Immigration - new material (57)
01 May 2002
Bundesdeutsche Flüchtlingspolitik und ihre tödlichen Folgen - Dokumentation 1993 - 2001 [Germany's Refugee Politics and its Deadly Consequences - Documentation 1993 - 2001].
Antirassistische Initiative Berlin, pp 216, 2002.
Since 1993, the Berlin-based anti-racist initiative ARI has annually compiled and documented deaths and injuries resulting from border crossings, suicides and suicide attempts and deaths and injuries before, during or after deportations. Also included are racist attacks on refugee homes. As far as is known to ARI, last year at least two people died at Germany's eastern borders and five were injured. Two people committed suicide rather than face deportation, at least 29 refugees harmed themselves or tried to commit suicide and survived, some with severe injuries, whilst they were in deportation prisons. Three refugees were injured due to applied force or abuse during their deportation, at least 27 people were abused and/or tortured in their country of origin after their deportation. Two refugees died and 11 were injured during police operations, two refugees died in a racist attack against centralised refugee housing, at least 15 people were injured, some severely, in these attacks. The compilation is available online on www.berlinet.de/ari and a CD-Rom can be ordered from: Antirassistische Initiative e.V., Yorckstr. 59, 10965 Berlin, 0049-30-7857281, ari@ipn.de.
Politica de cupus: en el reino del absurdo [The politics of quotas: in the reign of the absurd], Agustin Unzurrunzaga. Mugak no. 18, 1st quarter 2002, pp.27-29.
Criticises the quota system for immigrants in Spain, dismissing official claims that it helps to regulate the entry of immigrants according to the needs of the labour market. In fact, Unzurruzaga argues, it has served to 1) restrict the number of third country nationals who can obtain work or residence permits under normal procedures; 2) provide a cheap labour pool with few legal guarantees for farming, cattle rearing and domestic work; 3) firmly establish the idea of immigrants as a subsidiary workforce to be used in the absence of nationals, and 4) regularise some immigrants illegally residing in the country, causing many to emerge in the hope of obtaining regularisation, only to order them to leave or expel them. Mugak is available from: Pena y Goni, 13-1 2002 San Sebastian, Basque Country, Spain.
La olvidada emigracion espanola (The forgotten Spanish emigration), Carlos Marichal. El Pais, 1.7.02, p.16.
Marichal accuses Aznar's administration of "amnesia" in relation to its plan to seal Europe's borders, by highlighting different periods in Spanish emigration (to South America, North Africa, and European countries such as France and Germany in the 1960s and 1970s) for "economic" motives, and the historical debt that Spain owes these countries.