If you ask an African migrant in Europe who came across the Mediterranean Sea in a boat if they would make the journey again, most of them would say yes. Many of them had been on vans and trucks that took them across the dangerous Sahara Desert, and many of them had been onboard vessels that struggled to get across the choppy waters.They might have seen their fellow migrants die of thirst or of drowning, but none of that halts their conviction that theyd cross the sands and the seas again.

Harsh treatment by European border guards and an overwhelming experience of racism inside European society do not bring regret or suggest that they would not do it again.

It was all to earn money, said Drissa from Mali. Thinking of my mom and my dad. My big sister. My little sister. To help them. That was my pressure. Thats why Europe.

A United Nations Development Programme report, released on 17 October, shows that 97% of the nearly 2 000 African migrants in Europe interviewed would take the same risks to come to Europe again knowing what they know now about the danger of the journey or what life in Europe would be like. What is powerful about this UN report is that it dispels the many myths about African migration.

There is a terrible view that Africans are somehow invading Europe, even worse swarming into Europe. Anti-immigration rhetoric speaks of building fences and creating a Fortress Europe. It is as if there is a war, and Europeans must arm themselves against invaders.

A year ago, the UNs Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng warned that European politicians fan the flames with hateful rhetoric that is legitimising hatred, racism and violence. While extremists spread inflammatory language in mainstream political discourse under the guise of populism, hate crimes and hate speech continue to rise. Hate crimes constitute one of the clearest early-warning signs for atrocity crimes. At the UN in Geneva this May, Dieng a Senegalese lawyer said, Big massacres start always with small actions and language.

The UN report shows that the hatefulness around the African migrant is misplaced. The reasons for major flows of migration to Europe actually come from within Europe itself. Those leaving war zones Syria and Afghanistan in West Asia, but also Eritrea and Libya come in expected numbers as they flee bombs that are often produced inside Europe. These numbers are much higher than for those Africans who come to Europe for work.

In fact, more than 80% of African migrants stay on the continent. The proportion of African emigration out of the continent compared to Africas population is one of the lowest in the world, says the United Nations. Most of the migrants who go to Europe, according to European data, come by regular channels with a visit to the embassy, an application for a visa, the granting of the visa and then a flight into the country; irregular arrivals, many of whom might come by boat, are far fewer than those who come with a valid visa. It is racism that fails to acknowledge this reality.

If you dig into the numbers from the UNDP report, you find that 58% of the African migrants in Europe were either employed at home or in school when they decided to leave; most of the migrants had jobs and earned competitive wages. What drove them is the insecurity in their countries, and the fact that they felt they could earn more elsewhere. More than half of the migrants had been supported financially by their families to make the journey, and 78% sent back money to their families.

World Bank statistics show that remittances to African countries are growing. In line with the global trend, sub-Saharan Africa received more foreign exchange from remittances than from foreign direct investment (FDI).

In 2018, according to the World Bank, remittances to sub-Saharan Africa totalled $46-billion almost 10% more than in 2017. The countries that received high remittances were Comoros, Gambia, Lesotho, Cabo Verde, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Togo, Ghana and Nigeria.

The total FDI flow into sub-Saharan Africa, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), was $32-billion, up by 13% from 2017, but a significant amount less than the remittance flows.

Migrants who send money home are more important than the corporations and banks that bring investment dollars into these countries. Its too bad the bankers are treated better than the migrants.

Africa is on the threshold of a major debt crisis.

The last debt crisis was in the 1980s, as part of the broader Third World debt crisis. In the decolonisation period, Africa looted of its wealth by colonialism had to borrow money for development; these funds were large, but worse was the manipulation of dollar-denominated debt by the London Interbank Borrowing Rate (LIBOR) and by the US Treasurys interest rates.

Skyrocketing debt in the 1980s produced a long period of austerity and suffering. That debt simply could not be paid as long as multinational corporations effectively stole Africas resources and refused to pay taxes on that drain of wealth. This was the reason why initiatives such as the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) were created by the World Bank and the IMF in 1996 and 2005, respectively. By 2017, these initiatives provided $99-billion to reduce Africas debts from a debt-to-GNI (gross national income) ratio of 119% to 45%.

