Archive for the ‘Migrant Crisis’ Category

Deaths in Ciudad Jurez detention center fire lay bare the harsh reality of migration crisis – EL PAS USA

The deaths of dozens of migrants at a detention center in Ciudad Jurez, on the Mexico-U.S. border, has brought the migratory crisis into sharper focus. The facility, run by the Mexican National Institute of Migration (INM), has been overcrowded for several years and was engulfed in a fire on Tuesday that has taken the horrors and hardships facing would-be migrants into the United States to a new level. The authorities have placed the death toll at 38 people with 28 more seriously injured, all of them men, in what is the worst tragedy ever to have occurred at a federal immigration center. In its aftermath, questions are being asked about the actions of immigration agents tasked with their care. A video that circulated on social media on Tuesday showed guards fleeing the building and leaving the men locked up while smoke and flames erupted.

The terror and desperation on display in the video contrast with the initial reactions of the Mexican government. President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador said Tuesday that the migrants had learned they were going to be deported and had set mattresses alight in protest. Some of the 68 men had been detained the previous afternoon in Ciudad Jurez amid a recent crackdown on migrants in the city. Others were returning from the United States, according to local media reports.

What remains unanswered is why the detainees were locked in cells and why the guards did not let them out when the fire started. International organizations have condemned the lack of response from the immigration agents at the center. The United Nations has demanded a thorough investigation. Others have been more critical, such as the NGO Refugees International.The INM has a long history of the abuse of migrants in Mexico, and greater accountability for those abuses could have prevented this tragedy, said Rachel Schmidtke, the NGOs senior lawyer for the region.

Latin America is experiencing an unprecedented migratory crisis, fueled by violence, hunger, lack of opportunity, climate change and political and economic factors. Over the past five years, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Hondurans, and Guatemalans, among many other nationalities, have crossed jungles and deserts in an attempt to forge a new life in the U.S. or Canada. Many have died on the journey, victims of organized crime and the networks of traffickers and facilitators who exploit the exodus. Now, the authorities have failed them as well.

The problem is a long-standing one. The administrations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden have both entrusted Mexico with a role in U.S. immigration policy, which consists of stopping new arrivals before they cross the border. Mexico has performed this task with considerable effectiveness. Over the past two years record numbers of migrant detentions have been recorded: 228,115 in 2021 and 444,439 in 2022. North of the Rio Grande, the U.S. government has been closing routes to migrants, including those for political or humanitarian asylum. Title 42 legislation enacted in 2020 under Trump that closed U.S. borders to prevent the spread of coronavirus remains in place under the Biden administration and continues to be used to prevent migrants from seeking international protection, with very few exceptions, despite the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announcing in May 2022 that it was no longer required for pandemic containment.

In Mexico, little has changed in recent years. Lpez Obrador assumed the presidency in December 2018 with a humanist, cross-cutting discourse, which soon found itself at odds with Trumps rhetoric over the construction of a border wall. A barrier that, the Republican president added, he would make Mexico pay for. The battle of wills went back and forth, with Lpez Obrador stating that Mexico would do no such thing. However, Mexico has created its own wall through the INM, which is supported in its role by the Mexican National Guard, created in 2019 under the Lpez Obrador administration.

However, the INMs broad mandate to monitor and detain migrants has failed to prevent the flow. Instead, it has served to hide it, pushing it even further toward the margins. Tragedies have occurred before the Ciudad Jurez fire. In December 2021, a truck full of migrants crashed in Chiapas, southern Mexico, leaving a terrible toll: 54 dead and more than 100 injured. Earlier the same year, in February, a group of 17 migrants passing through Tamaulipas, a border region in Mexicos northeast, encountered a group of police officers who, for reasons that remain unclear, riddled them with bullets. They then set fire to their bodies.

But the Ciudad Jurez is of a different dimension because there, the migrants were under the charge of the Mexican government. The INM, which is nominally dependent on the Secretariat of the Interior, manages the immigration center at the Stanton-Lerdo International Bridge, located a few hundred meters from the U.S. border. Its agents are responsible for the facility and those who are inside it. The center has said that it will cooperate with the investigation, which is being carried out by the Mexican Public Prosecutors Office (FGR).

It remains to be seen how the Mexican government will respond to the tragedy: whether it treats it is a one-off error, blames individual agents for failing to follow protocols, or points the finger at the system as a whole. On Tuesday, Secretary of Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard provided some indication of what the fallout might be. On social media, he said that those directly responsible for the events have been presented before the FGR, without giving further details. On the other hand, some pro-government media outlets have reported that the Attorney Generals Office, which insists responsibility for the fire rests with the migrants, has made progress on its own investigation.

