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German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to visit Turkey Friday to discuss the migration crisis with President Recep Tayyip Erdoan.

The agenda of the two leaders meeting includes Syrian refugees heading toward the Turkish border after fleeing the regime attacks on Idlib and the Turkey-EU migration pact.

While Merkel is expected to express her countrys concerns about a new migration wave that could arrive in Europe from Syria through Turkey, Erdoan is expected to highlight Turkeys disappointment over EUs failure to deliver its commitments stemming from the migration pact.

Erdoans plan to build a safe zone in northern Syria for refugees is another topic to be discussed. The latest developments in the conflict-ravaged countries of Syria and Libya are other important topics of the two leaders main agenda.

Bilateral relations between the two countries, possible steps to enhance cooperation, and Turkeys process of accession to the EU are also among the agenda items for leaders meeting. Germany is preparing to take over the term presidency of the union in June.

After attending the World Economic Forum in Switzerlands Davos, Merkel will come to Istanbul. The two leaders are also scheduled to attend the opening ceremony of Turkish-German Universitys new campus. Merkel also plans to meet with representatives of the business world from the German-Turkish Chamber of Trade and Industry, in addition to civil society representatives.

Merkels visit comes amid fears that a renewed conflict in Syria could unleash a new refugee wave.

Erdoan warned that Turkey, which already hosts about 3.7 million Syrian refugees, would not be able to handle a new wave of migrants if attempts by the Syrian regime and Russia to retake opposition-held Idlib sent more people fleeing.

The two leaders last met in December in London where they discussed the situation in Syria with French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Turkey has been a key transit point for irregular migrants aiming to cross into Europe to start new lives, especially those fleeing war and persecution. To reduce the number of illegal migrants on the dangerous Aegean Sea route and to find a solution to the influx of refugees heading to the union, Turkey and the EU signed an agreement in March 2016. The deal stipulates that Greece is to send illegal migrants held on its Aegean islands back to Turkey. In return, Turkey is to send Syrian migrants with documents to various EU countries.

According to the deal, Turkey was also promised a total of 6 billion euros in financial aid, which was initially planned to be given to the country in two installments to be used by the Turkish government to finance projects for Syrian refugees. Visa freedom for Turkish citizens traveling to the EU was also promised under the agreement.

The deal also pledged an update of the customs union Turkey enjoys with the EU. In return, Turkey took the responsibility of discouraging irregular migration through the Aegean Sea by taking stricter measures against human traffickers and agreed to maintain suitable conditions for accommodating more than 3.5 million Syrians living in Turkey.

Despite significant developments in the control of migration traffic, the EU has not delivered on its commitments. Similarly, although the first installment of the funding pledged has been provided to Turkey, the EU has yet to fulfill other articles, including visa-free travel for Turkish citizens and an update of the customs union.

Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees and spends the most on humanitarian aid per capita in the world. According to Interior Ministry figures, the number of refugees was 4.2 million in 2017 and has now reached 4.9 million. While 3.7 million Syrians are living in Turkey, more than 415,000 Syrian children have been born in Turkey since the start of the civil war in 2011. Furthermore, Ankara has spent $40 billion on the refugees so far, according to official figures.

Few in the German government want to see a repeat of the migrant crisis of 2015, when Germany had to open its doors to over 1 million people, most of whom were seeking refuge from the Syrian conflict.

The migration wave, the largest Europe had seen since World War II, transformed Germany and Europe's politics, spurring far-right, anti-immigration politicians into legislatures across the continent and fueling Britain's vote to leave the EU.

Migrant numbers have started to pick up again recently as Damascus and Moscow move to retake Idlib, the last significant opposition-held enclave in Syria, where up to 3 million people live.

"If the violence toward the people of Idlib does not stop, this number will increase even more. In that case, Turkey will not carry such a migrant burden on its own," Erdoan said.

The president has previously warned to "open the gates" for migrants to Europe unless Turkey received more support in hosting the refugees.

Turkey has frequently warned the international community of the imminence of a humanitarian disaster and fresh wave of refugees unless actions are taken and the Syrian regime is restrained. Yet, no worthwhile actions have taken place, as airstrikes and artillery shelling continue to target thousands of civilians.