No change in the structure was made no assault on transfer mispricing and base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), mechanisms used by Western-based multinationals to continue their plunder of the African continent. When the 2014 commodity price shock came, many African countries slipped gradually toward a new debt crisis. The new debts are not all government debt, but they include very high proportions of private-sector debt, which has tripled from $35-billion (2006) to $110-billion (2017) according to World Bank figures. Debt repayments have risen dramatically, which means that investments in health and education have declined, as has access to capital for small-scale private-sector businesses.

Currently, according to World Bank numbers, half of the 54 states in Africa struggle with high debt-to-GDP (gross domestic product) with many of these over the 60% threshold that signals a crisis. The rate of increase of this debt has set off alarms across the continent.

What does this mean?

It means that if there is any financial crisis in the West, it will draw away financing from Africa, plunge the region into another major debt crisis and set millions of people in search of better earning opportunities. Families and countries in Africa have come to rely upon these remittances. They are part of the structural fabric of finances.

Racism against the migrant is an enormous problem, and it must be tackled in itself.

But deeper than that is another problem that has grown as a result of no effective post-colonial policy the structural problem of the ongoing theft of resources from Africa, and of the lack of financing for the continent to develop its own potential. Allowing multinational firms to steal African resources, and allowing foreign banks to lend to Africa at virtually usurious conditions, simply creates a cycle of crisis that results in migration and remittances as the bandaids.

Europe does not have a refugee or migration crisis. The real crisis is in Africa, where the thief often a European firm continues to undermine the continents ability to breathe.

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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Seeds of Europe's 'migrant crisis' are in Europe - Mail and Guardian

By TNH Staff November 5, 2019

FILE - Refugees and migrants take part in a protest outside an overcrowded refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos, on Friday, Oct. 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Michael Svarnias)

ATHENS A timid European Union is allowing Turkey to have keep sending refugees and migrants overwhelming Greek islands with a new crisis and wont confront Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to stop it, Retired Admiral Konstantinos Ginis said.

The honorary chief of Greeces armed forces told SKAI TV that Greece is facing an asymmetrical threat from Turkey and that the EU is incapable and unwilling to deal with the issue, except except superficially, putting money into it, reluctant to take on the tough Turkish leader.

He said that Greece needs to change course toward Turkey Greece supports Turkeys long-delayed hopes of joining the EU with the former military leader saying the new New Democracy government should the condemn the 2016 EU-Turkey agreement on migration and get a new deal that would require other EU countries to take in refugees and migrants.

The EU has closed its borders to them and reneged on promises to help take some of the overload of some 78,000 refugees and migrants being held in detention centers and camps, including more than 33,00 on islands.

Technically violating the EU deal, Greeces new government is going to move thousands off islands to the mainland and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said his goal is to send back 20,000 to Turkey who arent eligible for asylum, for which virtually all have applied.

New Democracys toughening of asylum procedures and plans to speed applications but also deportations was criticized by human rights groups who dont want anyone returned and said the policy should be more lenient.

Greece must also stress to Turkey that its failure to help slow the flow across the Aegean to Greek islands is an act of aggression, Ginis said, but no Greek government has been willing to do anything with Erdogan other than plead with him.

Ginis dismissed efforts by the government to speed up the asylum procedure as a tertiary issue, saying that the focus needs to be on why all these people are coming and how.

Do we have a strategy for preventing their arrival? Ginis asked, saying that Greece needs to strengthen its presence along its border with Turkey and he said the transfer of refugees and migrants would only be an incentive for more to come, thinking they would find sanctuary.

Noting photos of buses taking refugees and migrants to hotels instead of camps he said that, Its like were telling them: Come over, to Greece.

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Retired Admiral Says Turkey Pushing Refugee, Migrant Crisis on Greece - The National Herald

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The U.S. might not want "to play ball" if Canada wishes to renegotiatethe Safe Third Country Agreement, according to an expert on refugees and immigration.

