Mediaboss Marketing

THE EU migrant crisis will rage on for decades, one of the most senior officials in Brussels admitted yesterday.

His comments came as tensions mounted on the border between Italy and Austria over the continuous flood of illegals pouring into Europe from north Africa.

EPA

The Sun reported yesterday that the Austrian army has mobilised tanks and troops towards the Brenner Pass.

Vienna has said it is sending four Pandur armoured personnel carriers and has 750 soldiers on standby at a barracks close to nearby Innsbruck airport.

Italian anti-immigration group Northern League plans to stage a demo at the Pass tomorrow to demand Italy closes all ports to migrants.

European Commission vice president Frans Timmermans said that many so-called refugees arriving in the bloc are really economic migrants seeking a better life.

In his warning to EU leaders, the Dutch official said: We know many of the people arriving in Italy, when scrutinised, do not have the right to international protection because they dont flee from war of persecution.

They seek a better life, which is a noble pursuit, but it does not grant them the right to stay in the European Union.

I will tell you this; this migration issue will not go away, not today, not tomorrow, not next year, not for a decade, not for two decades.

This is a global phenomenon that will be with us for generations.

Locals in the Alpine flashpoint of Brenner Pass are also feeling the strain with one bar owner in Gries am Brenner, just over the border in Austria, telling The Sun: It is worrying.

The numbers coming over from north Africa are striking. I just dont understand where all these people are going to go.

Rex Features

We are only a small country of eight million and we are already crowded.

If these people are fleeing war or famine then maybe I could understand, but when you see them they are mainly young men on their own.

They are economic migrants and they are happy to work for less than locals and they get hired while locals lose their jobs.

The other thing you have to think about is the security.

You just dont know where these people are from or who they are.

Look at the attacks we have had in Europe the past few years and it has emerged some terrorists arrived in Europe claiming to be refugees.

Reuters

Austria is not alone in looking to tighten its borders. Neighbouring Switzerland, which also shares a frontier with Italy, is also beefing up its crossing points.

Figures show 85,183 migrants have made it to Italy in 2017 up from 71,279 in the first six months of 2016. The number reaching Spain from Africa has risen from 1,352 to 6,464 over the same periods.

The Brenner Pass has been a focal point for conflict for thousands of years.

Germanic tribes used it to invade Roman territories, the Austrian Empire used it as a trade route, and in 1940 Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini sealed their Pact of Steel there.

Alamy

And after an unprecedented wave of migrants arriving in Europe from north Africa this year, the area finds itself at the forefront of world affairs once again.

Officials in Italy have accused the Austrian authorities of overreacting and have summoned the ambassador for a dressing down at the Interior Ministry in Rome.

However those over the border in Austria are worried about the possible influx of migrants heading their way. And with elections due in the autumn, immigration is a crunch issue.

LIBYAN security forces have been filmed in a gun battle with a gang of people smugglers.

In dramatic footage, migrants can be seen ducking for cover as bullets fly. Afterwards, dozens of people were seen scrambling to safety from sinking dinghies on to a Libyan navy patrol boat. The footage emerged as officials revealed more than 100,000 migrants have made their way across the Med from North Africa to Italy. Charities have been accus- ed of providing a taxi service for asylum seekers.

AP:Associated Press

Yesterday at the Brenner Pass crossing itself there was a steady stream of tourist traffic and trucks flowing in both directions.

There were no checks taking place as both Italy and Austria are part of the EUs Schengen free movement of people agreement.

One off-duty Italian squaddie told The Sun: We have always worked well with the Austrians on migration so there is no need for all this posturing.

Alamy

It raises tensions with the locals on both sides who worry about tourists being put off from visiting. The best thing would be for them to calm down and just let things go back to the way they were this time last week.

But Austrias Defence Minister Peter Doskozil has said he expects border controls will be introduced very soon with the flow of migrants shows no sign of easing. However, Rome has warned that would breach EU rules.

One official said: We would take a very dim view if Vienna did anything to restrict free movement of people between the two countries.

Reuters

Restrictions were introduced across Europe in 2015 and 2016 after similar surges in migrant numbers.

Last year Austria had 31,750 requests for asylum a 79 per cent rise on the previous year. The number is expected to go up again.

One Italian border officer told us he sees about 20 people a day trying to get across to Austria. He added: Over a year it adds up.

Reuters

In his warning yesterday, Mr Timmermans said it would make a world of difference if every member state lived up to their commitments to help Italy.

Ukips Jane Collins urged the EU to copy Australia in turning boats away if it wants to tackle the crisis.

She said: Even Bill Clinton spoke out, saying Germany will not be able to handle the huge numbers of migrants waiting to leave Africa and find a better life overseas and neither can the UK, Austria or Sweden.

Follow this link:
Brussels officials warn EU migrant crisis could rage 'for decades' as tensions mount at the Italian-Austrian border - The Sun

Paris: Paris police moved out 2,500 migrants who had been living rough in the north of the city, officials said, on its latest operation to ease strains caused by a human influx to Europe.

