An international immigration law expert said that humanitarian visas could guarantee safe access to European borders and protect refugees, who are now treated as illegal immigrants. "[Europe] is building a system for refugees, but without refugees," criticized Violeta Moreno-Lax, one of the people responsible for the work that underpinned a European Parliament initiative on creating humanitarian visas.
The researcher and Professor at Queen Mary University of London stressed that one of the problems of migration to Europe is precisely the impossibility of safe and legal access to European territory. “There is no mechanism for people fleeing Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria to legally go to Europe and apply for asylum. That is why, although we recognize the right to asylum and we are building a common asylum system, this system is not accessible to those who are supposed to benefit from it.”
Read the full piece here on the Observador website [Portuguese].