"The reality is that most asylum seekers cross over from the U.S. into Canada and not the other way around," said Robert Falconer, a researcher specializing in immigration and refugee-related issues, at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.

The Safe Third Country Agreement recognizes both countries as safe for refugees, so people fleeing persecution are required to claim asylum in the first country they enter.

The agreement is being challenged in federal court this week on the grounds that the U.S.'s immigration crackdown under President Donald Trump's administrationhas made it unsafe for refugees.

The Liberal government is arguing against the legal challenge, but has suggested the deal signed in December 2004 could be renegotiated to modernise it, and cover all border crossings.

A revised agreement might mean Canada could return refugees to the U.S., Falconertold The Current's interim host Laura Lynch.

"And U.S. immigration policy is all about freezing out asylum seekers right now."

Texas-based immigration lawyer Luis Campos thinks Canada should scrap the agreement.

"I don't see the United States as a safe place for asylum seekers," he said.

Campos has been working with asylum claimants for 20 years. He said he has "never seen circumstances as poor" for refugees and migrants being held in U.S. detention centres, while theywait for their asylum claims to be processed.

He's worked on cases where 150 to 200 people were packed into cells designed for 50. A lack of bedding meant people had to sleep in shifts, and the single toilet was in full view, and prone to overflowing.

He said he has also heard of the officials in charge dissuading detainees from seeking medical attention, with threats it could delay their case from being heard.

"In one specific case, an individual was forced to extract his own tooth because he wouldn't get dental attention," Campos said.

Falconer warned that a successful legal challenge could lead to a suspension, and"negatively impact" Canada-U.S. relations.

"We're already in a sort of a tenser period ... than we have been," he said, pointing to ongoing issues with trade and the fact that the revised NAFTA agreement isn't yet "across the finish line."

Craig Damian Smith suggested that Canada should wait for a change in U.S. leadership before trying to renegotiate the deal.

"My policy prescription is essentially keep our heads down until we have a rational partner to negotiate with in the U.S.," said Smith, the associate director of the Global Migration Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in Toronto.

He said the Safe Third Country Agreement is similar to the deal known as the Dublin Regulations that made the EU member countries an "open-border regime."

That deal works by pooling countries' resources to control the external borders, he explained, with the aim of sharing the burden internationally.

Refugees are expected to claim asylum in the EU country the first arrive in. However the system has been put under strain by the migrant crisis, which has seen hundreds of thousands of displaced people to seek asylum.

Faced with those numbers, Smith said that countries like Italy, Greece or Hungary have begun accepting support like equipment and personnel from non-port-of-entry states.

But other states have been less forthcoming in offering to take in the "hundreds of thousands" of people stranded in the countries they arrive in, he said.

"When states can't co-operate, then they make deals with less scrupulous states, states that aren't signatories to the convention, or just autocratic states," he told Lynch.

"When you have a fight between France and Italy over who is going to accept these asylum seekers, Italy will go and make a deal with Libya to keep the people at bay," he said.

Smith said something similar is happening with the U.S. right now, as the country "is trying to control migration to its southern border by cutting deals with Central American states."

The Trump administration is working onagreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras that would require refugees on their way to the U.S. to seek asylum in those countries first.

Falconer said that migrants travelling through those countries are at a high risk of violence.

The researcher cited a 2015 UNHCR report that said women fleeing through Central America preemptively "took contraceptives before traveling, in order to reduce the possibility of becoming pregnant if they were raped during flight."

The U.S. is signing these agreements "not with the idea of burden sharing for asylum seekers, [or] that everybody will get a fair chance of safety," he said.

"They're using it more in a way to avoid taking asylum seekers within the U.S."

Written by Padraig Moran. Produced by Karin Marley.

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U.S. too focused on 'freezing out asylum seekers' to fix refugee deal with Canada: researcher - CBC.ca

In the three decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, European countries have built about 1,000 kilometres of border walls and fences.

That amounts to six times the length of the Berlin Wall, the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute (TNI) flagged in a new report on Tuesday, adding that most have been built since 2015 when Syria's civil war and the migrant crisis was at its height.

