Category Archives: Migration

Non-EEA migrants on Irish trawlers gain new immigration rights

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Move comes after union took Irish government to court for facilitating modern slavery

African and Asian migrants working on Irish fishing trawlers are to be given new immigration rights to protect them from trafficking and modern slavery.

Non-EEA fishing workers will no longer be tied to employers and will be able to leave a boat to find other work without fear of deportation under a new immigration agreement between the Irish government and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), the Guardian has learned.

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Tony Blair: migrants should be forced to integrate more to combat far right

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Former PM claims that ‘failure’ of multiculturalism has led to rise in bigotry

Migrant communities must be compelled to do more to integrate to help combat the rise of “far-right bigotry”, Tony Blair has warned.

The former prime minister said that successive governments had “failed to find the right balance between diversity and integration”, while the concept of multiculturalism has been misused as a way to justify a “refusal to integrate”.

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‘A whole generation has gone’: Ukrainians seek better life in Poland

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As Ukraine prepares to elect a new president, millions of its citizens have moved across the border

When the small business run by Kristina Melnytska’s father began to struggle in 2014 he did what hundreds of thousands of other Ukrainians were doing and moved his family to Poland.

Melnytska, then 19, enrolled in a university in the eastern city of Lublin. She worked long nights in a kebab shop, where she was paid about £1 an hour. Five years later she is still here and one of an estimated 2 million Ukrainians working and living in Poland.

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Fighting in Libya will create huge number of refugees, PM warns

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Fayez al-Sarraj says Khalifa Haftar’s attack on Tripoli ‘will spread its cancer through Mediterranean’

Hundreds of thousands of refugees could flee the fighting caused by Khalifa Haftar’s attempt to seize the Libyan capital, Tripoli, the prime minister of the country’s UN-recognised government has warned.

The warnings by Fayez al-Sarraj – who also claimed Haftar had betrayed the people of Libya – echo those given privately to the Italian government by its intelligence services, and are clearly designed to alert EU states to the possible consequences for European migration of a prolonged civil war in the country.

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Fear and despair engulf refugees in Libya’s ‘market of human beings’

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Long the target of reported abuses, refugees in Libya now claim they are being recruited by militias – a potential war crime

On the roofs of the highest buildings in Tajoura, a military complex and migrant detention centre in southern Tripoli, snipers are taking position.

“Tonight nobody will sleep because of fear,” said a refugee locked up there. “We can hear the sound of guns and explosion of bombs very close to the detention centre.”

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Have we, Australia, become a country that breeds mass murderers with our words? | Richard Flanagan

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We are better than our politicians’ dark fears. We are not their hate. We are optimistic about a country built on openness

I have only ever heard Behrouz Boochani’s voice through speakers. One day, he will stand here before us, and we will hear and see him in the flesh. As a free human being. And I am here today to say that day is coming.

Because change is coming. You can feel it, you sense it. It is coming and it will not be denied. But it needs us to fight for it and to keep fighting for it, and we need to fight for it, not only for the refugees of Manus and Nauru, but for our own salvation.

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Steve Bannon ‘told Italy’s populist leader: Pope Francis is the enemy’

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Trump’s ex-strategist advised Matteo Salvini ‘to target pontiff’s stance on plight of refugees’

Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon advised Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini to attack the pope over the issue of migration, according to sources close to the Italian far right.

During a meeting in Washington in April 2016, Bannon – who would within a few months take up his role as head of Trump’s presidential campaign – suggested the leader of Italy’s anti-immigration League party should start openly targeting Pope Francis, who has made the plight of refugees a cornerstone of his papacy.

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‘Shameful’: Italian town bans asylum centres near schools

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Mayor for Calolziocorte claims welcome centres can be havens for drug dealing

An Italian town has been called “shameful” and “unconstitutional” after banning reception centres for asylum seekers from being placed near schools.

The urban plan approved by the council of Calolziocorte, Lombardy, this week asserts that “welcome centres for migrants must not be located within 150 metres of schools”. The small town of 15,000 is currently home to about 20 asylum seekers.

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Fears grow over migrant rescue boat stranded for a week

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Vessel barred from entering Italy or Malta since picking up dozens of refugees on 3 April

Concerns are rising for the wellbeing of 64 people stranded on a migrant rescue vessel in the Mediterranean for a week because neither Italy nor Malta will allow the boat to dock.

The migrants and refugees were rescued from a dinghy off Libya on 3 April by a rescue boat operated by the German NGO Sea-Eye and named Alan Kurdi after the Syrian boy who drowned in 2015.

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Only one person has been transferred under medevac law, refugee advocates say

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As the new process for bringing sick refugees to Australia faces unexplained delays, others who have come are being held under guard in hotels

More than a month after the medevac bill passed the Australian parliament, just one person is believed to have been transferred under the law.

