Mexico clamps down on illegal immigration from Cuba

Reuters | Oct 20, 2008

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico agreed to tighten immigration rules on Monday in an effort to cut off the main smuggling route for thousands of Cubans headed to the United States.

“We believe now there will be fewer attempts to use Mexico as an illegal corridor for Cuban immigrants trying to get to the United States,” said Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque at a news conference with Mexican officials.

More than 11,000 Cubans slipped into the United States via Mexico last year, according to U.S. authorities.

Most sneak off the island without exit permits from the Cuban government and travel in small speedboats to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

Paying smugglers up to $15,000, they then make their way overland to the United States where, unlike other Latin American immigrants, they only have to step on U.S. soil and request political asylum to be allowed to stay.

If arrested in Mexico, the Cubans are often released and continue their journey north.

The lax enforcement will change under the new agreement, with Mexico pledging to send all Cubans caught without proper documents home.

The move is an effort by President Felipe Calderon to smooth the ties between the two countries strained under his predecessor, Vicente Fox.

Fox and Fidel Castro feuded publicly, with the Cuban leader calling Mexico a U.S. pawn, and Fox voting to condemn Cuba at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in 2002.

The two countries temporarily withdrew their ambassadors in May 2004. Fox left office in December 2006 and Castro, sidelined by illness, was replaced by his brother Raul Castro this year as Cuba’s first new leader in 49 years.

Cubans seeking to get to the United States traditionally packed into boats and motored across the Florida Straits, but U.S. drug patrols in the area have made it harder to get through. Now the preferred route is by boat to Mexico and then overland to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Human traffickers are believed to be working with drug smuggling gangs that control organized crime and police protection rackets in Mexico.

Several Cubans have been murdered in Mexico in recent months with police pointing fingers at smugglers with suspected ties to drug cartels.

A joint declaration by the two governments said the preferential treatment given by the United States to Cuban migrants encourages their illegal entry into Mexico.

“The U.S. immigration policy toward Cuba … complicates efforts to effectively combat criminal organizations that profit from the illegal trafficking of Cubans,” the declaration said.

England most crowded country in Europe due to immigration

Population growth: Official figures show England has overtaken the Netherlands to become the most crowded country in Europe

Daily Mail | Sep 15, 2008

By  Steve Doughty

England has become the most crowded major country in Europe, official figures show.

The number of people crammed in has overtaken those in Holland, long the most densely-populated major nation on the continent.

A count released to MPs showed England now has 395 people per square kilometre.

Crowding has increased because of high immigration into England while the Dutch population has fallen or remained steady.

Last night MPs who are campaigning for ‘balanced migration’ said the figures were a milestone in the immigration debate.

Beyond Europe, England’s population density is among the highest in the world. Of countries with a population of at least 10million, England ranks third in density after Bangladesh (1,045 per sq km) and South Korea (498 per sq km).

The English figures were in a Commons written answer from National Statistician Karen Dunnell.

Miss Dunnell said that in 2008 the number of people in every square kilometre in Britain was 253 with 395 in England. Latest figures from Holland show that its population density was 395 a square kilometre in 2002 and 393 in 2005.

The only country in the European Union with greater crowding is Malta. The Mediterranean island is a special case because it has only 400,000 people, most of whom live around the port of Valletta.

Increasing crowding in England is largely concentrated in the South and East, where in recent years the greatest number of migrants have headed to provide labour for agriculture, construction and service industries.

Official projections say the population will become even more concentrated in the future.

Miss Dunnell’s department, the Office for National Statistics, has estimated that English population density will rise to 464 people for every square kilometre by 2031.

The new estimates were made public just a week after an unprecedented alliance of all-party public figures called for balanced migration.

The campaigners, led by Labour former minister Frank Field and Tory MP Nicholas Soames, have called for the number of foreigners allowed to settle in the country to be held at around the same level as the number who leave.

The two MPs said yesterday: ‘The Government have now been obliged to recognise that England is projected to catch up with Holland this year as the most crowded country in Europe.

‘This is a milestone in the immigration debate as immigration accounts for 70 per cent of our population growth.

