The Midlands-North-West candidate for the European Parliament went further than the recommendation in an internal Fianna Fáil report on immigration which recommends that asylum seekers who commit a serious crime while awaiting decisions on their international protection applications should be immediately deported.
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“Anybody that comes into this country, or if they’re seeking asylum or have been granted refugee status, if you break the law, you need to be sent back. And that’s what the public are asking us for.” Mr Andrews said of the pact however that “the overall message here is that we have to get the balance right between the protecting the human rights people who are fleeing well-founded fear of persecution, while also restoring public trust in migration management, not just in Ireland, across the European Union.”
He added that if elected he would campaign for the reintroduction of an EU search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean Sea.