Donald Trump abandoned his attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 US census but will sign an executive order forcing federal agencies to hand over citizenship data to the commerce department. 'As a result of today's executive order we will be able to ensure the 2020 census generates an accurate count of how many citizens, non-citizens and illegal aliens are in the United States of America. We will leave no stone unturned,' the US president said. The attorney general, William Barr, said including a question on the census was not the only way to obtain this 'vital information'
Continue reading...Category Archives: Migration
The Syrian refugees changing the UK’s food scene
Mohamad Rahimeh found a talent for cooking in the Calais refugee camp. Now he has a viable business in London
When Mohamad Rahimeh arrived in the Calais refugee camp that was nicknamed “the Jungle”, cooking was the last thing on his mind. He was a political scientist from Syria with a journey from hell behind him. Food was just a means to an end.
But when a close friend fell sick, he rustled up a meal of eggs. A hidden talent was uncovered.
Continue reading...Second migrant rescue boat defies Salvini and docks in Italy
Mediterranea’s Italian-flagged Alex arrives in Lampedusa with 41 shipwrecked migrants
A charity rescue vessel brought 41 shipwrecked migrants into port in Lampedusa on Saturday, the second boat to defy far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini’s bid to close Italian ports to them.
Mediterranea’s Italian-flagged Alex arrived in port where a strong police presence was waiting for them but everyone remained on board after spending two days with the rescued migrants and asylum-seekers on the sailboat.
Continue reading...Survivor of shipwreck off Tunisia describes vessel going down
Malian was one of four out of over 80 people on board who were rescued after raft sank
One of only four survivors after an inflatable raft carrying more than 80 people capsized off the coast of Tunisia has recounted his ordeal as 54 rescuees from a separate shipwreck headed to Malta.
Soleiman Coulibaly, from Mali, said he had spent two days clinging to a piece of wood after the engine caught fire and the inflatable sank.
Continue reading...Captain who rescued 42 migrants: I’d do it again despite jail threat
Carola Rackete faces prospect of long trial for defying Italy’s ban on rescue ships
The ship’s captain facing jail after defying Italian law to bring 42 migrants into port has said she would do it all over again and hit out at Italy’s far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini.
“People’s lives matter more than any political game,” Carola Rackete, the German captain of the migrant NGO rescue ship Sea-Watch 3, told the Guardian.
Continue reading...More than 80 feared dead as migrant boat capsizes off Tunisia
Four men were pulled from sinking vessel with one later dying in hospital, says official
More than 80 people trying to reach Europe from Libya are feared dead after their boat capsized off the coast of Tunisia, according to the UN migration agency.
The boat sank on Wednesday off the port town of Zarzis and 82 of the migrants who had been onboard were missing, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. Fishermen pulled four men from the sinking boat, said Lorena Lando, the agency’s head in Tunisia. One of the four died later in hospital.
Continue reading...UN calls for inquiry into Libya detention centre bombing
Attack widely blamed on warlord Khalifa Haftar, which left at least 44 dead, labelled ‘war crime’
The United Nations has called for an independent inquiry into the bombing of a Libyan migrant detention centre that left at least 44 dead and more than 130 severely injured, describing the attack as “a war crime and odious bloody carnage”.
The detention centre east of Tripoli was housing more than 610 people when it was hit by two airstrikes. The bombing was attributed to the air force of Gen Khalifa Haftar by the Italian interior minister, Matteo Salvini, as well as by the UN-recognised Government of National Accord.
Continue reading...Why attack on Libya detention centre was grimly predictable
The EU has long been aware of the terrible plight of migrants detained or trapped in Libya
Shocking as the precise circumstances are behind the deaths of at least 44 people in an airstrike that hit a detention centre in Tajoura in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, it is a predictable incident.
Even as footage circulated online claiming to show blood and body parts mixed with rubble and migrants’ belongings from the air raid blamed on the forces of the warlord Khalifa Haftar, it emerged the detainees had been housed in a hangar next to a weapons store – the likely target of the strike.
Continue reading...More than €1m raised for rescue ship captain detained in Italy
Money will go towards paying Carola Rackete’s legal fees if charges are brought
Two online campaigns to help the German captain of a rescue ship under house arrest in Italy have between them raised more than €1m.
Carola Rackete’s arrest on Saturday, after she forced her way into port in Lampedusa carrying migrants and refugees she had rescued off Libya, prompted a fundraising appeal by two prominent German TV stars that by Tuesday morning had raised €917,195 from more than 33,000 donors.
Continue reading...Captain defends her decision to force rescue boat into Italian port
Carola Rackete says act of ‘disobedience’ in Lampedusa was necessary to avert tragedy
An NGO rescue boat captain who has risked jail time after forcing her way into Lampedusa port in Italy with 40 migrants onboard has defended her act of “disobedience”, saying it was necessary to avert a tragedy.
“It wasn’t an act of violence, but only one of disobedience,” the Sea-Watch 3 skipper, Carola Rackete, told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Sunday, as donations poured in for her legal defence.
