Weekly news roundup

This week's news roundup features stories from Iraq, the UK, France and Russia: 

• UK Home Secretary, John Reid, is coming under fire from right-wing critics. Civitas, a right-wing think tank has argued that people have been allowed to enter the UK “at record pace.” Mr. Reid has acknowledged that illegal immigration creates insecuritites and a sense of “unfairness” among the resident population, the BBC reports.
• The Editorial of the New York Times warns of the effects of mass migration from Iraq. “Four million people – one out of seven Iraqis – have been forced to flee their homes. If Iraq continues this descent, the refugee tide could turn into into a regional tsunami, with potentially convulsive political consequences.
• The Economist takes a last look at the candidates ahead of Sunday's election in France and has this to say about immigration: Indeed, it is the enduring potency of Mr Le Pen that has pushed Mr Sarkozy to the right on immigration during this campaign. Although Mr Sarkozy firmly rules out an electoral deal with the far-right leader in the second round, assuming he gets through, he has been unapologetic about courting his supporters. "It is not Le Pen that I’m interested in," he says, "but his voters." To that end, at a rally in Metz this week Mr Sarkozy repeated his declaration that "those who do not like France are not obliged to stay." He even added a religious twist: France, he said, should not "renounce 2,000 years of Christian civilisation and heritage."
• The NYT also features a piece by Eleanor Randolph, in which she highlights a new wave of racist crimes in Russia. There migrants have been banned from selling their wares at market: "In the street there is hate for immigrants." SOVA, the anti-hate-crime organization in Russia, has estimated that so far this year, 23 immigrants have died and 149 have been wounded in what it terms ethnically motivated attacks. Since April 1, the police have raided the markets with buses to round up people and send them back to former Soviet states like Azerbaijan or Uzbekistan or Georgia. Notices on market doors advertise space now for "farmers from the Fatherland."