Afghan refugees at Guarulhos airport. Photo: Shabir Niazir/NGO ARRO
On Tuesday (26), the Ministries of Justice, Public Security and Foreign Affairs published the regulation linking the issuance of temporary visas to Afghans to vacancies in accommodation facilities that have signed an agreement with the Union. Professionals and people working to receive refugees An Asian country expressed concerns about the provisions of the regulation.
In a statement released the same day, the ministries justified the policy change by saying they wanted to “promote the humanitarian reception of Afghan immigrants in a safe, orderly and regular manner.”
“The new policy aims to ensure that Afghans receive a planned, organized and dignified reception upon their arrival in Brazil, in order to better promote local integration and the dignity of beneficiaries with security and prior preparation,” the statement said .
The only entry point for Afghans to Brazil is Guarulhos Airport in São Paulo, where, according to the city hall, as of Wednesday evening (27) 48 Afghans were seeking refuge and waiting to be received. According to the municipal administration, the 257 reception places for migrants and refugees, of which 207 are managed by the town hall and 50 by the state government, are occupied.
With the new regulation, the refugee has 180 days to arrive in Brazil after the visa is issued, which is issued exclusively by the Brazilian embassies in Tehran (Iran) and Islamabad (Pakistan). Until then, approval was still granted at embassies in Moscow, Russia; Ankara, Türkiye; Doha, in Qatar; or Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
The representative of the United Nations Refugee Agency in Brazil (UNHCR), Davide Torzilli, argues that the presence of people of the same nationality in the reception and, above all, in maintaining the family nucleus can be fundamental for the stay of Afghans in Brazil definitely.
The UNHCR official said that authorities must adapt reception measures to the specificities of each people and that vulnerable people and people in a climate of instability, as is the case with refugees, are not always able to organize escape and travel according to their needs. planned. “It’s often a matter of life and death,” he muses.
For Torzilli, the regulation published on the 26th signals the federal government’s commitment to this matter. “That’s why it’s important to view the arrival of refugees in solidarity.”
Victor Del Vecchio, lawyer and master in international law at the University of São Paulo (USP), considers Brazil to be a good reference in terms of migration legislation, since it takes into account several vulnerability criteria that guarantee entry and stay in the country. However, he predicts an even slower pace of issuing humanitarian visas and a reduction in the number of embassies responsible for fulfilling this role.
“This places geographical restrictions on where people can submit applications, and we know that Afghans go where they can go, not exactly where they want. By limiting the number of locations that process these orders, we also reduce the capacity to process a demand that was already much larger than the flow.”
According to Del Vecchio, “creating bureaucratic barriers to migration flows does not necessarily have an impact on reduction.” Often this only has an impact on the increased vulnerability that this process entails. In other words, people keep coming in because they find a way to get there, and that means they end up coming in an irregular way, or it can even end up increasing corruption. “Visas are becoming more scarce and in the end, preference is given to families who have more access to professionals who work with these processes and even with the corruption of system operators,” he explains.
In a note to Brazil AgencyAccording to the administration of Guarulhos Airport, the responsibility for receiving the Afghans lies with the Guarulhos City Hall, which maintains a humanized service point for this purpose and extends the service to other refugees.
Editing by Fernando Fraga Information from Agência Brasil