Representational image. AP

The evacuation, which went ahead smoothly, entailed moving out migrants who had been living around an aid centre set up in the Porte de la Chapelle area last November.

The authorities mobilised 60 buses to disperse them to a couple of other locations in the Paris region, mainly school gymnasiums that have become available during the holiday season. Charity groups took part in the operation. Officials had been expecting to move out 1,600 migrants, but according to Francois Ravier, a senior official with the Paris region prefecture, "at least 2,500" people were involved.

"Experience shows that there are always more people than estimated," he said.

Paris became a gathering point for migrants after the closure last October of the notorious "Jungle" near Calais -- a makeshift camp near the Channel coast where thousands lived in the hope of climbing aboard trucks or trains to get into Britain.

Friday's evacuation was the 34th to take place in Paris in the last two years. The previous operation was on May 9, when more than 1,600 migrants were moved out from the same area. Aid workers said around 200 more migrants had been coming into the area every week recently, raising security and hygiene concerns and causing tensions with locals. Europe's migrant influx began in 2015, centering on Greece, where hundreds of thousands of people, many of them fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Afghanistan, crossed from Turkey. The crisis receded in 2016 under an agreement with Turkey to clamp down on illegal border crossings.

However, it revived this year, focusing instead on sea crossings from Libya to Italy, mainly entailing people from sub-Saharan Africa.

On Thursday, EU interior ministers pledged to back a plan to help Italy, which has accepted around 85,000 people since the start of the year and says it is overwhelmed.

Follow this link:
Migrant crisis: Paris Police evict 2500 refugees to ease human influx in Europe - Firstpost

Illegal immigration across the southwest border rose yet again in June, according to the latest Homeland Security figures released Friday that show a noticeable jump over the past two months.

Border Patrol agents nabbed 16,089 illegal immigrants trying to sneak in, while Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers identified another 5,570 illegal immigrants who showed up without authorization at the ports of entry.

The combined 21,659 illegal immigrants is still the lowest numbers for June in years, but the spike is worrisome because illegal immigration generally begins to slow in the summer months. Indeed, the past four years saw an average drop of 10 percent in Border Patrol apprehensions in June but this year saw an 11 percent rise.

The number of illegal immigrant children and families also rose sharply. Unaccompanied children spiked 31 percent in June, compared to May, and the total number of people coming as families shot up a stunning 47 percent last month.

The numbers could end up spurring action on President Trumps border wall, which had been attacked as unnecessary earlier this year as the numbers of those attempting to cross the border plunged to 40-year lows.

Experts say the number of people caught is a rough yardstick of how many people are trying to cross, so a rise in apprehensions signals a rise in the overall level of illegal immigration.

CBP acknowledged the increase, but said the numbers are still well below where they were during the latter years of the Obama administration.

These numbers represent a 53 percent decrease as compared to June of 2016, the agency said.

Officials did not offer an explanation for the spike, which now has spanned two months.

See the rest here:
Illegal immigration spikes along U.S.-Mexico border - Washington ... - Washington Times

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday that illegal-immigrant minors must be granted a bond hearing a hearing in which the burden of proof is on the government to show why the person should be held rather than released.

The overall issue is that it releases people we know nothing about and cant properly vet, says Matthew OBrien, a former trial attorney for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who now works for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

The justices of the 9th Circuit ruled against Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, and the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, writing that two federal laws did not invalidate a 1997 settlement, in which the government had agreed to certain practicesregarding the detention and release of illegal immigrant juveniles.

According to this agreement, referred to as the Flores settlement, minors cannot be held without being given a bond hearing at which they have the right to be represented by a lawyer, and at which the government mustmake an argument for why they should be held.

In a bond hearing in a regular criminal case, O'Brien noted, the government would have to show that the person is a danger or is a flight risk in order for a judge to agree that heshould be held pending a trial.

Under mandatory detention rules, all illegal immigrants have always been considered a flight risk, as they areunlikely to show up at a future court appearance.

"That puts this on its head," says O'Brien of the 9th Circuit's decision, and adds that it removes a lot of the discretion normally accorded to ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The case, he says, represents a "further erosion" of those agencies' power to determine who should not be released for national security reasons.

"The interests of alien children should not trump the security interests of the citizens of the United States," he told LifeZette.

In the original Flores case, which dates to the 1980s, a 15-year-old girl from El Salvador who'd entered the country illegally was handcuffed and detained in an area with minors of both sexes for two months.

But things have changed since the '80s, and the influx of thousands of unaccompanied minors from Mexico and Central America, most of them male, created a crisis at the border in 2014 and 2015 after President Barack Obama signed the executive order creating DACA Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Tens of thousands of illegal immigrant minors from Mexico and Central America have been released in the past few years and placed around the country. Many have joined the ranks of criminal gangs such asMS-13 in small, previously peaceful small towns like Central Islip on Long Island, New York, where young gang members murdered a teenage girl last year. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that there are more than 1,000 MS-13 members in towns on Long Island, and that most came to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors.

