Four Al Jazeera links on migration

I've been sitting on four news articles from Al Jazeera for some time. More original content will be coming tonight, but I wanted to get these out first.

In "Cuban migration surges after thaw in US-Cuba relations", Al Jazeera reports that attempts at migration from Cuba to the United States have surged despite the improvement in relations. This makes sense, with all the new incentives to migrate, between the prospect of easier movement between the island and the major destination of its emigrants and the risk that Cubans might lose their special status.

Elizabeth Braw reported, meanwhile, on the surge in unaccompanied child migrants and refugees in Sweden from conflict areas. Attracted by Swedish generosity and apparently not facing serous opposition, their numbers are on the rise.

Alice Su observes, meanwhile, that the continuing legacies of the devastating Hamas war with Israel on top of deep poverty are starting to make mass emigration a thinkable possibility for the people of the Gaza Strip. With no opportunities at home and a rapidly growing workforce, what else is there to do?

Desperation is also the theme of Hamza Mohamed's report from Somaliland. Even though that unrecognized state is far more stable than the rest of Somalia, again, young Somalilanders see no option but to flee.

On illegal immigration in Israel

The ongoing revolution in Egypt is a concern to Israel, since regardless of the peace treaty theirs is a "cold peace". War's unlikely, but a regime that expressed popular dislike for Israeli policies and for Jews wouldn't be a very good Israeli partner. The Globe and Mail has pointed out a perhaps-unexpected consequence of a deteriorating Egypt-Israeli relationship: there could be more illegal immigrants.

Israel is by far the most affluent nation to share a land border wi Africa and is a magnet for refugees – more than a thousand refugees make it across the Israeli-Egyptian border every month. In the past, Egypt’s army has attempted to stop them, but a hostile regime in Cairo, or an ineffective one, could turn this steady trickle into a flood that inundates Israel’s welfare systems.

As one would expect given the importance of displacement and migration in the history of Israel and the diasporas of Jews and Palestinians, immigration is a sensitive topic, illegal immigration more so. Notwithstanding the close links between Palestinians within and without Israel and geography, after the flight of Jews from the Middle East the region is of little, and decreasing, importance. When the post-Gulf War peace process began, Palestinians played a major role in the Israeli economy, provided unskilled labour at significant benefit to the Israeli economy and to Palestinian living standards. Ironically, when the peace process began, even before the post-2000 wave of suicide bombings Palestinians were displaced by less expensive foreign guest workers.

There were three hundred thousand foreigh workers in 2003, of fairly homogeneous background, half from Asia (China, Thailand, Philippines) and 45% from eastern Europe (mainly Romania and Moldova). The largest share work in construction, domestic service, and agriculture, but they can be found throughout the Israeli economy. (This collection of articles) goes into greater detail.) Many overstayed visas, and this, along with the standard concerns of immigrants debasing the national character and harming the economy, etc., has caused a recent crackdown on foreign guest workers.

A new Interior Ministry regulation would bar certain foreign nationals, who had illegally lived in Israel and then left of their own volition, from entering Israel again. This severely tightens immigration policy in Israel, as it bars the entry of foreign nationals from 60 countries exempt from visa requirements, including Russia, Romania, Colombia and the Philippines, for at least a year and up to a lifetime. It will affect tens of thousands of people, including the families of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and of former foreign workers, who were granted Israeli citizenship according to an arrangement for foreign workers' children.

According to the regulation, foreign workers from visa-exempt countries who remained in the country illegally for more than 30 days and then left on their own volition would be subject to a two-year "cooling-off" period. The price to be paid by foreigners who arrived as tourists but remained in the country illegally for a period of up to 30 days is slightly lower - a no-entry period of just one year. However, a foreign worker who is caught and deported from Israel will be barred from entering the country for a period of 10 years. A tourist or foreign worker residing in the country for over a year without a permit will be barred from returning for the rest of his or her lifetime, unless he or she receives a special permit from the immigration authorities in advance. According to the regulation, foreign workers who remained in Israel legally and departed as required will not be allowed to return for a year following their departure.