‘The Government’s points-based system places no limit on the number of people who are allowed to settle in the UK. If ever there was a case for balanced migration, it is now.’

The campaigners estimate current immigration into Britain at around 300,000 a year – although not all will stay permanently – and calculate that a balanced migration policy would result in a British population of around 65million by 2050. Current Government policies would mean a British population of nearly 80 million by then.

England has taken its position as the most crowded country in Europe at a point when the risk of economic recession has led to growing concern over diminishing numbers of jobs and pressure on public services.

A spokesman for the UK Border Agency, the organisation set up by the Home Office to tighten immigration by admitting only those with skills, said: ‘Our tough new points system plus our plans for newcomers to earn their citizenship will reduce overall numbers of economic migrants coming to Britain, and the numbers awarded permanent settlement.’

Illegal Immigrants Returning to Mexico in Record Numbers

Reports are already out in Mexico that the large number of illegal immigrants returning home could drive down wages and put pressure on social services — the same concerns many Americans have with illegals living and working in the U.S.

Fox News | Aug 22, 2008

By Kris Gutierrez

DALLAS —  Illegal immigrants are returning home to Mexico in numbers not seen for decades — and the Mexican government may have to deal with a crush on its social services and lower wages once the immigrants arrive.

The Mexican Consulate’s office in Dallas is seeing increasing numbers of Mexican nationals requesting paperwork to go home for good, especially parents who want to know what documentation they’ll need to enroll their children in Mexican schools.

“Those numbers have increased percentage-wise tremendously,” said Enrique Hubbard, the Mexican consul general in Dallas. “In fact, it’s almost 100 percent more this year than it was the previous two years.”

The illegal immigrant population in the U.S. has dropped 11 percent since August of last year, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Its research shows 1.3 million illegal immigrants have returned to their home countries.

Some say illegal immigrants are leaving because a soft economy has led to fewer jobs, causing many laborers to seek work elsewhere.

Others argue that a tough stance on immigration through law enforcement has spread fear throughout the illegal population.

“There’s no question there’s a variety of suggestions that people are in fact returning,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “Remittances, which is the money immigrants send home to Mexico, have gone down dramatically over the past year. Again, probably part the economy, but also part enforcement, leading to fewer people being here.”

Advocates for immigrants are disturbed by the trend. Albert Ruiz, an organizer for the League of United Latin American Citizens, agrees that more undocumented immigrants are going home — but says families are being torn apart in the process.

If a father is deported, Ruiz says, his family members in America are forced either to fend for themselves or follow him to a country where they’ve never even lived.

“So the mother is saying we should return home with the breadwinner of the family to Mexico, and the children are saying, I don’t want to leave, I’m a U.S. citizen, I don’t know that country,” said Ruiz.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon plans to help returning nationals by providing food, medical care and temporary shelter if needed. But reports are already out in Mexico that the large number of illegal immigrants returning home could drive down wages and put pressure on social services — the same concerns many Americans have with illegals living and working in the U.S.

By 2042 Hispanics in US to triple making Whites a minority group

Hispanics projected to triple by 2050, when they’ll be nearly a third (133 million) of the population

Noting a recent poll in which half of whites opposed federal aid to minorities, Cardenas’ colleague John Koval joked that they should think twice. “Pretty soon they’re going to be the minority,” he said.

McClatchy Newspapers | Aug 13, 2008

By KAT GLASS

WASHINGTON — In a few decades, all Americans will be minorities, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections to be released Thursday.

Non-Hispanic whites will drop below half of the population as early as 2042, the projections show. That’s about 10 years earlier than demographers previously had predicted, said Grayson Vincent, a demographer for the Census Bureau.

Here’s what’s expected:

•Non-Hispanic whites, who are two-thirds of the population today, are older, dying off faster and producing fewer children than other groups, Vincent said. By 2050, they’ll number 203 million in a nation of 439 million.

•Hispanics are projected to triple by 2050, when they’ll be nearly a third (133 million) of the population. Spurring Hispanic growth is the group’s large natural increase — birth rate minus death rate — which Vincent attributed mainly to its youth and fertility. Immigration is an important factor, she said.