Ankara has also proposed the establishment of a safe zone in northern Syria cleared from all terrorist elements to allow for the resettlement of Syrians who have fled to Turkey from war-torn areas. Turkeys safe zone plan aims to host millions of Syrians in a safe and stable environment.

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Merkel to visit Turkey Friday to discuss migration crisis with Erdoan - Daily Sabah

Just last Friday, on my last full day of reporting for the Center for Immigration Studies on the Mexico-Guatemala border, I found myself with the leading elements of the just-arrived, first migrant "caravan" of 2020. It was in Tecn Umn, the Guatemalan border town just on the other side of the Puente Rodolfo Robles International Bridge.

About 300-400 of the mostly young, male Hondurans, some of whom had donned masks after I began videotaping the crowd, were excitedly chanting "Hon-dur-as! Hon-dur-as! Hon-dur-as!" Guatemalan police had blocked them from the bridge over to Hidalgo, Mexico, for the time being. Which was fine, they told me, because the plan was to wait for more migrants to arrive and then push over the bridge in the morning and continue on north up Mexico's spine to the American border, just like past caravans. Everyone I interviewed said they were coming for jobs, except for one man who said he wanted American cancer treatment for the child at his side.

But the excitement visible in their faces and body language went dark fast, then dissolved into disbelieving glance exchanges as I explained to the dozen Hondurans surrounding me what I had just found over the previous week of reporting on the Mexican side. This time, I told the young men listening to me with keen interest now, they were going to run headlong into a new defensive bulwark the Mexicans had put up.

It was evident that these men, unbelievably, had not heard that Mexico now had the means, will, and preparation to stop the caravans by force on that bridge with riot troops and reinforced spiked gating I'd just inspected, but also that Mexico had built an inland national guard skein that would catch most everyone else and send them into a deportation machine that would transport their masses home by plane and bus. I said my reporting had just found that those who did manage to get through this particular area would not likely get anywhere near the American border due to an interlocking system of National Guard roadblocks throughout the Mexican border state of Chiapasthat was proving pretty effective in feeding caught migrants back into the border deportation machine.

I told them those who didn't want to be deported had only the choice of applying for Mexican asylum, but that this would take many months, with success disqualifying them from making a U.S. asylum claim for years, and entrap them in southern Mexico during the long wait on pain of deportation, hemmed in by the national guard.

The caravanners, of course, heedlessly and violently charged right into this buzz saw anyway in a series of dramatic melees this week after I flew home, as can be seen from my CIS colleague Jason Pea's collection of reporting on the caravan's destruction and the mass deportations of its participating ranks. This particular caravan now stands broken and repulsed, as was one in October that fell upon the same Mexican shoals.

But the caravans keep forming and coming, defying deterrence in what appears to be a purposeful campaign to probe, test, and shake Mexico's will to stand fast.

America needs Mexico to do so, and the stakes in the outcome of these battles couldn't be higher for border security against mass illegal migration. Because while Americans and policymakers who oppose unfettered mass illegal immigration may feel relief or even take delight in the fates of these violent caravans, the relentless probing highlights the dependency on Mexico of President Donald Trump's successful initiatives that effectively ended the million-strong mass migration crisis of 2018-2019 and portends a resumption of that unwanted population transfer at any moment.

These caravans bring into sharp relief the fact that Mexico's cooperation forms the most important membrane standing between an unimpeded resumption of the crisis. And it's a thin one.

It should be pointed out that Mexico is doing all of this not out of friendship or informed self-interest, but under duress. With a Democratic House of Representatives blocking all legislative remedies to deter Central America's population transfers, President Trump had to scare Mexico into acting by threatening progressive trade tariffs of up to 25 percent on all exports if it did not stop the moving populations at its southern border.

Should even one of these testing, probing caravans be allowed to find and exploit a breach in the Mexican defense, or should President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador (AMLO) falter for a moment, many more will no doubt follow through the breach. That happening would quickly overwhelm the American deterrence policies such as the "Remain-in-Mexico" pushbacksof asylum applicants, the efficient administration of which depends on currently manageable volumes. The whole house of cards can fall on a Mexican political whim, or an unfortunate incident amplified by the media.