"This time Europe is divided not so much by ideology as by perceived fear of refugees and migrants, some of the world's most vulnerable people," the report notes.

Newly-built barriers are in locations across the continent, including:

READ MORE: Meet the women reunited 58 years after Berlin Wall was built

"Land walls and fences on European borders are the most visible aspects of Fortress Europe. By themselves though, they are mostly symbolic," the TNI stresses.

It adds that these physical walls and fences are accompanied by maritime borders naval operations patrolling the Mediterranean extending another 4,750 kms as well as virtual borders border-control systems seeking to stop people entering or even travelling within Europe.

The research institute estimates that the global market for border security was worth approximately 17.5 billion in 2018 and projects it will grow by an annual 8% annually in the coming years.

EU countries, meanwhile, are believed to have spent between 900 million and 1 billion on land walls and fences since the Cold War. Adding to that was money spent by the bloc's External Borders Fund (1.7 billion between 2007 and 2013) and the Internal Security Fund (2.76 billion between 2014 and 2020).

The European Commission has also planned to earmark 9.3 billion for the 2021-2027 period as part of a new Integrated Border Management Fund.

The primary beneficiaries in Europe have been companies including Thales, Leonardo and Airbus which all produce equipment used for land and maritime border patrolling including helicopters but also sensors and radars.

Spanish firm European Security Fencing was also identified as a key player. It produces razor wire and in particular a coiled wire known as concertinas that is used around Ceuta and Melilla, Calais, as well as along the Hungary-Serbia, Bulgaria-Turkey, and Austria-Slovenia borders.

For the TNI, "everything points to a further heightening and strengthening of the walls of Fortress Europe." This is turn will lead to refugees and migrants "to take more risks to cross borders, to encounter violence, and to end up living 'illegally in dire circumstances or in detention, awaiting deportation to unsafe countries of origin".

It argues that pouring more money will not solve the issue and might even exacerbate it.

READ MORE: 30 years on from 1989, central Europeans say democracy is again at risk

Meanwhile, Istvan Viragvolgyi, the curator of an exhibition entitled "Walls of Power" which explores man-made barries in Europe, told Euronews about walls of segregation. These are barriers within a society.

An example he flagged is a picture from Slovakia where locals collected money and lobbied the authorities to erect a wall separating them from a Roma settlement.

"They (Roma people) have to walk around the wall because it's not a complete wall. It's just a couple of hundred metres and then you actually walk around it. They just diverted the traffic basically so the Roma people going into the town, they diverted them around their houses," he said.

"In human history, all the walls that were built were demolished," he stressed. "Maybe (it took a) longer, shorter time but eventually they were all demolished. So we really have to think about what the real problem is and somehow come up with a solution."

"I think we have the false feeling that we dealt with the problem already and it's behind us," he concluded.

READ MORE: How barriers still divide Europe 30 years since fall of Berlin Wall

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Europe has built barriers six times the length of the Berlin Wall since 1989 - Euronews

A rubber dinghy carrying migrants is pictured at sea in the Mediterranean. (Reuters / Karsten Jager / Sea-Eye)

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On the night of July 7, 2019, Alessandra Sciurba of the humanitarian rescue organization Mediterranea was aboard a sailboat in Libyan territorial waters. The boat wasnt meant to save people at sea; she and the crew were just supporting another ship from the German NGO Sea Eye. But suddenly an Alarm Phone alert notified them of a nearby boat in distress, so the crew sailed toward a rapidly deflating dinghy with 59 migrants aboard.Ad Policy

We got there and found men, women, children, even a 5-month-old baby. Some of them had signs of torture, signs of electrocution with wires. They were all sitting there in this dinghy that didnt have a hull anymore, it was just a few wooden planks on a black tarp, recalled Sciurba, who is a researcher in law and human rights at the University of Palermo and has volunteered with Mediterranea since its start in 2018.

