Behind the surge?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/26/uk-faces-surge-in-eu-migration-before-brexit-unless-cut-off-date/

The Telegraph

UK faces ‘surge’ in EU migration before Brexit unless cut-off date applied, MPs warn

27 JULY 2016 • 12:01AM

Britain faces a huge "surge" in European Union migrants before leaving the bloc unless Theresa May enforces a "cut off" date on those arriving, MPs have warned.

The Home Affairs select committee has suggested three dates after which EU migrants cannot claim permanent residence, the earliest being the referendum date a month ago.
Keith Vaz, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, said while EU citizens in Britain must not be used as “pawns in a complicated chess game” there was a chance of a migration surge.
Liam Fox: If we remain in EU we will not be in control of migrationPlay! 00:56
Theresa May will visit Rome on Wednesday to hold talks with Matteo Renzi, the Italian Prime Minister, as she continues a diplomatic drive to meet EU leaders after taking office.
She is expected to repeat that Britain does not want to abandon Europe despite the vote for Brexit and that the country remains open for business.
Theresa May: I wouldn't invoke Article 50 until the UK has secured better deals.
Meanwhile Liam Fox, the new International Trade Secretary, has criticised Barack Obama’s decision to intervene before the EU referendum during an America trip to scope out the chance of a trade deal.
He told a US radio show that UK voters “don’t really like being told by anybody outside their own borders” what to do after Mr Obama said Britain would be at the “back of the queue” for a trade deal after Brexit.
Obama: Britain would go to the ?back of the queue' of trade deals if it votes for Brexit.
Dr Fox said voters responded by questioning whether Britain had been “at the back of the queue” when America was searching for coalition allies to invade Iraq and Afghanistan.
He also suggested in a separate interview that the issue of Britain’s relations with the EU to be resolved by 2020, the date of the next general election.
Following the vote to leave the EU last month, the UK is expected to introduce controls on free movement rules but the details of the system are yet to be outlined.
A report from the Home Affairs Committee said: "Past experience has shown that previous attempts to tighten immigration rules have led to a spike in immigration prior to the rules coming into force.
"Much will depend on the negotiations between the UK and the EU and the details of any deal to retain or constrain the free in the European Union."
It suggested three “cut off” dates for when EU citizens can apply for permanent UK residence: the June 23 referendum, the date Article 50 is triggered to begin Brexit talks or the day Britain actually leaves the bloc.
Mr Vaz said: "There is a clear lack of certainty in the Government's approach to the position of EU migrants resident in the UK and British citizens living in the EU.
"Neither should be used as pawns in a complicated chess game which has not even begun.
"We have offered three suggested cut off dates, and unless the Government makes a decision, the prospect of a 'surge' in immigration will increase."
A Government Spokesperson said: “We have been clear that we want to protect the status of EU nationals already living here, and the only circumstances in which that wouldn’t be possible is if British citizens’ rights in European member states were not protected in return.
We have offered three suggested cut off dates, and unless the Government makes a decision, the prospect of a 'surge' in immigration will increase
Keith Vaz
“We are about to begin these negotiations and it would be wrong to set out further unilateral positions in advance. But there is clearly no mandate for accepting the free movement of people as it has existed up until now.”
One in three lorries arriving in Britain do not have the security measures needed to keep out stowaways, border officials have also found as it emerged almost half of all people smuggling fines are never paid.
Around 750,000 vehicles a year come to the UK without the necessary locks on doors and other measures needed to make sure illegal migrants cannot ride across the border undetected, according to the Border Force.
Millions of pounds of penalties for people smuggling have also gone unpaid in recent years after thousands of foreign drivers were caught but failed to pay up.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/27/peer-condemns-shocking-delays-over-help-for-unaccompanied-child-refugees

The Guardian

Peer condemns 'shocking' delays over help for unaccompanied child refugees
Lord Dubs, who forced government into U-turn on position on child refugees in May, says he is depressed by lack of progress

Wednesday 27 July 2016 16.51 BST Last modified on Thursday 28 July 2016 00.25 BST

The Labour peer who persuaded the UK government to promise to give sanctuary to unaccompanied child refugees has condemned a “shocking” lack of urgency to bring vulnerable minors to safety.

Alf Dubs, who was brought to Britain as part of the Kindertransport scheme in 1939, said he feels “utterly depressed by the lack of progress” almost three months after the government’s clear commitment to help child refugees travelling alone in Europe to find shelter in the UK.

Having successfully forced the government into a U-turn on its position on child refugees in May, Lord Dubs was hopeful that the UK would swiftly begin to accommodate large numbers of the estimated 90,000 unaccompanied child refugees in Europe. However the Home Office said this week that only around 20 had been accepted for transfer to the UK, not all of whom have yet arrived.

“Very little seems to be happening. I am not satisfied. There is a lack of urgency,” he said. “I think it is absolutely shocking that we as a country have passed the legislation and nothing is happening. It is unacceptable.”

