Immigration News: August, 2002 - Volume #9

THE AMERICAS

Homeland Security, Legalization, Visas
Congress in July 2002 worked on its third major piece of legislation in response to September 11 terrorism, the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security...

INS: Border, Naturalization
The INS in FY02 has 34,442 employees and a $5.5 billion budget.

Labor: Social Security, Projections
The US unemployment rate was 5.9 percent in June 2002.

H-1Bs, Foreign Students
Unemployment among US IT workers is rising and hourly wages for programmers have fallen since the dot.com slump began in mid-2000.

Mexico: Clubs, H-Visas, Hernandez
Mexico will hold national elections in 2006, and the race to succeed Vicente Fox has already begun.

Canada: Population, Asylum
Pope John Paul II visited Canada in July 2002, and there were many stories of young foreigners wanting to see the Pope denied visas to enter Canada.

Latin America: TPS, Haiti, Crime
After Hurricane Mitch in 1998 carved a path of destruction through Honduras and Nicaragua, some 105,000 Central American received Temporary Protected Status in the US.

ASIA

China: Migrants, North Korea, Economy
Internal migrants are beginning to protest ill treatment.

Japan, South Korea
Japan had about 1.8 million foreign residents at the end of 2001; they were 1.4 percent of the 127 million residents.

Southeast Asia
Thailand's immigration laws do not allow the importation of unskilled foreign workers...

EUROPE

EU: Danes, Immigration, Enlargement
Denmark, which assumed the six-month EU presidency on July 1, 2002, also began implementing tough new immigration and asylum rules on July 1.

UK: Sangatte, Labor
In mid-July, 2002, France and the UK agreed that the Red Cross-operated center in Sangatte would be closed by April 2003.

Germany: Schily, Labor
Interior Minister Otto Schily said that Germany's new immigration law would enter into force January 1 ,2003, and that it is already having effects "in terms of restricting the number of asylum seekers."

Benelux, Northern Europe
The new center-right government, the first in 25 years, promises to be stricter on immigration...

Spain, Italy, Portugal
Tensions between Spain and Morocco increased after Morocco on July 11,2002 occupied an uninhabited island 200 yards off its coast that is claimed by Spain.

Turkey, Albania, E. Europe
Tsar Nicholas I of Russia dubbed the Ottoman Empire "the sick man of Europe" just before going to war with the Ottomans, Britain and France in the Crimea in 1854.

OTHER

Australia: Detention, New Zealand, Fiji
In late June 2002, activists drove a car into a fence at the Woomera detention center, allowing 35 asylum applicants to escape.

Israel, Arabs
Israel has about 300,000 foreign workers; most fill menial, low-paying jobs that used to be filled by Palestinians who began to be prevented from commuting from the West Bank in 2000 to keep out suicide bombers.

Africa: South Africa, Refugee Returns, AIDS
The Southern African Development Community includes 14 countries that are dependent on South Africa.

UN Population, UNFPA, UNDP, Trade
The United Nations Population Division in July 2002 estimated there were 185 million people living for 12 months or more outside their country of birth or citizenship in 2000, up from 120 million in 1990.