Now Austria wants to PAY migrants hundreds to LEAVE in desperate bid to ease crisis

AUSTRIA plans to pay migrants £380 each to go back to their homeland in a desperate bid to ease the deepening crisis.

The country’s government hopes the last-ditch tactic will help encourage a staggering 50,000 migrants to leave the country by 2019.

According to officials in Vienna, the full sum will only be paid if the migrant decides to leave quickly before the government rules on their asylum case.

The drastic plans have been drawn up by the country’s foreign ministry, interior ministry and defence ministry – which will be flying thousands of migrants home.

Austrian interior minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said the country has one of the highest deportation levels in Europe.

Austria deported 8,365 migrants in 2015, but the member state increased that to 12,500 last year in order to meet the plan’s obligations – and Ms Mikl-Leitner said “we will further increase our success rate”.

Adverts will also be placed in adverts in migrant-origin countries and on social media encouraging migrants to stay in their home countries, according to Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung.

The country is an asylum destination for migrants from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Georgia, Mongolai and Ghana while also planning to expand its list of safe countries in order to make it easier to send individuals back.

Questions have also been raised on how the Austrian army plans to patrol the borders.

Minister Hans Peter Doskozil has suggested stationing soldiers on the borders and even training citizens to patrol them, according to Austrian paper OE24.

He said: “We now need to prepare as soon as possible. Time is running out.”

It comes just days after Finland announced it plans to deport around 20,000 asylum seekers it received last year.

Around two-thirds of the 32,000 asylum seekers who arrived in Finland in 2015 are estimated to be gradually deported, as immigration authorities process applications.

Interior ministry official Paivi Nerg said: “In principle we speak of about two-thirds, meaning approximately 65 percent of the 32,000 will get a negative decision.”

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