•The black population is projected to increase by just 1 percentage point, from 14% this year to 15% (66 million) in 2050. At that point, Hispanics will outnumber blacks by 2-to-1, the report said.

•The Asian population will grow from 5% to 9% of the population (41 million) by 2050, according to the projections.

•American Indians and Alaska Natives are projected to rise from 1.6% to 2% (9 million) of the population.

All the changes will show up first and fastest among children, less than half of whom will be non-Hispanic whites by 2023.

Policymakers need to start adapting now, demographers and race scholars said, especially in education.

“It’s a different kind of student body than we’ve known during the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s, when a lot of our education policies were shaped,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington research center.

“If we don’t invest in educating and training African-American kids, immigrants and Latino kids, we won’t have a middle class,” said Mark Sawyer, the director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Politics at the University of California at Los Angeles. “We’ll have a very, very poor disposable class that’s largely black or brown.”

The face of America will look different, too.

“I think the American complexion will be a multiplicity of complexions rather than one complexion,” said Gilberto Cardenas, director of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

The study predicts that the number of Americans who say they’re biracial or multiracial will more than triple from 5 million to 16 million people by 2050.

Some sociologists already have scrapped “minority” for terms such as “dominant” and “nondominant group” to discuss race and ethnicity, Sawyer said.

Noting a recent poll in which half of whites opposed federal aid to minorities, Cardenas’ colleague John Koval joked that they should think twice. “Pretty soon they’re going to be the minority,” he said.

Mexican troops cross U.S. border, hold Border Patrol agent at gunpoint

Reuters | Aug 6, 2008

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Mexican soldiers briefly held a U.S. Border Patrol agent at gunpoint in a remote stretch of the Arizona desert after they mistakenly strayed north across the border, authorities said on Wednesday.

Tucson sector Border Patrol spokesman Mike Scioli said four Mexican soldiers wearing desert camouflage and carrying weapons confronted the agent early on Sunday morning as he patrolled a border road in the Tohono O’Odham nation southwest of Tucson.

Scioli said the agent repeatedly identified himself in English and Spanish. After four minutes the soldiers lowered their weapons and crossed back in to Mexico on foot.

The stretch of desert is frequently crossed by human and drug smugglers from Mexico, and the border line in the area is not always clearly marked, Scioli said.

A spokesman for the U.S. State Department said the incursion had been brought to the attention of the Mexican government, and appeared to be accidental.

“Our understanding is that this encounter stemmed from a momentary misunderstanding as to the exact location of the U.S.-Mexican border,” Gonzalo Gallegos said.

“We recognize that occasional incidents such as this can and do occur. But we take the misunderstanding seriously, as does the Government of Mexico.”

Incursions by Mexican military personnel into the United States over the nearly 2,000-mile (3,200-km) southwest border are not uncommon. Scioli said 42 incidents had been reported since October 1 last year.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; editing by Alan Elsner)

Italy’s brutal crackdown on Gypsies echoes country’s fascist past

The bodies of Cristina, 12, and Viola, 11, were left on the sand after they drowned in rough seas as holidaymakers carry on sunbathing nearby. It was the week’s most shocking picture: gipsy girls dead on a beach ignored by sunbathers… Now there is more chilling evidence of how Italy’s brutal crackdown on the Roma has sick echoes of the country’s fascist past.

Thousands of migrants, many of them Roma gipsies from the old communist bloc and racially troubled Balkans, have poured into the country since the dismantling of border controls across a greatly expanded European Union in 2004.

Daily Mail | Jul 26, 2008

By Sue Reid

She looks like any teenager the world over. Wearing a denim skirt, pink designer T-shirt, and with long hair tied back from her face, Samantha is a child who would make any parent proud.

Yet just a few days ago, this bubbly 14-year-old found herself taking part in an excercise that would seem unthinkable in a modern, civilised European country.

She was ordered to line up at the local community hall near her home in Naples, Italy, and dab her right forefinger in black ink before placing it on a government census form.

Samantha was photographed and given an identity code – F43 – as officials asked for her full name, address, age, religion and where she was born.

Most controversially of all, she was told to state her ethnic background.

