A girls soccer team from Congo applied for visa to Schengen (meaning most of the EU countries + Norway) to take part in the worlds largest soccer tournament for young people in Oslo this summer. It turns out that the "Dynamo Girls" don’t exist and they never arrived. 17 girls and their “coaches” are now unaccounted for.
The incident is very embarrassing for Norwegian government since it appears that the visa process was more than careless. Standard routine was put aside in order to give the soccer team’s application a speedy response in time for them to attend the tournament.
Worst case, the young girls may now have been "exported" as prostitutes. At best, they are simply another group of illegal immigrants, somewhere in Europe ...
The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration suspected early that something was wrong but together with the Foreign Office still hesitates to recall the visas. See story in Aftenposten here (Norwegian only)
The affair comes at a time when the present left of centre government is under heavy criticism from its main opposition party for being too lax on asylum seekers. Even after promising to tighten rules, the number of asylum seekers are record high. The most contentious issue is the frequent acceptance of minors that carry no ID (flushed down the toilet before approaching Immigration). See story here in English.
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