The right of asylum is one thing: the duty of the State to regulate immigration with a view to the common good is quite another”, said Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, President of the Austrian Bishops’ Conference, during an interview with the Austrian magazine News . The cardinal was commenting on the recent “Arigona” case, the girl from Kosovo who refused to be expelled from Austria. “We must never forget that a distinction needs to be drawn between refugees and immigrants”, said the cardinal, rejecting the claim that in the case in question recourse had been made to ecclesiastical asylum, “a legal concept of a bygone age”. “But it is the obvious duty of the Church to show mercy”, he added, saying he was “happy a parish priest had devoted himself to Arigona”. “The right of asylum is sacrosanct. Undoubtedly, however, it is essential to adjust the formulae of the Geneva Convention, which date back to the time of the Cold War, to existing situations”, he admitted, also pointing out the need to have “greater information about the countries of origin of asylum-seekers”. Schönborn expressly hoped that children aged 14 to 18 would not be subjected to expulsion procedures, because it “has traumatic effects on the adolescents involved”. “Immigration has always existed”, he recalled. “But the way it which it is regulated constantly changes: the political process exists to this end”. Nonetheless, he warned, asylum, immigration and integration must not be considered “primarily as a problem of security”. “Clearly, cases of abuse exist, for example also abuses of the right to asylum. But to suspect in general that the immigrants who arrive in Austria have criminal intentions is profoundly unjust”, he concluded.