Every detail, including the fact that her parents are immigrant Roma gipsies from Serbia, was catalogued and put on a national computer system.

She was mortified. Her eyes bright with anger, Samantha said she felt like a villain in the only country she has ever known.

‘That same day, the Italian kids started calling me “gyppo” in the streets.

They pointed at me and laughed. I felt like shouting back and saying: ‘I am Italian just like you. I was born here too.

‘But I didn’t dare, in case I started a riot.’

Samantha was taking part in a compulsory new census of Italy’s 160,000 Roma people, promised by the inflammatory Right-wing premier Silvio Berlusconi in the run-up to his successful election this spring.

Anyone with a sense of the past would be forgiven for a strong feeling of foreboding about what is happening.

Thousands of migrants, many of them Roma gipsies from the old communist bloc and racially troubled Balkans, have poured into the country since the dismantling of border controls across a greatly expanded European Union in 2004.

The huge diaspora was political good fortune for 73-year-old Berlusconi.

In a country where fascism under dictator Benito Mussolini thrived until the end of World War II, Berlusconi warned of a ‘Roma emergency’ in big cities and produced a dossier of dubious figures alleging foreigners were involved in half of Italy’s attempted murders, muggings and robberies.

The interior minister went further. Roberto Maroni, a leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League aligned with Berlusconi’s nationalist Forza Italia party, claimed the controversial census and fingerprinting was essential to discover ‘who is entitled to be here and who is not’.

It would stop anonymous armies of Roma children being sent out begging or stealing by their families, 60 per cent of whom have no identity papers or passports, he claimed.

Gipsy people with the right to stay would be re-housed in ‘decent conditions rather than with rats’. The remainder, Maroni made clear, could expect deportation.

Many observers, including the Roman Catholic Church, the United Nations, Roma and Jewish leaders, condemned Berlusconi’s actions. Comparisons were made with the Nazi registration of Jews and gipsies introduced by Adolf Hitler with the support of Mussolini.

Only this week, the Italian parliament authorised six-year prison sentences for immigrants who lie about their identity, and instigated the deportation of foreigners who have been given any prison sentence of two years or more.

For the first time, simply living in Italy illegally is punishable by up to four years in prison.

But where will Berlusconi stop? Italy’s pledge to the EU that the census would not include a question about ethnicity has been blatantly breached, even for children such as Samantha.

While fingerprinting children under 14 has been abandoned (they are photographed instead) following international disquiet, there are now whisperings that gipsy camps not sanctioned by the authorities – and there are 50 of these in Rome alone – will be destroyed by the authorities.

Border controls are expected to be reintroduced to staunch the flow of migrants from Italy’s neighbours.

No wonder there is a growing sense of unease at the huge – and illegal – Rotunda gipsy camp in Naples, where Samantha Jevremovic underwent fingerprinting.

She lives there with her parents, two younger brothers and a toddler sister in a small white wooden hut.

The family share one bedroom and eat at a table outside, whatever the weather.

Samantha goes to school and hopes to train as a hairdresser. Her 32-year-old mother and itinerant metalworker father, 33, have no citizenship in Italy or anywhere else.

On the census form they declared themselves ‘Ethnic Serbs’, who slipped into the country illegally in 1993, just before their eldest daughter was born.

Her mother, Dani, says: ‘We didn’t want to co-operate. We are afraid.

‘But we hope by giving the information it will stop us being thrown out of Italy, which our children think of as home.’

The camp has 700 residents and was first established 25 years ago. It’s the size of a sprawling village under a four-lane expressway to the north of the city.

By any standards, it is a shabby place where potholes are filled with fetid water, toddlers run half-naked chased by cats around the alleys, and burnt-out cars outnumber brick houses.

Most of the residents live in corrugated shacks without either a tap or a lavatory, with only a towel or a duvet pinned up to serve as a front door.

Here, only two-thirds of the 300 children go to school, a pink-roofed building nearby. Their parents say they are afraid to send them because the appalling facilities in the camp mean they cannot wash the boys and girls each day.

‘They are scared that the Italian pupils will jeer at their dirty sons and daughters,’ explains 48-year-old Nihad Sajovic, one of the gipsy elders.