As the crew started transferring people from the dinghy to the boat, the Libyan Coast Guard arrived; some of the rescued migrants remarked that they would have rather been thrown into the sea than handed over to the Libyan authorities, says Sciurba. The Libyan Guard ultimately declined to intervene, leaving them at sea with a boat that was too small to carry 59 migrants plus an 11-person crew, had no food, and whose two toilets had broken immediately.Related Article

At that point the EU abandoned us for 50 hours, she told The Nation. All we got from them was a written order not to dock in Lampedusa [an island off the coast of Sicily], which was handed over to us from an Italian police patrol boat while we were still outside of Italian territorial waters.

The Mediterranea crew eventually declared an emergency and the coordination center of the Italian Coast Guard allowed the boat to dock on the island, which sits only a few nautical miles from the borders of the Libyan search-and-rescue area. As soon as everyone disembarked, the boat was sequestered by Italian authorities and the migrants were transferred to mainland reception centers to begin the seemingly interminable process of claiming asylum.

For years, such an episodemarked by peril, confusion, and desperate hopeshas been the norm in Southern Europe. Matteo Salvini, leader of Italys far-right Lega party, famously cracked down on immigration; his open war on NGOs in the Mediterranean made life for rescuers like Sciurba so difficult that many rescue organizations ceased to operate. His policies also emboldened the Libyan Coast Guard (a group comprising former militiamen from the UN-backed Libyan government that Italy struck a deal with in 2017) to go after migrants crossing the Mediterranean and bring them back to war-torn Libya, or just let them die. Salvinis hard-line stance sent ripple effects throughout Europe, embroiling neighboring countries in disputes over who was responsible for welcoming the migrants that Italy was rejecting.

A month and a half after the sailboat rescue, Salvini was ousted. His departure seemed to herald a new era not only in Italy but in Europe at large. French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte made public pledges to remove right-wing populist rhetoric from the discourse on immigration. We must make sure the issue of migration isnt left to those that use it as a permanent topic for their propaganda, said Macron during a meeting with Conte in September.Current Issue

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These leaders bid to overcome what we could call the Salvini doctrine rested on the assumption that European countries would find a long-lasting way to cooperate on the intake of people arriving in Europe via seathat asylum seekers like the ones Sciurba encountered would no longer be ignored for days on end.

Nearly four months after Salvinis ouster, that assumption has not been borne out.

In the wake of an inconclusive meeting of interior ministers in Luxembourgwhich itself followed another promising but ultimately inconclusive meeting two weeks earlier with representatives of France, Italy, Germany, and Finland on the island of Maltathe question of migrant intake is no closer to being answered.

Participants of the Malta summit proposed a voluntary disembarkation scheme in which governments could offer a port of entry to rescue ships, and migrants would then be relocated within Europe according to quotas. Its an informal accord that only a handful of European countries seem interested in observing; some of the countries most deeply impacted by the question of migrant intakenamely, Greece and Spaindidnt even have a seat at the table.

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Plus, the plight of those who attempt to cross the central Mediterranean on unsafe vessels still isnt resolved when they get rescued by humanitarian boats. The provisional, voluntary, nonbinding nature of the Malta accord still makes it possible for rescue ships to be stranded at sea for a long time before a government reacts. In the latest such case, it took 11 days for Italy, France, and Germany to come up with a plan to take in roughly 200 migrants rescued at sea.

The imminent renewal of the 2017 Libya-Italy deal lays bare the difficulty not only of moving away from Salvinis policies but also of changing the core principles that have shaped European migration policy for the past two years. An explosive report by the Italian daily Avvenire recently revealed that the Italian government in office before the latest 2018 elections negotiated strategies to limit departures of migrants from Libya with a man who turned out to be a ruthless human trafficker. The deal, which could have terminated by November 2, is now set to be renewed as of February 2, 2020, for three more years.

The ethics of pulling migrants back into a country where gross human rights violations are regularly documented is highly questionablebut so is the policy flipside. Preventing people from leaving Libya doesnt work, because some keep wanting to leave, notes Matteo Villa, a research fellow in the migration program at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI).

Salvini purported to resolve the issue of migrant intake in Southern Europe by declaring Italian harbors closed to them. But he did very little at the institutional level to solve a key exacerbating factor in the migration issue: regulations that weigh disproportionately on Mediterranean countries. Salvinis call for other European governments to absorb the migrants pushing to enter Italy never resulted in actual policy discussion at the European level. Yet the post-Salvini discussions are failing to move beyond the same old flawed models.