That day may well come anyway in November 2020, should Trump lose the election and his credible threat of debilitating tariffs leave the White House with him. With the tariff threat removed, AMLO might well return the national guard to their barracks and reopen his nation as the transit country it has always been.

That's why permanent legislative remedies are necessary to, for instance, reform U.S. asylum law, close certain incentivizing loopholes, and finish a barrier, among other needed permanent measures.

It's still unclear who organized these latest caravans and what their agenda is. That there is a political agenda at play here is almost beyond doubt, though while I was among the caravan migrants, I asked everyone I could who the leaders were and who was leading them to which locations. The answers I got back were typical: No one knew of any leader; they just heard about a new caravan on social media, then the regular media picked up on that, and a kind of herd formed up that kind of directed itself as to where to go.

But it seems likely that whoever is going onto social media and announcing new caravans is doing so well understanding the stakes involved in forming new ones that will continuously press and challenge the Mexicans to hold fast.

Yet another one is already on its way from Honduras, this one described as "massive" and "violent and lawless".

Until Congress legislates more permanent remedies, the Trump administration right now should be whispering in AMLO's ear that those trade tariffs are back on the table and would be far worse for Mexico than the violent and lawless people on their way to his border.

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Video: Why the 2020 Caravans Threaten the Fragile Success of Trump's Border Policies - Immigration Blog

Leader of Italy's far-right League party Matteo Salvini addresses a news conference with centre-right senator and regional candidate Lucia Borgonzoni, in Bologna, a day after a regional vote in Emilia-Romagna.

MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP/Getty Images

Matteo Salvinis determined campaign to win a key regional election in Italy ended in failure, a significant blow to his plans to topple the fragile Italian government and install himself as the far-right, anti-migrant prime minister of the European Unions third-largest economy.

The polls had suggested an exceedingly tight race in Emilia-Romagna between Mr. Salvinis populist League party and the centre-left Democratic Party. The wealthy north-central region, which is home to Ferrari, Lamborghini and Parmesan cheese, has been a left-wing, and sometimes communist, bastion since the late 1940s.

A League victory would no doubt have accelerated the demise of the national coalition government that was formed last summer between the Democrats and the 5-Star Movement (M5S) after Mr. Salvini, who was deputy prime minister and interior minister, pulled the plug on its coalition with M5S.

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Italy's right-wing leader Matteo Salvini failed in his effort to overturn decades of leftist rule in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna on Sunday in an election that he hoped would bring down the current national government. Reuters

But Mr. Salvinis gambit to finish off the coalition by destroying the Democrats stronghold in Emilia-Romagna was met with fierce resistance by the Sardines, the youth-led movement who packed the squares of Bologna, Parma and other cities in the region with tens of thousands of anti-League protestors, some of whom called him a neo-fascist. The high youth turnout at the polls was instrumental in swinging momentum away from the League.

Nicola Zingaretti, the Democrats leader, gave his immense thanks to the Sardines for their anti-Salvini rallies.

The early results gave the Democrat-led list headed by Stefano Bonaccini, who has been Emilia-Romagnas president (effectively governor) since 2014, more than 51 per cent of the vote. The League candidate, Lucia Borgonzoni, and her allies, which included Silvio Berlusconis Forza Italia party, took just under 44 per cent of the vote. Voters delivered a crushing defeat to M5S, the anti-establishment party which had placed first in the last national elections, in 2018; it landed at a mere 3.5 per cent, reflecting its crumbling support throughout Italy.

Mr. Salvini worked hard in Emilia-Romagna in recent weeks, making as many as a dozen appearances a day in a whirlwind campaign. On Saturday, he was so confident of victory that he used a tweet about the eviction notice he intended to deliver to Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

In effect, Mr. Salvini turned the election into a referendum on his own popularity, political analysts said. Salvini became the victim of his own hype, turning a strong result on enemy territory into a crushing defeat for himself and his party, said Francesco Galietti, chief executive of Policy Sonar, a Rome geopolitical consultancy.

His campaign in Emilia-Romagna reinforced his status as Italys anti-migrant champion, a strategy that has won him millions of supporters among Italians who are convinced that Italy took an unfair burden of the European migrant crisis and that migrants are taking their jobs. A video showing Mr. Salvini buzzing the intercom on the door of Tunisian migrants in Bologna to ask them if they were drug dealers triggered a diplomatic row with the Tunisian ambassador.

