Stepped up border checks stem the flow of asylum seekers and refugees for whom Ukraine is a transit country for points further west
It’s a weekday morning, and a group of Afghan women in Kyiv are waiting for their children to finish language
classes. Unlike their sisters in Afghanistan, these women don’t have to muffle up in veils and hide the fact that they were once teachers, lawyers or doctors.
But that’s small consolation. Instead, on Kyiv’s streets most of these women take their children everywhere with them as shields against the local police who can detain them, fine them and abuse them because they are in the country illegally.
These women are among the estimated 500,000 illegal migrants in Ukraine. Some of them are bona fide asylum seekers who have applied for refugee status and have been denied. Others, their sights firmly set on points west, haven’t even bothered applying but are living in Ukraine until they can find a route out.
Most live in limbo. Without the documents that would make them official, they exist on the fringes, unable to work and constantly on the run from police. Most wouldn’t be allowed to return home even if they wanted to.
Last week, Ukrainian immigration officials revealed that the number of illegal migrants detained in the country fell by 5 percent during the first half of the year. That figure came as good news to authorities who for the past year have been intensifying their efforts to stem the flow of illegal migrants into the country.
But for the migrants themselves, the number indicates that the heat is being turned up. And they’re right.
According to Pavlo Shysholin, head of the state committee for defense of Ukrainian state borders, officials have stepped up checks at the borders where in the past, migrants passed without problem. These checks resulted in more than 1,000 potential illegal immigrants being refused entry in 1999 at Boryspil Airport alone.
Of the 5,448 illgeal immigrants who were detained in all of Ukraine so far this year, 4 percent were from China, 8 percent from India and 14 percent from Sri Lanka. The biggest group of all – 36 percent – were from Afghanistan.
Sarah Rasuly is one who fled Afghanistan four years ago with her two children. The family sought asylum from wars at home and in Tajikistan, where Rasuly had been studying.
She would have seemed a perfect asylum candidate. After all, as well as being connected with the former regime in Afghanistan, she is a well-educated professional. Such women cannot work and are discriminated against under the Taliban regime.
But the family’s application for asylum was turned down by Ukrainian authorities. Ever since, she has been living the precarious life of an illegal migrant.
“Here we live worse than in Afghanistan,” she says. “No documents, no work. My children can’t go to school; I can’t get medical help. But worse still is that the police give us no peace.”
Many women like Rasuly hardly dare step out of doors without their children, who they says act as “half a document” with the police, who are less inclined to stop them or treat them harshly.
They are totally reliant on the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, which provides them with a small living allowance and a center where their children can learn the Afghan language and customs.
Illegal migrants are essentially stranded by Ukrainian authorities. Ukraine does not give them even temporary residence permits, but neither can it send them back to their home country or even to the country they immediately came from – usually Russia. Migrants detained at the border eventually end up on trains back to Kyiv, where they are simply turned loose.
“This is creating the problem of a limbo situation for many people,” said Pierfrancesco Natta, senior protection officer at the UNHCR. “Basically they are forced to stay in the country illegally and they are under continual harassment from the police forces.”
Many of the would-be asylum seekers have no option but to join the flow of illegal migrants trying to travel to the West through southern and western Ukraine. The journey is expensive, but there is an endless supply of traffickers, both local and international, willing to facilitate the journey in refrigerator trucks, trains, boats and just on foot.
“If I could find the money and the way,” Rasuly says, “I’d go. I’d go tomorrow. I’d even walk. Because here, I’ve just had enough; I get no peace.”
On the western border with Slovakia, Ukraine’s inability to handle the enormous transit trade in migrants and asylum seekers is immediately evident. Since NATO bombs halted a favorite channel via the Danube, the Slovak crossing has become the main route. Last year, 7,600 people were stopped here – over half of the illegal migrants detained altogether in Ukraine.
Harried border guards say they don’t even have gasoline for their vehicles to patrol the border, let alone up-to-date monitoring equipment. The European Union has poured money into border management of its candidate countries Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, but Ukraine has been left to cope alone.
When migrants are caught, they are sent to a detention center in nearby Mukacheve, which is near the Hungarian and Slovakian border. There they stay for up to 10 days while the border guards try to find out who they are and how they came to Ukraine. It’s a painstaking task; none have documents and few speak Russian or European languages.
Until recently, the detainees were kept in two tents provided by the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration. The tents had beds for 30; at times, they held more than 200. Recently, thanks to the UNHCR, women and children were moved to a slightly less dilapidated hostel, with space for 50.
The border guards have no funds to feed or house migrants while they carry out their investigations. The UNHCR, via the local Adventist Relief Association (ADRA), provides basic humanitarian aid to migrants during their stay. According to Ilya Pirchak, an Adventist pastor who runs the aid agency efforts in Mukacheve, the Afghan migrants whom he sees, usually traveling with wives and children, should qualify as asylum seekers in Ukraine.
“They come here to save their lives, but Ukraine doesn’t grant them that, the militia treat them so badly,” Pirchak said. “Some try to live here, and even have refugee status … . But they soon see that if there [in Afghanistan] they can die from a bullet, here they can die of starvation.”
One of ADRA’s jobs is to inform migrants that they can claim asylum in Ukraine. Many refuse, saying they have relatives in Western countries, Pirchak said. Some agree to apply, only to be denied.
“But when we took on some people here, the local authorities frowned at us, asking why we were helping these people stay in Ukraine,” Pirchak said.
The UNHCR wants Ukraine to sign the 51st convention, which regulates asylum law worldwide, to accept more refugees so that large numbers of asylum seekers never get to Western Europe. Despite making positive noises, Ukrainian authorities have failed to do so; Natta believes, because they are worried about the additional financial burden of coping with more refugees.
But not everyone is convinced that if Ukraine loosened its refugee laws, it would have any real effect on the numbers of asylum seekers versus illegal migrants passing through Ukraine. According to J. Steven Cook, who heads the International Organization for Migration in Ukraine, it’s not the law the keeps most people out.
“I don’t think that’s the defining thing,” he said. “What’s defining is that very few people claim asylum in Ukraine because nobody wants to stay in Ukraine.”
