Norway to pay asylum seekers to leave

Norway is offering asylum seekers 30,000 krone (£2,517) to leave the country voluntarily.

The offer, which came into effect yesterday, will run for six weeks and will be paid to the first 500 asylum seekers who apply for voluntary return to their home countries.

The funds are an increase to the previously proposed 20,000 krone (£1,678).

“We need to entice more people to voluntarily travel back by giving them a bit more money on their way out. This will save us a lot of money because it is expensive to have people in the asylum centres,” Minister of Immigration and Integration Sylvi Listhaug said.

“There are also many who are not entitled to protection and, by all means, are going to be rejected. It’s better for us to stimulate their travel back,” she added.

There are some 25,861 asylum seekers waiting in asylum centres in Norway, a majority of them are from Somalia, Eritrea and Syria, according to official data.

Asylum seeker Mohammad Seifan told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed: “The authorities are kind of begging us to leave the country by giving us about $4,000 while some refugees have borrowed twice that amount to get here.”

Human rights groups in Scandinavian countries criticise what they call the authorities’ disregard for human life through policies that prolong the waiting period and then offer financial incentives to leave.

More than 7,000 asylum seekers have been waiting for more than a year to hear from immigration authorities in Norway.