Italys new interior minister, Luciana Lamorgese, for example, saluted the Malta agreement as a pathway to revising the common European asylum system. But this pathway, experts note, builds on previous attempts to reform the Dublin regulation (which requires asylum seekers to be registered and processed in their first EU country of arrival) that were never effective.Related Article

Politicians seem to have difficulty understanding that reform of the Dublin treaty must happen via legal principles that are applicable under all circumstances, says Leonardo Marino, a lawyer in the Sicilian city of Agrigento who has represented Carola Rackete, the German ship captain arrested for docking a migrant rescue ship in Lampedusa this past June.

In the absence of new strategies and of a concerted effort by European leaders to manage immigration in an effective and humane way, the promise to move away from Salvinism is doomed to remain unfulfilled.

We are left with what has traditionally been the EUs most fundamental policy, says Massimo Frigo, a senior lawyer and expert on migration with the International Commission of Jurists. What this new [Italian] government did was realign itself with the traditional agenda on immigration. It certainly isnt a pro-immigration government. EU policy on migration hasnt been an open harbor one for almost 20 years now.

While humanitarian organizations like Mediterranea are still fighting their legal battles to regain access to sequestered ships in the aftermath of Salvinis tenure, the European Parliament voted down a proposed resolution that would have enjoined member states to keep their ports open to humanitarian ships. Even though the vote wasnt binding (a decision on rescue operations at sea would need to come from the European Council, after consideration by every member state), it sent a clear signal.

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This is a red flag showing how much Europe is divided about the choice around its ethical-political guiding principles, says Matteo Villa from ISPI.

The Malta agreement also states that NGOs shouldnt create a pull factor for migrationan idea thats infected the institutional lingo since at least 2016 and which is based on faulty evidence.

Even moderate governments trying to reach an agreement and show solidarity with other EU countries need to reckon with the mainstream narration of the past yearsthat to take action so that people are saved at sea is to create a pull factor for more migrants to come in, Villa says.

Meanwhile, people continue to die, some a mere few nautical miles from the patch of Italian land closest to Africa.Related Article

On October 6, 13 women and eight children drowned right off the coast of Lampedusa as their vessel capsized. The sixth anniversary of one of the islands most infamous and disturbing milestonesthe fiery shipwreck that saw the deaths of over 360 Eritrean, Somalian, and Ghanaian migrantsfell only five days earlier.

The only way out of the deadlock, many analysts and activists maintain, is to open legal pathways for migration into Europe.

The only way to properly remember those dead people would be to reopen government-backed European rescue missions and open a humanitarian corridor from Libya, Annalisa Camilli, an Italian journalist and expert on migration, wrote on Facebook.

Our goal is to never have to go out to sea and save people again, insists Alessandra Sciurba.

While Salvinis exceptionally cruel reign may have ended, the underlying facts of the migrant crisis remain effectively unchanged. As Europe picks up where it left off before Salvini, the collective efforts necessary to reform European migration policy still arent on the horizon.

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There's Still No Plan to Deal With Migrants in the Mediterranean - The Nation

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France will start setting quotas for migrant workers from next year as Emmanuel Macron toughens his stance on immigration in an apparent attempt to appeal to rightwing voters.

The French labour minister, Muriel Pnicaud, said on Tuesday that France would set quotas for the first time, with the government working with employers to identify industries lacking qualified candidates and where foreigners could fill the gap.

This is about France hiring based on its needs. Its a new approach, similar to what is done in Canada or Australia, Penicaud told BFMTV.

She did not say how many foreign workers would be granted visas, nor if an applicants nationality would be taken into account, a proposal floated last month by the prime minister, douard Philippe. The quotas were presented as a way to simplify the hiring process for businesses.

Currently, employers have to take part in a complex administrative process and justify why a French citizen cannot be hired for a position they intend to give to a foreign worker needing a visa.

