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Less than half of migrants apply for international protection: Border Guard

“Only 44 percent of people staying in (refugee) centers have applied for international protection,” 2nd Lt. Anna Michalska, the spokeswoman for the Border Guard said. “Not all people want to submit such applications for economic reasons. They count on welfare in Germany,” she added.

The spokeswoman also confirmed the information about the immigrants with children staying at the refugee center in Michałów, eastern Poland. She said that they were asked if they wanted to submit an application for international protection in Poland, they answered that they wanted asylum, but in Germany, therefore they were sent back to the border.

“Foreigners behaved completely differently when they saw journalists, and they behaved completely differently in the presence of Border Guard officers,” she emphasised.

“These people received help from Border Guard officers. They received beverages and food, none of them needed medical help and did not report that they expected such help, otherwise such help would be given to them. Border Guard officers informed them about the possibility of submitting an application for international aid, but the parents of the children were not interested. They were only interested in making such an application in Germany,” the deputy Interior and Administration Minister Maciej Wąsik stressed.

A state of emergency has been in force since September 2. It pertained to 183 municipalities (115 in the Podlaskie province and 68 in the Lubelskie province) and was introduced for 30 days under the ordinance of President Andrzej Duda, issued at the request of the Council of Ministers.

On 1 October Poland’s Sejm, the country parliament’s lower house, approved a Presidential ordinance prolonging the state of emergency by 60 days in areas close to the country’s border with Belarus owing to an attempt by the Alyaksandr Lukashenka regime to destabilise Poland and the EU by pushing migrants from the Middle East across the frontier.

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