• Danish police confiscate money, valuables from asylum seekers to pay for upkeep

    Danish police have taken valuables from asylum seekers for the first time since a controversial law was passed in January, requiring that asylum seekers pay for part of their upkeep by surrendering cash, jewelry, and other valuables to Danish authorities. The law allows police to search asylum seekers on arrival in the country and confiscate any non-essential items worth more than 10,000 kroner, and which have no sentimental value to their owner.

  • Europeans’ attitudes to migration do not depend on net migration levels

    A new study has analyzed attitudes to immigration across twenty-one European countries and finds that negative attitudes do not appear to be linked with net migration rates. Some countries with high immigration levels are also very positive about migrants, such as Norway, while other countries like the Czech Republic and Hungary, which have low immigration. have populations with negative attitudes. U.K. respondents’ support for immigration is slightly lower than the European average, but they also have a slightly more positive view of migrants’ contribution to their country compared with a decade earlier.

  • Refugees can offer economic boost to host countries

    Refugees are often considered an economic burden for the countries that take them in, but a new study indicates that refugees receiving aid — especially in the form of cash — can give their host country’s economy a substantial boost. The researchers found that these economic benefits significantly exceeded the amount of the donated aid. The findings come as refugee numbers around the world are growing.

  • CBP issues long-anticipated Biometric Exit Program RFI

    Last Monday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued its highly-anticipated call to industry to share solutions for the Biometric Exit Program. The Request for Information (RFI), issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), explains that CBP intends to add biometrics to confirm when foreign nationals are departing the United States, in order to deter visa overstays, to identify criminals, and to defeat imposters.

  • 4-4 Supreme Court tie keeps Obama's sweeping immigration reforms blocked

    A 4:4 tie at the Supreme Court has dealt Barack Obama’s immigration program – and his legacy — a major setback. The president took his executive action to shield about four millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation after House Republicans refused to bring to the floor for a vote a 2013 bipartisan Senate legislation which provided a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Twenty-six states with Republican governors challenged Obama’s executive action, arguing that Obama had exceeded his authority by granting a blanket deportation deferment to millions of undocumented immigrants. A federal judge in Texas ruled in favor of the twenty-six governors, and the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of appeals upheld that Texas court’s decision last November.

  • After 4 years CBP IA disabled vet still mired in employment procedures

    Lieutenant Commander J. Gregory Richardson (retired), a decorated Naval officer with almost thirty years of military service to his country, maintains that while employed as a GS-14 Senior Security Analyst in the Integrity Programs Division (IPD) at Customs and Border Protection Internal Affairs (CBP IA), his immediate supervisors and the Senior Executive at CBP IA repeatedly ignored his multiple medical issues. The failure of these supervisors, alleges Richardson, led to a deterioration in his medical conditions until, finally, he could no longer endure the pain from which he suffered. He missed many days at work, and this absenteeism, according to documents provided, was a major reason he was fired from IPD. Since 2013 Richardson has been seeking information from CBP about any investigations or reports about him while he was an employee.

  • Scanners more rapidly and accurately identify radioactive materials at U.S. borders, events

    Among the responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, DHS, among other things, has increased screening of cargo coming into the country. At MIT, the terrorist attacks gave rise to a company dedicated to helping DHS — and, ultimately, other governments and organizations worldwide — better detect nuclear and other threats at borders and seaports. Today, Passport — co-founded in 2002 by MIT physics professor emeritus William Bertozzi — has two commercial scanners: the cargo scanner, a facility used at borders and seaports; and a wireless radiation-monitoring system used at, for example, public events.

  • 2015 global forced displacement breaks records

    Wars and persecution have driven more people from their homes than at any time since the UN began keeping refugee records. A new, detailed study which tracks forced displacement worldwide found a total 65.3 million people were displaced at the end of 2015, compared to 59.5 million just twelve months earlier. The report found that, measured against the world’s population of 7.4 billion people, one in every 113 people globally is now either an asylum-seeker, internally displaced, or a refugee.

  • Many migrants arriving in Europe this year are unaccompanied children

    More than 9 out of 10 refugee and migrant children arriving in Europe this year through Italy are unaccompanied, prompting UNICEF to warn of the growing threats of abuse, exploitation, and death facing them. In a report, Danger Every Step of the Way, released the other day, UNICEF says that 7,009 unaccompanied children made the crossing from North Africa to Italy in the first five months of the year, twice as many as last year.

  • With persecution, threat of mass killing on the rise, further mass migration is inevitable

    With the refugee crisis far from over, the failure to address persecution in states where peoples are under severe threat makes further mass population movements inevitable. The international human rights organization Minority Rights Group International (MRG) has just launched the 2016 Peoples under Threat index and online map, which seeks to identify those countries around the world which are most at risk of genocide, mass political killing or systematic violent repression.

  • Not all Visa Waiver program nations share information with U.S. as required: GAO

    The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) allows nationals from the thirty-eight VWP countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business for up to ninety days without a visa. To help prevent terrorists and others who present a threat from travelling to the United States, DHS requires VWP countries, among other things, to enter into information-sharing agreements with the United States. In a public version of a classified January 2016 report on the VWP, the GAO examines the extent to which VWP countries have implemented different agreements with the United States which VWP requires.

  • Lawsuit seeks information on CBP's complaint process

    The American Immigration Council the other day filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to compel the release of additional documents related to the complaints process at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The Immigration Council says it is seeking to update information received from CBP in its previously filed FOIA request, in which it obtained data concerning 809 complaints of abuse lodged against U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents between January 2009 and January 2012.

  • Obama's lawyers ask Texas judge to rethink immigration order

    The Obama administration has asked a Brownsville, Texas-based judge to rethink an order that requires the federal government to turn over the private information of thousands of undocumented immigrants. The 19 May order from U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen asserted that the federal government’s attorneys intentionally misled the court during proceedings over the Obama administration’s controversial executive order on immigration.

  • Net migration to U.K. increases to 333,000

    The British government has release new migration figures which show that net migration into Britain rose to 333,000 last year - 20,000 more than in 2014. About 308,000 of these immigrated to Britain for work, an increase of 30,000 from 2014. Just under 60 percent had a specific job waiting for them, but 42 percent arrived looking for work, which, the government notes, is a statistically significant increase from 104,000 the previous year. The information released by the Office for National Statistics is politically significant now, as Britain is a month away from a referendum on whether to remain in or leave the EU.

     

  • Method developed for including migration uncertainty in population projections

    Statisticians have developed the first model for projecting population that factors in the vagaries of migration, a slippery issue that has bedeviled demographers for decades. Their work also provides population projections for all countries worldwide — and challenges the existing predictions for some, particularly the United States and Germany.