RECENT NEWS AND VIEWS
Extracts of recent news and views in date order - latest first
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MULTICULTURALISM – POLITICS
Cabinet minister John Denham: poor whites have had a raw deal
Sam Coates
The Times, 1 December 2009.
White working-class communities feel
a justifiable sense of grievance and deserve additional help reserved for
minority groups, a Cabinet minister told union leaders yesterday.
John Denham, the Communities Secretary,
sparked a row by saying that government agencies and councils should give
more priority to poor white communities that feel hard done by because of
immigration and the recession.
The move
is an attempt to head off support for the British National Party, which has
gained popularity by suggesting that whites are treated like a minority in
Britain. It comes two weeks after remarks by Alan Johnson, the Home
Secretary, acknowledging that Labour had done too little to tackle
Britain's immigration crisis. ...
Mr
Denham is implying that too much is being done for disadvantaged ethnic
communities at the expense of the white working class – a claim likely
to be rejected by some Labour politicians, who will argue that now is not
the time to downgrade the fight against racism.
Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs
Select Committee, said: "To suggest that ethnic minorities do not suffer
from a disadvantage is a radical departure from government policy, not
least in his own department, where hundreds of millions are spent helping
ethnic minority groups. We need to know whether he is suggesting additional
government spending supporting white working-class groups – or cuts to
existing programmes." ...
Mr Denham told
the Trades Union Congress that government bodies and councils had been
"blind" to the needs of white working-class communities and called for a
new focus on the needs of poor whites affected by mass immigration.
... Mr Denham said state agencies charged
with tackling inequality and disadvantage should no longer focus solely on
ethnic minority groups.
He said that
areas with high immigration levels felt a sense of "insecurity and
unfairness" because of the impact of new arrivals on jobs and public
services.
"Many local agencies have a
clear and good commitment to tackling racism and race inequality. But on
its own this is not enough. We can only challenge racism and race
inequality as part of a strategy that tackles all forms of inequality and
disadvantage.
"This must include poorer
white working class communities, as well as disadvantaged minority ethnic
communities. Agencies that have thought their only remit was to address
minority issues must reassess the way they work."
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BENEFITS AND COSTS – ASYLUM, CITIZENSHIP
Council pays refugee family's £83,000 rent
Chris Irvine
Daily Telegraph, 30 November 2009.
A family of former asylum seekers
living in a £1.8 million home in central London is costing taxpayers
more than £83,000 a year.
Nasra
Warsame, originally from Somalia, seven of her children and her mother
moved into the six-bedroom home last month, while her husband, Bashir Aden,
and an eighth child are living in an "overspill" property, also paid for by
housing benefits.
The couple claimed
asylum in Britain after leaving Somalia in 1991.
They have been granted citizenship and
all their children, aged between two and 16, have been born here.
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ASYLUM – PIRACY
Pirates set free in case they claim asylum
Nick Britten
Daily Telegraph, 30 November 2009.
The Royal Navy has regularly been
allowing Somali pirates to go free because of the risk they would claim
asylum if prosecuted in Europe.
Pirates
terrorising ships in the Indian Ocean are often given medical checks and
life jackets and fed after being caught, before being sent on their way.
This is sometimes because, although they
are carrying guns and even holding hostages, they have not been caught in
the "act of piracy".
More than 340
suspected Somali pirates have been captured by international navies in the
past year and released.
Julian Brazier,
Conservative shipping spokesman, said: "The fault lies not with the
hard-pressed naval commanders, but the ridiculous rules of engagement and
operating instructions they are given by their political masters."
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MULTICULTURALISM – ISLAM, SWITZERLAND, PUBLIC OPINION
Switzerland faces Muslim backlash after it bans minarets
Alexandra Williams
Daily Telegraph, 30 November 2009.
Switzerland risked a Muslim backlash
yesterday after its citizens voted overwhelmingly to ban minarets on
mosques.
The legally-binding referendum
result had not been widely expected and was a serious embarrassment to the
neutral Swiss government. ...
...
Yesterday's results showed a swing to 57.5 per cent (1.53 million people)
in favour and 42.5 per cent against. Of Switzerland's 26 cantons, or
federal states, 22 were in support. ... ...
Yesterday's referendum was born of
planning application by Muslims in the town of Langenthal, in the canton of
Bern, asking for permission to add a 30ft minaret to their mosque. What
began as a debate about an architectural structure snowballed into an issue
about the position of Muslims in Switzerland. ...
Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, the justice
minister, said: "The initiative is a kind of proxy war. Its supporters say
they are against minarets. But they want to fight what they consider
creeping Islamisation and sharia law." About 400,000, or 5 per cent, of
Swiss residents are Muslims. Only four of the country's 150 mosques have
minarets.
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TERRORISM – BORDER SECURITY
Al-Qaeda 'exploits sloppy security checks'
Duncan Gardham
Daily Telegraph, 28 November 2009.
Al-Qaeda terrorists are exploiting
loose visa and immigration rules to enter Britain, the security services
fear.
Counter-terrorism police and
Whitehall officials believe dozens of extremists could have arrived here by
posing as students or legitimate visitors.
They are concerned both by the relatively
lax checks that are made on the visitors before they arrive and by the ease
with which they can overstay their visas without anyone noticing.
As many as 13,000 visa applicants may
have entered the country from Pakistan in a seven-month period from October
last year, without any checks on their supporting documentation.
The security services fear that because
most do not mix with home-grown terrorists, they are able to operate under
the intelligence radar, acting as sleeper cells until ready to launch
attacks in Britain.
Every year about
100,000 visitors arrive in Britain from Pakistan alone, which has been
described by the Prime Minister as being part of a "crucible of terror"
along with Afghanistan. ...
The security
services are also worried about arrivals from Somalia, Yemen and north
Africa. ...
Figures released in a series
of parliamentary questions show that in the seven-month period from October
2008 until May this year, just 29 of the 66,000 applicants from Pakistan
were interviewed and in 20 per cent of cases there were no checks at all on
documents that gave qualifications, references or travel plans.
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IMMIGRATION ABROAD – WORLD, CHINA
The World of China Inc.
Hannah Beech
Time, 7 December 2009.
[An article largely about Chinese involvement in Papua New Guinea (P.N.G.)]
[This magazine is published more than a week before the date it carries]
Chinese companies investing abroad
also tend to ship in nearly everything used on building sites, from packs
of dehydrated noodles to the telltale pink-hued Chinese toilet paper. It's
not only the contracted Chinese workers who show up, either. Within a few
years, their relatives invariably seem to materialize to set up shops
selling cheap Chinese goods that threaten the livelihood of indigenous
entrepreneurs. Locals who do get work on Chinese-funded projects complain
that their bosses don't heed national labor laws ensuring minimum wage or
trade-union protection. Over the past three years, anti-Chinese riots have
erupted everywhere from the Solomon Islands and Zambia to Tonga and
Lesotho. Tensions are also simmering in India, where the Chinese are
involved in several major infrastructure projects. Even high-level
officials are speaking up. In Vietnam, plans for a $140 million
Chinese-operated open-pit bauxite mine were publicly excoriated by none
other than revolutionary hero General Vo Nguyen Giap because, he said, of
"the serious risk to the natural and social environment." ...
Last November, in a low point for
Sino-P.N.G. diplomacy, the police raided the construction sites at Basamuk
and Ramu and arrested 223 Chinese for immigration violations. The foreign
workers, it turned out, had entered on visas that prohibited employment.
... ...
Today, in major cities across
P.N.G., the vast majority of so-called kai bars, or fast-food
restaurants, are run by recent Chinese immigrants, as are nearly all the
grocery stores. But few Chinese have the correct papers to run such
businesses. ... ...
In Papua New Guinea,
at least, normal citizens can express their reservations about Chinese
investment. But in many of the countries where China has made its biggest
business forays, such democratic dissent is squelched by repressive
governments that are taking the lion's share of any investment profits. ...
China is also learning that it can't keep a lid on political scandals
overseas as easily as it can clamp down on information back home. In
P.N.G., for instance, the local press has widely covered a government
investigation into claims that corrupt local officials allowed Chinese
immigrants to buy passports.
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CITIZENSHIP
600 passports given out each day
Tom Whitehead
Daily Telegraph, 27 November 2009.
Migrants are being handed a British
passport every two minutes after a sharp jump in approvals for citizenship,
Home Office figures show.
A total of
54,430 people were granted citizenship between July and September this year
– the equivalent of around 600 people every day and a 69 per cent
increase on the same period last year.
The rise has been blamed on a rush of
applications ahead of new rules to "earn" citizenship through a
probationary period.
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MULTICULTURALISM – DIVERSITY
Mapping out the strain on your NHS: 243 sick babies treated in one London hospital ward.... and just 18 mothers come from Britain
Sue Reid
Daily Mail, 27 November
2009.
Countless red dots scattered across
the world map on the wall of a NHS hospital reveal the story of the
changing face of Britain.
Each dot
denotes the background of a mother with a baby in the neonatal ward of
London's Chelsea and Westminster hospital. The map was put up by hospital
administrators to 'celebrate the ethnic diversity' of the sick children
treated there, each at a cost of £1,400 a day.
It shows dramatically how the NHS now
treats patients from every corner of the globe.
The 243 mothers are from 72 different
nations. They include Mongolia, the remotest regions of Russia, Japan,
Africa, South America, swathes of Asia, Australasia and even Papua New
Guinea.
Only 18 mothers said they were
from Britain. ...
It is impossible to say
how long each of the mothers has been in this country. But the fact is only
a fraction of them declared themselves as having a British background.
In theory, only a woman who has lived
here legally for a year or has a student visa lasting more than six months
is entitled to free NHS care when giving birth.
Yet few hospitals are prepared to turn
away a pregnant patient in the late stages of labour. Indeed, the
Government recently issued an instruction telling them to admit such women
without question.
Health Minister Ann
Keen pronounced in July: 'We remain firmly committed to the requirement
that immediately necessary or urgent treatment should never be denied or
delayed from those that require it.'
Many
nurses and doctors on the NHS frontline believe her words were dangerously
naive, even an explicit invitation to heavily pregnant women to fly to
Britain to have babies. Some have arrived at Chelsea and Westminster - and
other London hospitals - straight from the airport with the ticket tags
still on their suitcases. ...
Today
nearly 25 percent of babies in Britain have mothers who were born abroad.
In London the figure is 50 percent. The boroughs of Newham and Brent have
the highest percentage, 75 percent and 73 percent respectively. Even in
Chelsea (an area less associated with immigration) the figure is 67
percent, according to a recent Government report.
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IMMIGRATION – PUBLIC OPINION
Record numbers leaving UK but half a million migrants still arriving each year
Tom Whitehead
Daily Telegraph, 26 November 2009.
[The news appeared in the printed paper the following day]
Eastern European workers returning
home was behind the sharp rise in emigration but hundreds of thousands of
new migrants continued to flock to the country.
It meant, on balance, more people still
arrived than left during 2008 and critics said the population remained on
course to pass 70 million within two decades.
Foreign migrants now account for a third
of the population of London, the Office for National Statistics revealed.
The figures show that while the recession
is having an impact the UK continues to be a major attraction for foreign
workers and migrants, pushing the population up yet further.
It will pile further pressure on local
authorities and communities already facing a heavy strain on resources by
large and sudden influxes of people.
And
it came as a poll showed three quarters of the public are concerned about
the impact immigration is having on Britain and a similar proportion do not
believe the Government is open and honest about the scale.
A record 427,000 people left the country
during 2008 around two thirds of who had not been born in the UK, which was
a 25 per cent increase on the 341,000 who left the previous year.
However, at the same time, some 590,000
came to live in the UK in 2008, a rise of 16,000 on the previous year and
just short of the record 596,000 arrivals in 2006.
It meant a net immigration to the UK of
163,000, which was down by almost half on the previous year but still well
above the 50,000 figure needed if the population is not to reach 70 million
by 2029.
Once Britons are removed from
the figures, there was a net inflow of non-UK born migrants of 251,000
during the year – the equivalent of 688 foreign arrivals adding to the
population every day. ...
The rise in
emigration was mainly driven by Eastern Europeans, 69,000 of who left last
year compared to just 25,000 in 2007 but the former Eastern Bloc citizens,
such as Poles and Slovaks, continue to arrive as well and there was a net
inflow of 20,000 over the year.
As for
those leaving the UK, Poland was the most popular country of residence for
foreign departees while Australia was top for British emigrants.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the
think-tank Migrationwatch, said the fact it was EU citizens, who have free
movement, who were the main drivers in the departures made a mockery of the
Government's claims of controlling immigration.
A YouGov poll for his organisation found
72 per cent of people want net migration cut to 50,000 a year.
