Category Archives: Migration

Netherlands mulls sending rejected African asylum seekers to Uganda

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Critics say plan mooted by coalition government led by Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom party is ‘totally unfeasible’

The Dutch coalition government, headed by Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom party (PVV), is considering sending Africans whose asylum requests are rejected to Uganda, in plans that opposition politicians have said are “totally unfeasible”.

During a visit this week to the East African country, the Dutch minister for trade and development, Reinette Klever, said the cabinet was exploring the ideaand that Uganda was “not averse” to it, the Dutch public broadcaster Nos reported on Wednesday.

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More EU leaders expected to back calls for offshore asylum centres

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Migration to dominate summit as four people including two toddlers die after falling from crowded speedboat off Kos

A growing number of European leaders are expected to back calls for offshore immigration centres, as the EU casts around for tougher measures to stop asylum seekers reaching the bloc.

EU officials were preparing for intensive talks on migration at a leaders’ summit on Thursday, as it emerged that four people, including two toddlers, had died after falling overboard from an overcrowded speedboat off the Greek island of Kos.

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Von der Leyen to ask EU leaders to explore using ‘return hubs’ for migrants

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European Commission president cites Italy-Albania deal as possible model for reducing irregular arrivals to Europe

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has called for an exploration of “return hubs” outside the EU in a letter to the bloc’s national leaders on irregular migration, citing a deal between Italy and Albania as a possible model.

EU leaders are to meet on Thursday and Friday for a summit on migration as the commission has said it will propose new measures.

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Temporary Australian visas for Palestinians a first step but longer stay options needed, advocates say

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Uncertainty of humanitarian visa will make traumatised new arrivals’ recovery tougher, charity founder says

The Albanese government’s new temporary humanitarian visa pathway for Palestinians fleeing the conflict in Gaza is a welcome first step, advocates say, but they warn the three-year option to stay is not good enough for those who have no home to return to.

Rasha Abbas, founder of the charity group Palestine Australia Relief and Action, said members of the community had been socially, financially and emotionally supporting the traumatised new arrivals who had been denied access to healthcare, housing or working rights for the past 11 months.

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Italy sends first asylum seekers to Albania under controversial pact

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Men from countries deemed safe are transferred to Albania to have asylum claims processed

The first people to be intercepted at sea by the Italian navy under a controversial migration deal with Albania are on their way to the Balkan nation to have their asylum claims processed.

As part of the pact signed off by Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, a navy ship set off on Monday and is due to arrive at the port of Schëngjin on Wednesday morning. The interior ministry confirmed on Monday night that 16 men – – 10 Bangladeshis and six Egyptians – who it said had arrived from Libya and were rescued on Sunday in international waters by the Italian coastguard were on board.

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EU unable to retrieve €150m paid to Tunisia despite links to rights violations

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Concerns are growing that funds from the migration deal are connected to abuses by the repressive regime in Tunis

The EU will be unable to claw back any of the €150m (£125m) paid to Tunisia despite the money being increasingly linked to human rights violations, including allegations that sums went to security forces who raped migrant women.

The European Commission paid the amount to the Tunis government in a controversial migration and development deal, despite concerns that the north African state was increasingly authoritarian and its police largely operated with impunity.

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Italian migration centres open in Albania under controversial deal

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Fears agreement will set dangerous EU precedent with up to 3,000 men a month held during asylum processing

Italy has formally opened two centres in Albania where it plans to hold men who are intercepted in international waters while trying to cross from Africa to Europe.

The Italian ambassador to Albania, Fabrizio Bucci, said the centres were ready to accommodate people while their asylum applications were processed, but could not say when the first ones would arrive. “As of today, the two centres are ready and operational,” Bucci told journalists at the port of Shëngjin on Albania’s Adriatic coast where the people picked up will land.

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One Nation Tory group refuses to back Badenoch or Jenrick in party leadership race – UK politics live

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TRG says both candidates have ‘used rhetoric and focused on issues which are far and away from … the values we cherish and uphold’

Robert Jenrick, one of the final two Tory leadership candidates, is delivering a speech in London. There is a live feed on his X account.

Jenrick started by promising “a complete break with Labour’s failing agenda”. He said:

The real choice this country faces is between Labour’s failing agenda and the new approach I want us to take, the new approach we need as a country.

Because if I am chosen as the next leader of this party we will stand to offer a complete break with Labour’s failing agenda.

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Pedro Sánchez unveils plans to help migrants settle in Spain

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Prime minister champions migration in stance at odds with European neighbours

Spain plans to make it easier for newcomers to settle, the prime minister said, promoting migration as an effective way to protect prosperity in sharp contrast with the attitude of much of Europe.

“Spain needs to choose between being an open and prosperous country or a closed-off, poor country,” Pedro Sánchez told parliament on Wednesday. “It’s as simple as that.”

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Irregular migration into UK and large European countries is same as 2008, research shows

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Despite hostile political discourse about migrants, the numbers are steady, at less than 1% of total population

The number of irregular migrants living in the UK and other large European countries has not changed for years despite hostile political discourse about migrants overwhelming the continent, according to researchers.

Migration researchers from 18 of the world’s leading universities and research organisations including the University of Oxford have released the public database as part of the MIrreM project, which measures irregular migration.

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More than 100 people missing after being forced off boats in Djibouti

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Nearly 50 people dead and 108 unaccounted for after smugglers apparently force passengers into the water

More than 100 people are still missing after smugglers apparently forced migrants to leave their boats and swim in the Red Sea off the coast of Djibouti, the International Organization for Migration has said.

