It has been a curious few weeks about immigration, emigration and migration across the world. This is one of the most emotional and stressful topics in politics these days as this cuts directly into the heart of our identity. Whether the identity is based around skin colour, language, nationality, religion, or what have you, when the "other" comes in, there is always the potential for chaos. Do not think that this is a rich country problem only, immigration is a problem in places such as Mongolia as well. The Sydney Morning Herald termed it as "INVASION". Now when you hear that some country is being invaded, what does it make you feel? how would you feel if YOUR country is being invaded?
Here's a quick review of the news stories and they just show how challenging immigration is.
1. The Mexican President is criticising the US Congress for suspending the congressional debate on the reform of immigration laws. As you do know, immigration is again turning into a third rail of US politics (as an aside, there are so many third rails, medicare, medicaid, abortion, terrorism, Iraq, gay rights, etc. etc. etc. that it is no wonder that the country is becoming so polarised). But you have to remember that specially the Mexican migration is much different from all other immigration factors. This is because this is primarily illegal. Which is why I find the Mexican leadership's commentary so strange, given that their citizens are technically breaking the law by migrating into USA, I would have expected that they would be quiet!. But no, this pattern of behaviour is quite consistent, it is almost like a right, the right to emigrate into USA illegally. No wonder people get so excited. Why are people getting so excited?
2. Well, this news is an example, which states that one out of ten counties in the USA is now having whites as a minority. Leaving aside the intellectual incoherence in which one is comparing a skin colour with a culture, humans do identify with colour. (mind you, the colour aspect only happens when the colour is non-white, when its white, its fine!). So no wonder that the whites are all getting excited. This also further points to why getting agreement on immigration reform is going to be so complicated.
3. The Economist reports on how two immigrant groups in the USA, blacks and hispanics, are now on a collusion course. Some quotes are of interest
Last year Pew, a pollster, found that one-third of blacks believe immigrants take jobs from Americans—more than any other group. Yet in some ways their views were benign. Blacks are less likely than whites or even Hispanics to believe that immigrants end up on welfare or commit crimes. Latinos, on the other hand, appear to make no such concessions. One survey of Durham, in North Carolina, found that 59% of Latinos believed few or almost no blacks were hard-working, and a similar proportion reckoned few or almost none could be trusted. Fewer than one in ten whites felt the same way.
One reason blacks and Latinos have failed to form an alliance is philosophical. The black civil-rights struggle, in the South at least, was mostly about asserting legal rights and demolishing barriers to voting by those who were, in theory, already enfranchised. The Latino struggle is quite different. Its goal is often the selective or non-enforcement of the law, particularly on immigration. A common demand, for example, is for local police not to co-operate with federal immigration agents. And, whereas blacks in the 1960s demanded power in proportion to their numbers as adult citizens, Hispanics want rather more.
4. Over on this side of the pond, the African migration into Spain is happening at very high levels, despite very high risk. To try to manage this migration, Spain is trying something else.
The program, promoted by the Spanish and Senegalese governments, aims to bring hundreds of workers to Spain this year with renewable one-year visas and jobs. Workers on one-year permits may have their contracts extended, at which point they have the right to bring over their immediate family. Ultimately, officials here say, the plan is to bring in thousands of immigrants through the program.
Will it work? Of course it will work. Will it reduce illegal immigration? Are you joking? Why would anybody want to just work for 1 year, go through bureaucratic hoops and so on and so forth, when they can easily come over illegally and save money?
5. Take a look at this story where people are actually now getting killed because of immigration. Assam in India has a long history of immigrants from Bangladesh and other parts of India. Assam is relatively rich and also has an industry (tea), which require quite a lot of common labour. Given the shortage of indideneous labour, poor immigrants from bangladesh and migrants from elsewhere in India have flooded into this state. With the result? They have generated angst, and because the political system went into the toilet, the natives revolted. The political parties saw the immigrants as votes and helped them to turn the demographics of the state. The natives massacred thousands of Bengali's and till date, not even a single person has been charged, forget about being sentenced.
6. British immigration laws, specially those relating to high potential migrants were reported to be unlawful as they breached the European Convention of Human Rights (mainly because they imposed conditions on a retrospective basis!). As you can appreciate, most of these migrants were highly skilled and qualified, came over to the UK to take up jobs and fulfill skill shortages. So the laws are back to the drafting board. Furthermore, the fact that the Glasgow terrorist act was done by immigrant doctors in the NHS is another nail in the coffin of the immigration reform in the UK.
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
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