Sir Andrew said: "Today's immigration
figures confirm that unless we change direction, immigration will add
another seven million to our population in the next 25 years – that's
equivalent to seven cities the size of Birmingham."
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DIVERSITY PROMOTION – POLITICS
Parties must list rejected applicants
Rosa Prince
Daily Telegraph, 26 November 2009.
Political parties will be forced to
declare how many women, disabled people and ethnic minority applicants they
reject as potential parliamentary candidates.
The proposal by a committee headed by
John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, looking at the lack of diversity in
Parliament is likely to be accepted after winning support from all the main
parties.
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MULTICULTURALISM – EDUCATION, CRIME
Teaching of gender equality 'too broad'
Tom Whitehead
Daily Telegraph, 26 November 2009.
Plans for gender equality lessons for
every child were criticised yesterday as a "one-size-fits-all approach" to
combat a social problem that only affects a minority of children.
They would not resolve the pressing
problem of honour-based crime, ministers were warned.
The Government announced this week that
children as young as five would be given the compulsory lessons to combat
negative attitudes towards girls and women that could lead to a tendency
towards violence in later life.
The
government strategy highlighted that certain groups of women, particularly
those from ethnic minorities, face specific forms of violence, namely
forced marriages, honour-based crime and female genital mutilation.
It has led to concerns that a general
policy for all children will fail to focus attention on those who would
benefit most from it, and will worry other children needlessly.
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BORDER CONTROLS
French border police discover 12 lorries packed with British-bound migrants
Ian Sparks
Daily Mail, 26 November 2009.
In September, the French bulldozed a
squatter camp in Calais called the Jungle. Of the 278 migrants arrested,
early all were released on humanitarian grounds.
Of the estimated 1,000 migrants in
Calais, up to 50 a week are thought to be crossing the Channel illegally,
with more arriving to replace them every day.
More are also arriving on a daily basis
in other ports on the northern French coast that have ferry links to
Britain, including Dunkirk, Ouistreham and Cherbourg.
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CRIME – BORDER SECURITY, EUROPEAN UNION
French film about illegal immigrant trying to enter Britain wins top EU award
Ian Sparks
Daily Mail, 26 November 2009.
A French film about an illegal
migrant who tries to swim across the Channel from Calais to Britain has won
a top EU award for its celebration of 'integration' in Europe.
The controversial movie called Welcome
dramatises a 'likeable' migrant's illegal attempt to reach our shores.
When released earlier this year the film
was criticised by many who said it glamourised the illegal efforts of
migrants to get into Britain.
But MEPs in
Brussels this week awarded it the EU's prestigious Lux Film Award.
The annual prize is given by the European
Parliament for the film which best illustrates 'the European integration
process, topical European issues or cultural diversity in the Union'.
The film centres on a Kurdish refugee who
has failed to sneak aboard lorries and ferries to the UK - so decides to
swim the 18 miles to the Kent coast instead. ...
The film's director Philippe Lioret also
whipped up a storm of controversy this year for likening the situation of
Calais migrants to that of Jews under the Nazi occupation during World War
Two.
As well as the award - shaped like a
Tower of Babel - Mr Lioret was handed a cheque for £80,000, part of
which he must use to have the film subtitled or dubbed into all 23
languages of the European Union.
A Calais
police spokesman said after the film hit French cinemas in March: 'I think
we would be disappointed if it made breaching frontier controls look like
some kind of noble quest.'
Council chiefs
in Calais also said they hoped the film would not present sneaking into
Britain as a 'worthwhile task'.
A
spokesman said: 'The idea of making a refugee very likeable, then to have
the audience rooting for him to successfully swim to Britain goes against
everything border patrols in France and the UK are trying to achieve.
'Anyone with a genuine case for asylum
should have it heard through the correct channels, and not try to side-step
customs and security.'
Mr Lioret said his
film was aimed at criticising a French law that makes it a crime to help
illegal immigrants.
He said: 'To see that
a decent guy can all of a sudden be charged and imprisoned for helping a
migrant is crazy. It feels like it's 1943 and we've hidden a Jew in the
basement.' ...
The EU's website for the
Lux film award says it is aimed at 'showing the process of building Europe
in a different light'.
It adds: 'As the
European Union works on a new treaty, the artistic and narrative quality of
the winning film will give the audience a glimpse of a submerged dimension
of the European venture the individual, perhaps the intimate, dimension.'
After receiving his award, director Mr
Lioret said it showed that MEPs backed his film's controversial view of
illegal immigration.
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TERRORISM – CRIME
Students 'part of global bomb plot'
Duncan Gardham
Daily Telegraph, 25 November 2009.
A group of Pakistani students
suspected of planning a terrorist attack on Easter shoppers was believed to
have been linked to al-Qaeda and part of a "very significant international
plot", an independent report has found.
Anti-terrorist police had no alternative
but to arrest some of the suspected group members, according to Lord
Carlile, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. ...
In the end, none of the 12 arrested men
was charged, although 10 were transferred to immigration custody.
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TERRORISM – CRIME, BORDER SECURITY
Bogus colleges: Tougher penalties needed
Daily Telegraph, 25 November 2009.
Tougher penalties are needed against
those who operate bogus colleges, according to Lord Carlile.
He said that most of the suspects in the
alleged Easter bomb plot arrived in Britain from Pakistan on student visas.
...
Lord Carlile said the case had
"thrown up yet further examples of a known problem, that of bogus colleges,
non-existent or merely vestigial courses and poor attendance records". He
added: "The increase in courses and the high level of applications from
non-UK nationals requires a higher level of vigilance from the authorities
than has occurred hitherto."
Those who
provided courses at bogus colleges should be prosecuted and have "severe
penalties imposed in serious cases".
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POPULATION PRESSURE – FLOODS
What our country needs is 'Slow Water' – and less concrete
Clive Aslet
Daily Telegraph, 24 November 2009.
The flash floods that Britain has
experienced in recent years – at Boscastle, Cornwall (2004); Helmsley,
Yorkshire (2005); Elford, Staffordshire (2007); Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire
(2008) – suggest that it is impossible to predict where flooding in
Britain will strike next.
One thing,
though, is certain: successive governments since the 1980s have been guilty
of supreme folly in allowing new dwellings to be built on flood plains.
Easing planning restrictions on flood
plains released a supply of land in a way that seemed preferable to
incurring the wrath of conservationists by building new towns. Inevitably,
these recently built homes have often been the first ones to be flooded.
Throughout history, builders prior to the
Thatcher government did their best to site development away from low-lying
areas that were close to rivers. Alas, they did not always succeed. ...
For half a century, we have been putting
more and more of Britain under concrete, reducing the amount of land
available to soak up rain.
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IMMIGRATION ABROAD – ITALY, POLITICS
Berlusconi fights to keep his allies together
Nick Squires
Daily Telegraph, 24 November 2009.
Tension has been rising for months
between the prime minister's allies Gianfranco Fini, the leader of a
conservative faction, and Umberto Bossi, the head of the Northern League,
over immigrants' voting and citizenship rights.
It spilt over when Mr Fini, the speaker
of the lower house of parliament, said that "anyone who discriminates
against foreigners is a piece of ––."
The remark was made in a speech on the
outskirts of Rome to teenagers from countries including Eritrea, China and
the Philippines.
It incensed the Northern
League, which is largely hostile to the nearly four million foreigners who
live in Italy, both legally and illegally.
"It is equally ––––
to delude immigrants into thinking that our country is the land of plenty
and work for all," said Roberto Calderoli, a minister from the League.
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CRIME – COST, DEPORTATION
Foreign prisoners offered bribes to go
Tom Whitehead
Daily Telegraph, 23 November 2009.
The taxpayer is having to pay
millions of pounds a year to "bribe" foreign murderers, rapists and other
prisoners to go home.
One in four of the
foreign criminals deported last year only went home after being offered a
voluntary return package worth up to £5,000 – representing a 60
per cent increase in such agreements in one year. ...
... Some foreign prisoners can already
have up to nine months slashed from their sentence if they are willing to
go home.
The Facilitated Returns Scheme
started in October 2006 and encourages overseas offenders to return to
their home country once they have passed the point in their sentence when
they would be released if they were British.
It is aimed at preventing lengthy and
expensive legal battles against deportation and can result in inmates being
given resettlement packages worth up to £5,000, including up to
£500 in cash.
In 2008, about 1,350
foreign criminals took advantage of the programme, with an average value
per package of £2,500. That means the taxpayer faced a bill of
£3.4 million last year.
Those who
received such a deal represent a quarter of the 5,400 foreign criminals
that the Home Office boasted it had removed from Britain during the year.
In 2007, 850 criminals, or 60 per cent fewer, took up the offer. ...
Under a separate early removal scheme,
foreign prisoners can be freed up to 270 days in advance of their release
date so long as they are willing to return home.
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IMMIGRATION ABROAD – FRANCE
France proposes closing companies that hire clandestine immigrants
Radio France Internationale, 23 November 2009.
The French ministers of labour and
immigration have joined forces to propose new measures to crack down on the
demand side of illegal immigration. These range from fines to outright
closure if companies are found to be knowingly employing undocumented
workers.
Undocumented immigrants are
exploited by human trafficking cartels, Minister of Immigration Eric Besson
said, but this practice is encouraged by the fact that "they find employers
and exploiters on our territory who abuse their situation."
Taking a page out of the American
strategy to combat illegal immigration, Besson said Sunday that he will
submit a bill to crack down on those who employ undocumented immigrants.
Xavier Darcos, the Minister of Labour,
said that the proposed law would give local authorities the power to fine,
shame and eventually shut down businesses employing undocumented
immigrants. ...
Work carried out by
undocumented immigrants is estimated to be worth four per cent of GNP or 60
billion euros, Darcos said, pointing out that this was the equivalent of
the annual budget for national education.
The opposition Socialists don't subscribe
to this government strategy, which started by going after the supply half
of the equation by setting deportation quotas and now moves to the demand
side by going after employers.
They
propose a mass regularisation of undocumented immigrants, like those
recently carried out in Spain and Italy, arguing that these people are an
economic necessity because they work at jobs no one else will.
Speaking on French radio over the
weekend, Vincent Peillon, who represents the party in the European
parliament, added that it's a moral imperative.
"So that France is loyal to its image
– a soldier for liberty, a country that defends human rights – I
believe that today we have to be generous and welcome these people," said
the politician who has already announced his intention to seek the
Socialist nomination for President in 2012.
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IMMIGRATION ABROAD – HAWAII, USA
Filipino Migration to Hawaii: A Tale of Tears
Alexander Martin Remollino
Bulatlat, 23 November 2009.
Hawaii is a popular destination not
only for tourists but also for migrants, and not without reason. ...
Filipinos migrated in waves to Hawaii
beginning in the very first years of the 20th century, when the island was
a newly annexed territory of the US. Hawaii's economy then was dominated by
the owners of big sugar plantations.
...
Hawaii became the 50th state of the US on
Aug. 21, 1959. In 1965, the Immigration and Naturalization Act was passed,
allowing for the influx of petitioned relatives of previous migrants, as
well as of occupational migrants (professionals like nurses and teachers).
Filipinos went to the US, including Hawaii, within this particular wave of
migration – which continues to this day.
The Filipinos had to contend with racial
discrimination, including by fellow Asians, in Hawaii as in the mainland US
and in other US-annexed territories. ... ...
Today, Filipinos in Hawaii number an
estimated 175,147 out of a total population of 1.29 million, based on the
American Community Survey of 2008, and make up one of the largest Asian
ethno-racial groups on the island.
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CRIME – HUMAN TRAFFICKING, USA
Forced labour and rape, the new face of slavery in America
Paul Harris
The Observer, 22 November 2009.
Human trafficking has become a major
issue in the Midwest heartland of America, causing some campaigners to dub
it a modern form of slavery.
Figures from
the State Department reveal that 17,500 people are trafficked into the US
every year against their will or under false pretences, mainly to be used
for sex or forced labour. Experts believe that, when cases of internal
trafficking are added, the total number of victims could be up to five
times larger. And increasing numbers of trafficked individuals are being
transported thousands of miles from America's coasts and into heartland
states such as Ohio and Michigan.
"It is
not only a crime. It is an abomination," said Professor Mark Ensalaco, a
political scientist at the University of Dayton, Ohio, who organised a
recent conference on the issue. ... ...
Trafficking represents a new challenge to
law enforcement, especially in regions which have traditionally not thought
of it as a major problem. That is especially true where it happens within
an immigrant community. Languages are a problem as well as cultural issues
and a natural fear that many immigrants – some of them possibly
illegal – have of contacting the police.