Forty-eight people have so far been confirmed dead after the incident on Monday, which involved two boats that had left Yemen for Djibouti with a total of 310 people onboard, said Frantz Celestin, a regional director at the UN agency. “Unfortunately, we have yet to account for about 108 of the migrants,” he said.

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Migration during adolescence linked to increased psychosis risk, study finds

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Risk found to be highest among black and north African people, as experts call for better mental health provision

People who migrate in adolescence have an increased risk of psychosis, researchers have found, noting the link is particularly strong among black and north African people.

While research has previously suggested migration could play a role in the increased risk of psychosis among people from ethnic minorities, the study suggests age could be an important factor.

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Keir Starmer tells Brussels press conference it was ‘right’ for him to repay £6,000 worth of gifts – as it happened

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Announcement that PM is returning gifts comes after news Labour peer Lord Alli is under investigation by Lords commissioner

Richard Fuller, the Tory chair, is on the conference platform now introducing the morning session.

He starts with thanks to various people who have helped with the conference.

After a frenetic Conference for Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Robert Jenrick the tiredness will be kicking in, but also for the teams of advisers who want, and maybe need, their principal to take another go at delivering the twenty-minute speech of their career.

It’s a four hoarse race.

The problem for the party, and for me, is that none of this gossipy chatter has taken the conference attendees much further forward – nor has any of the four taken conference by storm.

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Kemi Badenoch faces backlash after comments on ‘excessive’ maternity pay – as it happened

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Conservative leadership contenders Jenrick, Cleverly and Tugendhat reject rival’s comments, while Rosie Duffield criticises Keir Starmer

Q: Do you agree with Kemi Badenoch that some cultures are less valid than others?

Jenrick says culture matters. But he says he disagres with Badenoch on immigration numbers. He says he thinks you have to have a cap on numbers. And he also says he believes the UK has to leave the European convention on human rights. He says Badenoch is just talking about developing a plan in a few years time, and that’s “a recipe for infighting and for losing the public’s trust”.

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Search resumes in what may be deadliest migrant boat sinking off Canaries

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At least nine dead and 48 missing after vessel carrying 87 people sinks off Spanish island of El Hierro

Rescuers renewed their search on Sunday for about 48 people missing after their migrant boat sank close to the Spanish island of El Hierro in what could become the deadliest such incident in 30 years of crossings from Africa to the Canary Islands.

Nine people, one of them a child aged between 12 and 15, have been confirmed dead in the incident in the early hours of Saturday morning.

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Trump leans into anti-immigrant rants and Harris barbs at Wisconsin rally

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Ex-president speaks in Prairie du Chien flanked by anti-immigrant posters and lobs insults at Harris and Biden

Donald Trump spoke on Saturday in the battleground state of Wisconsin, escalating his anti-immigrant rhetoric and taking his personal insults against Kamala Harris up a notch.

Trump’s speech in the small community of Prairie du Chien, where a Venezuelan in the US illegally was detained in September for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman and attacking her daughter, was unusually devoted almost entirely to undocumented immigrants. He wrongfully claimed that immigrants in the US are violent criminals, referring to them as “stone-cold killers”, “monsters” and “vile animals”.

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Nine dead and 48 missing after migrant boat sinks off Canary Islands

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Rescue services say they saved 27 of the 84 people aboard the vessel believed to have come from Mauritania

Nine people are confirmed drowned and at least 48 are missing after a boat carrying migrants capsized off Spain’s Canary Islands overnight, rescue services said on Saturday, the latest in a series of such disasters off the west coast of Africa.

Sea rescue teams said in a statement they had answered a distress call off El Hierro, one of the islands in the Atlantic archipelago, shortly after midnight. They managed to save 27 of the 84 people on board.

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Anti-immigration mood sweeping EU threatens its new asylum strategy

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The bloc’s migration pact, finally agreed after a decade of talks, is already in peril as states outdo each other in efforts to get tough

In 2015, when more than 1.3 million people headed to Europe, mostly fleeing a brutal war in Syria, the response of Germany’s then chancellor, Angela Merkel, was to say “Wir schaffen das” (“We can manage this”), and open the country’s borders.

Less than a decade later, and faced with a flow of irregular arrivals less than 10% of what it was at the peak of the bloc’s migration crisis, EU capitals are increasingly saying, “No, we can’t”. Or, perhaps more accurately, “We won’t”.

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Demonstrations being held in Italy against ‘repressive’ security bill

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Bill by Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government comes down hard on climate activists and migrants

Demonstrations are being held across Italy on Wednesday evening in protest against a new security bill described as “repressive” and “dangerous for the country’s democracy”.

The 24 laws contained in the bill, which passed its first hurdle in the lower house of parliament last week and now needs approval in the senate, is the latest attempt by Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government to get tough on law and order. It comes down especially hard on climate activists and migrants.

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Meloni-themed restaurant opens near asylum-seeker camp in Albania

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Trattoria Meloni contains 70 portraits of Italian PM and is near site where arrivals to the EU are processed

A restaurant dedicated to Giorgia Meloni has opened in the vicinity of a camp in Albania where the asylum claims of people who seek to enter the EU by sea will be processed as part of a controversial pact promoted by the Italian far-right prime minister.

Trattoria Meloni, a seafood restaurant in the northern port of Shëngjin, was opened by Gjergj Luca, a restaurant owner who is close to the Albanian prime minister, Edi Rama.

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