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Deaths in Ciudad Jurez detention center fire lay bare the harsh reality of migration crisis - EL PAS USA

Deadly fire at Jurez detention center shows ‘urgency’ of addressing … – Crux Now

NEW YORK After learning that a fire at an immigration detention center in northern Mexico killed more than three dozen migrants, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso said the tragedy underscores the urgency of addressing the complex humanitarian crisis at the southern border.

Our brother and sister migrants, who are in many cases fleeing extreme violence, persecution, and extreme poverty, deserve dignity, compassion, and the protection of their human rights as children of God, Seitz, who is the U.S. Bishops Conference Migration Committee chair, said in a statement. As a faith community we are called to respond to their suffering with love, empathy, and support.

The fire at the National Migration Institute in Ciudad Jurez the city bordering El Paso killed at least 40 migrants. It started around 10 p.m. after migrants set mattresses ablaze in protest of their pending deportation, according to Mexico President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador.

29 others were injured in the fire and are in delicate-serious condition, the institute said in a statement. There were 68 men from Central and South America held in the facility at the time of the fire. As a protest, at the door of the shelter, they put mattresses and set them on fire, and they did not imagine that this was going to cause this terrible tragedy, Lpez Obrador said at a news conference. We assume it was because they found out they were going to be deported.

Seitz offered his deepest and most heartfelt condolences to the families of the migrants who died and extended prayers for the swift recovery of the individuals who were injured. He also pledged to continue his advocacy for more humane immigration policies.

As we mourn this devastating loss, I call upon people of all faiths and goodwill to join in prayer for the victims and their families, Seitz said. May our collective efforts lead to meaningful change and help prevent such tragedies from occurring.

Directly across from El Paso, Ciudad Jurez has long been a hot spot for migrants to gather before they attempt to enter the United States. U.S. Customs and Border Protection have encountered almost 225,000 migrants trying to illegally cross into El Paso between Oct. 1, 2022, and February 2023, according to agency data. Overall, there have been almost 900,000 total encounters over that time, the data shows. Dylan Corbett, executive director of the El Paso-based Hope Border Institute a faith-based immigration advocacy organization that does humanitarian work in both El Paso and Ciudad Jurez told Crux that the fire is a direct result of U.S. pressure on Mexico to up its immigration enforcement, especially at the northern part of the border. Corbett said Hope has done humanitarian work at the National Migration Institute in Ciudad Jurez in the past, but has not had access in recent months amid the crackdown prompted by the U.S. government.

We know theres a direct line that you can draw from the Biden administration pressuring the government of Ciudad Jurez to increase enforcement to the death that weve seen, Corbett said.

The strategy that weve implemented includes as part of its overhead death, so its an indictment of our approach, Corbett continued. Death cant be the price of immigration enforcement and theres nothing stopping us from putting in place a humane and effective and safe process at the border. Corbett and other immigration advocates have long been critical of the Biden administrations border entry deterrent policies that limit migrants ability to seek asylum, arguing that they are not just illegal but ineffective given the desperation of many migrants. They have argued at a time of record number of migrant crossings at the border that the administration and Congress need to work on comprehensive reform to the nations immigration system and work to address the root causes that force people to migrate in the first place. In the short term, advocates say more effective legal pathways are needed.

The system we allowed to be created in our name is predicated on pain and death and that is what killed them, Corbett said. We have to work to put in place a more just system.

Seitz also works with migrants on both sides of the border, calling Ciudad Jurez El Pasos sister city. He said in the aftermath of the fire, he has been in communication with the bishop of Ciudad Jurez. I have been in contact with Bishop Jos Guadalupe Torres Campos, expressed my prayer solidarity with him and the faithful of his diocese, and offered support to him and the people in his pastoral care in the Diocese of Ciudad Jurez, Seitz said.

Follow John Lavenburg on Twitter:@johnlavenburg

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Deadly fire at Jurez detention center shows 'urgency' of addressing ... - Crux Now

Will cruise ships solve the migrant housing crisis? – The Spectator

In an ironic twist, cruise ships are being hailed as the latest measure to help stop the boats. Most Fleet Street newspapers have today splashed on briefings that Channel migrants will be housed on ex-military bases, disused ships and barges, under plans that are expected to be announced later today. The aim is twofold: to act as a deterrent for future migrants and to cut the 6 million-a-day hotel bill to house the 50,000 people who are already here.

