The Telegraph of the U.K. reports that students at Oxford University have launched a petition demanding that a Professor be fired for creating hostility towards immigrants.  Prof. David Coleman is the cocreator of MigrationWatch, an organization founded in 2001 to monitor the effects of integration caused by refugees.  MigrationWatch says immigration has made a “valuable contribution” but “the numbers have become too great.”  Coleman told a student newspaper of the petition: “It is a shameful attempt of the most intolerant and totalitarian kind to suppress the freedom of analysis and informed comment that it is the function of universities to cherish.  I am ashamed that Oxford students should behave this way.”  

His views have been controversial; Teresa Hayter, a writer and anti-racism activist, recently pulled out of a panel after learning Prof. Coleman would appear along side her.  Said Hayter of the students’ action: “I support the petition.  I don’t think he should be a professor at the university.”  Dennis Hayes, president of the University and College Union, said: “It comes to something when students would rather see an academic sacked than stand up and debate these issues with him.”  

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A top Russian migration official warned that the number of foreign migrants in specific regions of the country could be limited to avoid social tension.  The Associated Press reports that Vyacheslav Postavnin, deputy director of the Federal Migration Service, said there were approximately 12 million foreign migrants in the country, exceeding the estimated 6 million foreigners needed to fill jobs.  

The migration problem came to a head last summer, as race riots in the northern town of Kondopoga resulted from a brawl between ethnic Russians and migrants from the Caucasus .  Racist attacks and hate crimes have increased in the nation, and the Movement Against Illegal Immigration has drastically increased in popularity in recent months.   

Russia ’s population has steadily the past 15 years to under 143 million; the change is largely blamed on the country’s economic crisis.  Experts insist that the population decline would be even more substantial were it not for migrants.

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