‘Would you send your child to class if that was going to happen?’

At a table in the community hall, where the census took place, he added: ‘No one can imagine our situation during the past few months.

‘There is a witch-hunt under way and people now believe that we are the only ones who commit crimes in Italy.

‘It is not easy for us. There have been incriminations and accusations against our community. We no longer know what the future holds.

‘We want to put down roots; we want to stop fleeing because our people have been doing that since the War began in 1939.

‘At the end, the Jews were given money and a new land. We still have nothing.’

Extraordinarily, the Red Cross of Italy has been persuaded by Berlusconi to help count gipsy heads and gather data on hundreds of families at 70 camps in Rome, an operation that will last until September.

Massimo Barra, the charity’s president, this week visited one pitiful group of gipsies who have been living under a dripping railway arch near international Leonardo Da Vinci airport for six years.

It can be reached only by a perilous walk along the main railway line between central Rome and the air terminus, then down a narrow gully.

On the brick walls hang a few pots and pans. Tents take up most of the floor space.

There is an acrid smell, and at night the rats come out. Surely this can’t be better than living in Romania, from where the 15 gipsies and their children had fled?

‘Yes it is,’ said Maria, mother of six. ‘There, we were accused and persecuted for being gipsies.

‘Up to now, we have lived in Italy in peace.’

The Red Cross’s Mr Barra said: ‘We know that people are pointing and saying that this is reminiscent of the Nazis. But that is collective paranoia.

‘We want to get these children vaccinated, give them health checks and medical cards.

‘That is all this census is about. We are building bridges and not walls.’

Whatever the truth of this, Italy’s history cannot be forgotten. It was as early as 1926 that Mussolini first expelled gipsies, calling them ’sub humans’.

It is thought that in the next 20 years, more than one million Roma people were killed in the extermination camps of Europe, alongside the Jews.

The current wave of Italian xenophobia was given new impetus last November when an Italian admiral’s wife, a religious education teacher, was beaten with a rock in a sex attack by a Romanian migrant.

Dreadfully injured, she was dumped in a ditch in a suburb of northern Rome. She died two days later and suspect Nicolae Mailat, 24, from Transylvania, was arrested in a nearby gipsy camp.

National outrage followed.

Soon afterwards came a story of baby-snatching when a teenage Roma girl was alleged to have tried to kidnap a baby from its mother in a local apartment in Ponticelli, near Naples.

The girl is now in custody awaiting trial. But the case sparked an extraordinary backlash.

In May, several hundred local residents besieged the nearby Roma camp, hurling missiles and abuse.

Eventually, the police evacuated the gipsy residents. Within a short time, the shanty town was in flames.

The response of the Berlusconi government? ‘This is what happens when gipsies steal babies,’ shrugged Maroni of the Northern League.

Sporadic vigilante attacks on gipsies have continued. Only this week there was another mysterious fire at an encampment on the outskirts of Rome.

At 10pm on Tuesday, a swathe of trees surrounding the officially sanctioned site, again near the airport, suddenly burst into flames.

As police investigated, the Roma residents said that they heard three loud bangs as if Molotov cocktails had been hurled into the undergrowth.

‘What do you expect us to think? We are scared and dispirited,’ said Lordache Cortizon, a 40-year-old who came to live in Italy from Romania six years ago.

‘We came to escape racism. Yet in the past few months since the government changed, we have lived in fear. On the streets we are given filthy looks.

‘The census is nothing short of racism. If they come here and ask that my four children are fingerprinted I will say no.’

Full Story

Mexicans urged to reclaim a piece of Texas

Telegraph | Jun 26, 2008

By Tom Leonard

Mexicans are being encouraged to reclaim a piece of Texas, more than 150 years after they lost the Lone Star state to the United States.

Texan estate agents are heading south of the border to drum up the interest in buying cut-price land and property in the foreclosure-hit state.

Thanks to a rising Mexican peso and an economy which is growing faster than that of the US, a country that has previously been looked on by America as a source of cheap labour is now seen as a potential source of rich investors.

