Weekly news roundup

So much news this week and much of it not good: In Iraq, local authorities grappling with the large number of internally displaced people, as sectarian violence exacerbates. Still no light at the end of the tunnel for Zimbabwe, which has seen a mass exodus of its citizens to South Africa. Meanwhile, authorities there are trying to come to grips with how to categorize these migrants – as refugees? As economic migrants? Where to house them? What to do? Politicians and authorities in Germany have spent the week looking for answers on another pressing question: How to address overt racial violence in Eastern Germany? The attacks on eight Indian migrants in the tiny Saxon town of Muegeln is cause for more than just concern. Thank goodness, there's positive news from Denmark, where a new integration scheme seems to be pedalling things in the right direction.

• The International Herald Tribune features a new series of articles on those internally displaced as a result of continued fighting in Iraq. We have covered the tenuous situation these migrants face in numerous stories on this blog, including the unwillingness of many European countries to accept additional Iraqi migrants or offer them protection in the first place. Now, it seems, certain Iraqi provinces are doing the same: “governmental and relief offices (report) that some provinces have refused to register any more displaced citizens or will accept only those whose families are originally from the area.” Read the IHT's coverage here, here and here.
• In an somewhat related story, the United States has been forced to pay $250,000 in compensation to a recognized Iraqi refugee for wrongful detention back in 2003.
• In last week's news roundup, we featured one of the many stories about Elvira Arellano, who quickly became a figurehead of the immigrant rights movement in the United States, when she staged a protest against her deportation while seeking refuge in a church. She has since been deported to Mexico, where she was subsequently arrested. Her young son – an American citizen – remains in the United States. Hundreds of supporters took to the street in LA to rally for her cause and those of thousands of other migrants like her.
• Following up on another of last week's stories, the UN refugee chief has said that setting up refugee camps for Zimbabweans fleeing their country to South Africa was not the answer. In an Associated Press article, Antonio Guterres said that “only those who had never lived in camps would advocate such a solution.” He also said that action had to be taken, despite the fact that the majority of these migrants were economic, rather than political refugees. The South African government has been under increasing international pressure to react to this exacerbating situation.
• European governments are arguing their strategies toward reducing African migration to the continent are working: an article in this weekend's New York Times reports that the number of migrants landing on European shores has been cut by a third. EU leaders link this decline in part to the launch of FRONTEX and to a number of legal changes that facilitate access to Mediterranean countries. These claims, of course, must be set against a recent news from the UNHCR, according to which at least 10,000 people have died trying to reach Europe's “safe haven”. UNHCR representative Paolo Artini delivered his assessment to a hearing at the European Parliament in early July, where he criticized Member States’ inability to agree on burden sharing mechansims. Additional information can be found here (in German) and here.
• As we recently reported, a number of trade unions in Germany have been putting pressure on the government to ease up on labor mobility restrictions to allow qualified personnel to fill currently existing gaps in the labor economy. Following the European Union's 2004 enlargement wave, the German government (along with a number of others) had insisted on a ban on workers from Eastern Europe moving to Germany, in part because of the high unemployment rate. The government has reconsidered this earlier decision, perhaps in part due to rising public pressure, but largely, because of economic necessity, as Judy Dempey reports in the New York Times.
• Those of you lucky enough to subscribe to the Financial Times will be privvy to a full article on European immigration flows, published early last week. The article refers to recent Goldman Sachs research on population mobility to Europe's “core”, i.e. the old Member States. Seemingly flying in the face of those that the adverse effects of demographic change cannot be weakened by immigration, the article notes that migration to the EU15 had added “an estimated 8.7m people to their populations. Between 2001 and 2005, relative to the population, these 15 countries experienced net migration of 0.5 per cent per year on average , more than the US and far higher than the rate over the previous 40 years. But net migration into the larger EU25, which includes newer central and eastern European members, was slightly higher over the period at 8.8m. This suggests the underlying impetus came from workers entering the market from outside Europe, rather than from new EU members.”
• Australia has introduced a new citizenship test, which includes specific questions to test “mateship”. What's that, you ask? It is a heavily criticized concept encompassing “tolerance, compassion, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and secular government, equality of men and women and peacefulness”. The test goes on to say that “Australia has a strong tradition of mateship in which people help and receive help from others voluntarily, especially in times of adversity.” According to the BBC, the idea of “mateship” caused a stir in 1999, when voters rejected an attempt by Prime Minister John Howard to have the concept written into the preamble to the constitution. It was criticised as too sexist, or inappropriate for a formal document.
• Integrating into a new society can be as easy as riding a bike, at least in Denmark. Riding a bike is a quintessential to being Danish as speaking the language and so the country's Red Cross has taken to teaching immigrants how to cycle, the SPIEGEL reports (in English). “Students come to learn to ride a bike not only for convenience, but also to help them get jobs. For example, the Danish Ministry of Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs has a program in place that encourages and subsidizes immigrants and refugees who would like to become social health workers, and work in places such as elderly homes. One recent change in the government's program is a requirement that the job applicant has a certificate saying that he or she can ride a bike.”
• And much to my disliking, I have to end this week's newsroundup by featuring a number of links on the racist hate crimes in Eastern Germany, which have not only shocked the country, but the world. Last Sunday, in what can only be described as a manhunt, eight Indian immigrants were driven through the streets of the tiny East German town of Muegeln, verbally harassed and beaten to a pulp by a suspected group of neo-Nazis. Police intervened and a number of suspects arrested. Politicians and authorities have spent much of the week looking for answers as to the identity of the perpetrators of this heinous crime, as well as to the question why nobody intervened. The English edition of Der Spiegel has full coverage of the story here and a roundup of reader reactions to the crime here. Commentary from the national and international press can be found here.