• Blair’s Reckless Population Explosion Sowed the Seeds of Brexit, Though Few Will Now Admit It

    The greatest failure of modern British governance was to encourage mass immigration to the U.K. and fail to prepare for the impact it would have, Philip Johnston writes in The Telegraph. “It is at the root of much that afflicts the nation today, from the agony of Brexit to the near-terminal pressure on the NHS and the housing crisis with all its attendant consequences.” “Bizarrely, political discourse has raged around the creaking NHS, the crowded trains, the snarled up roads, the lack of homes, the crammed prisons, the cost of pensions and the woeful state of social care, all without ever focusing on the cause for fear of being denounced as racist,” he writes, adding: “There were two ways to address this matter. Either stop adding to the population with a policy of net zero immigration. Or accept that the increase was unstoppable, even welcome in view of the fact that we had so many more older, economically inactive people, and ensure the infrastructure was in place to cope.”

  • U.S. Not Alone in Restricting Asylum Eligibility

    U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to dramatically curtail claims for asylum in the United States — cheered by the administration’s supporters and condemned by immigration rights advocates — is unprecedented on America’s southern border but not unique on the world stage. Europe in particular has imposed restrictive rules for asylum-seekers that predate this year’s flurry of activity in the United States.

  • Religious Bias against Refugees

    Give me your Christian, your female, your English-speaking with a good education? While not the words on the Statue of Liberty, these seem to be the kinds of refugees that the American public prefers –according to a new study. The study shows that religion is the most powerful source of discrimination.

  • High Tech at the Border Wall... and the Government Wants More

    Border Patrol agents say one of the most helpful types of technology in the region is the network of underground sensors placed along the riverbank and nearby dirt trails. They detect movement and notify agents of activity, like migrants illegally scrambling across the border. “There’s a lot of focus on just the wall. The wall is just one aspect of a multi-layered approach that we utilize to secure our borders,” says George Gomez, a Border Patrol agent in the El Paso sector of the southern border the United States shares with Mexico. “If they’re able to actually scale the wall and come down on the U.S. side safely without injuring themselves, then they’re going to step on one of our sensors that are magnetic, seismic or infrared. And that alerts us to activity in that area,” he says.

  • Catch-22: Stricter Border Enforcement May Increase Agent Corruption

    When a customs officer in El Paso, Texas was arrested for conspiracy to smuggle marijuana into the U.S between 2003 and 2007, investigators found she had sought a job with the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency mainly to enable the smuggling operation. Analysis of corruption cases among customs officers and border patrol agents reveals alarming trends depending on their years of service.

  • NYC Bans Calling Someone an “Illegal Alien” out of Hate

    It’s now against the law in New York City to threaten someone with a call to immigration authorities or refer to them as an “illegal alien” when motivated by hate. The restrictions — violations of which are punishable by fines of up to $250,000 per offense — are outlined in a 29-page directive released by City Hall’s Commission on Human Rights. The Commission on Human Rights made clear that the directive is, at least in part, a rebuke of federal crackdowns on illegal immigration.

  • Border Communities Inundated with Surveillance Technologies

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) the other day published The Atlas of Surveillance: Southwestern Border Communities. The Atlas consists of profiles of six counties along the U.S.-Mexico border, outlining the types of surveillance technologies deployed by local law enforcement—including drones, body-worn cameras, automated license plate readers, and face recognition. The report also includes a set of 225 data points marking surveillance by local, state, and federal agencies in the border region.

  • Will Denmark Become Like Sweden?

    Denmark has experienced 10 bombings since February. The latest took place on August 27 in a residential complex, Gersager, in the Greve area, very close to Copenhagen. No one was injured, but the building was seriously damaged. This year, the Swedish city of Malmö has experienced 19 bombings. Sweden is exporting not only its bombings to Denmark. Gang crime, with its shootings and murders, has also traveled across the border. As to the nationality of migrants engaged in crime, statistics show that Lebanese male migrants are engaged in crime almost four times as much as the average Dane. They are followed by male descendants from Somalia, Morocco, and Syria.

