, took issue with Barrett ahead of her official nomination, highlighting her Jacksonville University speech. In a statement Friday, Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said, “If she is nominated and confirmed, Coney Barrett would work to dismantle all that Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for during her extraordinary career.”
Of concern to activists like David is that Bostock isn’t the only trans rights case that will hit the Supreme Court under the next justice’s tenure. The Court will be called upon to rule on several big legal battles brewing for years, over issues such as transgender student bathroom rights, or trans women participating in women’s sports.
Should Barrett be confirmed, her work on the Court may depart from her personal views. However, as Millhiser writes, her personal and professional thinking has aligned in the past:
Barrett’s limited judicial record suggests that her approach to constitutional interpretation aligns with her conservative political views. In Planned Parenthood v. Box (2019), Barrett joined a brief dissent arguing that her court should rehear a case that blocked an anti-abortion law before that law took effect. That opinion argued that “preventing a state statute from taking effect is a judicial act of extraordinary gravity in our federal structure” — suggesting that Barrett would have prevented her court from blocking the anti-abortion law at the heart of that case if given the chance.
And it is this judicial record, limited though it is, that has led activists to express concern Barrett’s appointment could limit LGBTQ rights in future rulings.


vox--2020-09-26--What Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court would mean for abortion rights

President Trump has repeatedly promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade , the landmark 1973 decision that established the right to an abortion in America .
Now that he has chosen Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , he has moved one step closer to that goal .
Barrett , a judge on the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago , has attracted praise from social conservatives for her religious faith as well as her strict interpretation of the Constitution .
On @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issued conservative decisions in cases involving the Second Amendment and immigration , among others .
But her views on abortion are likely to get particular attention during her confirmation process , given the president ’ s promise on Roe and the political importance of the issue in an election year .
Barrett has not stated publicly how she would rule on abortion if confirmed to the Court .
But her history includes a number of clues about her feelings on the issue , both as a person and as a judge .
Barrett @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both times in ways favorable to abortion restrictions .
And while she ’ s said she doesn ’ t believe Roe will be overturned outright , she ’ s also made clear that she ’ s open to reversing Supreme Court precedent if she thinks a previous decision goes against the Constitution .
Barrett is sure to face a contentious confirmation process where questions about abortion will be front and center .
In the past , nominees have avoided answering such questions directly and Barrett is likely to do the same .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not the certainty , that she could be a deciding vote to reverse Roe and eliminate the legal right to abortion in America .
At 48 , Barrett doesn ’ t have a long judicial record , as the LA Times noted in 2018 when she was first floated as a replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy .
Barrett was confirmed to the Seventh Circuit , her first judgeship , in 2017 .
Since then , she ’ s voted in two abortion cases , each time in ways that could be seen as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. , the Seventh Circuit voted to block an Indiana law requiring parental notification for minors seeking abortions .
Barrett joined a dissent saying the law should have been allowed to take effect , as ABA Journal reports .
The second case , Commissioner of the Indiana State Department of Health v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. , concerned an Indiana law that would have banned abortions on the basis of race , sex , or Down syndrome diagnosis , as well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or cremated .
A lower court struck down the law , and the state of Indiana appealed only the fetal remains portion .
A panel of the Seventh Circuit declined to rehear the case , but Barrett joined the dissent , arguing that the case should be reheard , and bringing up potential legal merits of the ban on race- or sex-selective abortions , even though that part of the law was no longer actually at issue .
The dissenters called the law a “ eugenics statute ” and wrote that “ none @ @ @ @ @ @ @ holds that states are powerless to prevent abortions designed to choose the sex , race , and other attributes of children.
” In addition to these votes , Barrett has also made a number of public statements on Roe and abortion over the years .
A Catholic and member of the religious group People of Praise , she has said that she personally believes life begins at conception , and that Roe “ ignited a national controversy ” by deciding the issue of abortion by court order rather than leaving it to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said several times that she believes the Supreme Court will not overturn Roe .
