Kosovo-born Agron Salihi’s confrontation with the Romanian immigration system lasted for five months and ended badly for him, when the 30-year-old was expelled.
Salihi illegally entered Romania in autumn 2016, together with his brother, through a south-western crossing covertly used by migrants on their way to Schengen states, according to his court file.
A convicted felon in Germany, Salihi asked for refugee status in Romania, arguing that ethnic Roma like him face discrimination in Kosovo. But in February 2017, a local court in the town of Giurgiu, where he was being accommodated as an asylum-seeker, ruled in favour of Romania’s Immigration General Inspectorate to deport Salihi to his home country.
Salihi is just one of hundreds of migrants from Kosovo and Albania who are believed to have sought an alternative route to Western Europe via Romania since Hungary was closed to them in the spring of 2016 when the Budapest government finished building a four-metre-tall, 175-kilometre-long fence on its border with Serbia to stop migrants entering the country.
Data from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, shows that after the fence was completed, illegal crossings of the Serbian-Romanian border grew tenfold in the first six months of 2017 compared to the same period a year earlier.
Romanian border police told BIRN that from the beginning of 2016 to March 2018, 148 Kosovo citizens and 95 Albanians were detained for illegal border-crossing.
However, the Romanian authorities refuse to give many more details about migrants from Kosovo because of the political sensitivities involved, as Romania is one of five EU countries which do not recognise Kosovo’s independence. Kosovo identity documents are accepted by Romania only to establish the identity of a specific person.
If migrants from Kosovo are caught after entering Romania, they are prosecuted and sent back to Serbia unless they ask for asylum, when they can stay in Romania until a court rules on their requests.
The fact that Serbia also does not recognise Kosovo further complicates migrants’ status and repatriation procedures. Serbian police declined to comment about what they do with Kosovo migrants who have been deported from other countries such as Romania.
Meanwhile Kosovo police do not have direct cooperation with their Serbian counterparts to exchange information on migrants, and notifications of attempted illegal border crossings are not transferred to the Pristina authorities..
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