Kelly believes that is the case in
Springfield, a town that is almost the Midwestern archetype. It was once
featured in a story in Newsweek magazine entitled "The American Dream". But
its 65,000 citizens also face all the problems of a modern America in the
grip of a deep recession: an immigration crisis and profoundly changing
demographics. The town now hosts several prominent minority communities who
make up more than a fifth of its population, including Russians, Chinese,
Latinos and Somalis. "There are a lot of people who distrust law
enforcement. We need to break down those barriers. Our officers need
training, especially in languages," said Kelly. "If you can't speak to
people, you can't reach them."
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IMMIGRATION ABROAD – FRANCE, CRIME
Why French Algerians' football celebrations turned into a battle
Andrew Hussey, the Dean of the University of London Institute in Paris
The Observer, 22 November
2009.
As the French nation prepared for the
crucial World Cup qualifying match against Ireland on Wednesday evening,
the streets of Paris were already in carnival mood long before the kick-off
in the Stade de France. ... Most confusingly, with their green, white and
red flags and football songs in Arabic, these supporters were obviously not
French. They were in fact Algerians – several thousand of them –
who were celebrating a 1-0 victory nearly 3,000 miles away in Khartoum.
More specifically, the Algerians were
celebrating that they had, for the first time since 1986, qualified for the
World Cup. As the final whistle blew in the match against Egypt, there was
near-delirium across Paris. As the evening went on, more than 12,000
Algerians poured on to the Champs Elysées, which was closed to
traffic as youngsters danced on the roofs of cars, chanting "One, two,
three, Vive l'Algérie", and throwing fireworks into the dank
November night. ...
... Armed police had
by now gathered around the Arc de Triomphe, trying to break up the crowds.
They were met with taunts, stones and fireworks. The party soon degenerated
into a riot ...
There were 60 arrests,
and similar scenes in Lyon and Marseille. The violence carried on and by
Friday morning the police reported that more than 200 cars had been burnt
in the suburbs of Paris. ...
...
[Site link] |
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RACISM – EDUCATION, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
At U, future teachers may be reeducated
Katherine Kersten
Star Tribune [Minnesota], 22 November 2009.
Do you believe in the American dream
– the idea that in this country, hardworking people of every race,
color and creed can get ahead on their own merits? If so, that belief may
soon bar you from getting a license to teach in Minnesota public schools
– at least if you plan to get your teaching degree at the University
of Minnesota's Twin Cities campus.
In a
report compiled last summer, the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group
at the U's College of Education and Human Development recommended that
aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of "the American Dream"
in order to obtain the recommendation for licensure required by the
Minnesota Board of Teaching. Instead, teacher candidates must embrace
– and be prepared to teach our state's kids – the task force's
own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and
homophobic.
The task group is part of the
Teacher Education Redesign Initiative, a multiyear project to change the
way future teachers are trained at the U's flagship campus. The initiative
is premised, in part, on the conviction that Minnesota teachers' lack of
"cultural competence" contributes to the poor academic performance of the
state's minority students. Last spring, it charged the task group with
coming up with recommendations to change this. In January, planners will
review the recommendations and decide how to proceed.
The report advocates making race, class
and gender politics the "overarching framework" for all teaching courses at
the U. It calls for evaluating future teachers in both coursework and
practice teaching based on their willingness to fall into ideological
lockstep.
The first step toward "cultural
competence," says the task group, is for future teachers to recognize
– and confess – their own bigotry. Anyone familiar with the
reeducation camps of China's Cultural Revolution will recognize the modus
operandi.
The task group recommends, for
example, that prospective teachers be required to prepare an
"autoethnography" report. They must describe their own prejudices and
stereotypes, question their "cultural" motives for wishing to become
teachers, and take a "cultural intelligence" assessment designed to ferret
out their latent racism, classism and other "isms." They "earn points" for
"demonstrating the ability to be self-critical." ...
The goal of these exercises, in the task
group's words, is to ensure that "future teachers will be able to discuss
their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white
privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized
oppression."
Future teachers must also
recognize and denounce the fundamental injustices at the heart of American
society, says the task group. ... In particular, aspiring teachers must be
able "to explain how institutional racism works in schools."
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RACISM – POLITICS
Tory objects to 'foreign' names of would-be MPs
Matthew Moore
Daily Telegraph, 21 November 2009.
A Conservative councillor has been
suspended after complaining that the party's would-be MPs do not have
"normal" English names.
Peter Hobbins, a
former parliamentary candidate, wrote in emails to party members that
applicants for the Orpington seat in Kent sounded "foreign".
He also complained that candidates
approved by Conservative Central Office all mention Africa on their CVs,
calling their cover letters "ridiculous" and "pathetic".
"I have been contacted by a Mr Dilon
Gumraj and a Zerha Zaidi and others who are all on the approved
Conservative parliamentary candidates list," he wrote in one email. "Not
one of them has a 'normal' English name."
He added: "Why are the candidates
department so keen on these foreign names? Maybe I should change my name."
His emails were condemned by the chairman
of Orpington Conservative Association and last night Tory Central Office
said his membership had been suspended. A party spokesman said: "There is
no room for racism in the Conservative Party."
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BORDER CONTROLS – EMPLOYMENT, HEALTH SERVICES
NHS Trust hired illegal immigrant
Channel 4 News, 19 November 2009.
Channel 4 News can reveal that an NHS
trust has hired dozens and possibly hundreds of illegal immigrants through
one of its biggest private cleaning contractors. ...
The UK Border Agency has uncovered
hundreds of fake documents submitted to Kingston Hospital, including
security passes, national insurance numbers and passports.
[Site link] |
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RACISM – EDUCATION, AUSTRALIA
Schools a hotbed of racism: study
Miki Perkins
The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 2009.
More than two-thirds of young people
are the victims of racism at school, with first-generation migrant women in
years 11 and 12 most at risk.
A national
study has found that racism permeates Australian schools, with 80 per cent
of secondary students from non-Anglo backgrounds and 55 per cent of
students from Anglo backgrounds saying they had experienced racial
vilification.
Interviews conducted with
900 secondary school students across Australia also found Anglo-Australian
youths displayed consistent prejudice towards other cultural groups,
particularly towards darker-skinned students from places such as Africa and
India.
The report, released yesterday by
the Foundation for Young Australians, showed racial abuse ranged from
verbal insults to cultural stereotyping, with its impact influenced by
gender, age and the type of school.
[Site link] |
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EXTREMISM – EDUCATION, RACISM, ASYLUM
The class debate: 'all whites are fascists'
Graeme Paton
Daily Telegraph, 18 November 2009.
Pupils are being asked to debate
whether "all white people are fascists" as part of classes to combat
violent extremism.
The lessons are being
held in Lancashire, which has a high proportion of pupils from black and
Asian families, before being expanded to other areas. Children are also
required to challenge the view that "all Muslims are extremists".
Teachers are encouraged to lead pupils as
young as 11 in discussions about racist stereotypes to stop children being
groomed by radical groups. ...
Another
exercise aims to dispel common "myths and stereotypes" surrounding asylum
seekers. This includes views that they are a "drain on the UK economy".
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CRIME – BORDER SECURITY
This man married his OWN daughter so she would be allowed to stay in Britain - and the Home Office knows about it
Sam Greenhill and Dennis Rice
Daily Mail, 18
November 2009.
A Nigerian Home Office worker
'married' his own daughter to get her a British visa, the Daily Mail can
reveal.
The extraordinary scam was
apparently executed by Jelili Adesanya while ministers turned a blind eye.
Mr Adesanya, 54, has lived here for more
than 30 years and holds a British passport, but wanted his daughter, her
husband and their four sons to join him from Nigeria.
He faked a wedding ceremony complete with
a photograph of the happy 'couple' which helped fool immigration officials
that his daughter, Karimotu Adenike, was really his wife.
Miss Adenike, who is in her mid-30s, was
duly granted permission to live in the UK.
The pair are waiting for her to be
granted a permanent right to remain before they undergo a quiet divorce and
attempt to bring the rest of her family here.
It is expected she would try to remarry
her real husband to get them all visas.
But despite being tipped off two years
ago, the Home Office seems to have done nothing to stop the scam by one of
their own workers.
Until recently, Mr
Adesanya was employed as an occupational health nurse for the Home Office,
working with immigration officials at Gatwick airport.
A whistleblower sent letters to the High
Commission in Lagos and the UK Border Agency including specific details
such as names, addresses, passport numbers and even a copy of the wedding
photograph.
When there was no response,
he sent emails to then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and ministers Vernon
Coaker and Phil Woolas on February 1 this year. He heard nothing. ...
David Burrowes, the Conservative MP for
Enfield Southgate and Shadow Justice Minister, was also tipped off by the
whistleblower and wrote to the Home Office.
This time there was a reply, but it said
that although the matter was 'under investigation', no further information
would be provided because it could 'breach of our obligations under the
Data Protection Act'.
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POPULATION PRESSURE – ECOLOGY
Slower population growth to help environment: UN study
Richard Ingham
Yahoo! Green, 18 November 2009.
Braking the rise in Earth's
population would be a major help in the fight against global warming,
according to an unprecedented UN report published on Wednesday that draws a
link between demographic pressure and climate change.
"Slower population growth... would help
build social resilience to climate change's impacts and would contribute to
a reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions in the future," the UN Population
Fund (UNFPA) says.
Its 104-page document
emphasises that population policies be driven by support for women, access
to family planning, reproductive health and other voluntary measures.
"It really is the first time that a
United Nations agency has looked hard at the connections between population
and climate change," lead researcher Bob Engelman, vice president for
programmes at the green group Worldwatch Institute, told AFP.
"People are at the root of the problem
and at the solution of it, and empowerment of women is the key."
The report, the 2009 State of World
Population, paints a grim tableau of the peril of climate change and the
likely impact on humans, in terms of floods, drought, storms and
homelessness.
But it notably puts
distance between a decades-long tradition in the UN arena whereby
population growth and its part in environmental destruction were rarely
– if ever – evoked.
"Fear of
appearing supportive of population control has until recently held back any
mention of 'population' in the climate debate," the document admits.
Things, though, are starting to change.
More than three dozen developing countries have already included population
issues in national plans on climate, it says.
Negotiators, including the European Union
(EU), have tentatively suggested that the question be considered in talks,
designed to culminate in Copenhagen next month, for a 192-nation post-2012
global climate pact.
Today, the world's
population stands at around 6.8 billion. By mid-century, it will range
between 7.959 billion to 10.461 billion, with a mid-estimate of 9.15
billion, according to UN calculations.
The difference between eight billion and
nine billion is between one and two billion tonnes of carbon per year,
according to research cited in the report.
That would be comparable to savings in
emissions by 2050 if all new buildings were constructed to the highest
energy-efficiency standards and if two million one-gigawatt wind turbines
were built to replace today's coal-fired power plants.
"[P]opulation growth is among the factors
influencing total emissions in industrialised as well as developing
countries," it says.
"Each person in a
population will consume food and require housing, and ideally most will
take advantage of transportation, which consumes energy, and may use fuel
to heat homes and have access to electricity."
Mitigating population rise would have a
double benefit, it says.
It firstly
reduces greenhouse-gas output, especially if the decline occurs in
developed countries, whose per-capita emissions are up to 10 times those of
poor countries.
And it also helps
countries – especially poor nations with high population growth –
adapt to the impacts of climate change.
[Site link] |
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TERRORISM – COST
£600,000 handout for terror suspects
James Kirkup
Daily Telegraph, 17 November 2009.
Some of Britain's most dangerous
suspected terrorists have received more than £600,000 of taxpayers'
money to pay for their living costs while they have been under surveillance
by the security services.
Twenty four
suspects placed on control orders have on average received £25,000
each to spend on accommodation, council tax, utility bills and telephone
costs, according to official figures.
Since April 2007, the Home Office has
spent £611,470 on "living costs" for people put under effective house
arrest on the advice of MI5. In addition, the Government is also paying
some of the suspects undisclosed sums in benefits.
There are currently 13 suspected
terrorists under control orders. Their movements and actions are restricted
because the security services believe that they pose a threat to public
safety. ...
Separate figures released
under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the total cost to the Home
Office of the control orders regime since April 2006 is £9.4 million.
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DISEASE – USA
Sex infections still growing in U.S., says CDC
Maggie Fox
Comcast, 16 November 2009.
American squeamishness about talking
about sex has helped keep common sexually transmitted infections far too
common, especially among vulnerable teens, U.S. researchers reported
Monday.
Latest statistics on chlamydia,
gonorrhea and syphilis show the three highly treatable infections continue
to spread in the United States. ...
The
CDC's latest study on STDs found:
* 1.2
million cases of chlamydia were reported in 2008, up from 1.1 million in
2007.
* Nearly 337,000 cases of gonorrhea
were reported. ...
* Blacks, who
represent 12 percent of the U.S. population, accounted for about 71 percent
of reported gonorrhea cases and almost half of all chlamydia and syphilis
cases in 2008.