And while those claiming to be minors are supposed to show documentation to verify their age, many don't have anything, making it very easy for an illegal immigrant who is 18 or older to claim that he is a minor, and thus win release and avoiddeportation.

But why would they be in a detention center in the first place?

A 2008 law meant to protect victims of human trafficking made it difficult for the U.S. government to deport unaccompanied minors. The law required the government to institute a legal process for unaccompanied minors from Central America, in particular, rather than quickly returning them to their countries. The legal process usually takes several years, and more often than not results in the minors remaining in the U.S.

Added to this is a special visa program that awards permanent residency status "green cards" to thousands of illegal immigrants who were detained as juveniles.

The 9th Circuit's decision applies only to the western states California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington and also Alaska, Guam, Hawaii, and the Mariana Islands.

But other federal appeals courts are likely to consider its decision in similar cases, and it throws yet another wrench into the Trump administration's efforts to enforce immigration laws.

"I think all these things do is hobble the federal government and hobble ICE as they attempt to do their jobs," says O'Brien. "We believe they should be challenging things like this. There's no reason why, 20 years later, the government should be hewing to this agreement," he said, referring to the Flores settlement.

After the 9th Circuit blocked the travel ban and the attempt to withhold funds from any city that refused to cooperate with enforcement of immigration laws, President Donald Trump said that he was "absolutely" considering proposals to break up the 9th Circuit, presumably into two or more smaller courts.

And now, he has a third reason to consider such a proposal.

Here is the original post:
9th Circuit Opens Door for Mass Release of Illegal-Immigrant Minors - LifeZette

With his penchant for tweeted insults and GIFs, President Trump will never be mistaken for a master of the sweet art of persuasion. Yet he is clearly winning the public argument on the issue of immigration.

He isnt doing it through sustained, careful attention. No, it is the sheer fact of his November victory, and the data showing the importance of the issue of immigration to it, that has begun to shift the intellectual climate.

It had been assumed, even by many Republicans like John McCain, that opposition to amnesty and higher levels of legal immigration would doom the GOP to minority status forevermore. Trump blew up this conventional wisdom.

Now, intellectuals on the center-left are calling for Democrats to rethink the partys orthodoxy on immigration, which has become more and more hostile to enforcement and to any skepticism about current high levels of immigration.

The swing here was enormous. A Trump defeat in November after running on an exaggerated version of immigration restriction would have sent Republicans scurrying back to the comfortable, corporate-friendly cliches about so-called comprehensive immigration reform. And if Hillary Clinton had won on a platform that doubled down on President Barack Obamas executive amnesties, serious immigration enforcement would have lost its political legitimacy.

In light of the election, Josh Barro of Business Insider, William Galston of the Brookings Institution, Peter Beinart of The Atlantic, Fareed Zakaria of CNN and Stanley Greenberg of Democracy Corps, among others, have urged Democrats to recalibrate.

Many of these writers dont merely note the perilous politics of the maximalist Democratic position on immigration or argue that policy should take account of the economic costs as well as the benefits of immigration. They also give credence to cultural concerns over mass immigration concerns that much of the left considers poorly disguised hate.

In an act of heresy for the Davos set, Zakaria recommends that the party should take a position on immigration that is less absolutist and recognizes both the cultural and economic costs of large-scale immigration.

This sentiment wouldnt be so noteworthy if the Democratic Party hadnt become so radicalized on immigration. Beinarts essay in The Atlantic is a trenchant reminder that as recently as 10 years ago, the left allowed much more room for dissent on immigration. Go back a little further, to the 1990s, and Bill Clinton was forthrightly denouncing illegal immigration, and liberal giant Barbara Jordan was heading a bipartisan commission that called for enhanced enforcement and reduced levels of legal immigration.

In the interim, Democrats convinced themselves that liberality on immigration has only political upside, and that immigration is in effect a civil rights issue, and therefore non-negotiable.

Reversing field wont be easy. The House just voted on Kates Law, named after Kate Steinle, the young woman killed in the sanctuary city of San Francisco by an illegal immigrant who had re-entered the country after getting deported five times. The bill merely strengthens the penalties on repeated illegal re-entry, yet only 24 Democrats could bring themselves to vote for it.

The pull of the lefts cosmopolitanism is strong. In an attack on Beinart, Dylan Matthews of Vox argues that the lefts egalitarianism cant stop at the nations borders it means a strong presumption in favor of open immigration.

So itd be a mistake to make too much of the recent spate of articles calling for Democrats to rethink this issue. If Democrats are ever going to shift on immigration, though, elite opinion has to change first, and at least there is now an opening.

Few would have guessed that in the 1990s, conservative Republicans, so unreservedly in favor of tough sentencing, would be open to joining liberals on criminal justice reform. Perhaps Democrats will eventually recalibrate on immigration. If so, the unlikely instrument of the sea change will have been none other than Donald J. Trump.

Read the original here:
Trump is winning the argument on immigration - New York Post