Blog 12: Delhi Chief Minister blames rise in Rapes on Migrants

On Thursday, the Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dikshit commented on the increasing number of rapes in the city, going as far as to blame it on those who migrate to the city from other Indian provinces. In her statements, she provides no hard evidence linking these migrants to the rise in violence against women, but instead offers a loose idea of how the crimes occur. She suggests that these migrants come into the city and partake in criminal activity and then leave before they can be caught. She blames this method on a “porous” border. It seems as if this may become a rallying point for cracking down on inter-provincial migration, backed by the idea that more migrants will mean more rape. As would be expected, many migrants and spokespersons responded to CM Dikshit in disgust and anger, calling her view elitist.

To my knowledge, India is an independent country now, and its states and provinces are all a part of that country. So why is it that the Chief Minister speaks of migration into the city as if it is NOT supposed to be happening? In a free country, you would think someone would have the right to live in whatever province or city they would like. I also find it convenient that even though crime is said to be decreasing in Delhi, every rape that occurs seems like, in Dikshit’s words, “100’s”. This association between rape and migrants will be causing even more tensions within the city, aside from lack of jobs that was already a major issue.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/sheila-dikshit-rising-rape-in-delhi-migratory-population/1/184091.html

Blog 11: Plans to send migrants in Greece packing

With Greece in an economic crisis and elections coming up soon, a platform that has been under heavy fire by all parties vying for power has been immigration. Greece has been for a long time a central hub for immigrants coming from Turkey and the Middle East, but lately, a rise in crime in Greece has caused legislatures to consider sorting out those who seek out asylum from the rest of the migrants and send those who are not seeking asylum back to their home countries. This plan of action was announced by the conservative socialist party last month. It is estimated that 150,000 people enter Greece every year and the current estimated population of undocumented immigrants is somewhere around one million or nine percent of the population. This is a vast number of people to sort through and will take years to realize, maybe never. There is talk of building 30 “closed hospitality” centers around the country to ease the congestion in streets and police cells in order to make screening easier.

Implementing action to this plan will prove difficult though. Due to the vast number of people and outrage expressed by the public, resistance will be met by the forces seeking to round up and arrest all those who are to be deported. The fact that this is an actual platform on which politicians are basing their campaigns in Greece is somewhat disconcerting, though not shocking, considering that many US politicians have taken up the same platform again and again. Something like this would cost the state too much in their current economic condition for something that is not really an issue. It is only a ploy for campaigners.

http://www.thesundaily.my/news/339237

Blog 10: Dehli Puts Blame on Immigrants

Recently, there have been remarks from Dehli officials that seem to imply that migrants are ruining the city. With each account of a major crime, the offenders tend to be “non-natives” of the Dehli area. This is because of Dehli’s high migration intake as a central city in the area. The city attracts all people from neighboring counties and countries, and with such a high population of migrants in the city, there is an increased chance of crime being greater among these peoples than the “natives”. The people of Dehli are associating crime with ethnicity, instead of considering the fact crime rates correspond with populations. Since the migrant population is larger than the native, the crime rate will naturally be higher with the migrants than natives, thus creating the illusion that migrants are more prone to crime than natives. This then creates ethnic tensions and hatred between the two groups, mostly from the natives who want to preserve they’re culture and economic standings amongst the influx of farmers and various other outside professions that come to the city in search of new lives.

This predicament is very much similar to the US/Mexican immigration debate: the accusations of the outside groups coming and stealing our jobs and bringing “their” crime with them. What is not being considered is the economic aspects of these immigrants who come into a new world with no smooth transitions, and must find any means to make ends meet (sometimes crime being the only option). We as host cities/countries, do not provide the means to make the best use out of these flourishing labor resources. Instead, make it harder on them. We try and keep the immigrants out or threaten them while they’re within out border/limits. Not to mention the media, which has the ability to make these situations flair up into a blaze when crimes are committed by immigrants, reinforcing the stereotypes and possibly inciting acts of violence.

Blog 8: Haitian Immigrants seek refuge in Brazil

Haitians have had a long history of immigrating out of Haiti, mostly to their neighbor country the Dominican Republic. This has long since created hostility between the two ethnicities, mostly caused by Dominicans toward the immigrating Haitians. But ever since the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010, the patterns of migration have altered drastically with Haitians flooding the DR borders and tensions rising within the Dominican Republic. The DR government has now even gone as far as to withhold citizenship to any child born of Haitian parents. With these new conditions of violence and prejudice, migrating Haitians are seeking out refuge where they can, one country in particular being Brazil. While the opportunities are much better for these migrants heading for Brazil, there is still the problem of getting into Brazil. The country has denied most immigrants immediate entrance to the country and has them camped in border towns for the time being. As for work, the Brazilian government is only allowing 100 work visas to be given out at a time. So these immigrants or refugees as one might go as far to call them, are being kept outside of the country of Brazil and given hardly any aid but that of the local people’s charity. Conditions are improving with the arrival of Doctors Without Borders, but they are still well below any acceptable standard.