* Black women 15 to 19 had
the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea. ...
Overall, CDC estimates that 19 million
new sexually transmitted infections occur each year, almost half among 15-
to 24-year-olds.
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POPULATION PRESSURE – HOUSING
27 towns in battle to save Green Belt
Andrew Gilligan
Sunday Telegraph, 15 November 2009.
The extent of plans to cut the Green
Belt across large parts of England can be disclosed for the first time.
The Sunday Telegraph has
identified 27 towns and cities that have been chosen by Whitehall planners
as locations where parts of the Green Belt should be reviewed or sacrificed
to make way for house building.
Ministers
have expressed their determination to push ahead with the plans despite a
series of successful court challenges that have delayed some of the most
controversial proposals.
John Healey, the
Planning Minister, said: "The Green Belt principle is unchanged. But we are
determined to see the new homes we will need."
The move comes despite a promise by
Gordon Brown two years ago to "robustly protect" the Green Belt.
The changes to the Green Belt – open
countryside around urban areas on which development is strictly controlled
– are contained in the final versions of "regional plans" that have
been imposed by Whitehall.
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ASYLUM
Welcome to heaven, how about a cup of tea? Mail on Sunday special investigation into why asylum seekers head to Britain
Edna Fernandes
Mail on Sunday, 15 November
2009.
The latest figures from the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show asylum applications in
industrialised nations rose by ten per cent in the first half of 2009 to
185,000, compared with the same period last year.
Europe received 75 per cent of all asylum
applications, although the United States remained the largest individual
recipient with 13 per cent of the total number of applications filed in
rich nations.
France ranks as the second
largest with 19,400 claims, followed by Canada (18,700), the United Kingdom
(17,700) and Germany, ranked fifth (12,000).
Over the whole of last year, Britain
received 30,500 claims, including dependants. That figure has fallen from a
peak of more than 80,000 eight years ago.
Iraqis, Afghans and Somalis make up the
biggest groups of claimants. Those heading to Europe are drawn by different
factors ranging from personal to economic to which country offers the best
chance of approval. ...
Between 24 and 30
per cent of people claiming asylum in Britain win their case - and this
includes their dependants. Greece, by contrast, has a one per cent approval
rate for cases. Many of those whose applications are refused in Britain end
up staying anyway, according to the UK Border Agency.
Abdul Samad Samadi, chairman of the
Afghan Association of London, says the traffickers are keenly aware of the
commercial value of a one-way ticket to Britain. He estimates there are now
75,000 Afghans living here. He says 80 per cent of them used a trafficker.
'The asylum seekers are big business for
the traffickers. People are paying $10,000 to $20,000 per person to come to
Britain,' he says. ...
The lure of
Britain is complex and there are many factors involved. But one commonly
cited reason for it being a popular destination is that this country is a
'soft touch'. How true is this?
Groups
such as Migrationwatch UK, which lobbies for controls on immigration, argue
that, under European Union law, asylum seekers are meant to lodge their
claim in the first EU country they land in.
In reality, many hold out for Britain
where they believe they will get a better deal. Europe does not have a
standard asylum procedure.
Sir Andrew
Green, chairman of Migrationwatch UK, says that in theory, an asylum
seeker's first country of arrival is where their case should be decided.
'But that doesn't happen. Traffickers tell their clients not to allow
themselves to be identified in any other country but the UK. They say,
"Don't be fingerprinted until you get to the UK, until you arrive in El
Dorado."' ...
The cost to the British
taxpayer in the last financial year was £478 million, down slightly
from £485 million the previous year. ...
Of the 30,000-plus cases a year, one
third of claimants and their dependants are approved, one third go home
either voluntarily or through enforced removals and one third remain here
illegally. These 'failed asylum seekers' are a massive political headache.
...
There are more than 140,000 failed
asylum seekers still in Britain, says Migrationwatch UK's Sir Andrew. Each
year, thousands more will join them.
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TERRORISM – ISLAM, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, USA
A nation in fear of being seen as anti-Muslim
Ruth Dudley Edwards
Sunday Independent (Ireland), 15 November 2009.
There's a climate of fear in the US
among the military, law-enforcers, policy-makers, the media,
opinion-formers and many ordinary citizens. A major cause is the
intimidating Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is
dedicated to Muslim empowerment, receives substantial funding from Arab
governments and has been accused by federal prosecutors of funnelling money
to Hamas.
So effective and ruthless is
CAIR that anyone in authority worries before doing anything that can be
misrepresented as anti-Muslim and lead to lawsuits citing religious or
racial discrimination.
There were plenty
of people who might have prevented the psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan
from murdering 12 soldiers and a policeman, but were too scared to do so.
... ...
And how has the army responded to
the massacre?
"As horrific as this
tragedy was," said the Chief of Staff General George Casey, "if our
diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse." Well, I don't think
the relatives of the dead are likely to agree. Worship of diversity,
fundamentalist political correctness and terror of being accused of
Islamphobia has obscured the simple truth that the US army is no place for
anyone who believes the Koran should be interpreted literally. ...
There have been other dodgy Muslim
fundamentalists in the United States army, including Sergeant Hasan Karim
Akbar, who in 2003 murdered two soldiers and wounded 14, but – with
CAIR in mind – the army continues to run from anything that can be
described as religious profiling.
A good
example of how CAIR has put the fear of Allah into American society is the
case of the flying imams. Three years ago, at Minneapolis airport, some
passengers and crew on US Airways Flight 300 were alarmed by six imams
whose suspicious behaviour included praying loudly, changing seats and two
of them demanding seatbelt extensions which they did not use; an
Arabic-speaker on the flight heard two of them mention Osama bin Laden and
condemn America for "killing Saddam". They were removed from the flight by
airport police, detained, questioned and released.
CAIR backed the imams' claim that they
had suffered from religious discrimination and underwrote their lawsuits
against the airline, the law-enforcers and unnamed passengers who had
reported them to the crew. Congress banned the suing of airline passengers
who report on suspicious activity, but after a bizarre judicial ruling that
no competent law enforcer could have thought their treatment reasonable,
the airline and the law-enforcers settled out of court last month. The
consequences for airline security are terrifying.
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IMMIGRATION ABROAD – REPUBLIC OF IRELAND, REPATRIATION
Irish government to pay immigrants to go home
Henry McDonald
The Observer, 15 November 2009.
Ireland is offering money to
immigrants to leave the recession-crippled Republic. The Irish Department
of Justice has confirmed that it is opening an EU-funded project to
persuade foreign workers and asylum seekers to return to their country of
origin.
A spokeswoman told the Observer
this weekend that the scheme will only apply to non-EU nationals living in
the Republic and would involve the department spending almost €600,000
this year to pay for immigrants and their families to return to nations
outside the European Union.
"The grants
will not be given to individuals but rather the scheme will operate through
projects and organisations," she added.
"They [immigrants] can apply for the fund
only through organisations and community groups. It is the first time we
have introduced the scheme."
The
department has made it clear it had no projected figure in mind as to the
number of immigrants the government hopes will take up the repatriation
grants. ...
The voluntary repatriation
programme comes at a time of rising fears about the cost of immigration
into Ireland. ...
However, according to
the Republic's central statistics office, about 18% of Ireland's
inhabitants are now non-nationals.
Most
of them are from eastern Europe, China, Brazil and west Africa or are
British citizens who have settled on the island.
Some academics, such as Dr Bryan Fanning
of University College Dublin, estimate that the real figure is more than
20%, meaning Ireland's "foreign" citizens make up over one fifth of the
Republic's entire population.
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IMMIGRATION ABROAD – JAPAN
Hatoyama says Japan should embrace migrants
channelnewsasia.com, 14 November 2009.
Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama
said Saturday that his country, which is battling low birth rates and an
ageing population, should make itself more attractive to migrants.
Japan has some of the world's strictest
controls on immigration, and Hatoyama admitted that he was broaching a
"sensitive issue".
But he said that as
well as introducing pro-family policies, Japan should attempt to encourage
migrants to live and work there. ...
"I
am not sure if I can call this 'immigration policy', but what's important
is to create an environment that is friendly to people all around the world
so that they voluntarily live in Japan," he said.
Japan has relatively few resident
foreigners, although in recent years it has cautiously opened up its job
market to nurses and care workers from some Southeast Asian countries.
"First, we will improve support for
child-rearing by offering cash allowances for families with children,"
before thinking about immigration to address the country's low birth rate,
the premier said.
Japan's population has
been shrinking since 2005. Despite efforts to raise the birth rate, a
woman's average number of offspring now hovers around 1.3, well below the
2.07 needed to maintain the population.
[Site link] |
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IMMIGRATION – POLITICS
Immigration hit family ties, jobs and pay in some areas, says Brown
Tom Whitehead
Daily Telegraph, 13 November 2009.
Immigration had "cost" parts of
Britain, impacting on jobs, wages and even family ties, the Prime Minister
admitted yesterday.
Gordon Brown said
there were "significant" variations in how immigration had been felt around
the country and accepted people's fears that it had undermined wages,
affected job prospects for children and whether families could live near
each other.
In his first speech on the
issue since entering No 10, Mr Brown announced a review of student visas to
clamp down on those abusing the system and bogus colleges that allowed
migrants to slip into the UK illegally.
He also promised to create more jobs for
British workers by reducing the number of skilled occupations that were
open to foreign workers.
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IMMIGRATION – POLITICS
Public misled by tough-sounding talk
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch
Daily Telegraph, 13 November 2009.
Gordon Brown's first speech on
immigration was a seriously missed opportunity.
He, himself, said that it was an issue to
be dealt with at the heart of our politics but his own contribution was
remarkably feeble.
He claimed that he
"get's it", yet he clearly doesn't. He seems to have no idea of the huge
concern about how the whole nature of our society is being transformed by
mass immigration – on which we have never been consulted.
This should be a moment for overarching
political leadership, not a laundry list of trivial measures, many of them
re-announced. ...
Yet again the public
are being misled by tough-sounding talk, or they would be if they believed
a word that this Government says on the subject. What is really needed now
is a clear political commitment to ensure that our population will get
nowhere near 70 million. Not a whisper of that, of course.
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POPULATION PRESSURE – EDUCATION
Record number of primary pupils in supersize schools
Graeme Paton
Daily Telegraph, 13 November 2009.
Record numbers of children are being
taught in "supersize" primary schools, official figures show.
The number of students enrolled at
primary schools in England with more than 800 pupils has increased by more
than 50 per cent under Labour.
...
Councils are being forced to find thousands of extra places to meet extra
demand caused by immigration and high birth-rates in some areas. ...
Over the past 20 years, the number of
schools with 500 pupils has increased fourfold from 99 to 400.
Parents have claimed that the expansion
of primary schools damaged children's education and left them feeling
"lost".
They also claimed that playing
fields were being sacrificed for more buildings.
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IMMIGRATION – POLITICS
Labour keen to make up for Tony Blair's lost ground on immigration
Francis Elliott
The Times, 13 November 2009.
The issue of immigration has been a
toxic one for Labour for nearly a decade. Tony Blair is said privately to
acknowledge that he missed an opportunity to tackle the problem in 2002,
distracted as he was by the war in Iraq.
The introduction of a points system for
would-be migrants to qualify for entry, based on their skills and the needs
of the economy, was Mr Blair's belated attempt to counter a Tory attack
during the 2005 general election. The issue was far more damaging to Labour
than was realised at the time, undermining support in the party's
heartlands.
Cabinet ministers admit that
the party has been running scared of immigration for most of this
Parliament. Mr Brown's one attempt to reassure the voters that he
understood their concerns, with a pledge to increase training, was reduced
to a disastrous soundbite: British jobs for British workers.
Now Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, and
Gordon Brown are making interventions. Counter-intuitively they believe
that the BNP's success at the European elections in June has given them an
opportunity to neutralise immigration partially as an issue at the next
general election.
Voters generally recoil
from an overtly racist immigration policy, Labour strategists claim. "The
reaction to the BNP has given us a chance to start a debate about the sort
of immigration policy we should have based on the premise that a globalised
economy will always require ebbs and flows," one strategist said. "All
people have heard for years is the allegation that we've got an 'open door'
immigration policy but they might to start realise that all three parties
are more similar than they think."
Specifically, Labour wants to draw the
Conservatives into a discussion on whether there should be a cap, a policy
that they think is economically naive.
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IMMIGRATION – POLITICS
Immigration controls are a joke
Macer Hall
Daily Express, 13 November 2009.
Gordon Brown faced furious
accusations of being "in denial" last night after claiming to have grasped
the depth of public anger over Labour's open-door immigration policy. ...