A “Texas for Sale” sign and cowgirl-clad models greeted visitors to a recent property fair in Monterrey, Mexico, at which hundreds of Mexicans looked over lists of potential investment opportunities. Virgilio Garza, a Monterrey developer, said he and his partners were considering investing $8 million in buying up foreclosed homes in Texas.

He told Bloomberg: “Texas is like our home. We believe there can be some opportunities.”

Marco Ramirez, a Texas estate agent, said that residents of Monterrey, which is 150 miles from the Texas border, were his best hope of buying the 120 foreclosed properties on his books.

“Many of these people have children who are studying in the US. They’ve been renting or leasing and now it’s a great time to buy.”

America annexed Texas in 1845 after Texans gained independence from Mexico nine years earlier following the Battle of the Alamo.

A three-year war between the two countries resulted in Mexico losing about half its territory – including what is now Arizona, Nevada and California – to the United States.

Foreclosures in Texas have risen by 29 per cent in a year with one in every 274 households now going through the process.

The peso has risen by 5.9 per cent against the dollar since the beginning of the year.

Diseases Plaguing Poorer Nations Infect Growing Numbers in U.S.

Bloomberg | Jun 24, 2008

By John Lauerman and Rob Waters

June 24 (Bloomberg) — Preventable diseases commonly seen among impoverished people in Africa, Asia and Latin America are infecting millions of U.S. residents, mostly poor women and children, researchers found.

Chronic infections such as Chagas disease and dengue fever are a major cause of disability, impaired child development, and pregnancy complications in the U.S., said Peter Hotez, author of the study released by the Public Library of Science’s journal Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Parasitic conditions including roundworm and toxoplasmosis, along with tropical bacteria are widespread in many inner cities, the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, and the Mexican borderlands, the study said. Improved recognition, screening and treatment of the diseases are needed to reduce the impact on patients, who are often poor and less educated, Hotez said.

“If these diseases were hitting wealthy people in the suburbs, we would never tolerate it,” said Hotez, chairman of microbiology at the George Washington University in Washington, yesterday in a telephone interview. “We need to make the names of these diseases household words.”

Even before Hurricane Katrina drove thousands from their homes in Louisiana in 2005, poverty and lack of access to health care contributed to high rates of roundworm and other parasites, the study said. Prolonged flooding has paved the way for increased rates of Chagas, a parasite that can cause lethal heart and intestinal complications, according to the researchers.

Red Cross Recommendation

An American Red Cross researcher called in October for screening of all donated blood for signs of the parasite that causes Chagas disease, which may be found in as many as one in 25,000 blood donors in the U.S., and kills as many as one third of patients. The disease can lurk undetected in infected people for as long as 20 years.

Hotez’s study is a wake-up call to state, local and U.S. health officials that more needs to be done about tropical diseases in the U.S., said Mary Wilson, a Harvard School of Public Health associate professor.

“Most people are completely unaware that many of these diseases still exist in the U.S.,” she said yesterday in a telephone interview. “Even for health professionals who work in major cities, this is below the radar screen.”

Infectious diseases can be difficult to track in poor populations, particularly when immigration is involved, said Elias Bermudez, chief executive officer of Immigrants Without Borders, an advocacy group in Phoenix.

Immigrants

“Communicable diseases are not reported by poor people,” especially undocumented immigrants, he said yesterday in a telephone interview. “With the anti-immigrant atmosphere that exists now in Arizona, people are afraid to go to medical clinics and hospitals, and that compounds the problem.”

Soil-dwelling microscopic worms, such as hookworms, penetrate the skin or gastrointestinal tract and infect billions of people throughout the tropical world, according to the World Health Organization in Geneva. The tiny parasites can cause diarrhea, abdominal pain, weakness, anemia, and may affect mental function and physical growth, the United Nations health branch said on its Web site.

Millions of people in the U.S., most of them in the Mississippi Delta and Appalachia, are likely to be infected with worms, Hotez said. In 2000, researchers estimated that 169,000 homes in Appalachia had no indoor plumbing, and in some of the region’s counties, 25 percent of homes lack complete plumbing, the study said. The report cited another 2000 study showing that about 36 percent of Mississippi Delta blacks then lived below the poverty line.

