Austrian Foreign Minister: “gifted children don’t migrate to Austria”

Austria currently holds the rotating Presidency of the Council of Europe, under the motto “A Europe that Protects.” The phrase is telling of Austria’s strict new immigration policies, which include cutting welfare benefits for refugees who fail to pass a German language exam. The UNHCR has criticized Austria’s decision to prevent refugees from beginning an apprenticeship until their asylum claims are processed.

Karin Kneissl, appointed Austria’s Foreign Minister by the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) in December of 2017, defended her country’s immigration policies last week at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs. She said that Austria’s priority should be to assist “true political refugees in the sense of the Geneva convention,” and that while Austria is a country founded by immigrants, “the arrival of young men from Afghanistan is a different story.”

Austria’s stance is part of a larger trend of anti-immigration policies among EU member states. President Emmanuel Macron of France has toughened asylum procedures, and Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini announced in June that he would repatriate 500,000 undocumented migrants. On Tuesday, Theresa May presented a new immigration policy for the UK that “ends freedom of movement once and for all.” These policies make little distinction between migrants seeking employment and refugees fleeing from violence. Despite the conflicts in Afghanistan, the EU continues to deny asylum applications and send large numbers of Afghan emigres back to their country.

Kneissl brought up the difficulty of integrating non-German-speaking migrants, and the struggles that school teachers in Austria faced when the majority of their pupils do not have German as their first language. She also said  that certain migrants are more desirable than others for a growing workforce,  and that the individuals who wish to settle in Austria are rarely the ones with the most potential. She blamed this on the country’s high taxes for private companies, and the fact that English is not its primary language.

She concluded that migrants go to Austria to squeeze its welfare state. “When you are the gifted child, you would like to go to the U.S.”

Kneissl also tackled the issue of foreign diplomacy, pointing out that the current Middle East wars originated in World War I, when world powers divided the region into spheres of influence. She said that these divisions continue today, both in the dispute over Israel-Palestine and in the Islamic State’s attempts to control Syria and Iraq.

Kneissl said that the international community should “refrain from all border changes,” not only in the Middle East, but in Africa and the former Yugoslav territories as well. “The last big mistake was separating South Sudan from North Sudan,” said Kneissl. “It didn’t lead anywhere.” Nor is she in favor of the proposed land swaps between Kosovo and Serbia.

“I cannot approve of anything that goes into dismembering states into ethnic units,” Kneissl said. She added that “what makes the Middle East” is the presence of a diverse mix of religions and ethnicities.

The Austrian government has also come under scrutiny for its relations with Russia, with Kneissl herself being criticized for dancing with Russian President Vladimir Putin at her wedding last summer.

Kneissl said that the reason Austria welcomes Russian diplomats is to continue Vienna’s legacy as “a multilateral meeting ground” where multiple agreements have been brokered, including the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal. Vienna hosted talks surrounding this agreement as recently as July of 2018.

“There has to be a place where people can meet,” said Kneissl, “You always have black sheep here and there.”

For Kneissl, foreign relations are about interaction, whether it’s friendly discussion or a shouting match. “I’m a little sobered when my colleagues simply look at their notes–they don’t look at one another, they don’t reply, they don’t refer to what has been said,” she confessed, then added, “This is not diplomacy.”

Photo: Syrian refugees crossing the border between Austria and Hungary in 2015\Wikipedia Commons.