But his speech, glossing over a decade of
mass immigration under Labour, ignited a fresh wave of anger over the
Government's refusal to heed warnings about the massive strain on public
services caused by a population soaring towards 70 million.
And ministers' "catastrophic" failure to
control Britain's borders was starkly exposed again yesterday when it
emerged that convicted foreign criminals are routinely walking free from an
immigration removal centre in Kent.
New
figures revealed that overseas-born offenders were released from Dover
Immigration Centre at the rate of one every day during last July. The Home
Office refused to provide information for other months.
The astonishing statistic – released
from the Home Office under the Freedom of Information Act – led to the
Government's policy on immigration being branded "a joke". Mr Brown's
speech was greeted by widespread condemnation last night. ...
Mr Brown wanted to "celebrate diversity"
and insisted mass immigration had boosted the economy, while acknowledging
local services were being over-stretched in some parts of the country.
He claimed the Government's points-based
system for assessing whether skilled migrants were needed in Britain had
reduced immigration by 44 per cent over the last year, although the drop
had coincided with the economic downturn. ...
"As growth returns, I want to see rising
levels of skills, wages and employment among those resident here, rather
than employers having to resort to recruiting people from abroad," he said.
Mr Brown fuelled anger by brushing aside
complaints that critics of Labour's open-door immigration policy have been
smeared as "racist." He said: "I have never agreed with the lazy elitism
that dismisses immigration as an issue, or portrays anyone who has concerns
about immigration as a racist."
Mr Brown
also risked incredulity by claiming Britain's population will not hit 70
million because of the points system "that is now being tightened". ...
Former Labour Welfare Minister Frank
Field and senior Tory backbencher Nicholas Soames, co-chairmen of the
Commons Cross Party Group for Balanced Migration, said: in a statement:
"While the Government is right to split economic migration from permanent
settlement, it is clear that the Prime Minister misses the big picture.
"The points-based system has no limit,
affects just 20 per cent of immigration and will not stop the UK's
population hitting 70million in 2029.
"What is needed is a clear political
commitment to make a very substantial reduction in immigration. In his four
thousand-word speech, the Prime Minister has entirely avoided this central
issue." Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: "Gordon Brown is
attempting to shut the stable door long after the horse has bolted.
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IMMIGRATION ABROAD – BAHAMAS
$1 million spent repatriating illegal migrants
Lindsay Thompson
Caribseek, 13 November 2009.
The Immigration Department has spent
$1 million repatriating illegal immigrants so far this year, Minister of
State for Immigration the Hon Branville McCartney revealed. ...
More than 4,000 migrants have been
repatriated following their apprehension in The Bahamas this year, he
confirmed.
"Unfortunately, many seeking
to enter the country are not invited, do not enter legally, and are poorly
equipped to assist in our further development," he said. "Many are often in
need of assistance in terms of health care, education and training.
"The cost is becoming too exorbitant in
terms of our limited financial resources. In tough economic times the
burden is heavier.
"We no longer have the
capacity to assimilate the ever-increasing numbers of illegal migrants,"
Mr. McCartney said. ...
"Some illegal
immigrants are involved in the illicit drug trade," he said. "Others are
concerned with the illegal gun trade and others into human smuggling
connected to the sex trade.
"The
overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants come from Haiti, and The
Bahamas "holds no malice against such persons," he said.
"The Haitian people are our brothers and
sisters," said Mr McCartney. "Our destinies have been linked by proximity,
by trade, by family and by friendship.
"But I would be remiss if I did not tell
you that we as a country cannot sustain the current levels of illegal
migrants from Haiti and elsewhere. In tough economic times, their
competition for services and for jobs becomes even more unwelcome."
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IMMIGRATION ABROAD – WORLD, USA, HUMAN TRAFFICKING
Human Trafficking Reaches to High Alert Around World
Kane Farabaugh
Voice of America, 13 November 2009.
The U.S. State Department estimates
that 800,000 human trafficking victims cross international borders each
year. The United States is often a destination for many of these victims,
where they are held in what many human rights activists consider modern day
slavery. Some of those activists participated in the Human Rights Accords
in Dayton Ohio, a two-day conference to help raise awareness about the
problems victims face. ... ...
Polaris
Project, one of the largest anti-trafficking organizations in the United
States, estimates as many as 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into
the United States each year. They also estimate as many as 244,000 American
youth are vulnerable to exploitation.
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IMMIGRATION – PUBLIC OPINION, POLITICS
Gordon Brown's immigration speech seen as first shot in election campaign
Alan Travis
The Guardian, 12 November 2009.
When both the prime minister and the
home secretary make their first major speeches for some time on immigration
you can be sure that the election campaign has started in earnest.
Labour ministers have been spooked by
private polling showing immigration as the single biggest issue sparking
defections among the party's past voters.
This anxiety has recently been fuelled by
a meaningless "projection" from the Office for National Statistics that
Britain's population will rise to 70 million and an unfounded Tory
conspiracy theory that the 1997 Labour government deliberately let in
millions of new migrants to ensure that there would never again be a
Conservative government in Britain. If there is even a grain of truth in
that conspiracy theory then the opinion polls all demonstrate it has
manifestly failed.
But either way, Labour
believes it needs to reassure its core working-class voters on immigration.
"So if people ask me, do I get it?, yes, I get it. I have been listening
and I understand," says Brown, promising that new migrants will have to
demonstrate their commitment to British values before being allowed entry
to "our British family home".
So we have
the spectacle today of a Labour prime minister boasting in a speech in
Ealing, Southall, the historic home of London's Indian community, that
overall net immigration is down 44% on last year and promising that in the
coming months thousands more jobs in shortage occupations will be closed to
overseas skilled workers.
Nearly all the
measures to further tighten the new points-based immigration outlined today
– such as raising the earnings entry threshold for graduate skilled
migrants to £24,000 and doubling the period for jobs to be advertised
first to British workers from two to four weeks – were recommended
earlier this year by the government's own Migration Advisory Committee.
But the Mac's chairman, Professor David
Metcalf, while recommending the changes to ensure that British workers were
not being undercut or displaced, also warned the government that it would
be a mistake to make deep cuts in the number of skilled migrant workers at
a time of recession. He implicitly criticised the idea that there was only
a set number of jobs to go round and recognised that migration had actually
boosted job growth and the economy over the past decade. ...
At the same time, the extension of the
points-based system to the 130,000 people who apply for a British passport
each year will mean much tougher "citizenship tests", including questions
on British history. ...
The draft
immigration "simplification" bill also published today should be regarded
more as a first glimpse of the Labour 2010 general election manifesto than
a serious piece of legislation. Its proposals for sweeping new expulsions
for failed asylum seekers and illegal migrants look as though they would
sit more comfortably in a party election broadcast than in what would be
the eighth major immigration and asylum bill introduced since Labour came
to power in 1997.
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RACISM – CASTE, DISCRIMINATION
Asian caste discrimination rife in UK, says report
Sam Jones
The Guardian, 11 November 2009.
Caste discrimination is rife in the
UK, with more than half of those from traditionally lower-status Asian
backgrounds finding themselves victims of prejudice and abuse, according to
a report published today.
The study,
co-ordinated by the Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance (Acda), suggests
that the caste system is still widespread and affects tens of thousands of
people in the workplace, the classroom and even the doctor's surgery.
Fifty-eight percent of the 300 people
surveyed said they had been discriminated against because of their caste,
while 79% said they did not think the police would understand if they tried
to report a caste-related "hate crime".
Almost half of the respondents (45%) said
they had either been treated negatively by co-workers or had comments made
about their caste. Nine per cent felt they had been passed over for
promotion, and 10% said they had been paid less because of their caste. A
further 5% said they had experienced threatening behaviour because of their
caste.
One woman said she had been
demoted from her job at a radio station after her manager discovered her
caste background, while one bus company decided to reorganise shifts so
that a "higher caste" inspector would not have to work alongside a "lower
caste" bus driver.
The classroom also
appears to be subject to caste divides: 7% of those surveyed said they had
been the victims of threatening behaviour while aged under 12 at school,
with another 16% suffering verbal caste abuse. According to the study, 10%
of those responsible for caste discrimination against under-12s were
teachers, and 42% fellow pupils.
One of
the most commonly reported forms of discrimination is caste-related
name-calling. Almost three quarters (71%) of those questioned in the survey
identified themselves as members of the Dalit community. Dalits, who were
formerly known as Untouchables because of their low caste status, are
sometimes referred to abusively as chuhra and chamar.
"[Such] names [are] as derogatory as
calling a black person a nigger, anyone from the subcontinent of
Indo-Pakistani diaspora Paki, or someone of Jewish extraction a kike," says
the report. ...
A number of respondents
also reported being asked – directly or indirectly – about their
caste background by their family doctor, nurse or a community nurse. One
elderly woman felt her care worker had discriminated against her on caste
grounds, while a physiotherapist was also alleged to have refused to treat
someone of low caste.
The report says
that the significant number of doctors from the Indian subcontinent now
indicated "a potential for caste discrimination occurring in the healthcare
sector".
The Acda hopes its findings will
persuade the government to amend the equality bill to make caste
discrimination illegal.
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IMMIGRATION – POLITICS, PUBLIC OPINION
Johnson: we need a debate on migration
Andrew Grice
The Independent, 9 November 2009.
In a candid interview with The
Independent, Mr Johnson admitted that Labour's failure to debate
immigration had "probably" boosted the BNP's appeal.
"People think we have shied away from a
debate on it. They may well be right," he said. "My post bag is bigger on
immigration than any other issue. It is a major public concern. The public
deserves a rational debate on this, rather than what they sometimes get,
which is at the extreme end of the scale."
His call for a "real debate" about
immigration marks a big shift in Labour's thinking. A week ago, Mr Johnson
admitted that successive governments, including the present one, had been
"maladroit" in handling the issue.
In his
interview he made clear that his comments were not a one-off but part of a
concerted attempt to regain the initiative and try to convince the public
that Labour has learnt from its mistakes and "completely transformed" the
immigration and asylum systems. ...
Mr
Johnson's message is that "immigration has been a good thing for this
country – culturally, socially and certainly economically". He
believes passionately that places like London, Birmingham and Liverpool
have been "enriched" by it. But he denied recent allegations that Labour
pursued an "open-door" policy to create a multicultural society. "We don't
have an open-door policy. It is misleading to say we have got one or that
we have ever had one. We manage immigration."
Mr Johnson believes public fears are
shaped by an out-of-date picture and that Labour's reluctance to debate
immigration has deprived it of the opportunity to show that the system has
changed out of all recognition. He cites the Australian-style points system
for non-EU entrants and introduction of electronic border controls which
have led to 4,000 arrests, and will track individuals as well as numbers
coming in and out so that "illegals" can be removed.
Official net migration fell by 44 per
cent from 209,000 in 2007 to 118,000 in 2008 – proof, he said, that
migrants come to Britain for short periods, work, contribute to the economy
and then return home.
The backlog of
asylum applications has dropped from 69,000 to 6,000 since 1995. The
average length of time for claims peaked at 35 months, but now 60 per cent
of cases are being decided within six months.
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IMMIGRATION – MYTHS
The immigration debate we need
The Independent, 9 November 2009.
[Leading article]
The Home Secretary, Alan Johnson,
suggests in an interview with this newspaper today that the Government has
"shied away" from the debate about immigration. In fact ministers have
often seemed to talk about little else over the past decade. It may be that
this debate has often resembled a dialogue of the deaf, but it seems
bizarre to imply that it has somehow been brushed under the carpet of
public life.
However, the Home Secretary
is correct when he suggests the Government would be a more credible
participant in the discussion if it did a better job of emphasising the
benefits that immigration brings to Britain. How often do we hear ministers
heralding the crucial role migrants play in the National Health Service, or
in looking after the elderly in our care homes? They should also do more to
debunk the popular myths about the supposedly preferential treatment of
migrants in the welfare system.
It is
still widely asserted, for instance, that new migrants jump the queue for
social housing despite the fact that only 1.8 per cent of social tenants
have moved to the country in the past five years. Gordon Brown even
bolstered this myth when he announced plans in June to allow councils to
"give more priority to local people". If Mr Johnson wants a more honest
debate he might start by apprising the Prime Minister of the facts.
There are plenty of other sensible points
that ministers ought to be making. They should point out that tens of
thousands of migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe have left
Britain since the recession hit; an illustration of the reality that
substantial inflows of foreign labour throughout our history have been
driven by strong economic growth.
Yet if
Mr Johnson seeks to make immigration into an election issue, he needs to
tread with caution. It is all too easy for careless politicians to stoke
popular anti-immigrant sentiment at a time of economic hardship.
An honest debate in which the costs and
benefits of migration are analysed would indeed be a relief. But the last
thing the country needs is a continuation of the grotesque bidding war
between politicians of all stripes over who can sound "tougher" towards
immigrants.
