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STRASBOURG, France-European Union lawmakers voted Wednesday to allow undocumented migrants to be held in detention centers for up to 18 months and banned from European Union territory for five years. Criticized by groups like Amnesty International as “severely flawed” and an erosion of human rights standards, the so-called return directive passed in the European Parliament here by a vote of 369 to 197, with 106 legislators abstaining.Manfred Weber, the German center-right legislator from Bavaria who shepherded the measure through the parliament, said that each country should decide for itself how to handle undocumented residents. “The member states must decide whether they need them — if so, then please legalize them,” he said. “If you don’t need them for your labor markets, then send them home.”Ten amendments to the measure, proposed by Socialists and intended to offer migrants some protections and legal recourse, were rejected. They included the necessity for a judge’s approval for detention within 72 hours of an arrest, the obligation to provide detainees with legal counsel and the possibility of making the five-year re-entry ban optional. Other amendments would have reduced the maximum detention period to six months rather than 18 and insisted on greater assurances for the protection of unaccompanied children.One opponent of the measure, Cimade — the only French nongovernmental organization authorized to work in France’s 23 detention centers — released a statement saying that it deplored the passage of what civil liberties groups have called “the directive of shame,” and said it was studying the possibility of contesting it before the European Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights.The Europe Union has freedom of movement among 25 of its 27 member states but no overarching policy on immigration. Supporters see the new measure as a means to unify a patchwork of systems governing treatment of migrants who overstay their visas or who, in far lesser numbers, slip clandestinely across its borders.The European Union has a total of 224 detention centers for migrants, with capacity for 30,871 people. National regulations on how long they can be confined vary; in France, it is 32 days; in Germany, 18 months. Eight European Union countries have no time limit on detention. European legislators visiting Denmark in April said they were concerned about some detainees who had been held for eight years.Mr. Weber said the measure passed Wednesday provided a limit on detention in those eight countries — though two, Denmark and Britain, can opt out of the restriction. But opponents fear that it will encourage countries with shorter detention lengths to extend them.Dragutin Mate, the interior minister of Slovenia who is the council’s president, had warned lawmakers that failure to approve the directive would mean no agreement on immigration in the European Union for at least three years, which would jeopardize pending legislation on workers’ rights.The vote came a day after António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said that the world was dealing with “a complex mix of global challenges” that could threaten even more forced displacements than the 37.4 million people last year.The refugee agency is concerned about those fleeing conflict or persecution who have the right under international law to seek asylum but opt for undocumented entry to Europe because of a lack of legal channels.It says that large numbers of people will be subject to the directive’s five-year re-entry ban, which does not take account of changes in their home countries that could force them to leave again.
As in the days of Noah....