Continue reading...Captain of rescue ship carrying 42 migrants arrested in Italy – video
The captain of an NGO rescue ship carrying 42 migrants has been arrested after more than two weeks in a standoff with Italian authorities. Carola Rackete reached Sicily on Saturday in defiance of a ban by the country’s far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini. She was greeted by lengthy applause from hundreds of people who arrived on the quay to support her
- Rescue ship captain arrested for breaking Italian blockade
- Migrant rescue ship defies Salvini's ban to enter Italian port
Women picking fruit for UK firms in Spain ‘victims of trafficking’
Lawyers say abuse claims by Moroccans must be investigated by Spanish authorities
Human-rights lawyers are warning that abuse claims by Moroccans picking fruit in Spain for UK supermarkets could amount to “state-sponsored human trafficking”.
The international lawyers say Spanish authorities have a legal duty to ensure the allegations by the women – that they have faced exploitation and abuse while harvesting strawberries – are properly investigated by the courts.
Continue reading...To all parents who can picture themselves in Valeria and her dad | Debbie Weingarten
Horror builds with each new report – children kept in cages, children taking care of infants, mothers who have been torn from their babies. What if it was your child?
Warning: graphic images
For as long as I have been a mother, I’ve had recurrent nightmares about water carrying my children away. In the dreams, my sons slip quietly beneath the surface, becoming blurry underwater shapes, and then disappearing completely. My panic is animal – a pulsing in my ears, static in my brain, a scream-howl building in my chest. I wake up thrashing against the water, searching desperately for my boys.
When the news broke of 23-month-old Valeria and her father, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, Salvadoran migrants who had been swept away by the Rio Grande, I was camping along a river in northern Arizona, without access to the internet. I had been photographing plants and making videos of the river to show my desert children, who were at home in Tucson with my parents. When I emerged from the woods, I came face-to-face with a gas station newspaper and saw it.
Continue reading...‘If you pay, you’ll go’: Dadaab residents claim bribery is price of getting home
Somali people at Kenya’s sprawling refugee camp allege that UN staff want money for everything from food to repatriation
Four years ago, Asha made what seemed like an impossible decision. She knew the journey from Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp back to her native Somalia was risky. But after an attack by the Somali Islamist group al-Shabaab, the Kenyan government had threatened to close the vast, sprawling camp for security reasons. Asha feared for her family’s safety if Kenyan soldiers moved in to evict them.
“I wanted to be gone before the rough-up,” recalls Asha. “I didn’t want my girls raped by [the] military forcing them on buses. I wanted to protect myself too.–
Continue reading...A refugee’s story
There are no mass graves in Britain, but there are other ways people can vanish.
By Jonathan Wittenberg
I looked online and immediately found the title of Jean Paul’s book (Jean Paul is not his real name). It was exactly as the judge who eventually granted him asylum had noted: anyone who wanted to check Jean Paul’s political record in his native country had only to Google his name. The book is a study of democracy and its failings in Africa. Jean Paul has also published scholarly papers on the nature of language.
I met Jean Paul for the first time at the British Library, an institution devoted to the preservation of words, voices, testimony and knowledge. He told me about his experiences of flight and refuge, focusing on what he saw and heard while held in indefinite detention here in the UK. “You’ve no voice when you’re inside there,” he said.
Continue reading...Number of asylum seekers sent back to Italy triples in five years
EU countries sending growing numbers back to country of arrival in bloc
The number of asylum seekers returned to Italy from elsewhere in Europe under a controversial EU regulation has almost tripled in five years, amid concern over their treatment in Italy and Germany.
Under the terms of the Dublin regulation, member states can send people back to their country of arrival in the EU – usually Italy or Greece.
Continue reading...Is it wrong to look at the harrowing photo of a drowned father and daughter? | Peter Beaumont
In an age when social media has undermined our ability to engage with pictures, Julia le Duc’s tragic image raises tough questions
Warning: graphic images
Julia le Duc’s image of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, lying drowned on a muddy shoreline after an attempted crossing of Rio Grande into the US appears like a summation of all the arguments about the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies.
The pair look as though they could be locked in a sleeping embrace, the child’s head tucked inside her father’s T-shirt, where she’d been placed by him for safety as he swam, protecting their last dignity.
Continue reading...Former Manus Island detainee tells UN ‘human beings are being destroyed’
Abdul Aziz Muhamat delivers a plea for urgent action to the Human Rights Council
Since Abdul Aziz Muhamat left Manus Island for the last time, he has climbed a mountain in his new home of Switzerland, and then returned to advocating for the resettlement of the hundreds of men and women he left behind.
The Sudanese refugee spent more than six years in Australia’s offshore processing and detention system in Papua New Guinea, before he was granted residency in the European nation earlier this month.
Continue reading...‘The river is treacherous’: the migrant tragedy one photo can’t capture
The father and his toddler daughter pictured face down in the river were two of dozens who drowned this year while crossing the border to seek asylum
Under a hot sun beating down on the US border, a family of five can be seen mid-river, struggling against a cruel current of greenish-grey water threatening to sweep them off their feet. It appears to be a couple and their three children, risking their lives in the treacherous Rio Grande that divides Mexico from Texas.
The father clutches a black backpack in his hand, the family’s only luggage. On his back he’s carrying a small boy wearing a rainbow-striped T-shirt. A little girl is on the woman’s back, small arms clasped tightly around her mother’s neck.
Continue reading...US border: photo of drowned father and daughter highlights migrants’ peril – video report
Searing photographs showing a man and his 23-month-old daughter lying face down in shallow water along the Mexican bank of the Rio Grande near the US border highlight the perils of the latest migration crisis involving mostly Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty.
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