New restrictions and the plunging ruble change the calculus for visiting migrant workers, who have helped fuel Russia’s past growth. Yet another sign of a fragile national economy.
Category: FOCUS
Greeks are used to making history, and they’re at it again. What will last month’s election victory of Alexis Tsipras and his anti-austerity Syriza party mean for the future beyond Greece? And more specifically, could it mark a turning point for the urgent global issue of environmental change? A not-so-subtle fil rouge exists between economic […]
Animosity towards immigrants is strong in Hungary. Controversial Prime Minister Viktor Orban was particularly blunt during a recent television interview: “We don’t want immigrants in our country.” But it was also notable that Orban was speaking from Paris, where he participated in the Jan. 11 unity march after Islamist terrorists murdered members of the magazine […]
Poles in the United States, Brazil and Britain recount how they’ve tried to adapt to the season in their new homelands. It can be bittersweet, as Polish traditions for them still hold sway.
In a reversal of economic fortunes, Sweden’s under-25s are leaving the high unemployment of their home country to seek more money and secure jobs in Norway.
This neighborhood on the Italian capital’s outskirts has erupted in clashes between longtime residents and undocumented migrants. It is part of a long and toxic history.
The October 2013 shipwreck that killed 366 off the Italian coast moved the world to the plight of Africa’s desperate migrants. A survivor from Eritrea tries to start a new life in Sweden.
A former cook for the Free Syrian Army, Iftikar al Daye is the 100,000th migrant who has arrived in Italy since the beginning of the year, and a symbol of hope for fleeing refugees.
SAJE — Father Kriakosmi, the priest of the village Saje outside Dohuk, doesn’t complain about the inconveniences caused by masses of displaced people arriving here. As he undoes the top button of his black shirt, revealing his white collar, it’s not a sign of fatigue or defeat, simply a reaction to the suffocating heat in […]
ROME — These are the kinds of lives that appear like ships at the mercy of a storm, where salvation will seem like a surprise — if it actually arrives. These are the stories of Eritreans with Italian roots trying, sometimes with the most desperate means, to make it to Italy. First, the history. Italy […]
LA JOYA — Juan Castro is trying to keep it together as he tells me this story, but the tears well up in his eyes. “There was this 11-year-old girl from Guatemala who had been raped. I had to ask her how, where, by whom, why and every single detail that could help build her […]
There was shock after the latest report from U.S. Border Patrol found an explosion of young people being sent northward from Central America. Why it isn’t just about the parents.
Crossing borders in and out of post-Soviet Russia is about to get more complicated, especially for Ukrainians.
A Polish reporter checks out sentiment in the heart of UKIP country after the anti-immigration party’s success in recent European elections.
Helped by access to social media, environmental activists are calling for efficient measures against the scourge of pollution and degradation. A whiff of Western-style protest in the air.
PALAWAN — For 25 years, Filipino lawyer Gerthie Mayo-Anda has tirelessly campaigned for better legal protection of the environment. Often called a forest hero, in the 1990s she established the Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC) to halt environmental destruction through court. “I thought it was important to establish a public interest environmental law group where my knowledge and skills as a lawyer can be utilized to help the poor and marginalized communities,” she says. Her group has filed dozens of cases against illegal logging, fishing and mining. “For now, the most difficult field is mining and coal because the parties […]
New data shows high crime rates among children of the millions of rural migrants who moved to Chinese cities – both those brought along with their parents, and the ‘left-behind’ children.
An experiment in the Amazon forest will test a hypothesis that higher levels of CO2, due to climate change, can avert the drought and high temperatures it was supposed to cause.
BERLIN — “You’re the ones who created this mess I’m in…” Mohammad points his finger at me, and doesn’t even want to tell me his real first name: “Call me Mohammad, we are all the same to you racist Italians anyway.” His age, though, he does tell me: He’s 47, but looks a bit younger […]
BAGHDAD – Everywhere in the Iraqi capital is an off-limits “red zone” for Westerners except for the American invasion’s legacy known as the “green zone.” This central quarter in Baghdad, accessible only by the right identification document or special permission, is actually a sort of privileged prison for those with valuable blood. But I have […]
Restrictive U.S. entry requirements deprive talented people of work opportunity but also drag down the competitiveness across the Americas.
Some 400,000 people leave the country every year to work abroad, often recruited by agencies that are really human traffickers. A close-up view of the human toll in Katmandu.
Over the past decade, the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa has become one of the main points of European entry for illegal immigrants. Even though the 90-mile open sea journey from Tunisia has already killed thousands, a new wave of refugees from Syria are following the same route. LAMPEDUSA — Two Syrian mothers with young […]
BERLIN — There are a record number of asylum seekers pinning their hopes on Germany this year, and refugees from Russia by far represent the largest group. Of those, some 90% are from the North Caucasus, particularly Chechnya. German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich has characterized the situation as “unsettling.” Germany has more asylum requests than […]
Like other countries, France faces a rising number of young people who arrive illegally into the country, without their parents or other family members. It poses unique questions.
The United States is increasingly a Latino nation, which means the time is ripe to make sweeping immigration reform a reality. A view from Bogota, Colombia.
SAHARONIM – Last summer, Israel passed an amendment to the 1954 Prevention of Infiltration Law, which allows refugees to be held for a minimum of three years without detention without a trial or charges being brought against them. According to the law, refugees from “enemy states” can be held in indefinite detention, even if they […]
ROME – Refuse from the shacks float by in the river’s brown, putrid water. There is mud everywhere and the acrid smell of burning plastic lingers in the air. Chickens crow and dogs bark, rusty chain-links act as fencing and a gate. It looks like Manila, but this is Rome. Welcome to the “City of […]
Some Mexican leaders say immigration reform is simply a domestic matter to be left for Washington to resolve. But the stakes for Mexico are simply too big.
Analysis: As Europe closes its borders, Morocco is becoming a new immigration destination for the rest of Africa. And like Europe, it is failing to address the issue intelligently.
Although their numbers have been halved by the recent economic meltdown, Poles – who now number an estimated 10,000 – continue to be Iceland’s largest ethnic minority.