“ I don ’ t think the core case , Roe ’ s core holding that women have a right to an abortion , I don ’ t think that would change , ” she said in a 2016 appearance at Jacksonville University .
“ But I think the question of whether people can get very late-term abortions , you know , how many restrictions can be put on clinics , I think that will change.
” The idea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ let states chip away at abortion access than to reverse Roe outright was common for many years among advocates on both sides of the abortion issue .
Indeed , conservative state legislatures have worked for years to restrict abortion within the bounds of Roe , with Louisiana , Texas , and other states passing numerous laws that have shut down clinics across the South and Midwest .
But now , the calculus is changing .
As Nina Totenberg and Domenico Montanaro note at NPR , Trump has already appointed two conservative justices to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the right .
Meanwhile , some believe that Chief Justice John Roberts may be more amenable to a direct challenge to Roe than to the kinds of incremental clinic restrictions that were at issue in the recent June Medical Services v. Russo , in which he voted to strike down a Louisiana abortion law .
And of course , the death of Justice Ginsburg leaves Trump the opportunity to pull the Court even further to the right .
Should Barrett join it , conservative justices might well have the votes — and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to an abortion directly .
If they do , states would be able to ban abortion outright , rather than just passing laws making the procedure harder to get .
Should such an opportunity present itself , Barrett has made clear that judicial precedent wouldn ’ t necessarily be an obstacle for her .
The judge has said she believes the Supreme Court has the responsibility to revisit and potentially overturn old rulings that its current members feel conflict with the Constitution .
“ I tend to agree with those who say that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Constitution and that is thus more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks is clearly in conflict with it , ” Barrett wrote in 2013 .
Despite her past votes and writings , no one knows for sure how Barrett would rule in a Supreme Court abortion case until and unless she gets to consider one .
But one thing is clear — Barrett has no particular allegiance to Roe v. Wade , or to Supreme Court precedent more generally .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overturn the 1973 decision , nothing in her record suggests she wouldn ’ t take it .
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President Trump has repeatedly promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established the right to an abortion in America. By putting Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the Court, he moved one step closer to that goal.
Barrett, who was confirmed by the Senate on Monday, attracted praise from social conservatives for her religious faith as well as her strict interpretation of the Constitution. As a judge on the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, she issued conservative decisions in cases involving the Second Amendment and immigration, among others. But her views on abortion got particular attention during her confirmation process, given the president’s promise on Roe and the political importance of the issue in an election year.
During her confirmation hearings, Barrett did not directly answer questions about how she would rule on abortion rights. But she has made her personal opinion on the issue clear in the past, signing her name to a 2006 newspaper ad opposing “abortion on demand.” She has twice voted in abortion cases, both times in ways favorable to abortion restrictions. And while she’s said she doesn’t believe Roe will be overturned outright, she’s also made clear that she’s open to reversing Supreme Court precedent if she thinks a previous decision goes against the Constitution.
She might get that opportunity soon, with more than a dozen abortion cases just one step away from the Court. And while no one knows for certain what kind of justice she would be, her past certainly suggests she could be a deciding vote to reverse Roe and eliminate the legal right to abortion in America.
Barrett’s record suggests she’d be open to overturning Roe
At 48, Barrett doesn’t have a long judicial record, as the LA Times noted in 2018 when she was first floated as a replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy. Barrett was confirmed to the Seventh Circuit, her first judgeship, in 2017.
Since then, she’s voted in two abortion cases, each time in ways that could be seen as friendly to abortion restrictions. In one, Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc., the Seventh Circuit voted to block an Indiana law requiring parental notification for minors seeking abortions. Barrett joined a dissent saying the law should have been allowed to take effect, as ABA Journal reports.
The second case, Commissioner of the Indiana State Department of Health v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc., concerned an Indiana law that would have banned abortions on the basis of race, sex, or Down syndrome diagnosis, as well as requiring that fetal remains be buried or cremated. A lower court struck down the law, and the state of Indiana appealed only the fetal remains portion.
