At a press conference on Monday afternoon, Interior Minister Karner explained that it had originally been assumed that the war in Ukraine would tend to lead to a decrease in the number of refugees from other regions. But the opposite is the case: In the first quarter, more than 11,000 asylum applications were made in Austria, which corresponds to an increase of 115 percent. Many people smugglers apparently tried to use the supposedly lax controls through free travel for Ukrainians for their own purposes.
With the “Aktion Scharf” the Ministry of the Interior now wants to take action against asylum abuse. 300 priority actions are planned, called “abuse grid squares”, on different levels. Up to 1,400 police officers from the Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum to the customs investigation and financial police are said to be on duty at the same time. They want to start at various levels, with the fight against people smugglers being a priority. There should be more controls in the high-level road network, where most arrests are made in the border area with Hungary, as well as on trains. To do this, they rely on the means of veil manhunt, so far more smugglers have been arrested this year than in 2021. At that time there were 400, this year 123 arrests in the first three months.
There is help for those who need it, but they react consistently when the system threatens to be exploited, according to the interior minister. He also recalled that among the top 5 nations with the countries of origin India, Turkey and Tunisia are three countries whose citizens are only granted asylum in very rare cases. The Ministry of the Interior is also concerned with the subject of social fraud. In the first quarter, 200,000 euros were already reclaimed for basic security, but it is also suspicious if “three cars are suddenly registered for a needy asylum seeker”, according to the Interior Minister.