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EMPLOYMENT – FINES
A fine mess: illegal employers fail to pay
Daily Telegraph, 9 November 2009.
More than four out of 10 fines
imposed on companies for employing illegal workers have not been paid,
figures show, raising questions about the Government's commitment to
controlling immigration.
Of the 3,164
illegal labour penalties handed out to companies – mainly restaurants
and takeaways – by the UK Border Agency over the past 18 months, 1,301
remain uncollected. In total about £6.5 million is thought to have
gone unpaid, prompting opposition politicians to claim that Labour's
immigration legislation "isn't taken seriously" by rogue employers.
Chris Huhne, of the Liberal Democrats,
disclosed the figures, which were contained in the answer to a
parliamentary question.
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EXTREMISM – ISLAM, DISCRIMINATION
Non-believers should have their heads cut off, said army killer
Nick Allen
Daily Telegraph, 9 November 2009.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman
who killed 13 at the Fort Hood military base in Texas, once gave a lecture
to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have
boiling oil poured down their throats.
He
also told colleagues at America's leading military hospital that
non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire.
The outburst came during an hour-long
talk Hasan, an army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of
other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he
worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July. ...
Fellow doctors have recounted how they
were repeatedly harangued by Hasan about religion and that he openly
claimed to be a "Muslim first and American second". One Army doctor who
knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier
had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints. ...
One of Hasan's neighbours described how
on the day of the massacre, about 9am, he gave her a Koran and told her:
"I'm going to do good work for God" before leaving for the base.
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IMMIGRATION – POLITICS
Tories claim immigration cover-up
BBC, 9 November 2009.
Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling
has accused ministers of trying to "deliberately deceive" people about
immigration policy.
He accused them of
breaking Freedom of Information laws and trying to cover up a policy of
increasing immigration.
His claim relates
to notes between officials and ministers released more than four years
after an FOI request.
Minister Phil
Woolas denied that laws had been broken and said the details had been
published months ago.
Mr Woolas told MPs
the notes and e-mails related to a policy to clear a backlog of immigration
cases between 2002 and 2004 - into which there had been a full inquiry at
the time.
Whistleblower Steve Moxon
prompted the row in 2004; it resulted in the resignation of then
immigration minister Beverley Hughes. He then requested details of
documents in January 2005.
Mr Woolas said
that, under FOI law, ministers were allowed to withhold some details if
there was a risk publishing them might prejudice the "free and frank
exchange of views" between ministers and officials.
Mr Moxon appealed and the case went to
the Information Commissioner who, in March 2009, ruled more details should
be released.
"We then released that
information in April 2009," Mr Woolas said.
But Mr Grayling said: "More and more
evidence is now emerging to suggest that this government broke Freedom of
Information laws and tried to cover up a deliberate change of policy
designed to encourage much higher levels of immigration, very probably for
party political purposes."
He said the
documents showed that in 2002 rules were relaxed to clear immigration
applicants waiting for more than 12 months "without any further
investigation into their cases".
The then
head of Immigration and Nationality had e-mailed a minister to confirm the
policy of "pragmatic grants", which meant "some risks would have to be
taken", Mr Grayling said.
Explaining his
accusation of a cover-up, he said some copies of documents outlining the
policy change were "clearly marked 'withhold' at the top".
"Will he tell the House why ministers did
break those [FOI] laws, laws this government itself passed?" asked Mr
Grayling.
"This is a government that has
set out to deliberately deceive the British people and a government that
has proved utterly incapable of telling them the truth about its policies
on accusation."
Mr Woolas told MPs the
accusation that the government had broken the law was one "I absolutely
reject".
He said the policies in question
had been the subject of a "thorough" investigation at the time and he
dismissed Mr Grayling's attack as "his latest political gimmick".
He added: "The allegation has been made,
very seriously, that we broke the law - that was the phrase you used.
"In fact, the ruling from the Information
Commissioner was issued on March 5 2009 and on April 9 we disclosed, in
line with that ruling, the information."
The Sunday Times reported that the
government had published the released documents on an "obscure" part of the
Home Office website.
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TERRORISM – ISLAM, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, USA
What's behind America's politically correct 'love' of Islam? [part 1]
David Kupelian
WorldNetDaily, 9 November 2009.
The second they heard about the Fort
Hood massacre, millions of thinking Americans wondered in their gut: "Oh
God, is this another crazy Muslim terrorist carrying out a one-man jihad,
as has happened so many times before?"
Then, when the alleged perpetrator's name
and religion were made public (Nidal Malik Hasan, a lifelong Muslim) along
with eyewitness reports he had shouted the obligatory pre-terror-attack
proclamation, "Allahu akbar" ("Allah is greatest") before commencing
his orgy of slaughter, their suspicions were confirmed: This was surely a
major attack on the American homeland by a Muslim terrorist.
Further evidence quickly rolled in: Hasan
had reportedly refused to fight fellow Muslims, called the war on terror a
"war on Islam," told a co-worker Muslims had a right to rise up and attack
Americans, and ...
In other words,
although the Army had many warnings Hasan was a certifiable,
America-hating, jihadist "ticking time bomb" waiting to go off, it did
nothing to avert last week's terror attack. Why?
And why, after the truth about Hasan
became undeniable following his mass slaughter, does the government, as
well as its mouthpiece the establishment press, agonize in their usual
pathetic manner over what could possibly have motivated the Army
psychiatrist to coldly, methodically murder 13 and wound 38 others?
• Shortly after the attack, right on
schedule, the FBI announced it wasn't terror-related.
• Time magazine moronically blamed
posttraumatic stress disorder – even though Hasan has never been
deployed in a war zone.
• The
shooter's relatives insisted he had been the victim of religious harassment
because of his faith, which must have made him snap.
• According to the Washington Post,
the problem was that Hasan was lonely. • Meanwhile, President Obama
warned Americans against "jumping to conclusions" about what might have
motivated the shooter.
Why, after a
Muslim commits a terrorist act, do authorities always announce
almost instantaneously – before they could possibly know – that
the attack was not terror-related?
Why do
the news media always torture themselves and their readers with the most
wildly improbable explanations in their attempts to avoid the obvious
truth?
Before we answer these questions,
lest you think I overstate the case, take a quick trip with me down jihad
memory lane. ...
This see-no-jihad,
hear-no-jihad, speak-no-jihad mindset has become standard operating
procedure for the establishment press. ...
The U.S. government, not wanting to
offend Muslim sensitivities, rarely mentions "Muslim" or "Islamic" when
describing Islamic terrorism. For example, when a massive jihad plot to
blow up 10 airliners over the Atlantic and kill thousands was foiled in
2006, then-Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff briefed his agency
using only the word "extremists" to describe the plotters – no mention
of Islam. All of the two dozen would-be terrorists were Muslims.
...
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TERRORISM – ISLAM, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, USA
What's behind America's politically correct 'love' of Islam? [part 2]
David Kupelian
WorldNetDaily, 9 November 2009.
Do we dare admit what is
really at play here? The truth is actually very simple.
We are afraid of Islam.
We are intimidated by Islam.
And because we are afraid of and
intimidated by Islam, Islam is changing us – in two distinct
and profound ways.
First, as is
appallingly obvious, we're afraid to criticize Islam openly, for fear of
having our head cut off or having a fatwa put out on us like the director
of the new "2012" film, or we're afraid of being sued by some of the very
litigious Islamic organizations like CAIR, or we're afraid of being called
a racist, extremist, hater or "Islamophobe" thanks to the tyranny of
political correctness, or we're afraid of offending those in power and
thereby risking our position, stature or other advantage. This reaction,
while perhaps selfish and cowardly, is more-or-less conscious and
strategic.
However, for some it goes much
deeper: Being intimidated by Islam (or by anything, for that matter)
actually causes some of us to mysteriously grow sympathetic toward
it, to defend it, to side with it, even to convert to it. This unconscious
shift in attitude, in response to fear of being hurt, is called the
Stockholm syndrome, named after the 1973 Swedish bank robbery during which
the four terrorized hostages sided with their criminal captors while
disparaging the police risking their lives trying to save them.
We need to understand that a certain
percentage of us, when we're intimidated and upset, start to emotionally
gravitate toward and agree with whatever is intimidating us. Not just
superficially, as a temporary tactic of placating a bully so he won't hurt
us, but more profoundly, deep down in the inner sanctum of our being where
our thoughts and feelings germinate and our loyalties bloom.
Intimidation – that is, causing
others to react with upset and fear – is a fundamental principle of
mind control, fully capable of causing the victim's loyalties to shift
toward the intimidator, whether a schoolyard bully, gang leader, child
molester, hostage-taking bank robber or Islamic radical.
"Political correctness" – which is
basically a low-grade Stockholm syndrome playing out on a broad societal
stage – is actually a subtle form of brainwashing. Even establishment
mouthpiece Newsweek, in its famous Dec. 24, 1990, cover story on the
then-new phenomenon of political correctness on college campuses (titled
"Thought Police") conceded this truth when it reported: "PC is, strictly
speaking, a totalitarian philosophy."
Bottom line: We're intimidated, bullied,
threatened, terrorized – and so we capitulate, not just in word and
deed, but in thought. Get it?
Most
of the time, of course, this occurs below the radar of our own
consciousness. We don't understand what's really happening. So we interpret
our growing sympathy and affinity for whatever intimidated us as evidence
of our loving, open-minded, enlightened nature. In reality, it's the result
of craven weakness on our part. ...
Although they were horrified, "One Army
doctor who knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a
Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints,"
...
Are you with me? "A fear of appearing
discriminatory" caused 51 brave American soldiers to be shot by an Islamist
monster, 13 fatally.
This inordinate
fear, implanted in us by the lords of politically correct attitude, the
subtle brainwashers of modern, secular society, is to blame.
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RACISM – CHINA, SOUTH KOREA
China's Race Problem
Reihan Salam, a fellow at the New America Foundation
Forbes, 9 November 2009.
Is racism universal? Since the end of
the colonial era, the rising powers of the developing world have been quick
to condemn Western racism. Ethnocentrism and color prejudice can be found
in virtually all human societies, going back centuries if not thousands of
years. ...
... It is also true, however,
that Americans have been fairly forthright in confronting this legacy. The
same can't be said of the new racism that is taking shape in Asia. ...
Like the rich nations of the West, South
Korea also has a low birthrate and, as a direct result, a rapidly aging
population. This begs the question of whether South Korea should embrace
large-scale immigration. ...
In a
fascinating article published in The New York Times last week, Choe
Sang-Hun described the intense discrimination faced by a small but growing
number of migrant workers from impoverished Asian countries. A number of
Koreans have expressed serious concerns about the end of the country's
ethnic homogeneity, arguing that a larger influx of migrant workers would
lead to a rise in the level of crime and social tension.
These anxieties have the air of
self-fulfilling prophecy. Given that many if not most Koreans prize ethnic
homogeneity, migrant workers will remain on the margins of society. This,
in turn, will fuel alienation and resentment among this class of permanent
second-class citizens. And so South Korea's major cities could very well
see the rise of segregated ethnic slums. It's worth noting that
anti-foreigner sentiments are flourishing in a time when South Korea is
experiencing rapid economic change, including a new social and economic
inequality. Just as racism provided the basis for solidarity among whites
in U.S. history, it could be playing a similar role in South Korea.
Next to China's race problem, South
Korea's pales in significance. ...
Moreover, as the political scientists
Valerie Hudson and Andrea van den Boer noted in their book Bare Branches,
China also has tens of millions of so-called "surplus males" thanks to a
strong cultural preference for male children. This means that large numbers
of Chinese men will have a difficult time finding wives in the near future.
One obvious way for the China of 2025 to address this dilemma would be to
embrace mass immigration. Because China remains a poor and populous
country, the idea that it will become a magnet for immigrants seems faintly
ridiculous, not least because millions of Chinese are desperate to
emigrate. Of course, the same was once true of Ireland, which is now one of
Europe's most diverse countries.
But like
South Korea – and, for that matter, Japan – China is not terribly
hospitable to ethnic outsiders, including members of non-Han minorities
native to China. Observers tend to overstate the level of ethnic
homogeneity in China, not least because the Han category masks tremendous
cultural diversity. "Hanness" is as broad and contingent a category as
"whiteness."
... The dislike and distrust
of Europeans was always mixed with envy and admiration. The disdain for
dark-skinned foreigners, in contrast, was and remains relatively
uncomplicated. Maoist China railed against Western imperialism, and saw
itself as a leader of the global proletariat of Africans and Asians.
Now, as China emerges as an economic and
cultural superpower, those notions of Third World solidarity, always skin
deep, seem to have vanished. It is thus hard to imagine China welcoming
millions of hard-working Nigerians and Bangladeshis with open arms. This
could change over the next couple of decades as China's labor shortage
grows acute. I wouldn't bet on it.