TheTimesreports that ministers have procured an accommodation barge capable of holding hundreds of migrants, which is being refitted. It will probably be moored in port rather than at sea, with the location yet to be decided. Former military bases include RAF Wethersfield in Essex and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire. Sources close to Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, are briefing that he hopes to start moving new arrivals to military sites within weeks.

Versions of this policy have been briefed out multiple times under the Sunak government

The use of military bases and cruise ships are controversial for different reasons. The former are often based in Tory constituencies and spark a visceral reaction from local residents who are not too enthusiastic at the prospect of housing thousands of young men. RAF Wethersfield is in James Cleverlys seat of Braintree; he is understood to share local concerns. RAF Scampton, meanwhile, is the home of the Dambusters squadron, with Nigel Farage now championing a petition to stop it being turned into a 1,500-strong asylum centre.

What about cruise ships then? Rishi Sunak proposed putting migrants on such barges as early as last summer when he ran for the Tory leadership. But, as critics point out, similar policies have been floated for decades to host refugees and prisoners, without success. A previous effort was mounted in 1986 when the Thatcher government rented a ferry called the Earl Williams which almost ended in disaster when a storm dragged the boat out to sea from its mooring in an Essex port. Priti Patel was considering a similar scheme as recently as December 2020, using the Estonian-owned Silja Europa cruise ship to hold up to 3,000 passengers. That too came to nought. Versions of this policy have been briefed out multiple times under the Sunak government: in November and December last year, and again last month.

What then, has changed? Ministers are stressing that illegal mass migration is a Europe-wide problem, with attitudes hardening across the continent. At cabinet yesterday, it was pointed out that Greece, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands are using large-scale sites to accommodate migrants. The Dutch government is using ships to house migrants, while Nicola Sturgeons administration deployed disused cruise ships for Ukrainian refugees. It is therefore hoped that such arrangements would not breach international conventions on refugees.

TheTimesstory on the accommodation barge noted that discussions are at an early stage, which suggests that the proposal to transfer migrants to former military bases will feature more prominently in todays announcements. But local authorities in such areas will bitterly fight the government in such areas with those in Essex and Lincolnshire expected to seek High Court injunctions.

The problems involved with both land and port sites highlights once again why Sunaks promise to stop the boats is likely to be the most difficult of his five pledges to fulfil.

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Will cruise ships solve the migrant housing crisis? - The Spectator

U.S. Human Rights Abuse Against Refugees and Immigrants: Truth … – China.org

BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Human Rights Abuse Against Refugees and Immigrants: Truth and Facts

March 2023

Introduction

I. Violations of the rights of immigrants in the United States

II. The human rights violations against refugees and immigrants in the United States see no improvement

III. Multiple domestic factors behind the entrenched immigration and refugee problem in the United States

IV. The United States is the primary cause of the global refugee crisis

Conclusion

Introduction

The United States is a nation of immigrants. Ever since colonial times, immigrants from around the world have come to the country in waves. However, the history of U.S. treatment of immigrants is one rife with inhumane tragedies such as discrimination, exclusion, arrest, detention, expulsion, and a litany of human rights abuses. Worse still, the recent years have witnessed one humanitarian disaster after another caused by the U.S. government on refugees and immigrants going to the country.

This report gives a truthful account of the United States' egregious record on the issue of refugees and immigrants by reviewing events in the past and present within the United States and beyond. Using facts and figures, this report lays bare the lies and double standards on the issue of refugees and immigrants of the United States, a self-proclaimed "beacon of democracy."

I. Violations of the rights of immigrants in the United States

When the United States was first founded, white Americans, mainly Anglo-Saxon Protestants, were very suspicious of immigrants and tried to restrict and assimilate them. A U.S. president once said outright that there is no need to encourage emigration "except of useful mechanic's-and some particular descriptions of men-or professions." Fearful of domestic chaos inspired by the French Revolution, in 1798, the U.S. government formulated the laws such as the Naturalization Act, the Alien Act, the Alien Enemies Act and the Sedition Act. These acts made it more difficult for immigrants to become U.S. citizens and gave the president the power to imprison and deport dangerous immigrants or those from enemy countries. It is worth noting that the Alien Enemies Act is still in effect today.

Black people are among the earliest immigrants to the United States. Their immigration was not voluntary, but forced. After they arrived in the United States, they suffered inhuman abuses and had no human rights to speak of. In 1619, the first 20 Africans were sold as slaves to the colony of Virginia. Soon after that, the colonies passed laws to legitimate black slaves as "permanent property" whose children also automatically became slaves. The idea and the system of racism against blacks have thus taken root in America. In order to justify the enslavement of blacks, white people established an oppressive racial hierarchy based on skin color. The United States Declaration of Independence declared that "all men are created equal." Nonetheless, the earliest U.S. Constitution did not recognize the civil rights of blacks. The three-fifths clause was introduced, under which the actual number of black slaves would be multiplied by three-fifths in the allocation of House seats. The harms of historical enslavement still haunt black descendants today. Their rights to life, development and political participation are not effectively secured.

