Tough asylum laws which the United Nations says could be the most restrictive in the European Union have been approved in Austria. Bethany Bell investigates.
 Austria is among European nations concerned at asylum levels |
Amina is sitting in a small transit area at Vienna's Schwechat Airport, waiting to be interviewed by Austrian border police. She is Liberian and says she has run away from the war in her country. She has false documents.
"When I ran away from my country I saw one white man," she tells me.
"When I explained everything to him the white man gave me a passport, he took me to the plane, he gave me everything. He said when I reach here, they will help me.
"So about four days now I am here. That's it."
Other asylum seekers are also waiting in the transit area. The airport is the first contact with Austria for many asylum seekers. Most of them don't make it through passport control.
Under the new plans, approved by parliament on Thursday, things could get tougher still.
The United Nations Refugee agency (UNHCR) says the measures could lead to breaches of the Geneva Convention on refugees.
 The task of separating refugees from economic migrants is hard |
They include deporting some asylum seekers while their appeals are held, asking for full statements within 72 hours of people's arrival and medically certifying cases involving traumatised people. But the Austrian Government insists it is just trying to speed up the asylum process.
Austria, it says, has more asylum seekers per capita than any other EU country and the system is on the point of collapse.
"We had 39,000 cases last year. Austria is an asylum country, not a country of immigration," says Guenther Koessl, the ruling conservative party's spokesman on security issues.
"We have to take into consideration that 85% are economic migrants. We all agree the process has to be speeded up. It's very important not to upset our own people." At a hostel in Vienna, Hossein, a political refugee from Iran, is eating lunch with his wife and children.
He has been waiting for three years to find out whether his appeal for asylum will succeed. His parents and brothers have already been granted asylum in Britain.
"Just I can say, please, for all the refugees - give the results soon. How many years can I wait?," he asks. "Three years, it's very long."
 |  It would bring Austria into a rather small group of the most restrictive and most negative asylum laws that exist  |
However under the new amendments, Hossein would probably have been deported back to Iran before his appeal was even put forward. Now that the measures have been approved, many asylum seekers won't be allowed to stay in Austria during their appeal process.
Heinz Stieb from the Austrian organisation Volkshilfe says strict new rules on evidence are also extremely problematic.
Traumatised
"The asylum seekers who make it into Austria will be brought to an asylum centre and within 72 hours they must tell their full story - which is quite unlikely to happen because these people are in a very stressful situation," he says.
"The only chance to have longer period of time is if they are traumatised. But the trauma must be medically certified and this, our experts tell us, is impossible to do.
"It would bring Austria into a rather small group of the most restrictive and most negative asylum laws that exist," he adds. Campaign groups in Austria and abroad say the new legislation may lead to breaches of the Geneva convention and the Austrian constitution - a charge Austria's interior minister Ernst Strasser denies.
"We are following the line of the European Commission to the letter. We are speeding up the process in full legal security," he insists.
Back at the airport, more planes are arriving and the transit waiting area is filling up with people without passports or visas.
Some of them are trying to seek their fortunes and others are fleeing for their lives. Whether the new laws will be able to tell the two apart is by no means certain.
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