Weekly news roundup

The weekly news roundup features critical views of the UK points system for highly-skilled migrants, a look at how Wester Union is dominating the remittances market across the world and a preview of France's new immigration legislation released on November 22nd.
It is becoming ever more attractive to become a US citizen – at least that's what the latest surge in citizenship applications seems to suggest. In fact, it's less that naturalization has become more popular over the past months, it is more a combination of a fee increase earlier in the year, fear of new immigration legislation and confusion over green card applications that is causing the bureaucratic backlog that might take up to a year to clear, the New York Times reports.

• Agence France Presse has a stunning article about the tiny village Elinkine in Senegal that is profiting from the droves of illegal immigrants passing through the town to seek a passageway to Europe. In a mafia-type set up, local families profit from “facilitating” migrants’ journeys, i.e. housing them ahead of their departures, and – the article alledges – police pockets are equally fleeced for the same purpose.
• What has five times as many locations worldwide as McDonald's, Starbucks, Burger King and Wal-Mart combined? Why, Western Union, of course. Powered by immigrant remittances around the globe, the once bankrupt telegraph and communications company now turns a USD 1 billion profit annually. Last year migrants sent home USD 300 billion,nearly three times the world's foreign aid budgets combined, according to this New York Times article on Western Union.
• In an opinion piece for the Financial Times, Michael Skapinker notes that the new points system to evaluate highly-skilled migrants in the UK has its faults. Geared toward the university educated, well-earning individual, Skapinker fears the new system would keep out precisely those entrepreneurs needed in Great Britain today: the brilliant minds too impatient to sit it out in a classroom, i.e. the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of this world.
• Also in last week's FT, Gideon Rachmann ponders the realities of immigration today. He concludes that while economics can be spun both in favor of and against increased immigration flows, governments are likely to pursue restrictive policies. But, he notes that the populist arguments and general anti-immigration stance is losing force in the Western world, partially because: “Voters are more attached to the principles of an open society than the raw polling data on immigration suggest. It is certainly possible to crack down on legal and illegal immigration. But the necessary measures would often involve sacrificing freedom and convenience. You could have much tougher controls at borders – and even longer waiting-times at immigration control. (Forget just hopping on the Eurostar to Paris.) You could introduce identity cards in countries, such as the US and the Netherlands, that have long resisted them. You could bind employers in even more red tape. You could restrict people's right to marry. You could arrange mass deportations of illegal immigrants and shut your eyes to the resulting injustices. Some combination of all of those measures probably would dramatically reduce immigration. But in the process you would risk creating countries that are not only less welcoming to immigrants. They would probably be much less palatable for native-born citizens as well.”
• France's new, 65 article strong immigration and asylum legislation was revealed at the end of last week. While I have yet to read the full text, Le Monde offers an initial glimpse here, though again, introducing genetic testing for immigrant minors wishing to accede French territory as highlighted by the paper and detailed in article 13 is hardly new, given the debate on DNA testing an immigration a few months ago. We will cover these legal changes in a separate blog. Meanwhile, however, Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank and one of the prominent Frenchmen on the international stage has implicitly criticised the restrictive new immigration law, pointing to France's longstanding history as a country of immigration.