Movd

Two kids try to find a way through Mexico into America.  Excellent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_Nombre_(2009_film)

Treating immigrants like people – no brainer

Child actor and illegal immigrant starred on Sesame Street.

California will give state aid to illegal immigrants.  Unfortunately this will only drive the perceived ‘cost’ of immigration up.

I would rather limit illegal immigrant rights to the bare minimum (i.e. that of any visiting foreign national) have more open borders and less ambiguity.

What happens when they graduate college?  They get thrown out for working illegally?

Twenty-four-year-old Muslina is leaving behind her four-year-old son to work in Saudi Arabia.

“I come from a village about 15 hours away from Jakarta by bus. I want to work in Saudi Arabia so that I can make enough money to put my son through school,” she says.

More on this meme

Indonesia is stopping migrant workers from going to the Middle East, because from all accounts Indonesian migrant workers are treated poorly there.

On the other hand, I am sure the migrant workers are a large source of Income to many families across the archipelago.

The BBC’s Indonesia correspondent tells how her family fled from Pakistan to Jakarta in search of safety and a new home.

Maids from Indonesia often work far away from home in terrible conditions, and when they finally get back, they are fleeced by the immigration officials at the airport.

Just goes to show you how highly work abroad is valued!

You have worked in Malaysia for 2 years as a housemaid, where you had to sneak behind your boss’ back just to make a quick phone call or send a text message to your family back

Toronto looked like Cleveland 40 years ago, now it’s a global Mecca. And it’s not an accident that it’s 50% foreign-born.

Nice stuff.

Young immigrants which fall through the immigration gap in the US

This story is about how Israel has been turning to Thai workers after closing the border with Gaza.

There are haves and there are have-nots on this planet and we can’t risk too many of the have-nots coming over and joining the haves. If we did, a more egalitarian distribution of life’s blessings may erode the level of comfort that the West has come to enjoy at the cost of the plunder and propped up dictatorships of many Third World countries, a plunder that leads to the creation of these very refugees in the first place.  Under our current system, I can only foresee a trajectory which leads to the world’s richest countries becoming virtually impregnable fortresses, facing down dark skinned, ragged trousered invaders as they rock up at the coasts.  We shall indeed fight them on the beaches.

A milestone.

School girl challenges Michelle Obama over immigration.

On the upside it’s good that illegal immigrant’s kids have access to education – unlike a lot of other countries.

“Criminalising immigration, which is a social and economic phenomenon, this way opens the door to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement.” He added: “My government cannot and will not remain indifferent when these kinds of policies go against human rights.”

~Felipe Calderon

Malaysia has a had some bad cases of immigrant worker mistreatment.  Nevertheless the unhighlighted stories of expat workers sending wages back to their home countries far out weighs the bad.

Now if only Western countries would get their acts together!

They call Ireland ‘the land of a thousand welcomes’.

Whether it is or not is debatable.

In any case you could call Japan the land of 417 ‘welcomes‘.

Poor Chinese Indonesians.  Statelessness.

I remember seeing a poor Chinese in a slum in Tangerang.  She looked as smart as my Hong Konger pal K.  Suspect however smart you are you’ll never escape a trap like that.

- From Emma Lazarus’ New Colossus

Google’s co-founder tells the story of how he and his family came to America.

Immigration into Europe is part of the solution to economic woes rather than part of the problem.

Yet, many countries (Spain, we’re looking at you) don’t get it.

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As an aside, my pal wrote a nice paper on using incentives to encourage Europeans to have more babies and therefore relieve the growing debt burden on younger generations.  I don’t think she was too happy when I told her we should just import more immigrants.

The BBC has an article about Indonesian migrant workers being laid off.

Don’t Indonesian authorities have anything better to do?

Oh that’s right, it’s probably profitable for cops to find an illegal foreigner or two.

Unfortunately, the Canadian authorities denied them immigration [...] (7 years after the application was submitted) based on the argument that they will be a burden on their social system despite Api’s continuous assertion that she will take full responsibility of their common day needs.

101 year old man has to leave his family in New Zealand and make his way back to Briton.