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IMMIGRATION
Home Office covered up immigration risk [part 1]
David Leppard
The Sunday Times, 8 November 2009.
Labour's "open door" immigration
policy knowingly risked allowing dangerous people to settle in Britain
unchecked, according to documents seen by The Sunday Times.
The Whitehall correspondence, which was
illegally withheld by the Home Office for four years, shows how ministers
were told by the country's most senior immigration official that his staff
were to be "encouraged to take risks" when granting visas, work permits and
extended residency to hundreds of thousands of new migrants.
The cover-up of this policy of
risk-taking was so concerted that Richard Thomas, the then information
commissioner, sent a team of investigators into the Home Office to trawl
all the relevant papers. Earlier this year he rebuked the department for
breaking the law and ordered it to release the material under the freedom
of information (FoI) law.
The documents
help to explain the huge rise in the flow of migrants into Britain as the
Home Office rushed to clear a backlog of 45,000 cases.
Officials agreed to fast-track 337,000
applications with minimal checks. This led to a rapid rise in immigration.
In 1999, 170,000 visas were granted; by 2002, this had risen to 300,000.
As officials were being ordered to take
risks, several potentially dangerous people entered the UK. In late 2001,
more than 20 Taliban, who had fled from Afghanistan after their defeat by
American and British forces, were allowed to stay in the UK. ...
... The documents indicate that, far from
being a mistake, there was a deliberate policy – apparently endorsed
at the highest level in the Home Office – to promote concerted
risk-taking by immigration staff whose job was to decide whether
non-European Union migrants applying to work, study or marry in Britain
were genuine.
A key figure in the scandal
was Sir Bill Jeffrey, who was the director-general of the Immigration and
Nationality Directorate, Britain's most senior immigration official. ...
The other key figure was Beverley Hughes,
then minister of state for citizenship and immigration. She was later
forced to resign after it emerged she had misled MPs about whether she had
been warned that Romanian and Bulgarian crime gangs might want to exploit
the UK's decision to open its borders to those seeking work from eastern
Europe.
In March 2003, shortly after the
2001 entry permits to the Taliban had come to light – to an outcry in
the press – Jeffrey spelled out the policy in a note to Hughes.
"We are still in a situation where some
risks have to be taken, and staff should feel that if they are encouraged
to take risks they will be supported when something does go wrong," he
wrote.
The minister's office replied by
e-mail three days later:
"Beverley Hughes
has seen and noted your submission of 7 March . . . Beverley feels the
basic point is that while staff have to take some risks, this was a
decision that flew in the face of common sense."
The e-mail was copied to David Blunkett,
then home secretary, and Sir John Gieve, his most senior mandarin. The
words "to be withheld" were later scribbled across the top, an apparent
instruction not to comply with an FoI request for its release.
The same words appear on a note, prepared
by Jeffrey, sent to Hughes a few day later. In it, in response to Hughes's
insistent complaints about the need to clear the 45,000 backlog, he
outlined the new "risk-taking" policy. This involved fast-tracking all
337,000 applications, with little or no regard as to whether they were
merited.
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IMMIGRATION
Home Office covered up immigration risk [part 2]
David Leppard
The Sunday Times, 8 November 2009.
The policy, codenamed Brace, meant
that officials had to make quick decisions based on the paperwork in an
applicant's file, regardless of whether it was complete. No further
follow-up checks were to be made.
Jeffrey
said staff were given guidance that "Brace is about pragmatic (ie not
pursing every angle that could conceivably justify refusal) grants rather
than pragmatic refusals".
In other words,
the official policy was in principle to grant applications rather than to
refuse them.
This telling exchange –
and equally significant evidence of a concerted cover-up – is buried
deep in a batch of documents that ministers tried desperately to prevent
being made public.
Their illegal activity
followed an application by a Whitehall whistleblower, Steve Moxon, to force
them to release the material under the Freedom of Information Act.
An immigration case worker whose ultimate
bosses had been Jeffrey and Hughes, Moxon was sacked after telling The
Sunday Times about the fast-tracking process in 2004. He has spent five
years trying to obtain the truth about the policy, which Hughes always
claimed publicly was implemented by junior officials without her knowledge.
Not only do the papers expose her claim
as untrue; they go further in showing that Hughes and Jeffrey were happy to
encourage the culture of deliberate risk-taking.
When an FoI application was made to see
their exchanges, ministers argued that the material was exempt from
disclosure because policy advice given by officials to their political
masters should remain confidential.
In
official correspondence with the information commissioner, the Home Office
said that "a Home Office minister" had ruled that the documents should not
be released.
But in March this year,
Thomas ruled: "The public interest in favour of maintaining the exemption
does not outweigh the public interest in disclosure.
"The commissioner requires the (Home
Office) to disclose the information which has been withheld . . . In
failing to release information, the commissioner finds that the (Home
Office) breached sections 1 and 10 (of the Freedom of Information Act."
The government reluctantly conceded,
placing the documents on an obscure part of the department's website,
apparently in the hope that nobody would notice.
Yesterday, the Tories said they would be
demanding an urgent explanation of the documents from the government.
Chris Grayling, the shadow home
secretary, said: "This is shaping up to become one of the major political
scandals of recent times. Ministers quite clearly broke the law and
deliberately misled the public to cover up a policy which most reasonable
people would say was utterly irresponsible."
Why did new Labour secretly open
Britain's borders, while pretending to control the numbers under its
so-called "managed migration" policy? ...
Chris Mullin, a former minister, recalled
in his memoirs that ministers had "barely touched the rackets that
surrounded arranged marriages . . . terrified of the huge cry of 'racism'
that would go up
. . . There is the added
difficulty that at least 20 Labour seats, including Jack (Straw's), depend
on Asian votes".
With up to 80% of ethnic
minorities voting Labour, it is obvious that the more immigrants who get
the right to vote, the greater is Labour's electoral share. Perhaps Mullin
has stumbled on a smoking gun.
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POPULATION – RELIGION, SOCIETY
Couples are now 'too selfish to have children' says Chief Rabbi
Martin Beckford
Daily Telegraph, 6 November 2009.
Europe is "dying" because its secular
population is too selfish to have children, according to the leader of
Britain's Jewish community.
Lord Sacks,
the Chief Rabbi, claimed that the continent's population was in decline
because people cared more about shopping than the sacrifice involved in
parenthood.
He blamed atheist
"neo-Darwinians" for Europe's low birth rate and said religious people of
all denominations were more likely to have large families.
"Parenthood involves massive sacrifice of
money, attention, time and emotional energy," he said.
"Where today in European culture with its
consumerism and instant gratification – 'because you're worth it'
– will you find space for the concept of sacrifice for the sake of
generations not yet born?
"Europe, at
least the indigenous population of Europe, is dying.
"That is one of the unsayable truths of
our time. We are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change and no
one is talking about it. ..." ...
The
Chief Rabbi gave warning that secular Europe was at risk, however, because
its moral relativism could be defeated easily by fundamentalists.
And he claimed that its population was in
decline, compared with every other part of the world, because non-believers
lacked shared values of family and community that religions have.
"Wherever you turn today – Jewish,
Christian or Muslim – the more religious the community, the larger on
average are their families," said Lord Sacks. ...
He said people were wrong to suggest that
religion was dying. Rather it was "liberal democratic Europe" that was in
danger – "demographically and in its ability to defend its own
values."
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IMMIGRATION ABROAD – SWEDEN, REPATRIATION, DEPORTATION, COST
Sweden to pay more asylum seekers to leave
The Local, 6 November 2009.
Sweden has decided to expand a
programme which gives unsuccessful asylum seekers money to voluntarily
return to their homelands, at the same time as the number of refugee
applications continues to drop.
For the
past two years, citizens from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, as well as from
the West Bank and Gaza who have had their asylum claims rejected have been
able to apply for funds from the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket)
to help pay for the return trip home.
"We've had this option for nearly two
years and have been reviewing it along the way, and based on that we've
chosen to go ahead and open it up to more countries," Caroline Henjered,
head of the agency's division for asylum reception, told the TT news
agency.
Since November 1st, an additional
20 countries have been added to the programme. Most of the countries are in
Africa, but asylum seekers from parts of Russia and Kosovo can now also
apply for the repatriation funds.
Migration authorities estimate that
around 18,000 repatriation cases will be carried out in 2009. About 42
percent of cases are expected to end in voluntary return, with Iraqis
making up the bulk of those willing to return on their own.
At the same time, about 10,000 cases will
likely be handed over to police, who will then be charged with carrying out
deportation orders for people who are unwilling to leave Sweden after
having their applications for refugee status rejected.
According to a recent report from the
United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 10,000 asylum seekers came to Sweden
in the first six months of 2009, down from 12,000 applications during the
first half of 2008, Sveriges Radio (SR) reports. ...
Through August, the agency has handed
around 7,000 cases to the police, with about 56 percent of them thought to
involve people who have decided to go underground to avoid deportation.
The Migration Board hopes that by
allowing unsuccessful asylum seekers from more countries to apply for
repatriation funds, it can also lower the number of people who go into
hiding. ...
The cost of the current
repatriation assistance programme is calculated to be between 40 and 50
million kronor ($5.7 to 7.2 million).
However, it remains unclear how much
costs may increase after more countries are added to the programme, or how
the costs would compare with those incurred by having the people remain in
Sweden.
"Off the top of my head, I'd
guess that it won't be cheaper or more expensive," said Henjered.
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RACISM – EDUCATION
Institutional racism keeps black teachers out of top posts - report finds
Jessica Shepherd
The Guardian, 6 November 2009.
Researchers at Manchester University
and analysts at Education Data Surveys quizzed 556 state school teachers
from ethnic minorities for their report.
...
Ethnic minorities make up 10.1% of
the population of England but only 1% or fewer of the headteachers in
primary and secondary schools, according to data gathered by the teaching
unions.
Only 2.6% of teachers are Asian,
while 1.7% are black and 0.8% are of mixed race, data from the Department
for Children, Schools and Families from last year shows.
Some 44% of the teachers quizzed said
they had suffered discrimination because of their ethnicity and 70% said it
was harder for teachers from ethnic minorities to become headteachers than
it was for white teachers. ...
The study,
The leadership aspirations and careers of black and minority ethnic
teachers, which was commissioned by a training college for aspiring
headteachers – the National College for Leadership of Schools and
Children's Services – and teaching union Nasuwt, concludes that the
findings are "indicative of an endemic culture of institutional racism".
...
The two main barriers to promotion were
the perception that headteachers are overworked and a lack of confidence in
their ability to take on a headteacher's role.
"When depicting teachers in leadership
posts, black and minority ethnic role models should be used wherever
possible, in order to create an image of an inclusive profession and to
challenge the dominant cultural perceptions that black and minority ethnic
teachers do not make good leaders," one of the co-author's of the study,
Professor Olwen McNamara, said.
Chris
Keates, general secretary of the Nasuwt, said: "This report reveals the
true extent of the problem of racism and discrimination that, regrettably,
is still all too pervasive in our schools."
She said the government and local
authorities should "systematically monitor" the career paths of BME
teachers so that barriers could be identified and removed. ...
Others said the findings did not show
schools were institutionally racist.
Steve Munby, chief executive of the
National College, said: "While there is no doubt that some of those sampled
had experienced discrimination, which is obviously unacceptable, this does
not mean that the system is institutionally racist.
"Although discrimination on the grounds
of race was cited by all as in the top ten barriers to achieving career
aspirations, workload and confidence were the first and second most cited
barriers overall."
Martin Ward, deputy
general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said:
"This research shows that the number one barrier to leadership for black
and minority ethnic teachers is the same as for non-black and minority
ethnic groups, and that is excessive workload. ...
Almost two-thirds of the teachers polled
were from secondary schools with just under a third from primary schools.
The rest were from special and other schools. Just under three-quarters of
the teachers were women. Two-thirds were of Indian, Afro-Caribbean, African
or Pakistani origin. The mean age of teachers in the sample was 38.
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IMMIGRATION – TALIBAN, AFGHANISTAN
Fighting the Taliban 'helps stem immigration'
Tom Whitehead
Daily Telegraph, 5 November 2009.
British forces are fighting in
Afghanistan partly to help control immigration to Britain, Phil Woolas, the
Immigration Minister has claimed.
Mr
Woolas said that the number of asylum seekers would "significantly
increase" if the Taliban regained power, but this aspect of the military's
role was "not aired strongly enough".
...
Mr Woolas was appearing before the Commons home affairs select committee,
which also heard that the Home Office may have unwittingly granted asylum
to members of the Taliban.
Mr Woolas said
he could not confirm this because those claiming asylum "tend not to tell
us if they were in the Taliban".
