HAGUE LETTER:The ruling on a deportation case of a 14-year-old girl from Afghanistan will have wide-reaching effects
FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD Sahar has lived in Holland for more than a decade. She speaks Dutch, is in the pre-university stream at school, and dreams of becoming a surgeon.
But that will surely never happen if she’s deported to her native Afghanistan.
Sahar’s future will be decided by the Dutch supreme court in an appeal that opens next Wednesday, bringing to an end a case that has prompted angry accusations that the law – and Dutch immigration policy – is an ass.
The problem for the Dutch government is that, if the court finds its immigration policy is indeed asinine, it will be deemed asinine not just in the case of Sahar, but in the cases of another 400 or so “westernised” Afghan girls in much the same precarious situation.
That figure was confirmed just days ago in a briefing note to MPs from Gerd Leers, the immigration minister at the centre of the dispute – who says that about 100 of those 400 are still involved in appeals, while the remaining 300 have already been told they must leave the country.
A total of 2,600 adult women and 830 girls have so far been refused asylum, the briefing note revealed.
Refugee groups have launched a petition to stop Sahar’s deportation, conscious of the fact that, if she wins, the rules of this tough immigration “game” will have changed dramatically – and families whose children have been raised here will have a valuable new claim on residency.
In the media – at least the more considered sections of it – the case of Sahar Hbrahimgel has prompted a wider debate about the logic of deporting a teenager on whose integration and education so much time and public money have been spent, and spent successfully.
Where, the government’s critics ask, is the sense of sending such a 14-year-old success story back to a potentially dangerous war-torn country about which she apparently remembers nothing and whose language she doesn’t even speak?
The Hbrahimgel family, who live in the town of Sint Annaparochie, have been turned down for asylum three times during the past 10 years.
Their supporters, including Sahar’s school, claim that unacceptably slow immigration procedures have contributed to a situation in which to deport them now would be unacceptable.
In fact, they appeared to have beaten the authorities last year when a court in Den Bosch ruled against the original immigration service decision that Sahar could adapt to living in Afghanistan – and that, irony of ironies, it had been her family’s own choice to lead a western lifestyle.
The judge instructed the immigration minister to reconsider that decision – which Gerd Leers did by appealing it to the supreme court, the end of the official line for Sahar and her family.
Who is right and who is wrong? If the government wins, have the Hbrahimgels and their daughter no moral entitlement to remain in Holland?
If the family win, what are the consequences for the government’s immigration policy and the principles on which it rests?
Voices are raised on both sides. The case has been mentioned by the opposition in the Dutch parliament.
One of the most unusual elements of Sahar’s case has been the intervention of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which rarely becomes directly involved in an asylum case.
This time though, the UNHCR urged the government to recognise Sahar as a refugee in her own right, distinct from her family.
It has also written to the family’s lawyer, Paul Stieger, saying that in its opinion, were the teenager to be returned to Afghanistan, she would be in danger from the Taliban and other extremist groups who would regard her western ways as “immoral”.
While the case of Sahar Hbrahimgel is unlikely ever to lead to unrest on the streets, privately many of the more politically astute MPs on the government benches in parliament may be hoping that the Supreme Court will listen to the UNHCR.
As one political observer said: “The government is appealing this case because it wants to win. Okay, but if it wins, what happens next?
“Do we really want to see this family and this 14-year-old girl who had such high hopes for the West being put on a plane back to Kabul and whatever awaits them? That is the realpolitik and it’s not pretty.”
