France takes in first refugees screened in Africa under new asylum policy
Paris — France on Monday accepted a first group of 19 refugees who were identified in Africa under an overhauled asylum policy that will also see it expel thousands of economic migrants. While it has drawn little public outcry in France, the policy faces stiff opposition from the left and from charities that shelter migrants, 22 of which called in an open letter for France’s rights ombudsman Jacques Toubon to intervene. Djamel, a refugee from the Central African Republic, arrived at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport with his wife and four children after spending four years at a camp in Chad, telling AFP: "Now we’ve no other family. Now you are our family." The new refugees — also hailing from Sudan — were brought to France from the camp in the Chadian capital N’Djamena where Djamel said about 1,000 people were sheltering. The programme, which expects to identify 3,000 African refugees by 2019, aims to prevent people from risking their lives at sea. More than 3,000 have died attempti...
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