The Department of Home Affairs and Australian Border Force refuse to say how many transfers have occurred, but according to advocates and detainees only one of more than 25 people brought to Australia for treatment in recent weeks has been under the new law.

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Rescued migrants hijack merchant ship off Libya

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The 108 people picked up by Elhiblu 1 reportedly hijacked it when they learned they were being returned to Libya

A merchant ship has been hijacked by refugees and migrants that it had rescued off the coast of Libya, and is now heading towards Malta, the Italian deputy prime minister and Maltese authorities have said.

Corriere della Sera and Italian news agencies reported that 108 people were picked up by the tanker Elhiblu 1, and hijacked the vessel when it became clear that it planned to take them back to Libya.

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New migrant caravan receives cooler welcome in Mexico

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  • 2,500-strong group mainly from Central America and Cuba
  • Activists say government is trying to stop migrants reaching US

A new migrant caravan of about 2,500 people is making its way through southern Mexico, headed for the US border, facing greater heat – and a much cooler welcome – than last year’s caravans.

The caravan walked past the city of Huixtla in the southern state of Chiapas on Monday, but police were lined up to keep them moving along a highway outside the town, and did not let them enter – a contrast to last year, when caravans were allowed to stay in the city center.

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Italian authorities order seizure of migrant rescue ship

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Volunteers rescued about 50 people off Libya on Tuesday in defiance of government order

Italian authorities have ordered the seizure of a charity rescue ship after it defied the government’s order not to bring refugees and migrants to Italy.

On Tuesday, volunteers onboard the Mare Jonio rescued about 50 people from a rubber boat off the coast of Libya, prompting Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, to say he was ready to stop private vessels “once and for all” from bringing rescued people to Italy.

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Italian charity ship defies Rome to rescue 50 off Libyan coast

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Rescue could spark showdown with government after order not to bring migrants to Italy

An Italian charity ship has rescued about 50 people from a rubber boat off the coast of Libya, prompting Rome to warn it is ready to stop private vessels “once and for all” from bringing rescued migrants to Italy.

The interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has repeatedly declared Italian waters closed to NGO rescue vessels and has left several of them stranded at sea in the past in an attempt to force the rest of Europe to take in more asylum seekers.

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EU declares migration crisis over as it hits out at ‘fake news’

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European commission combats ‘untruths’ over issue after row with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán

The European commission has declared the migration crisis over, as it sharpened its attack on “fake news” and “misinformation” about the issue.

Frans Timmermans, the European commission’s first vice-president, said: “Europe is no longer experiencing the migration crisis we lived in 2015, but structural problems remain.”

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Italy’s intelligence agency warns of rise in racist attacks

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Agency says increase in attacks on migrants is likely before European elections in May

Italy’s intelligence agency has warned in a briefing to the Italian parliament that attacks on migrants and minorities could rise in the run-up to May’s European elections.

Racially motivated attacks have seen a sharp increase in Italy and tripled between 2017 and 2018, when the far-right League entered government in coalition with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement.

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Last four refugee children leave Nauru for resettlement in US

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Move follows intense campaign by refugee advocates for all children sent to the island by the Australian government to be taken off

The last four children living in Australian government-run offshore processing on Nauru have now left the island, amid a group of 19 people flown to the US for resettlement.

The group includes a number of Iranians, according to refugee advocates, contradicting persistent suspicions that Donald Trump’s travel ban on six nationalities was blocking refugees from the resettlement scheme.

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Greece races to move refugees from island likened to a ‘new Lesbos’

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Migration minister warns camp on Samos where hundreds of children live in squalor is six times over capacity

Greek authorities are scrambling to house almost 4,000 people crammed into an overflowing migrant camp in Samos, as aid groups warn of a “humanitarian disaster” on one of Europe’s forgotten frontlines.

Likening Samos to a “new Lesbos,” the country’s migration minister warned of a race against the clock to find suitable accommodation for the ever growing number of people trapped in a reception centre now six times over capacity.

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Italian senate group votes to block criminal case against Salvini

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Rest of senate must choose whether to ratify decision over kidnapping charges

An Italian parliamentary committee has voted to block a criminal case against Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister and interior minister, for refusing to allow migrants to disembark from a rescue ship.

Prosecutors in Catania, Sicily, need the backing of parliament to continue investigations against Salvini, who also leads the far-right League party, for alleged abuse of office and kidnapping.

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Swedish student fined for plane protest against Afghan’s deportation

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Elin Ersson received a £250 fine for refusing to take her seat on a plane in Sweden last year

A Swedish student who livestreamed her protest against the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker last year has been found guilty of violating Sweden’s aviation laws and fined £250.

Elin Ersson, 22, avoided a prison sentence at the Gothenburg district court, where she was sentenced to a fine of 3,000 Swedish krona.

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