Most asylum-seekers unaccounted for after leaving Swiss centre

The majority of asylum-seekers who left a federal departure centre near Zurich have vanished without a trace, the Swiss government concluded after testing accelerated asylum measures over 15 months. A total of 649 asylum-seekers were admitted to the Embrach departure centre between the time of its opening in March 2017 and early June 2018. The State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) said on Wednesday that 309 out of the 503 asylum-seekers who left the centre did so in an uncontrolled manner. In other words, the authorities have no knowledge where they went after the centre. That figure corresponds to around 61% of all departures. The federal departure centre in Embrach was part of a pilot project in which the federal authorities, along with the procedural centre in Zurich, tested the new Asylum Act. The changes to asylum legislation will come into force at the beginning of 2019. They are the outcome of a 2016 vote, in which the government gained public backing to reform and speed ...