Weekly news roundup

This week's news roundup features stories on a new wave of highly-skilled migrants in newly developed countries, an update on the US’ current most prominent immigrant activist and a look at how remittances are impacting the global economy:

• The New York Times features an article on the mobility of skilled and highly-qualified migrants, who now constitute 69% of global workers on the move. Increasingly, Westerners are moving to former developing countries as new career possibilities emerge in sectors that have long since become established and in some cases less lucrative in their own societies.
• Illegal immigrant Elvira Arellano, who has become a symbol of the immigrant rights movement has been deported to Mexico, after weeks spent in refuge in a Chicago church. There she protested her deportation and separation from her US-born son. Arellano's story is just one of the many similar fates we have chronicled in the pages of this blog. A can watch a local CBS report on her situation by clicking on this link.
• Again, tragic news from the Canary Islands. Der SPIEGEL reports that another 10 would-be migrants have died off the coast of Spain. Authorities brought 15 refugees to safety, who reported that they had to throw ten bodies – among them two children – overboard, when their fellow passengers died as a consequence of starvation, dehydration and overall exhaustion.
• The Economist covers the plight of many Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa. Over 3m Zimbabweans are thought to have left their homeland (out of a population of 13m), most of them for South Africa. Many are fleeing for purely economic reasons, as Zimbabwe struggles with an 80% unemployment rate – others are political refugees, their bodies covered with signs of torture. South Africa, so the journal reports, is struggling to accomodate the thousands of migrants, which have made it across the border over the past months and problems are set to rise, as a key river bed, which used to deter migrants from risking the trip has now run dry, facilitating illegal border crossings. <>
• <>Remittances have been back in the news recently. Over on the FPA's Mexico blog, our fellow blogger Rohini Gupta reports that Mexican migrants seem to be sending home less money than in previous years. We featured a similar story a few weeks back. The International Herald Tribune took a closer look at the global impact of remittances, which “are larger than direct foreign investment in Mexico, tea exports in Sri Lanka, tourism revenue in Morocco, and revenue from the Suez Canal in Egypt,” according to World Bank economist Dilip Ratha.
• While most of Europe faces a dramatic demographic downturn, which will put a squeeze on established pension systems, Ireland is looking at a population boom, partially due to the country's economic growth, partially due to a larger number of migrants over the past few years. Thus, the country has been increasing its integration efforts, as the International Herald Tribune reports.