In spite of the Leagues loss in Emilia-Romagna, the party remains a potent and rising force, even in Emilia-Romagna, where it won only 5 per cent of vote in the 2014 election. In Italys other regional election on Sunday, in Calabria, in the deep south, a centre-right coalition backed by the League handily defeated the Democrats. Nationally, the League still tops the polls and would probably win a snap-election.

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But Mr. Conte, the Prime Minister, has vowed to keep the Democrat-M5S coalition intact. Whether he will be able to do so as support for M5S vanishes is an open question. The party, which was launched in 2009 by the comedian Beppe Grillo, thrived in opposition but has had trouble making the transition to government. Sensing that MS5 is near collapse, Luigi di Maio resigned as party leader last week, though he remains as Foreign Minister.

Investors cheered the Democrats victory in Emilia-Romagna. They had feared that a victory by the euro-skeptic League would have triggered national elections and heightened tensions between Brussels and Rome. In early European trading, Italian benchmark bonds rallied, with the yield on 10-year debt falling 0.16 per cent to 1.07 per cent (yields move inversely to prices).

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Regional election in Italy delivers blow to populist leader Salvini - The Globe and Mail

TAPACHULA, MEXICO Almost a million migrants have entered the US via the southern border in the past 12 months. Further south, hundreds just this week waded across the Suchiate River into southern Mexico in a new test of President Trump's controversial Central America policy called "Remain in Mexico" designed to keep them away from the US border.

That strategy has slowed the rate of migrants streaming over the border, and arrests have fallen 94 percent since the policy was enacted in May of 2019.

CBN News recently traveled to Mexico to talk with those who hope the policy and the president who made it will soon be voted out of office.

We spoke with a 26-year-old Honduran who wanted to remain anonymous. Hewas deported from the United States several years ago. When he tried to return, he got stuck in Mexico."We haven't had any answers from the immigration," he told CBN News. "There's no way we can get work, there's no way we can have like a work permit. So we're basically stuck with no money, no information whatsoever about what's going on with our paperwork, and we're just signing and waiting."The Trump administration has put the burden of the migrant crisis back on Mexico, and what that means is that Mexico is taking a much stronger stand against illegal migration.Manuel Zepeda, a Tapachulan businessman says the policy has stopped them. "I mean, the Mexican policies are not as easy now, it's getting harder for them to get the visa for traveling in Mexico."The small fishing village of Barro de San Jose on Mexico's Pacific coast is one of the places where immigrants are getting in, according to the Mexico Federal Police. They use boats to get around the roadblocks so they can make it illegally into the United States.

But this technique has had some negative consequences. Just a few months ago, several African migrants washed up dead on the shore north of Barro de San Jose. It shows the lengths that these migrants are willing to go to try to make it to the US border."The answer to migration? There is no answer. It's a phenomenon throughout the whole world. They're just running out of their countries because there's nothing for them there," Zepeda said.Another caravan is reportedly starting in Honduras, and it may pass through Tapachula in the next few days. The rumor on the street is that it may be made up of many of those who were deported from the first caravan in 2018."My idea is to go to Tijuana, and in Tijuana, I'm going to try and go ahead and make a living until Trump leaves office," the deported Honduran migrant said. "Once he leaves office hopefully everything is going to go back to normal or the situation is going to get better for immigration laws and we're going to go ahead and try to get up there."

Excerpt from:
Illegal Immigration Slows Under Trump as Migrants Say They'll Wait Out His Term in Mexico Before Trying Again - CBN News

Over the last decade, migration has become an urgent political issue. The 2010s have been marked not only by the global movement of people across national borders but also attempts by governments to erect walls and fences in their path. Weve seen nationalism winning votes and the worldview of the far right mainstreamed.

Flow, flood and crisis. Media imagery and language has shaped public opinion. Of course, migration from the global south to the north intimately connected to the legacy of colonialism and the wests military machinations has been happening for decades. But the 2010s has seen a higher number of people from the south moving towards the north. In particular, Europe has seen hundreds of thousands of people from Africa, the Middle East and south Asia, fleeing chronic poverty, political instability, wars, and the climate crisis in countries often laid to ruin by western-backed institutions.

