IMMIGRATION

Turk saner than the Swedes: "An elderly Turkish immigrant in the southern town of Malmo in Sweden co-writes an article in a Social Democratic evening paper, Aftonbladet, demanding a stop to all immigration until all immigrants, who have already arrived, are working and integrated. It should have been done long ago, he says. And considering a population of nine million, of which 12 percent are born in another country, and that 400 000-500 000 are Muslim (a very recent development), he has a point. Especially since the familiar problems of crime, gang rapes and the like are abundant in the big cities.... Suad Cicek says he and friends are planning to start a one-issue-party demanding a stop to all immigration. The logic being that the present open borders-policies are a threat to both Swedes and immigrants.... Mr. Cicek boldly claims [it] is not really a real refugee problem, but rather "welfare-immigration" caused by the rumor that you can live comfortably without working in Sweden and other European countries. And, he also stresses, the ones who come are to a large extent not that poor, since they have to pay a small fortune to refugee smugglers. The really poor and needy can't afford to come here at all".

Italy copies Australia: "Italy is to send 150 police officers to Libya, along with aircraft and infra-red tracking equipment, as a first step towards the creation of holding camps for illegal migrants passing through North Africa bound for Europe. The deal between Italy and Col Muammar Gaddafi's regime is widely seen as a pilot project for a European Union policy of processing asylum seekers before they reach EU soil. This would effectively sub-contract the job of migration control to buffer states which often have a record of harsh treatment of refugees".

Italy boots them out: "Italy has defended as an "emergency measure" its draconian new policy of airlifting illegal immigrants straight back to Libya the moment they set foot on Italian soil. In an attempt to deter further waves of illegal immigration hundreds have been sent back to Libya by air during the past four days. Italian immigration officials said at the weekend that the immigrant reception centre on the tiny island of Lampedusa, designed to hold 200 people, was "packed to bursting point" with nearly 1300 migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East as smugglers took advantage of fine autumn weather and calm seas. Lampedusa, a rocky Italian outcrop, is closer to North Africa than to Italy and has become a magnet for refugees and the criminal gangs who smuggle them. Under the new law, refugees landing there are taken straight to the island's small airport to be put on aircraft".

Australia boots them out too: "The Federal Government's covert Operation Long Haul - in which 31 immigration detention centre detainees considered at high risk of escape or self-harm were forcibly removed from Australia using handcuffs, batons and restraining belts - appears to have been the flight from hell.... Almost all the detainees bundled onto the charter flight were considered "extreme high risk" and some had four guards assigned to them.... One more "multi-country" operation took place in December 2001, returning 65 detainees to 14 countries, an Immigration Department spokeswoman said yesterday.... Last financial year, 3390 people were forcibly removed from Australia".

But keeping the good guys out is a cinch, of course: "The US has immediately exhausted its annual quota of temporary visas for highly skilled foreign workers this year, making it impossible to hire engineers, mathematicians, researchers and others that US companies say are critical for their competitiveness".

I wonder why they stay? "The health of immigrant children gets worse the longer they live in the United States and become more like Americans, a study has found. When they arrive, children of immigrants - legal and illegal, who are mostly from developing countries in Latin America and Asia - have lower rates of asthma and obesity than American-born children. Children born to immigrant mothers are also less likely to have low birth weights or die as infants than children born to native mothers. But those relative strengths can dissipate by the time children of immigrants become teenagers - often because they have gone years without health insurance, adopted sedentary lifestyles and bad eating habits or become sexually promiscuous. Ellen Wu, executive director of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, said another reason was that American children tended to spend more time surfing the internet and playing video games than kicking soccer balls around."

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