NCFCA Policy Debate: Joint Processing Centers - Bad Idea (NEG)

Dublin Rule right now requires the first country to which an asylum seeker arrives to process his asylum claim.  “Frontline” states like Italy and Greece get overwhelmed just because of their geographical location.  This plan creates teams of asylum processing case managers who come in from other EU countries to processing centers created in the “frontline” states (Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Malta) to help them manage the case load.  It’s based on a study done in 2013 and a pilot project in 2014.  The 2013 study came up with 4 possible ways (known as Options A through D) to implement the centers, and settled on Option A as the most feasible.  AFF’s 1AC solvency evidence from the study is quoting the results of Option A, so that’s what we quote here from that study in critiquing it.  The reason the experts in the study advocated Option A was because it was an insignificant change that would hardly be noticed, and the study also listed disadvantages and problems that might block its effectiveness.   Be careful with letting the AFF quote from any other sections of the study, because once they quote solvency evidence from Option A, they’re committed to that as the methodology of their plan.

The other problem with their solvency studies is that some new developments have occurred since those studies were written.  Greece and Italy tried joint processing centers (known as “hot spots”) in 2015 and it was a failure.  The EU also “Asylum Support Teams,” (AST) in which the Status Quo pretty much does what the AFF plan is trying to do.  These are teams that come in whenever there’s a crisis or the member nation requests help and they provide additional manpower to process asylum claims faster.