  • “People Actively Hate Us”: Inside the Border Patrol’s Morale Crisis

    For decades, the Border Patrol was a largely invisible security force. Agents called their slow-motion specialty “laying in” — hiding in the desert and brush for hours, to wait and watch, and watch and wait. Two years ago, when President Trump entered the White House with a pledge to close the door on illegal immigration, all that changed. “No longer were they a quasi-military organization tasked primarily with intercepting drug runners and chasing smugglers,” four New York Times journalists write. “Their new focus was to block and detain hundreds of thousands of migrant families fleeing violence and extreme poverty — herding people into tents and cages, seizing children and sending their parents to jail, trying to spot those too sick to survive in the densely packed processing facilities along the border.”

  • Major Impact Expected from Supreme Court Asylum Decision

    While legal challenges continue to make their way through the nation’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — which includes the southern border states of California and Arizona —  the Supreme Court ruled that, in the interim, the Trump administration could begin denying asylum claims to migrants at the country’s southern border who did not first seek protection in another country along their route. The policy would affect asylum-seekers at the border, who are largely from Central America, as well as an increasing number of migrants from outside the Western Hemisphere.

  • U.S. Supreme Court Ruling Erodes Protections for Asylum Seekers, UN Says

    The U.N. refugee agency is expressing concern about the negative impact of Wednesday’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on people seeking asylum in the United States. The ruling affirms the Trump Administration’s policy that denies asylum to anyone who does not seek protection in countries through which they pass before reaching the U.S. border.

  • New EU Office Criticized by Liberals, NGOs as Conveying a "Xenophobic Message"

    EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen was accused by liberal and leftist members of the European Parliament, and by several international organizations, of creating a new position which conveys a xenophobic message. The new office – the official name is The Office for Protecting Our European Way of Life — has been the subject of bitter criticized within Brussels and throughout the EU. von der Leyen defended he decision saying: “Our European way of life is holding up our values,” she told reporters. “The beauty of the dignity of every single human being is one of the most precious values.”

  • Get Ready for the Venezuela Refugee Crisis

    With its economy in free fall, after having already contracted by half this decade, and with its future politics completely up in the air as President Nicolas Maduro clings semi-constitutionally to power, Venezuela teeters on the brink. “Even if things do not get that bad, it is easy to imagine scenarios in which ten million Venezuelans become refugees — with many millions inside the country struggling just to stay alive as food supplies dwindle and public health conditions deteriorate even further,” Juan Carlos Pinzón Bueno and Michael O’Hanlon write.

  • How Immigration Can Make Some U.K.-Born Residents Feel Worse Off Even If They Aren’t

    Worries about the effects of immigration are prevalent in politics across Europe and the U.S. In the U.K., for instance, concerns over immigration dominate much of the Brexit debate. For many, immigrants are seen as a source of competition for jobs and access to public services (irrespective of whether this is true or not). Peter Howley writes in The Conversation that despite the intuitive appeal of this argument, empirical evidence to support it is lacking. The explanation for the negative perception of immigration is rather found in subjective well-being, and the effects of immigration on subjective well-being were found to be more negative and more notable in certain subgroups. These groups include relatively older people (those over 60), those with low household incomes, and/or the unemployed. “The main concern with these findings is that if – despite positive economic benefits– immigration is associated with adverse effects on the subjective well-being of certain groups in society, then this makes the challenge of integration more difficult,” Howley writes.

  • How Climate Change Is Driving Emigration from Central America

    Migration from Central America has gotten a lot of attention these days, including the famous migrant caravans. But much of it focuses on the way migrants from this region – especially El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras – are driven out by gang violence, corruption and political upheaval. These factors are important and require a response from the international community. But displacement driven by climate change is significant too.