It was hard to know whether to lay the blame for the slow rate of progress with officials in Europe or with the British government, he said, but he was disturbed that 11 weeks after the government’s widely celebrated commitment so little had been achieved. He was concerned that a collective failure to act quickly was forcing thousands of children to remain living in unsuitable migrant camps, out of school and routinely exposed to danger.

“The delay isn’t all right. Every day puts more young people at risk. The longer they are there, the more time they are out of school, the more time they are living in intolerable conditions, more time spent in places where they are at risk of being abused,” he said.

Lord Dubs was dismayed by the conditions children were forced to endure in Calais, when he visited earlier this summer. “It is very distressing that children should be expected to live like this in modern 21st century Europe,” he said.

His own experience of being helped to travel to the UK before the second world war has fuelled his determination to push the government to help more children fleeing from conflict. “We did it then; why can’t we do it now?”

Around 300 of the 600 unaccompanied children in Calais are believed to be eligible under the Dubs amendment for resettlement in the UK. In the absence of any prospect of being resettled officially in the UK, the minors are making nightly attempts to travel here in lorries, exposing themselves to greater danger. “A week before I visited, a boy had been killed falling from a lorry. It is a very tragic situation,” he said.

The dangers faced by child migrants have been repeatedly described in reports published by aid agencies, and were this week highlighted again in a powerful Lords EU committee report.

The mayor of Calais has warned that the remaining informal encampment in Calais, which is home to an estimated 7,000 people, will soon be bulldozed, prompting concern from local charities who note that when the last clearance took place many unaccompanied children went missing.

“If there is a good reason for the delay, the government should tell us. If not, they should get on with it. We need to find a way of speeding all this up.”

The Home Office said they were in “active conversations” with the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, the Italian, Greek and French governments to “speed up mechanisms to identify, assess and transfer children to the UK”. Officials say they want to avoid doing anything that might encourage more children to put their lives in the hands of people traffickers.

In March Lord Dubs had hoped to get a commitment to give sanctuary to 3,000 children on the basis that this was calculated to be the UK’s fair share of an earlier Save the Children estimate of 26,000 lone child migrants in Europe (before the real number was calculated to be closer to 90,000). However a last-minute compromise meant no figure was included in the Immigration Act, and there was initial optimism that at least 3,000 could be given homes in the UK under the legislation. This now looks unlikely.

Part of the problem appears to be that formal identification of eligible refugee children in Calais is very slow. The process of mobilising councils in the UK to commit to finding homes for the children is also proving slower than Lord Dubs had hoped, particularly as unaccompanied children who have arrived in Kent in great numbers in the past few years are also being transferred to new homes around the country, to spread the burden of responsibility.

In the weeks leading to the referendum, campaigners were quiet on the issue of offering sanctuary to child refugees, because immigration was seen as too unhelpfully controversial an issue, but pressure has been stepped up in the wake of the vote to leave, and activists are keen to hold the government to its commitments.

Unicef has called for 300 of the most vulnerable children to be fast-tracked to the UK before the school year begins in September, but progress has been so slow that this now looks unrealistic.

Although many children have applied for asylum in France, many still hope to settle in the UK because they have relatives here or speak some English.

Lord Dubs was meeting with campaigners on Westminster and has requested a meeting with the new Home Office minister when he returns from holiday next week.

George Gabriel from Citizens UK, which has been campaigning to persuade local authorities to increase the number of children they accommodate, said he was frustrated that the 300 children identified as eligible in Calais could not be brought more swiftly to safety. “It is inconceivable that we would leave 300 British children in a field exposed to every risk imaginable yet those children will spend tonight in that stinking mud.”

Yvette Cooper, the chair of Labour’s Refugee Taskforce, said: “While the government is delaying, there are children alone in Europe being exposed to trafficking, abuse and slavery. Now, instead of expediting this process, Theresa May is pulling vital support and ministerial responsibility away and dragging her feet. Britain needs to urgently fulfil the promises we made.”

http://www.west-info.eu/pedophilia-risk-for-kids-playing-pokemon-go/

Pedophilia risk for kids playing Pokémon Go

by Roberta Lunghini - 2016.07.15

Pokémon Go, the new app that is getting popular also among the Italian youth, can be very dangerous. Mainly because of the geolocation, which is one of the fundamental principles of this game and exposes the children to many risks. First of all the online soliciting by malicious adults, with different purposes: from robbery to sexual abuse. The alarm was launched by Telefono Azzurro on the occasion of the presentation of the campaign “BECOME A DIGITAL SUPPORTER #TAdigitalsupporter”, which aims to establish a network of digital volunteers ready to spread information and materials on the topic of the Internet safety through the social networks and to report potential threats.

http://www.thelocal.it/20160614/number-of-migrant-children-crossing-alone-to-italy-doubles-in-2016

The Local (news@thelocal.it)

'Slavery deals' fuel surge of teenage migrants in Italy

Published: 14 Jun 2016 14:26 GMT+02:00

The number of unaccompanied minors among Italy's refugees has doubled since last year, as smugglers' exploitative "pay as you go" deals attract cashless teens.