Libya had always been the migratory destination for many sub-Saharan Africans because of its employment opportunities. Following the suppression of the 2011 Arab spring and Natos intervention in Libya, a lawless society emerged, with racial hatred against sub-Saharan Africans unleashed. Many escaped forced labour and torture, climbed into dinghies and began the dangerous sea journey across the central Mediterranean. But when they landed in Europe, they didnt come to safety. Instead, they found themselves in the centre of a white, Eurocentric discourse a problem to be blamed for societys ills.

Throughout this time, when tens of thousands died at sea trying to reach Europe, Europe has imagined itself to be the victim of a migrant or refugee crisis. The concept of a crisis caused by the movement of people into the European continent has always been embedded in the Eurocentric way of seeing things. This rupture brought about by the arrival of the other creates anxiety and fear in the European mind, as the sociologist Encarnacin Gutirrez Rodrguez has pointed out thus the need to create neverending irrational, ideological justifications for that anxiety and fear.

This can be seen in the way migration into Europe has been portrayed as an invasion of different cultures and a clash of civilisations in a way that is similar to the justifications of the colonial era where the colonised were cast as racially inferior beings. Colonialism still casts its shadow over the immigration debate. For Europe, the other challenges its way of being as its presence is a reflection of Europes past imperialism, upon which much of the continents wealth was built.

In the past decade, weve seen anti-migrant policies and racism flourish across the world. The EU implemented the hotspot system, filtering people and categorising them as asylum seekers or economic migrants. Europes patrolling of its southern borders intensified, resulting in deals with Turkey and Libya. Since Italys then-interior minister Marco Minnitis agreement with Libya in 2017, Italy has supplied technical support to the Libyan coastguard, fending Africans away from European waters.

Restrictions were also imposed on NGO search-and-rescue activity in the Mediterranean. These policies under the centre-left Democratic party (PD) were later continued and elaborated on by the hard-right Matteo Salvini of the League from the summer of 2018 and now carry on under the PD/Five Star coalition. Thousands have died as a result.

Back in the 1970s, the critic and writer John Berger depicted Turkish migration to Germany in A Seventh Man, which charted migrant workers journeys in Europe through their departure, work and return. The return represented the future, where a worker could travel freely and see lives improved for his family when he visited home. But in the 2010s, this cycle has been disrupted many migrants and asylum seekers irregular status prevent them from visiting home. Instead, they are forced to live invisible lives, illegalised, entrapped and segregated.

In Britain, the Conservative government has persistently refused to receive refugees only 3% of asylum applications in Europe are lodged in Britain because refugees are commonly denied entry. In 2016, when the refugee numbers were at their highest across the continent, Britain only received 38,517 applications for asylum, compared with 722,370 applications in Germany, 123,432 in Italy and 85,244 in France. Britain, simply put, has one of the lowest refugee acceptance rates in Europe.

Plenty of efforts have also been made see the Home Offices hostile environment to make life unbearable for asylum seekers and migrants in Britain. Over the decade, I have witnessed asylum seekers leading a subhuman existence, deprived of rights to work (despite the substandard state support) and made to pay for healthcare. They live in desperate limbo, pushed into the world of exploitation and forced labour. As a Chinese builder said to me: If you didnt die in the back of a lorry, you could die working here.

And there are many migrants who are effectively imprisoned. Throughout this decade, I have visited many people detained in Dover and Yarls Wood removal centres, held without time limit, and despite committing no crime. Today, Britain remains the only European country to practice the indefinite detention of asylum seekers and migrants. Over this Christmas, 1,826 people were incarcerated in these centres.

While large numbers of people across the globe continue to be denied freedom of movement and illegalised, their determination to survive will not be defeated by walls and borders. Migrant protest movements such as the black vests (gilets noirs) in France and the black sardines (sardine nere) in Italy show that there is plenty of resolve and a willingness to fight back. We can join them by fighting for the regularisation of peoples immigration status but also by challenging the system that enables their marginalisation and racial segregation. We must offer a different way of seeing migration; a real alternative that addresses colonialism and the massively unequal world that it has created.

Hsiao-Hung Pai is a journalist and the author of Chinese Whispers: The Story Behind Britains Hidden Army of Labour

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The refugee crisis showed Europes worst side to the world - The Guardian