London: The UK's minister of immigration issued an extraordinary order to the staff at a center in Kent, southeast England, designed to handle the asylum claims of unaccompanied minors who had arrived in Britain on small boats, in April.
He argued that the wall murals of Mickey Mouse and other cartoon characters should be covered up because they were "too hospitable" and gave asylum seekers, some of whom were as young as nine, the "wrong message."
Robert Jenrick's action was roundly denounced as a "heartless" act of "abject cruelty" and a cunning attempt to appease "the rabid right" in advance of by-elections that many commentators predicted would result in the ouster of Conservative MPs, portending a disastrous loss for the party at the subsequent general election.
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In the end, the Conservatives dropped out of two of the three seats they were defending on Friday.
However, "Mousegate" is merely a symptom of a larger issue: the rise of right-wing populism across Europe, wherein populist parties increasingly and falsely attribute blame for every issue—from overstretched healthcare systems and housing shortages to rising crime and unemployment.
And these parties are growing in popularity across Europe. The ParlGov Project's analysis reveals that right-wing parties now have a majority of seats in 11 national legislatures, including those in France, Italy, Greece, and the UK, which are at the center of the migrant boat crisis.
The South-to-North migration crisis, which has resulted in nearly 2,000 fatalities this year alone, is not a tragedy but an opportunity for the right. Following the Conservatives' by-election losses, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is "preparing to launch a more aggressive campaign in an attempt to shift Labour's lead in the polls with divisive policies on crime (and) migrant boats," according to The Times of London's lead story on Saturday.
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The generalization of all those seeking refuge hides crucial information about where they are coming, dehumanizes the actual people behind the statistics, and adds to the ongoing death toll among those desperate enough to risk their lives crossing the English Channel and the Mediterranean in completely unsafe boats.
The death toll following the capsize of the overloaded fishing boat Adriana on June 14 in the waters off Greece revealed that the nature of the exodus is changing.
Up to 700 people were on board the ship when it departed Tobruk, Libya, for Italy. There were survivors from Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Pakistan among the 108 survivors, most of whom were men
Several hundred more people perished, including women and about 100 kids who were allegedly imprisoned below deck.
Data from the UN's International Organization for Migration, which was released the day after the Adriana went down, revealed that 2,761 people drowned in the Mediterranean last year while trying to travel from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe.
The story received very little media coverage, in contrast to the month-long hunt for four wealthy tourists who went missing after their submersible imploded while they were on a tour of the Titanic wreck.
The number of first-time asylum applications in Europe has steadily increased over the past 15 years, rising from 121,600 in 2008 to nearly 900,000 in 2022.
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The previous high point was in 2015, when there were 1.28 million applications and the conflict in Syria was at its height. There is a strong chance that that troubling record will soon be broken because the trend has been rising since 2020.
The 881,220 applications in 2022 represent a 64 percent increase over the 537,355 applications in 2021.
Monitoring changes in these applicants' places of origin not only reveals previously hidden trends but also acts as a barometer of geopolitical events occurring around the world.