The notable thing about the illegal migration noted in the Globe and Maoil is that it actually does come from Israel's region. African refugees have a growing presence.

Most Africans [. . .] climb in through the window of the long, sprawling and largely open border with Egypt and then knock on the door for asylum. About 15,000 African hopefuls have entered the country this year, roughly double the amount of last year.

The government is determined to stop the influx. For starters, it is fencing off its 150-mile border with Egypt. Work began last month.

The border fence will cost about $370 million, but government indecision on immigration matters is costing dearly. Fear of the impact on politics, religion, demography, diplomacy and the economy has paralyzed decision-makers, negating a cohesive immigration policy. Years of Band-Aid solutions have produced a situation that is rapidly approaching a crisis.

All non-Jewish foreigners challenge Israel's aspirations for a Jewish majority and character while treating others fairly. But the African issue offers a test of humanitarianism and international law -- and social tolerance too.

Largely lumped together as "infiltrators," many of the Africans come from war-torn regions. Most come from Eritrea; Sudan is a close second, with a number from Ivory Coast and other countries. All asylum seekers undergo a process of "refugee status determination, " or RSD, except for Sudanese and Eritreans, who enjoy a temporary sweeping protection.

The Eritreans are predominantly men of military age, fleeing their country's military draft, while the Sudanese tend to be refugees from Darfur and southern Sudan. Both these populations certainly have any number of incentives to flee their homelands and to try to find new lives in Israel, while the older migration route to Libya is now profoundly unsafe. The size of future influxes of Sudanese and Eritreans into Israel--and, perhaps, of other migrants from the Middle East--depends on the enforcement of border controls by Israel and its neighbours.

Will Israel's neighbours keep illegal migrants out from Israel? Who knows. Leaving their general dislike for Israel aside, they do have incentives not to have large refugee populations accumulate in their own countries. Blind eyes are quite imaginable.

A few more news links

For your reading pleasure, here's some population-related news links that I thought might interest you.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Nikola Krastev observes that even though populations are aging, fiscal issues and social isolation is making the lives of the elderly difficult.

Turkey's Today Zaman observes that Turkey's population is aging swiftly, its elderly population growing more quickly than its youth population.

Ha'aretz' Lily Galili notes that ex-Soviet Jews, by virtue of their removal to the very different environment of Israel, have enjoyed a much greater lifespan than they otherwise would have and are being assimilated to Israeli norms.

The CBC comments that Nova Scotia's rapidly aging has led to serious and growing economic problems in a depopulating rural Nova Scotia.

Billboards in Atlanta claiming that relatively high abortion rates among African-American women is threatening the survival of that community are as controversial as you'd expect.

Kenya's Daily Nation reports that remittances to Kenya, about half from North America and one-quarter from Europe, reached $609 million dollars in 2009.

French Pearce in the Guardian suggests that the sharp decline in Bangladeshi fertility rates can be explained by a combination of a Green Revolution that reduced the need for labour on farms and the economic empowerment of women.

"Fertility in Israel: Is the Transition to Replacement Level In Sight?"

Israel is a nation marked profoundly by planning, from the construction and adoption of Modern Hebrew as a common tongue then as a first language, from the design of agricultural communities and the designation of settlement patterns, to the construction of the basic institutions of state and civil society.

That's why it's ironic, as detailed in Dov Friedlander's paper on Israeli demographic trends, that fertility and migration trends in Israel have to be considered not so much nationally as sectionally, with European and American Jews, Sephardim and Arab Jews, different religiously- and territorially-defined Arab populations, and recent eastern European immigrants all constituting their own relatively self-contained communities and are themselves divided between secular and religious groups.

Friedlander's paper provides a fascinating look at demographic trends in one of the world's most ethnically and religiously complex economically developed countries. Go, read.