And now there are already reports of ethnic tension between the Haitian immigrants and Brazilians. With differences in language and a strong racial awareness in Brazil, it could only be foreseen that hate crimes would spring up sooner or later. The Dominican excuse for the resentment of Haitians was something that developed out of a population crisis, while the Brazilian resentment seems to be originating from an old world class structures and culture clash.

Blog 7: British law to limit Years Migrants can work in the UK

            Do to influx of migrant workers in England, the British government is looking to enact a law that would limit the amount of time a migrant worker can stay in the UK to no more than five years. This is being done in order to create a stronger “guest worker” labor force. This new law would apply to all migrants except those who make £35,000 a year. It is estimated that this law will affect over 40,000 skilled migrant workers in the UK. The hope is that this new plan to limit the number of years a skilled migrant worker can stay in the UK will cut the current net migration of about 250,000 down to “tens of thousands” by the next general election. The British government believes that setting the required income to remain in the country at £35,000 a year will ensure that only the best and brightest get to stay.

            There is much to say about this proposed law. It only caters to the upper class. This class favoritism is exactly the kind of thing that discourages workers from choosing to work in that country to begin with. The government is essentially saying, the wealthy get to stay, but the ones who don’t meet the financial requirement cannot live here indefinitely. Many of these migrants are targeted because they are employed through intra-company programs that is exempt from the limit of migrant workers already established in that country. These companies mostly bring in non-European workers through this program. So now this new law is targeting workers that are non-European, a sort of subtle way of “cleansing” the British population of drastically different ethnicities before they have the opportunity to settle.

http://www.dawn.com/2012/03/02/uk-to-cut-migration.html

Labor Calls for Mass Inter-Provincial Migration in China

In a recent issue of the Economist, a map was published that displays the inter-provincial migration of people in China from 1990-2005. It shows that the bulk of migration is coming out of central inland such as Sichuan and moving to coastal regions such as Guangdong. The overall migration, within this time frame, was around 80 million people. The bulk of these migrants are out searching for work. About 12% of China’s rural population works away from their home. Since inland China has weak connections to world trade, the best place for people to find work was the coast. This turned many inland provinces into labor exporting counties, where their best way to make money is to sell their labor. This mass labor migration has separated millions of families from one another. In the most common case, these are the men of the families who go off in search of work, leaving their wives, children, and elders back in the rural countryside. This could very well impact the construct of rural family structure, in that the wife may now gain certain powers in the absence of the husband. Though, it is more likely that the family authority would transfer to an elder first.

However, do to rising wages of coastal jobs, many companies are looking for cheaper places to build facilities and goods; the cheapest places being inland, where the bulk of their cheap labor already came from. The use of rivers will allow for companies to move further inland, thus bringing jobs closer to home for some of these labor migrants.

http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/02/chinas-changing-migration-patterns/

Discrimination and Abuse of African Migrants in Libya

Since the fall of the Gadhafi regime in Libya, armed militias are increasing instability within the country by hunting down and detaining both supporters of Gadhafi and African migrants and refugees. The reason African migrants are being targeted by these militias is because of a stigma that arose back during the revolution to topple the Gadhafi regime. It was reported that a vast majority of Sub-Sahara Africans in Libya were actually mercenaries working for Gadhafi. This report however was grossly over exaggerated. Once the people of Libya heard this report, they immediately assigned stigmas to all Sub-Saharan Africans and discriminated them harshly, even murdered some of them. This stigma is still strong in Libya and has led to the militias in charge to round up Africans along with those who are also believed to be supporters of the former leader. In many of these cases, those detained by these militias are brutally beaten and tortured.

This brings to mind the ethnic discrimination experienced here in the United States post 9/11. For the Libyans, Sub-Saharan Africans brought to mind an oppressive and dangerous government, while many Americans saw a terrorist in almost every Muslim and anyone who even resembled someone from the Middle-east. So now we have these people who are the target of an almost national hatred without having done anything to warrant such behavior. People who only wish to pass through a country or even make it their home, but are then detained under the pretense of their ethnicity because of a national fear that singles them out and labels them bad people. In times of strife, tolerance and understanding of others is easily disregarded.

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/decapua-libya-militias-16feb12-139448568.html

Stricter Employment for Immigrants in Russia

There are now new employment regulations in Russia that have been set up to combat the flow of illegal immigrants. These regulations include a foreign labor quota. This quota limits the number of foreign employees for each company. The process is very difficult to get through. First of all, to even get a quota for the number of foreign employees a company can have, they must first prove that the jobs cannot be filled by Russian citizens. Then the company has to apply for a permit to hire said employee and order them a personal work permit. An immigrant can no longer apply for the permit themselves. They must ask the company to do it for them. To attain a work permit, the potential employee must provide documentation of their education and qualifications for the job they are applying for, and if the documents of proof of education are from a foreign institute, they must be legalized and translated into Russian. But there are exceptions being made for certain countries and workers who are specialists in their field of labor. Citizens of the Kazakhstan no longer require permits to work in Russia. And foreigners who have the proper work experience and meet the qualifications for the “specialist” labor category are awarded permits and multiple work visas that last up to three years. Another major change to the structure of the foreign labor force is that the number of days an immigrant has to find another job if they lose the one they have before being deported. The new number is 15. They must have a new labor contract filled with another company within 15 days of their last employment before they are deported.