Study, Drugs Needed

More study is needed of which populations are most vulnerable, how worms are transmitted and how to diagnose them, Hotez said.

“We need to take a better look at which interventions are possible,” he said. “The approach to worms is more systematic in Honduras than it is in the U.S.”

New drugs also are needed to treat dengue fever, a mosquito- borne disease frequently found along the U.S.-Mexico border, he said. Better drugs and diagnostics also are needed for parasitic leishmaniaisis, a skin infection that can affect internal organs, he said.

The U.S. is spending billions to find treatments for anthrax, avian flu, and smallpox, diseases that affect few or no one, Hotez said. More resources should be spent on finding new treatments for tropical diseases that sicken millions annually, he said.

“Here we have real suffering, real diseases among the poorest people living in the U.S.,” he said.

Many tropical diseases could be alleviated just by addressing the poverty of people that suffer from them, said Harvard’s Wilson.

“For a lot of these diseases, basic biomedical research is not going to provide the answers,” she said. “We have to alleviate poverty and social inequities, and provide better education for people living in conditions that contribute to disease.”

Global warming to spur more terrorism and illegal immigration

Report: Climate change linked to national security

Associated Press | Jun 25, 2008

By PAMELA HESS

WASHINGTON – Global warming probably will mean more illegal immigration and humanitarian disasters, undermining shaky governments and possibly expanding the terrorism threat against the U.S., intelligence agencies say.

“Logic suggests the conditions exacerbated (by climate change) would increase the pool of potential recruits for terrorism,” said Tom Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.

Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central and Southeast Asia are most vulnerable to warming-related drought, flooding, extreme weather and hunger. The assessment warns of a global spillover from increased migration and water-related disputes, Fingar said in prepared remarks Wednesday to a joint hearing of a special House committee on global warming and a House Intelligence subcommittee.

Climate change alone would not topple governments, he said. But it could worsen problems such as poverty, disease, migration and hunger, creating conditions that could destabilize already vulnerable areas, Fingar said.

But he warned that efforts to reduce global warming by changing energy policies “may affect U.S. national security interests even more than the physical impacts of climate change itself.”

“The operative word there is ‘may,’ we don’t know,” Fingar said.

The assessment of global climate change through 2030 is one in a series of periodic intelligence reports that offer the consensus of top analysts at all 16 spy agencies on foreign policy, security and global economic issues. Congress requested the report last year. The assessment is classified as confidential.

It predicts that the United States and most of its allies will have the means to cope with climate change economically. Unspecified “regional partners” could face severe problems.

Fingar said the quality of the analysis is hampered by the fact that climate data tend not to focus on specific countries but on broad global changes. For that reason, the intelligence agencies have only low to moderate confidence in the assessment.

Africa is seen as among the most vulnerable regions. An expected increase in droughts there could cut agricultural yields of rain-dependent crops by up to half over the next 12 years.

Parts of Asia’s food crops are vulnerable to droughts and floods, with rice and grain crops potentially facing up to a 10 percent decline by 2025.

As many as 50 million additional people could face hunger by 2020. The water supply, while larger because of melting glaciers, will be under pressure from a growing population and increased consumption. Between 120 million and 1.2 billion people in Asia “will continue to experience some water stress.”

Latin America may experience increased precipitation, possibly cutting tens of millions of people from the ranks of those in need of water. But from 7 million to 77 million people could be short of water resources because of population growth.

Fingar’s statement strikes a considerably less ominous tone than a report issued a year ago by the Center for Naval Analyses.

Rep. Edward Markey, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, accused the White House of trying to “bury the future security realities of global warming” in Fingar’s prepared statement. Markey, D-Mass., received a briefing on the classified assessment, which he said is “first-class.”

Fingar said no one in the White House changed any of his public testimony.

The center’s report, by retired military leaders, drew a direct correlation between global warming and the conditions that lead failed states to become the breeding grounds for extremism and terrorism.

“Climate change will provide the conditions that will extend the war on terror,” said Adm. T. Joseph Lopez, who commanded U.S. and allied peacekeeping forces in Bosnia in 1996.

“Weakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies,” the center’s report said. “The U.S. will be drawn more frequently into these situations,” according to the report, which drew on 11 retired generals and admirals.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the request for the intelligence agencies’ report was “a dangerous diversion of intelligence assets.” He said the issue should be studied by climate scientists, not intelligence agencies.

Republicans used the hearing to argue for domestic oil drilling and nuclear power to reduce reliance on foreign energy.

Mass immigration to blame for British crime spikes and knife culture

Cambridgeshire Police Chief Constable Julie Spence complains the force can’t cope

Daily Mail | Jun 4, 2008

By  James Slack

A chief constable gave a stark public warning yesterday of ‘immense’ pressure placed on resources by the unprecedented influx of immigrants.

Julie Spence, who heads Cambridgeshire Police, took the highly unusual step of singling out Poles, Lithuanians and Iraqi Kurds who are carrying knives on the streets.

The comments of such a senior officer in an Parliamentary evidence session will spark widespread alarm at a time when the UK is struggling to control knife crime.

Mrs Spence said: ‘We have had the Iraqi Kurds who carry knives and the Poles and the Lithuanians who carry knives. If it is normal to carry them where you come from, you need to educate them pretty quickly. We have done a lot of work to tell them not to, and we have seen it go down.’

The chief constable  -  who first sparked a nationwide debate on migrant crime last year  -  also said there were problems related to violent debt recovery among Eastern Europeans.

‘There is an assaults pattern going on in relation to debt recovery. There is an issue of confidence in the police.’

Mrs Spence also described as ‘very worrying’ growing labour and sexual exploitation within former Communist communities whose nations have joined the EU since 2004. In the same evidence session, Local Government Association chairman Sir Simon Milton reported a series of ’spikes’ in crime as a result of mass immigration.

He told the Home Affairs Select Committee there had been an issue with largely Romanian pick-pocketing gangs in the Westminster area.

‘Nationally there has been no crime wave but there are instances where there have been spikes in certain types of criminal activity. Much of it is low-level  -  driving offences, and so on.’

Mrs Spence has given previous warnings of the link between migrants and certain types of crime. Last September she highlighted a surge in drinkdriving, for example, by migrants with ‘different’ cultures and standards.

But it is highly unusual for a police chief to single out certain nationalities as posing a specific crime problem.

Simply carrying a knife in public is a criminal offence, punishable by up to four years in jail.

Mrs Spence, however, is establishing a reputation as an officer prepared to confront uncomfortable truths.

Addressing the Police Federation Conference last month, she warned that the economic downturn could spark tensions among ethnic groups.

Violence has already erupted between immigrant populations in the past. And she warned that the looming financial crisis could trigger unrest as competition for jobs increases. She also claimed that the Government had greatly underestimated the soaring numbers of Eastern Europeans entering the UK.

Mrs Spence said as many as 1.4million had arrived since the borders were opened to them four years ago  -  half a million more than the official figure.

She called for a European-wide police database so officers can easily check whether immigrants they arrest have any previous convictions in their home country. Mrs Spence cited one example of a violent Polish man arrested by her officers who came up as clear on the police national computer. They contacted the Polish authorities and had to wait 24 hours to find out he was a convicted murderer.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said last night: ‘Under Labour, fatal stabbings are up by almost a third and the Government’s lax approach means people carry knives in the street with impunity. We need more effective action to tackle knife possession  -  regardless of who is carrying them.

‘This means taking a zero-tolerance approach  -  including action to confiscate such weapons and punish those carrying them. Only this will send a clear message that we are serious about tackling a problem, which one senior judge has labelled an epidemic.’

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘The vast majority of foreign nationals entering or living in the UK play by our rules. However, we will not accommodate those that abuse our hospitality by becoming involved in crime.

‘In 2007 we removed over one person every eight minutes, including the highest-ever number of foreign lawbreakers, up by a huge 80 per cent to 4,200.

‘The new UK Border Agency has put in place a national network of crime partnerships so that we stand shoulder to shoulder with police forces and systematically target foreign lawbreakers for expulsion from Britain.’