With Marine Le Pens far-right National Rally hoping to make gains in local elections in March and Le Pen still seen as Macrons main political rival in the run up to 2022 presidential elections, the centrist president has recently begun focusing on immigration and hardening his stance.

The number of foreigners in France is not the main worry of the electorate who are more concerned about making ends meet and growing fears over the climate crisis but Le Pens anti-immigration party continues to focus on the issue and is seeking to win over voters from the mainstream right.

Macron, who was elected with support from voters on both the right and left, appears to be preparing the ground for a second presidential stand-off with Le Pen, seeking to address rightwing voters who complain there are too many foreigners in France.

Macron has steadily heightened his rhetoric on immigration since September, when he told Europe 1 radio: France cannot host everyone if it wants to host people well. In order to be able to welcome everyone properly, we should not be too attractive a country.

The question of setting quotas for economic migrants was an idea of the former rightwing president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 but was never put in place. Macron distanced himself from the idea of quotas during the 2017 election campaign andpraised the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, for saving our collective dignity by allowing in large numbers of refugees.

However, he recently sparked criticism on the left when he gave an interview focused on immigration and Islam to the conservative weekly magazine Valeurs Actuelles, where his views were considered as appealing to readers on the right and far right. When an outraged voter criticised Macron for doing the interview, he said: You have to speak to everyone.

The prime minister, will unveil a series of measures on Wednesday after France received a record 122,743 asylum requests last year, up 22% from the year before.

The new measures could include restrictions on migrants bringing over family members or limiting access to health care for asylum seekers while their claims are processed.

France has also called for an overhaul of the EUs efforts to halt the surge of migrants fleeing conflict and poverty in Asia, the Middle East and Africa since 2015.

The French president wants more EU members to share the burden of taking in migrants allowed to stay, a move opposed by several countries in eastern and central Europe.

But Macron sparked anger from Bulgarias government last week after he said he wanted legal migrants from Guinea or Ivory Coast rather than clandestine networks of Bulgarians and Ukrainians.

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France to set migrant worker quotas in bid to appeal to rightwing voters - The Guardian

On October 25, the White House hosted a Halloween party for the families of executive branch employees. It featured costumes, candy, and, because were all living in the darkest timeline, a Build the Wall game where kids were encouraged to wear construction gear and paste red paper bricks to a wall. (It should be noted that the wall is not made of bricks.) This game was without a doubt, as many, many have noted, wildly inappropriate, un-American, and xenophobic. As far as kids party games go, it was also really, really boring.

Horribleness of the game aside which, lets face it, was almost definitely conceived by that walking corpse Stephen Miller who doesnt need to wear a Halloween costume to terrify children what was the point? To attach tape to a piece of red paper and stick it on a wall? Yay? After you build it, what do you win? What makes you the winner? The Trump White House is all about winners, right?

If this was a shoddy rip-off of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, at least the players shouldve been blindfolded, spun around, and, teetering, tasked with placing a useless brick that wont help migrants or solve the migrant crisis in the correct spot. Thats fun and challenging and has an actual goal. Kids enjoy that. Thats why its a classic party game, right? Even the most boring kids birthdays hosted by the most boring parents have some version of it.

But no. Kids walked up and pasted a brick to the wall. Could they have put less thought into this game? At least when presented with the loose concept of a Build the Wall game, the party planners for this terrible idea of fun could have sent out an intern to get some, I dunno, building blocks. At least letting kids actually do some building has a goal and allow children to flex their creative muscles and fine motor skills. Hell, there couldve been prizes set up for the best section.

But what happened when the final red brick was laid in the Build the Wall game? Did a cage of toy snakes and alligators fall from the sky like those that President Trump wanted to fill a moat around the wall with? Did a kid get a commercially available power tool to saw through the wall, because thats what smugglers are doing on the Southern Border, because the wall is an exceptionally dumb idea? Do tubes oftoothpaste and soap, two things which have been withheld from border detainees, rain down on the champion?

Seriously, though: Did any child laugh with joy when taking part in this assembly-line-of-hate simulation? What was the point?

