Category Archives: Migration

UK to close door to non-English speakers and unskilled workers

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Government plans to take ‘full control’ of borders a disaster for economy and jobs, say industry leaders and Labour

Britain is to close its borders to unskilled workers and those who can’t speak English as part of a fundamental overhaul of immigration laws that will end the era of cheap EU labour in factories, warehouses, hotels and restaurants.

Unveiling its Australian-style points system on Wednesday, the government will say it is grasping a unique opportunity to take “full control” of British borders “for the first time in decades” and eliminate the “distortion” caused by EU freedom of movement.

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EU agrees to deploy warships to enforce Libya arms embargo

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Operation to come into force as mission to save migrants and refugees from sea is wound down

The EU has agreed to deploy warships to stop the flow of weapons into Libya, as the bloc wound down a military mission that had once rescued migrants and refugees from drowning in the Mediterranean.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, announced that 27 foreign ministers had agreed to launch a new operation with naval ships, planes and satellites in order to enforce the UN arms embargo on Libya.

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Greece’s refugee plan is inhumane and doomed to fail. The EU must step in | Apostolis Fotiadis

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The government wants to create massive detention centres, but this is being resisted by locals and refugees alike

Since the start of the year, Greece’s reception system for migrants has imploded. A spike of arrivals over the past few months, caused by Turkey’s police operations removing refugees and asylum seekers from its western coastal cities and sending them back to the regions where they were registered, has pushed the existing accommodation to its limits.

Between September 2019 and January 2020, the Greek government transferred 14,750 people from the islands to the mainland, as 36,000 new arrivals crossed the Aegean to Greece from Turkey. While the system is unable to absorb any more people, efforts to establish additional camps in the mainland and new detention centres on the islands have met strong resistance from local communities.

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Australia’s offshore detention is unlawful, says international criminal court prosecutor

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Treatment of refugees and asylum seekers ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading’, but does not warrant prosecution, ICC office says

Australia’s offshore detention regime is a “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” and unlawful under international law, the international criminal court’s prosecutor has said.

But the office of the prosecutor has stopped short of deciding to prosecute the Australian government, saying that while the imprisonment of refugees and asylum seekers formed the basis of a crime against humanity, the violations did not rise to the level to warrant further investigation.

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Matteo Salvini trial for kidnapping authorised by Italian senate

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When he was interior minister, Salvini prevented 177 migrants from disembarking in Italy

Italy’s senate has formally authorised a criminal case against Matteo Salvini, the far-right leader accused of kidnap last year when, as interior minister, he prevented 177 migrants from disembarking from a coast guard ship.

Last December, the Italian court of ministers in Catania, Sicily, ruled that Salvini should be tried for allegedly depriving the asylum seekers on board the Gregoretti coast guard ship of their liberty by refusing to allow them to leave.

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102 migrants try to cross Channel as Storm Ciara approaches

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Dangerous conditions fail to deter record number of people from attempting to enter UK

The approach of Storm Ciara has not deterred 102 people from trying to cross the Channel on Friday.

Five inflatable boats carrying migrants who said they were from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Syria were picked up by Border Force, the Home Office said.

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Greece sends more riot police to Lesbos after migrant clashes

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Government calls in further reinforcements after teargas fired during island protests

Greece has rushed in extra squads of riot police to Lesbos amid warnings of potentially explosive tensions on the island following clashes between security forces and thousands of migrants and refugees.

As hundreds of mainly Afghan asylum seekers converged on Mytilene, the local capital, on Tuesday to protest against conditions in the island’s vastly overcrowded camp, the government ordered in the reinforcements.

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Families call for inquests into deaths of Vietnamese migrants

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Letter calls for full inquests into deaths of 39 people in a refrigerated lorry last year

Families of the 39 Vietnamese migrants whose bodies were discovered in a refrigerated lorry in Essex last year and campaigners in the UK are calling for inquests to be held into the deaths.

While criminal proceedings related to the tragic deaths continue, there has been no indication whether there will be any wider investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident.

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Greece defends anti-migrant floating barrier amid growing criticism

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Minister says barrier would send message to smugglers that ‘rules of the game have changed’

The Greek government has defended plans to erect a floating barrier in the Mediterranean to deter thousands of people determined to reach Europe from making the sea journey from Turkey.

Dismissing criticism, the country’s minister for migration and asylum, Notis Mitarakis, said the proposed barrier in the Aegean Sea would send a strong message to people smugglers that the “rules of the game had changed”.

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‘New underclass’: Labor warns on Australia’s reliance on short-term migration

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Large numbers of easily exploited temporary migrants could have a ‘corrosive’ effect, says Kristina Keneally

Australia’s reliance on temporary migration is creating a new economic underclass that risks having a “corrosive” effect on the nation’s society, Labor’s shadow home affairs minister, Kristina Keneally, says.

In a major speech to the Curtin institute on Thursday night, Keneally will step up Labor’s attack on the government for its reliance on temporary migration, saying current trends could see as many as 3 million people – or 12% of the population – living in Australia on a temporary basis.

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French and Dutch police arrest 23 suspected people smugglers

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Europol detains alleged members of group responsible for trafficking 10,000 migrants into Britain

Authorities in France and the Netherlands have arrested more than 20 suspected members of a people-smuggling gang responsible for transporting as many as 10,000 migrants from France into Britain, the European police agency has said.

The network is believed to have made about €70m (£59m) from its human trafficking operations, which used refrigerated lorries to smuggle Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi-Kurdish and Syrian migrants into the UK.

