CANADIAN BACKLOG LEAVES REFUGEES IN A 3-YEAR WAIT
Canada’s Immigration Refugee Board has a backlog of 50,000 cases that will take up to three years to clear, according to Canada’s assistant deputy minister of Immigration, Joan Atkinson, who spoke to the Senate committee on National Security and Defense Wednesday. She said that refugees are waiting years to get a decision on whether they can stay in Canada, but wouldn’t say whether more money or staff will fix the backlog. The board received million this year to speed things up, which, officials say, is being used to hire immigration caseworkers and to pay for new office space.
Immigration Minister Denis Coderre said he hopes to seal negotiations with the US to create a “Third Safe Country” agreement, allowing Canadian officials to turn away refugee claimants arriving from the US. The agreement will state that those arriving from the US are already in a safe country and have no fear of prosecution. He said Canada would return only applicants who already have legal status in the US and would not be detained by US authorities. Fearing these new rules will make it harder for them to enter Canada, refugee claimants are surging to the Canada-US border in numbers three to four times larger than usual.
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DISRUPTIONS ABOUND AS EU LEADERS TACKLE IMMIGRATION IN SPAIN
Today as European Union leaders met in Seville, Spain, for a summit featuring politically-charged debates on immigration policy, two car bombs blew up in nearby tourist resorts. Six people, including two British tourists, were wounded by the first blast; there were no immediate reports of injuries in the second.
The European leaders hope to forge a deal during the two-day meeting that will put to rest public fears on immigration, and possibly slow the rise of populist far-right parties throughout the region. The meeting comes after a general strike called yesterday, which threatened to cripple transportation and public services in Spain; it began two hours later than usual to allow representatives time to deal with the transport chaos and reach the conference center.
The battle lines are drawn between those who say illegal immigration is taxing Europe’s social fabric and those, such as European Commission chief Romano Prodi, who believe legal immigration can be a boon for Europe’s economies. Many Germans, Austrians and others at the union’s eastern frontier worry about being inundated with jobseekers after countries such as Poland and Hungary gain Union membership. Analysts said pressure from the European right is likely to force officials to at least embark upon common immigration policy.
Prodi has said fears about illegal immigration are overblown and that Europe’s leaders should focus as much on streamlining legal immigration procedures as on stopping illegal immigration. Prodi, who proposed the creation of a common EU border police last year, told a news conference he supports Spain’s call for “severe” measures to stem illegal immigration, but that leaders should also promote the view that “legal immigration is good for Europe.” A recent commission study said the aging of the EU population, putting a strain on public pensions, could be moderated by increases in immigration and fertility rates.
BBC News Online’s Andrew Geddes reports that immigration may be essential to support aging populations and sustain economic growth. The UK and Germany have announced plans to attract skilled immigrant workers, while statistics show EU population growth is slowing, expected to be cut in half by 2025. Yet, at the same time, Germany and Italy, two countries with an aging population, have unemployment rates of around 10%. Still, labor market gaps and government spending on public services create a need for nurses, teachers, doctors and other skilled workers.
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OFFICIALS, ADVOCATES SPEAK OUT ON WORLD REFUGEE DAY
In the UK, four agencies combined forces to launch a welcome campaign aimed at refugees and asylum seekers arriving in Greater Manchester. Refugee Action, Oxfam, the Citizens Advice Bureau and Manchester Council for Community Relations, gathered to mark world refugee day, Thursday. The launch follows opinion polls showing Britons are broadly sympathetic to asylum seekers and refugees and are four times more likely to show a positive rather than a negative attitude towards them.
In Ireland, the Irish Refugee Council attacked the Government’s policy on immigration, saying words uttered by Irish and European politicians directly conflict with their actions. Green Party MEP Patricia McKenna called on European leaders not to approve the controversial new anti-immigration measures at Friday’s summit in Seville, saying, “we are making it much more difficult for people from third world countries to gain access to the EU – genuine asylum seekers who for whatever reason have to flee their own country and are trying to seek refugee [status] within a European Union member state.” The Irish representative of the UN High Commission for Refugees, Pia Phiri, said that emotive and inaccurate debate on asylum and immigration made asylum-seekers and refugees more vulnerable to racist abuse and violence.
German President Johannes Rau signed into law Thursday the government’s disputed immigration bill, which had scraped through the upper house of parliament in March, and grew out of a long-running debate on how to balance anxiety about the growing number of immigrants with Germany’s need for skilled foreign workers. Conservative lawmakers maintain the vote in March was invalid because state officials shouted both “yes” and “no” as the vote was taken. The law sets no ceiling on the numbers of immigrants that could be admitted. Germany’s 7.3 million legal foreign residents currently account for about 9 percent of the population.
In Denmark, immigration authorities said they would no longer automatically grant asylum to Afghan refugees because of the new political situation in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban last year. In January, the Danish Immigration Service suspended decisions on granting asylum to the roughly 1,600 Afghan refugees who had applied for shelter last year pending results from a fact-finding delegation in May. The immigration agency said it would reopen the suspended applications and that they would be considered on an individual basis.
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