In The News

Help Wanted as Immigration Faces Overhaul

S. Mitra Kalita March 27, 2006
Some landscapers, restaurants and amusement parks insist that affluent Americans no longer want to do certain types of jobs, tedious seasonal work that was once the province of high school and college students – despite increasing wages for low-skilled work and finder fees. Employers run ads to find low-skilled help, but to no avail. So the business owners resort to hiring seasonal guest workers...

Immigration Debate Heats Up

Darryl Fears March 22, 2006
About 12 million immigrants live and work illegally in the United States, according to a recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center. As the US Senate debates tough new laws restricting illegal immigration, a coalition of activists who support immigration – including unions like the AFL-CIO, religious groups like Catholic Bishops and business organizations like the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce –...

Spain Scrambles to Cope With Tide of African Migrants

Renwick Mclean March 21, 2006
As thousands of Africans gather in Mauritania, seeking eventual passage to the EU, Spain is taking an active role in preventing the migrant job-seekers from reaching its shores. Spain’s deputy prime minister paid an emergency visit to the Canary Islands to discuss controls on the record flow of African migrants reaching there from Africa’s Atlantic seaboard. Many of the Africans, who are...

Mauritania Calls for Help on EU-Bound Migrant Flood

Ahmed Mohammed March 20, 2006
More than 1000 Africans have died in the first four months of 2006, trying to reach the EU and the economic opportunity it represents. Increasing numbers of desperate migrants flee Africa in crowded and small fishing canoes, called pirogues, from Mauritania to the Canary Islands and the coast of Spain. Police intercepted a record 400 Africans in a single day, crowded into nine boats. In 2005...

Immigration Shakeup Will Bar Most Unskilled Workers From Outside EU

Alan Travis March 13, 2006
A new points-based immigration system – based on aptitude, experience, age, and shortages in the labor market – will go into effect in 2008, the biggest shakeup in British immigration law in 40 years. The plan assumes that low-skilled help can be found within the EU, and an advisory board will determine annual quotas for occupations that have a shortage of workers. According to the new system,...

America's Immigration Advantage

Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco March 6, 2006
Europe and the US have different perspectives on immigration and therefore different problems, according to immigration scholar Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco. Immigrants typically receive good educations on both sides of the Atlantic, but immigrants in Europe face intense discrimination in the labor market. European immigration is driven by asylum-seeking and marriage, so ethnic groups tend to...

On Immigration and Ports, Turning Inward

Dana Milbank March 3, 2006
Powerful sentiments are rising that threaten to turn the world’s most globalized nation inward. Two issues have emerged that capitalize on US fears about jobs and security, both revealing an increasing desire for isolation. Debate over a proposed “guest worker” program aimed at transitioning illegal immigrants to legal status mirrors the objections to transfer of control over six US ports to...