A panel of the Seventh Circuit declined to rehear the case, but Barrett joined the dissent, arguing that the case should be reheard and bringing up potential legal merits of the ban on race- or sex-selective abortions, even though that part of the law was no longer actually at issue. The dissenters called the law a “eugenics statute” and wrote that “none of the Court’s abortion decisions holds that states are powerless to prevent abortions designed to choose the sex, race, and other attributes of children.”
In addition to these votes, Barrett has made a number of public statements on Roe and abortion over the years. Perhaps most notably, in 2006 she signed her name to an ad placed by the group St. Joseph County Right to Life in the South Bend Tribune, an Indiana newspaper. The ad stated that the undersigned “oppose abortion on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death,” the New York Times reported.
The ad has raised additional concerns because St. Joseph County Right to Life opposes in vitro fertilization, and has stated that the discarding of frozen embryos generated through IVF should be criminalized, as BuzzFeed News reported. In response to concerns about this position, the White House directed BuzzFeed to a statement by Barrett on the day of her nomination: “Judges are not policymakers, and they must be resolute in setting aside any policy views they might hold.”
Barrett, a Catholic and member of the religious group People of Praise, has also said that she personally believes life begins at conception, and that Roe “ignited a national controversy” by deciding the issue of abortion by court order rather than leaving it to the states.
However, Barrett has also said several times that she believes the Supreme Court will not overturn Roe.
“I don’t think the core case, Roe’s core holding that women have a right to an abortion, I don’t think that would change,” she said in a 2016 appearance at Jacksonville University. “But I think the question of whether people can get very late-term abortions, you know, how many restrictions can be put on clinics, I think that will change.”
The idea that the Court was more likely to let states chip away at abortion access than to reverse Roe outright was common for many years among advocates on both sides of the abortion issue. Indeed, conservative state legislatures have worked for years to restrict abortion within the bounds of Roe, with Louisiana, Texas, and other states passing numerous laws that have shut down clinics across the South and Midwest.
But now the calculus is changing.
As Nina Totenberg and Domenico Montanaro note at NPR, Trump has already appointed two conservative justices to the Court, moving it significantly to the right. And some believe that Chief Justice John Roberts may be more amenable to a direct challenge to Roe than to the kinds of incremental clinic restrictions that were at issue in the recent June Medical Services v. Russo, in which he voted to strike down a Louisiana abortion law.
And, of course, the death of Justice Ginsburg leaves Trump the opportunity to pull the Court even further to the right. Should Barrett join it, conservative justices might well have the votes — and the will — to go after the right to an abortion directly. If they do, states would be able to ban abortion outright, rather than just passing laws making the procedure harder to get.
Should such an opportunity present itself, Barrett has made clear that judicial precedent wouldn’t necessarily be an obstacle for her. The judge has said she believes the Supreme Court has the responsibility to revisit and potentially overturn old rulings that its current members feel conflict with the Constitution.
“I tend to agree with those who say that a justice’s duty is to the Constitution and that is thus more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks is clearly in conflict with it,” Barrett wrote in 2013.
Like previous nominees to the Supreme Court, including Brett Kavanaugh, Barrett declined to provide substantive answers about her thoughts on Roe during her confirmation hearing, arguing that to do so “signals to litigants that I might tilt one way or another on a pending case.” However, she did provide some clues.
For example, she referred to a category of rulings she called “superprecedents” or “cases that are so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling,” as CBS News reported. That category included the cases Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down school segregation, and Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated laws against interracial marriage, she said — but not Roe v. Wade. In the case of that decision, “calls for its overruling have never ceased,” Barrett told the Senate Judiciary Committee. To many, that signaled that she saw Roe as a decision the current Court could revisit — and potentially reverse.
Despite her past votes and writings, no one knows for sure how Barrett will rule in a Supreme Court abortion case until she gets to consider one. But one thing is clear: Barrett has no particular allegiance to Roe v. Wade, or to Supreme Court precedent more generally. And if she is given the opportunity to overturn the 1973 decision, nothing in her record suggests she won’t take it.