As a result of the rapid growth in the number of asylum seekers arriving via Storskog border crossing in autumn 2015, the Immigration Appeals Board (UNE) established a special fast-track project to deal with this portfolio.
UNE has now considered most of the just over 2,000 cases received, and the project organisation has therefore been discontinued.
The cases have been given special priority throughout the immigration administration. In connection with such an increase in the number of cases, it is particularly important that the immigration administration also attends to society's interests in quickly clarifying who are entitled to residence and who will have to leave the country. This requires appeals to be considered quickly. Through this project, UNE has succeeded in reducing case processing times for appeals significantly, without compromising the thorough consideration of cases or the appellant’s due process protection.
The objective of the project was to reduce case processing times as much as possible, while ensuring that the quality of the case processing remained satisfactory. UNE must safeguard the appellant’s due process protection in all cases, whether they be routine cases or more complex ones, and this consideration has been as important in this project as in any other case.
Resources were allocated to complete cases within a very short time, while UNE has taken the time needed to deal with cases that needed further clarification. As stated in the section on case processing times, the goal was to reach a decision in as many as possible of the Storskog cases within 14 days.
After most of the cases have been concluded, the case processing times as of 15 September are as follows: The average case processing time for all Storskog cases is 15.4 days. This is significantly shorter than UNE’s ordinary case processing times for appeals cases.
For cases decided by a board chair following case preparation by the secretariat, the average case processing time is 14 days. Seventy-two per cent of the cases were considered within the concrete deadlines set for case processing, while more time was required in the remaining cases.
The reason for this is that some cases were complicated and required particularly thorough consideration of both legal matters and the facts of the case. This includes 57 cases (31 sets of related cases) that were considered in Appeals Board hearings (with or without the appellant appearing in person). In addition, two cases were considered at a Grand Board hearing.
- So far, 20 cases have been considered in Appeals Board hearings where the appellant appeared in person, with an average case processing time of 86 days.
- 37 cases have been considered in Appeals Board hearings without the appellant appearing in person, with an average case processing time of 33.4 days.
- The case processing times for the two cases decided at Grand Board hearings was 33 and 69 days, respectively.
A total of 3.9% of the Storskog cases that have been decided will be considered in Appeals Board hearings. This is about the same percentage of Appeals Board hearings as for other asylum appeals cases.