Over 2,500 migrants rescued off Italy over weekend (13 Jun 16)
Eritrean held in Italy denies being trafficking kingpin (10 Jun 16)
Italy busts two Ukrainians smuggling migrants on yacht (10 Jun 16)
Of the 7,567 migrants below the age of 18 who have arrived in Italy since January, some 7,009 of them - 92 percent -  were travelling alone, according to a recent report by United Nation's children's agency, Unicef. That figure is double the number of unaccompanied minors who arrived during the first five months of 2015.

According to the report, youngsters making the perilous crossing to Italy alone face greater dangers than adults, often suffering sexual abuse and being forced into labour or prostitution by traffickers once they arrive on Italy's shores.

“It's a silent and desperate situation, yet there are hundreds and thousands more ready to risk everything to make the crossing,” explained Marie-Pierre Poirier, Unicef regional director for central and eastern Europe.

“We need to protect these children from those who wish to make a profit from exploiting their dreams.”

Driving the high number of child arrivals is an increase in the number of “pay-as-you-go” deals on offer.These deals allow cashless children and teenagers to spend months working for traffickers before they are given passage to Europe on unseaworthy vessels.

Five crowd-free alternatives to Italy's tourist hotspots
“It was just like the slave trade,” said 16 year-old Aimamo from Gambia, who worked for two months in Libya before crossing the Mediterranean.

“If you try to run they shoot you and you die, if you stop working they beat you.”

For more news from Italy, join us on Facebook and Twitter.

The Local (news@thelocal.it)

http://time.com/4024210/climate-change-migrants/

TIME

How Climate Change is Behind the Surge of Migrants to Europe

Aryn Baker @arynebaker  Sept. 7, 2015     

Even as Europe wrestles over how to absorb the migrant tide, experts warn that the flood is likely to get worse as climate change becomes a driving factor.

More than 10,000 migrants and refugees traveled to Western Europe via Hungary over the weekend, fleeing conflict-ravaged and impoverished homelands in the hope of finding a more secure life abroad. Even as Europe wrestles over how to absorb the new arrivals, human rights activists and migration experts warn that the movement is not likely to slow anytime soon. Intractable wars, terror and poverty in the Middle East and beyond will continue to drive the surge. One additional factor, say scientists, is likely to make it even worse: climate change.

From 2006 to 2011, large swaths of Syria suffered an extreme drought that, according to climatologists, was exacerbated by climate change. The drought lead to increased poverty and relocation to urban areas, according to a recent report by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and cited by Scientific American. “That drought, in addition to its mismanagement by the Assad regime, contributed to the displacement of two million in Syria,” says Francesco Femia, of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Climate and Security. “That internal displacement may have contributed to the social unrest that precipitated the civil war. Which generated the refugee flows into Europe.” And what happened in Syria, he says, is likely to play out elsewhere going forward.

Across the Middle East and Africa climate change, according to climatologists at the U.S. Department of Defense-funded Strauss Center project on Climate Change and African Political Stability in Texas, has already affected weather. These changes have contributed to more frequent natural disasters like flooding and drought. Agricultural land is turning to desert and heat waves are killing of crops and grazing animals. Over the long term, changing weather patterns are likely to drive farmers, fishermen and herders away from affected areas, according to Femia’s Center for Climate and Security, and into urban centers — as has already happened in Syria. Both the Pentagon, which calls climate change a “threat multiplier” and U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have warned of “water wars,” in which rival governments or militias fight over declining resources, sending even greater waves of migrants in search of security and sustenance. On Aug. 31, Secretary of State John Kerry warned that climate change could create a new class of migrants, what he called “climate refugees” at a conference on climate change conference in Anchorage, Alaska. “You think migration is a challenge to Europe today because of extremism, wait until you see what happens when there’s an absence of water, an absence of food, or one tribe fighting against another for mere survival,” he said.

Security analysts say they are already seeing the impact, particularly in migration patterns from northern Africa and the Sahel region, which is the band of farmland just below the Sahara desert. “All the indicators seem to fairly solidly convey that climate change — desertification and lack of water, or floods, are massively contributing to human mobility,” says Michael Werz, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress policy group in Washington, D.C. Syrians and Afghans may make up the largest number of refugees flooding into Europe right now, but Africans from the Sahel are not far behind. “No one is saying ‘I’d better pack my stuff and go to Europe because I expect CO2 emissions to rise,’” he says. But the knock on effects — failed crops, ailing livestock and localized conflicts over resources—are already driving residents of the Sahel northward to flee poverty. Libya’s collapse has opened the doors wide for migrants, and the smugglers who ship them across the Mediterranean to Europe.

As Europeans debate over what to do about the influx of migrants, there has been a call for an international effort to stabilize the regions from which they come. But it’s not enough to talk about ending conflict, says Femia. “A lot more attention has to be paid to putting more resources into climate adaptation and water security and food security, so migration doesn’t become the primary option.” Tackling the problem at its source doesn’t mean ending conflict, but stopping it before it starts. And that means addressing climate change as well.