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American Dirt: why critics are calling Oprah’s book club pick exploitative and divisive

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Latino writers say Jeanine Cummins’ novel uses stereotypes and exploits the suffering of Mexican immigrants

American Dirt, the third novel by Jeanine Cummins, begins with a group of assassins opening fire on a quinceañera cookout. We watch Lydia’s entire family get killed, one by one. Only Lydia and her eight-year-old survive.

The scene is one of many depictions of graphic violence in American Dirt and it has sparked an intense conversation about “pity porn” and writing about the Mexican immigrant experience.

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‘Moria is a hell’: new arrivals describe life in a Greek refugee camp

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Originally intended to hold 3,000 people, 19,000 now live at the Moria refugee camp – with no electricity, scant water and, for many, no shelter at all. Journalist Harriet Grant and photographer Giorgos Moutafis met some of those attempting to cope with life there

Above a hill on the north shore of Lesbos, volunteers watch the sea and the twinkling lights of Turkey day and night with binoculars. The coastguard hurry to respond when they see a boat approaching, trying to arrive in time to stop children falling in the icy cold water as they clamber onto rocks and beaches.

On the morning of 11 January, a group of migrants from Afghanistan make it ashore without being spotted and walk to an olive grove where they light a fire and call for help.

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US agents aid in Guatemalan crackdown on hundreds of migrants headed north

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Move in effect dashes migrants’ plans to travel together in a ‘caravan’ to the United States

Guatemalan police accompanied by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have swept up hundreds of migrants, returning them to the Honduran border and in effect dashing their plans to travel together in a “caravan” to the United States.

Other, smaller groups traveled on in dribs and drabs in a movement involving several thousand people but very different from previous caravans.

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Two refugees killed after leaving crowded UN facility in Libya

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Circumstances of deaths raise concerns about pressure on gathering and departure facilities

The fatal shooting of two Eritrean men in Libya has raised concerns about overcrowding in UN facilities for refugees there.

The pair were reportedly killed in Tripoli last Thursday, days after the UN refugee agency had pressed them to leave a so-called gathering and departure facility (GDF).

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Trapped on Lesbos: the child refugees waiting to start a new life

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Thousands of children are living in appalling conditions on the Greek island. At the Moria camp, one Syrian teenager tells of trying to join his family in the UK

Outside the Moria refugee camp in Lesbos, a shanty town made of tarpaulin strung between olive trees is getting bigger every week. There are now 18,000 people living in this second camp, designed for just over 2,000.

Ahmed (not his real name), 17, and his friend Musa wind their way up muddy tracks towards their tent, swerving to avoid groups of children running in flip-flops through the dirt.

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New Zealand would be honoured to take Behrouz Boochani. Australia be damned | Morgan Godfery

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The moral case for the former Manus island detainee becoming a citizen is as simple as ‘asylum is a human right’

I wonder if it winds up Peter Dutton to know that Behrouz Boochani, the Kurdish-Iranian journalist, award-winning author and former Manus Island detainee, is a free man in the continent’s orbit. Boochani, the best-known witness, critic and victim of Australia’s offshore “processing centres”, remains in New Zealand after his 30-day visa came to an end. No one quite knows what the No Friend But the Mountains author is planning next, but it seems safe to assume that sooner or later he’ll lodge an application for asylum in New Zealand. A permanent reminder to Dutton, his predecessors and the country’s immigration detention system that they are not as close to vanishing the “boat people” problem as they might have thought.

For their part New Zealand’s policymakers fear as much with headlines suggesting if Boochani’s hypothetical asylum application is successful it could “fuel tensions with Australia”. The problem is Behrouz Boochani, New Zealander, would enjoy free movement between his new home and his old incarcerators, unless Dutton and the gang insert new exceptions in the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement. This is the “back door” the Coalition government in Canberra is so afraid of, and the political problem preventing Scott Morrison from taking up Jacinda Ardern’s invitation to resettle the last remaining detainees on Manus.

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Brexit: Johnson condemned for dropping pledge to replace family reunion law

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Lawyers warn loss of reunion rights for unaccompanied refugee children will put them in danger

The loss of family reunion rights for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children will leave them with “no options” except taking dangerous routes and using smugglers, charities in France and Greece are warning.

The prime minister, Boris Johnson, faced criticism after he told parliament he had dropped a promise to replace the EU law that allows child refugees stranded in Europe to reunite with family members in the UK after Brexit.

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‘Blood on the ground’ at Croatia’s borders as brutal policing persists

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While heavy snow makes life unbearable for migrants, a dangerous nightly ‘game’ has led to alleged assault and injury

Photography by Alessio Mamo

In a room in the intensive therapy unit of a hospital in the port city of Rijeka, Croatia, Farouk fights for his life.

The 18-year-old Afghan has life-threatening injuries to his thorax and abdomen. On 16 November, in the woods around Tuhobić, a Croatian police officer shot Farouk – who, with dozens of other migrants, was attempting to cross the border with Slovenia.

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Hope and heartbreak, three years after the fall of Aleppo

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When the Observer spoke to people in the besieged city three years ago, they told of their daily struggle. Now they tell their stories of exile

In December 2016, in the eastern half of Aleppo, a brutal siege was drawing to a bloody end. The last bombs were falling on its shattered streets, snipers were picking off their last victims. Besieged civilians, if they still had food, prepared their final meagre meals inside a city they had clung to for four painful years.

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