We all know the answer: there was no point. And here we are talking about yet another horribly tone deaf thing the White House did on a day that was made for children and supposed to be a short pause from the terrible things they have wrought. This physical manifestation of how the GOP has embraced fascistic immigration policies, separated more than 5,000 migrant children from their parents, let dozens die in ICE custody, abandoned the Statue of Libertys mandate of accepting all who come to America for a better life was the best they could come up with? Stick to egg rolling.

The post White House Asks Kids To Play Build the Wall Game At Halloween Party appeared first on Fatherly.

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The White Houses Build the Wall Game Was Horrible. It Was Also Really Boring. - Yahoo Lifestyle

Hundreds of migrants from the Middle East and Asia living in a freezing camp in the forests of Bosnia are short of food and bedding and at growing risk as the bitter Balkan winter approaches, aid workers say.

Bosnia has faced an upsurge in migrant numbers since Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia closed their borders against undocumented immigration.

The Vucjak camp.

In June, authorities in the northwest Bosnian town of Bihac moved migrants who were sleeping rough there to an tent settlement at Vucjak, a former landfill site 8 km (5 miles) from the Croatian border.

Aid agencies have urged the authorities to close Vucjak and find better accommodation for the migrants as the weather gets colder.

A migrants from Syria sleeps inside an abandoned house amid smoke after trying to cross the border with Croatia on the hills near Vucjak camp.

"Otherwise it's very clear what's going to happen. If people stay there for the winter, people will die ... in a couple of days or in a few weeks time because the temperatures are going down very rapidly," said Peter Van der Auweraert, the Western Balkans Coordinator for the International Organisation for Migration.

The site lacks running water and electricity. The nearby woods are littered with landmines left over from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

A Bosnian police officer tries to line up migrants as they wait for blankets and clothes donation at the Vucjak camp.

On a rainy late-October day, with the temperature close to zero, police officers restrained migrants quarrelling over the small amounts of food provided by the local Red Cross.

Some, wearing flip-flops in the mud, washed by pouring cold water over themselves from plastic containers. Most inmates were not dressed warmly enough for the cold weather.

Migrants warm themselves by the fire inside Vucjak camp.

Several men lit a fire and cooked a meal with the Red Cross rations. Others slaughtered a sheep, hoping for a more substantial lunch.

"I saw houses in Slovenia and Croatia for animals that are better than this camp," said Mohammed Idriz Neeaziv from Afghanistan. "This is not a camp. This is not for humans."

Migrants from Syria walk back through the woods after trying to cross the border with Croatia on the hills near Vucjak camp.

The migrants have all tried many times to cross into Croatia, but have been turned back at the border. Many say police beat them and smash their mobile phones, accusations that Croatia has repeatedly denied.

Hamza from Pakistan said he had just been returned to the camp by police after being prevented from entering Croatia. He said he was now worried that the weather would get worse and snow would stop him from trying to cross again.

A migrant smokes a cigarette inside Vucjak camp.

More than 40,000 migrants have entered Bosnia since 2018. Nearly one fifth are children. Many manage somehow to make it into Western Europe.

Bosnian authorities have not been able to decide on where to house the migrants that are stuck in their country. The government says it has offered alternative accommodation but regional authorities have not agreed.

A migrant baths inside Vucjak camp.

On the top of the crisis at the Vucjak camp, officials in Bihac have threatened to close down the Bira migrant centre, which is located at an old factory in the town, in about two weeks.

Van der Auweraert said closing the Bira centre would be a "disastrous decision" that would add 1,300 people to the 2,000-2,500 who are currently not in safe accommodation in this corner of Bosnia.

Migrants warm themselves wrapped in blankets inside Vucjak camp.

"I do hope that reason will prevail in the end and that authorities will allow Bira to continue at least for the winter because we have no alternatives at the moment," he said, blaming political leaders for poor handling of the migrant crisis.

"We have about 7,000 migrants in the country, that should not to be a problem to deal with for a country of 3.5 million people," Van der Auweraert told Reuters TV.

Photo editing by Marika Kochiashvili, Writing by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Giles Elgood

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Winter poses new threat to migrants in Bosnian forest camp - The Wider Image