This situation, while understandable in its attempts to lower the number of illegal immigrants in Russia, is causing much concern for the legal immigrants. For them, their lives are now all the more difficult. It raises the question of whether these new regulations help more than hurt. The same can be said for The US. The stricter we are in keeping illegal immigrants out and unemployed, the harder it is for those who are here legally.

http://rbth.ru/articles/2012/02/10/dealing_with_the_migration_bureaucracy_14340.html

Tougher Immigration Laws in Russia

New developments have now unfolded in Russia’s immigration reform. Since Prime Minister Putin made his controversial announcement to crack down on immigration from former Soviet nations and central Asia, there have been two new proposals on how to accomplish this reduction. The first proposal is to criminally charge businesses that hire illegal immigrants and provide them with housing. This would include a $26,000 fee to any business that is caught employing illegal immigrants. The second proposal is to have these immigrants pass a required exam if they wish to reside legally within Russia. This exam will cover Russian language, history, and culture. While this is aimed at dramatically reducing the number of immigrants from Soviet countries, it could potentially make immigration from desired countries more difficult, such the United States or various Western European countries.

Another concern would be the fact that if you make legal immigration all the more unattainable, then chances are there will be a spike in illegal immigration. There are still all these people who want to live and work in that country and will do what ever they can to get there. This in turn will cause a higher demand for human trafficking, which is already notorious in that region. And when you have a greater number of people being moved illegal across borders, there is more opportunity for drugs to be smuggled with them, driving the number of narcotics crimes up. The same situation can be seen here with the US and Latin American countries. Access to live and work in the US is near impossible for most who wish to immigrate here, so they find their own means to “live the American Dream”. These immigrants then go through some terrible ordeals and terrible people in order to get here.

http://rbth.ru/articles/2012/02/03/russias_authorities_to_tighten_migration_legislature_14315.html

Russian Border Control

 

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has caused a lot of controversy since an article of his was recently published in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Putin has taken it upon himself to discuss two issues that have been plaguing the Russian people since the collapse of the Soviet Union: New Russian Identity and Migration. On the new Russian identity, Putin stated that Russia is not a modernized version of the Soviet Union, but it’s own, new country. And that drastic changes, such as the collapse of the Union, have not defeated Russia, that it remains, due to the will of its people. Now, there are two identities becoming rooted in the modern Russian people. The first are the Rossiyanin, or citizens of Russia that are members of the multiethnic Russian civic nation, and Russkyis, who are ethnic Russians. Russkyis make up about 80% of the population, but immigration is constant and Russia has the second highest migration rate in the world, next to the US. These migrants are mostly from the North Caucasus and Central European countries that have long been tied to Russia, many of which were once a part of the Soviet Union. There are many ethnic Russian nationalists who are calling for the borders to be closed off to these countries. They believe that closing the borders to these countries will help solve all of their economic and political problems, placing the blame of the many Muslims that migrate from these regions. There is a rapidly growing hatred toward these non-ethnic Russians and Muslims. They are blamed with stealing the jobs of native-ethnic Russians and importing the crime and poverty from their old countries. Sound familiar? Putin has stated that he would like to limit any further illegal immigration by putting more responsibility on police and improving the living conditions of the poor areas of Russia and neighboring states. With this escalating tension between race and religion, it is almost inevitable before hate crimes become prominent in daily Russian headlines, if they are not already.

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012/01/27/64756362.html

Blog #1: Dramatic Increase in Migration to Yemen

Despite the political turmoil, there has been a major influx of Somali and Ethiopian migrants and refugees in the past year in Yemen, which sits at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula and borders the Arabian and Red Sea. The estimated total of Somali and Ethiopian migrants to reach Yemen in 2011 was 103,000. This is double the number from 2010. 

The growing famine and violence in Somalia and Ethiopia have driven natives to seek refuge in Yemen and countries beyond, in search of safety and stability. The reason there has been such an influx of migrants into Yemen this past year is because of the ongoing political struggle and protests against the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, which has led to a lack of law enforcement that in turn allows for human traffickers and smugglers to bring more people into the country. 

The majority of these migrants are smuggled in across the Gulf of Aden, and when they arrive, they are usually found dehydrated, malnourished, and often in shock. These people are often extorted by the smugglers, ransomed, and sexually harassed in the process of being smuggled into the country. Three Ethiopians were killed last week for trying to escape from smugglers.