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IMMIGRATION ABROAD – SPAIN
Spain: despite crisis, foreign residents increase 10%
ANSAmed.info, 5 November 2009.
Despite the crisis, the number of
foreigners in Spain with resident or stay permits has increased 10.31%. In
September there were 4,715,757 people, and 38.86% of them were from EU
countries. According to data published today by the Ministry of Labour's
Immigration and Emigration Service, there are about half a million (exactly
444,936) foreigners who've declared residence in the country in the last
twelve months, a 1.96% increase in the third quarter compared to the
previous one. In terms of origin, the Moroccan community remains the
largest, with 758,174 residents in Spain; followed by Romanians (728,580),
Ecuadorians (441,455), Columbians (228,255), British (221,073), Chinese,
Italian, Peruvian, Bulgarian, and Portuguese. Of the total foreign
residents, 53.49% are male. The European Union is the geographic area of
origin for the majority of foreigners (38.86%), followed by Latin America
(30.71%), Africa (20.84%), Asian countries (6.28%), Non EU Europe (2.84%),
North America (0.43%) and Oceania (0.04%).
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RACISM – ANTI-RACISM
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Daily Telegraph, 4 November 2009.
[An obituary of the famous social anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss]
The sage's views were never
predictable. Asked to deliver the 1971 Unesco lecture on the causes of
racism, he took the opportunity, even while condemning all forms of
discrimination, to attack anti-racist propaganda for undermining "ancient
individualism" and for driving humanity towards the insipid goal of a world
civilisation.
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IMMIGRATION – POLITICS
Our immigration mistakes, by minister
Tom Whitehead
Daily Telegraph, 3 November 2009.
The Home Secretary has admitted for
the first time that the Government has been inept over its handling of
immigration, which has increased pressure on local jobs and services.
In his first speech on the subject, Alan
Johnson said that some parts of the country had been "disproportionately
affected" by the influx of migrants and that his predecessors had ignored
for "far too long" problems that led to backlogs of asylum seekers and
foreign prisoners. Labour had been "maladroit" in its handling of
immigration, he said.
But he insisted
that halting immigration altogether was "no sensible argument" and rejected
claims that the increase in migrants over the past 10 years was partly due
to a politically motivated effort to boost multi-culturalism. ...
"The legacy problems with unreturned
foreign national prisoners and asylum seekers may have accumulated under
previous administrations, but they continued to be ignored for far too long
on our watch."
He criticised Tory plans
for a cap on migrant numbers as "arbitrary".
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CRIME – CHILD-TRAFFICKING
Revealed: hidden misery of children trafficked to Britain
Robert Verkaik
The Independent, 3 November 2009.
Hundreds of children trafficked to
Britain each year are being failed by social workers, teachers and doctors,
it is claimed today in a report which uncovers the hidden misery of the
international trade in young labour.
The
findings suggest that when trafficked children try to escape from
imprisonment in Britain, their cries for help are ignored or negligently
handled by UK agencies. The report, by the Children's Society charity,
found that those who managed to escape their captors were often returned to
domestic imprisonment, where they were forced to work as prostitutes in
brothels or as slaves in British homes. ... ...
The United Kingdom Human Trafficking
Centre (UKHTC) is aware of 325 children from 52 countries who may have been
trafficked in 2008. But the Children's Society, which looked closely at 46
cases in the UK, said these figures did not account for young people who
feel they have no choice but to keep their ordeals a secret. ...
Even when a child is identified as being
at risk of exploitation and taken into care, they still face kidnapping by
traffickers. In May this year, it was discovered that 77 children had gone
missing from a single children's home near Heathrow since March 2006. It is
estimated that 1.2 million children worldwide are trafficked each year, in
a trade worth ú16bn annually. ...
The study's disturbing findings will add
to growing pressure on the Government to introduce a law making domestic
servitude and forced labour an offence in the UK for the first time. Last
week, ministers backed down and dropped opposition to a new anti-slavery
offence punishable by 14 years' imprisonment. Some of the children living
on the streets of the world's poorest cities are picked up by criminal
gangs before being sold on to traffickers who take them to countries
including Britain. Others are sold to traffickers by their parents. The
most common countries of origin are China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India,
Afghanistan and Nigeria.
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IMMIGRATION – WORLD, DESIRE TO MIGRATE
700 Million Worldwide Desire to Migrate Permanently
Neli Esipova and Julie Ray
Gallup, 2 November 2009.
Every day, migrants leave their
homelands behind for new lives in other countries. Reflecting this desire,
rather than the reality of the numbers that actually migrate, Gallup finds
about 16% of the world's adults would like to move to another country
permanently if they had the chance. This translates to roughly 700 million
worldwide – more than the entire adult population of North and South
America combined.
From its surveys in 135
countries between 2007 and 2009, Gallup finds residents of sub-Saharan
African countries are most likely to express a desire to move abroad
permanently. Thirty-eight percent of the adult population in the region
– or an estimated 165 million – say they would like to do this if
the opportunity arises. Residents in Asian countries are the least likely
to say they would like to move – with 10% of the adult population, or
roughly 250 million, expressing a desire to migrate permanently.
The United States is the top desired
destination country for the 700 million adults who would like to relocate
permanently to another country. Nearly one-quarter (24%) of these
respondents, which translates to more than 165 million adults worldwide,
name the United States as their desired future residence. With an
additional estimated 45 million saying they would like to move to Canada,
Northern America is one of the two most desired regions.
The rest of the top desired destination
countries (those where an estimated 25 million or more adults would like to
go) are predominantly European. Forty-five million adults who would like to
move name the United Kingdom or France as their desired destination, while
35 million would like to go to Spain and 25 million would like to relocate
to Germany. Thirty million name Saudi Arabia and 25 million name Australia.
Roughly 210 million adults around the
world would like to move to a country in the European Union, which is
similar to the estimated number who would like to move to Northern America.
However, about half of the estimated 80 million adults who live in the EU
and would like to move permanently to another country would like to move to
another country within the EU – the highest desired intra-regional
migration rate in the world.
... Eighty
percent of those in developing countries who would like to move permanently
to another country would like to move to a developed country, while 13% of
respondents in developed countries would like to move to a developing
country. ...
Results are based on
aggregated telephone and face-to-face interviews with 259,542 adults, aged
15 and older, in 135 countries from 2007 to 2009. The 135 countries
surveyed represent 93% of the world's adult population.
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BENEFITS AND COSTS – CHILD BENEFITS, EUROPEAN UNION, PUBLIC OPINION
We pay benefits for 37,000 Polish children ... still living in Poland
Rebecca Lefort
Sunday Telegraph, 1 November 2009.
British taxpayers are funding child
benefit payments for 37,900 children who live in Poland, Treasury figures
show.
The money is going to support those
who have remained behind in their homeland while one or both of their
parents lives and works in this country. The cost is estimated at more than
£20 million a year.
The number of
claims has risen by 20 per cent in the past year, despite a slowing in the
rate of immigration from eastern Europe. ...
The findings come as an ICM poll for
The Sunday Telegraph shows today that two thirds of voters believe
the number of immigrants in Britain is too high.
Poles make up the majority of the 50,600
children, from more than 30,000 families, living outside Britain who are
supported with child benefit payments from British taxpayers. ...
The Treasury has refused to put a figure
on the cost of supporting children abroad.
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POPULATION PRESSURE – HERITAGE
Planning changes 'threaten our history and countryside'
Andrew Gilligan
Sunday Telegraph, 1 November 2009.
Tens of thousands of listed buildings
and large swaths of the countryside could be destroyed after two key planks
of the planning system were quietly dismantled by ministers.
In previously unreported plans, the
Government is to downgrade protection on old buildings and those in
conservation areas in order to "benefit developers" and "reduce the number
of applications for planning permission rejected on heritage grounds".
The professional body representing town
planners described the proposal as "unfit for purpose".
In a separate development, the
Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC), a new quango that has been
created to speed up planning decisions on "major infrastructure projects",
was described as a threat to "valuable landscapes".
The changes to historic building
protection are contained in a draft Government "planning policy statement"
slipped out during the summer holidays. ...
Martin Willey, the President of the Royal
Town Planning Institute, described the policy as "a charter for people who
want to know buildings down". ...
The IPC
is made up of unelected commissioners who have been given 'draconian' new
powers to grant planning permission, cancel Green Belt protection, allow
developers to seize private land, remove footpaths and close roads. ...
The Campaign for the Protection of Rural
England described the IPC as a "mockery of democracy" that will "threaten
valuable landscapes".
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EXTREMISM – EDUCATION
Funds for 'extremist' schools suspended
Andrew Gilligan
Sunday Telegraph, 1 November 2009.
Schools run by members of Hizb
ut-Tahrir, an Islamic extremist group, have had their public funding
suspended and will be placed under investigation after the payments were
exposed by The Sunday Telegraph.
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MULTICULTURALISM – RACE
It's a wonderful, mixed-up world
Aarathi Prasad
Sunday Telegraph, 1 November 2009.
[Aarathi Prasad presented a programme, "Is it Better to be Mixed Race?", on Channel 4 television on 2 November 2009]
As a person from the Indian ethnic
minority in this country, ... ...
... my
daughter, and approximately 400,000 other children in Britain today, is
mixed race. Families like mine are on the rise – nearly one in 10
British children now lives in a mixed-race family, a figure that is six
times higher than it was when I was a child. In fact, mixed race people are
the fastest-growing minority in this country, a trend that is set to
continue. Even in my community, traditionally inward-looking when it comes
to choosing partners, the proportion of mixed marriages has increased from
3 per cent to 11 per cent in the space of just 14 years.
A report in January 2009 produced for the
Equality and Human Rights Commission noted that this rise in interracial
relationships can be "taken to be a thermometer of ethnic relations". ...
...
If inbreeding is bad, then the
opposite – outbreeding – should be good. It makes sense, some
suggest, that people might be genetically better off if they were mixed
race. The anecdotal evidence is writ large in the over-representation of
Britain's tiny mixed-race population in the arts, music, modelling and
sport. Mixed-race people account for 30 per cent of the current England
football team in a country where they make up only 2 per cent of the
general population.
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IMMIGRATION ABROAD – SOUTH KOREA, RACISM
South Koreans Struggle With Race
Choe Sang-Hun
New York Times, 1 November 2009.
South Korea, a country where until
recently people were taught to take pride in their nation's "ethnic
homogeneity" and where the words "skin color" and "peach" are synonymous,
is struggling to embrace a new reality. In just the past seven years, the
number of foreign residents has doubled, to 1.2 million, even as the
country's population of 48.7 million is expected to drop sharply in coming
decades because of its low birth rate. ...
For most South Koreans, globalization has
largely meant increasing exports or going abroad to study. But now that it
is also bringing an influx of foreigners into a society where 42 percent of
respondents in a 2008 survey said they had never once spoken with a
foreigner, South Koreans are learning to adjust – often uncomfortably.
...
In South Korea, a country repeatedly
invaded and subjugated by its bigger neighbors, people's racial outlooks
have been colored by "pure-blood" nationalism as well as traditional
patriarchal mores, said Seol Dong-hoon, a sociologist at Chonbuk National
University.
Centuries ago, when Korean
women who had been taken to China as war prizes and forced into sexual
slavery managed to return home, their communities ostracized them as
tainted. In the last century, Korean "comfort women," who worked as sex
slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army, faced a similar stigma. Later, women
who sold sex to American G.I.'s in the years following the 1950-53 Korean
War were despised even more. Their children were shunned as "twigi," a term
once reserved for animal hybrids, said Bae Gee-cheol, 53, whose mother was
expelled from her family after she gave birth to him following her rape by
an American soldier.
Even today, the
North Korean authorities often force abortion on women who return home
pregnant after going to China to find food, according to defectors and
human rights groups. ...
For many
Koreans, the first encounter with non-Asians came during the Korean War,
when American troops fought on the South Korean side. That experience has
complicated South Koreans' racial perceptions, Mr. Seol said. Today, the
mix of envy and loathing of the West, especially of white Americans, is
apparent in daily life. ...
The Foreign
Ministry supports an anti-discrimination law, said Kim Se-won, a ministry
official. In 2007, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination recommended that South Korea adopt such a law, deploring the
widespread use of terms like "pure blood" and "mixed blood." It urged
public education to overcome the notion that South Korea was "ethnically
homogenous," which, it said, "no longer corresponds to the actual
situation."
But a recent forum to discuss
proposed legislation against racial discrimination turned into a shouting
match when several critics who had networked through the Internet showed
up. They charged that such a law would only encourage even more migrant
workers to come to South Korea, pushing native workers out of jobs and
creating crime-infested slums. They also said it was too difficult to
define what was racially or culturally offensive.
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