Irish immigrants were severely discriminated against and alienated in the early years of the United States. Between the 1830s and the 1860s, Catholic Irish immigrated to the United States in large numbers. A strong movement against Irish immigrants emerged. Irish immigrants were stigmatized and labeled as being lazy, inferior, violent and dangerous. A large number of early American nativist and exclusionist organizations and political parties were formed at this time. The American Party, or the Know-Nothing Party, made anti-Irish immigration its main agenda. In the 1850s, the party produced seven governors, eight senators and 104 House representatives. New York and Massachusetts enacted laws to deport and repatriate Irish immigrants. Xenophobes even resorted to violence, attacking Irish immigrants and burning down their churches. In 1844, riots against Irish immigrants broke out in Philadelphia, causing at least 20 deaths. Irish immigrants were treated as blacks and were not accepted by white Americans until the 20th century. They were long-time victims of racial discrimination in the United States.

The anti-Chinese movement is among the most infamous in discriminating and ostracizing immigrants in the U.S. history. Since the mid-19th century, Chinese laborers were trafficked in large numbers by Americans to the United States as coolies. By 1880, the total number had exceeded 100,000. The Chinese laborers undertook the most arduous work in the construction of the Central Pacific Transcontinental Railroad. Thousands of people died. They made enormous contributions to the development of the United States with their hard work and even their lives, but were not treated with respect and kindness which they deserved because of rampant racism in the United States. As the railroad projects came to completion, the United States began to turn its back on those who helped it. In 1875, the U.S. Congress passed the Page Act, obstructing the entry of Chinese laborers and women. In 1882, the United States went further and enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act, putting an absolute end to immigration from China and denying resident Chinese immigrants U.S. citizenship. It was the first and only law in the United States to ban all members of a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the country on the grounds of race and nationality. It was not until 1943 that it was formally repealed. To prevent Chinese immigration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services established an immigration detention facility on San Francisco's Angel Island in 1910, which remained open until 1940. Meanwhile, Chinese immigrants suffered from severe violent attacks. On Oct. 24, 1871, 19 Chinese immigrants were killed by hundreds of white people around Calle de los Negros in Los Angeles. In 1877, the houses of Chinese residents in Calle de los Negros were burned down by white people. In 1876 and 1877, two riots erupted in which armed white racists attacked Chinatown in San Francisco. Then on Sept.2, 1885, white miners rioted on the Stone Springs mine in Wyoming, destroying the residential village of Chinese workers and killing at least 28 Chinese immigrants.

Japanese immigrants were discriminated against and ostracized in the United States. Although Japan had undergone Meiji Restoration and championed "leaving Asia and entering Europe" at the turn of the 20th century, Japanese immigrants still faced discrimination and exclusion in the United States because of their different skin color and distinctive culture. The U.S. West Coast saw a particularly strong anti-Japanese sentiment. San Francisco adopted a policy to ban Japanese schoolchildren from public schools. In 1907, the United States and Japan reached the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement, meaning the United States would limit the entry of Japanese immigrants, and Japan would voluntarily ban immigration to the United States. In 1913, the California state government enacted the Alien Land Law, barring Asian immigrants, including Japanese, from owning land. In 1917, the U.S. Congress enacted the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, which barred most Asians from immigrating to the United States. After the adoption of the Immigration Act of 1924, the Japanese were completely banned from immigrating to the United States. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were forcibly moved by the U.S. government from the West Coast to internment camps further inland. They had to take "loyalty questionnaires" to completely remove their suspicion of being an enemy alien. It was not until 1988 that the U.S. government formally apologized.

White immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe were strongly ostracized in the United States. Immigrants from countries like Italy, Poland, Greece and Russia made up the majority of U.S. immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. In 1911, the U.S. Congress released the Dillingham Commission report, claiming that Eastern and Southern European immigrants had made limited contributions to the United States and degraded the unique American race, culture and system. To curb their immigration, the report recommended having immigrants take literacy tests and introduced a nationality-based quota scheme. Racists sought to use the theory of evolution for their argument that immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe belonged to an inferior non-white race, and would contaminate the race of Anglo-Saxon whites in the United States. Xenophobes launched the Americanization Movement to deprive Eastern and Southern European immigrants of their language and culture, forcing them to be fully Americanized. Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company, required migrant workers in his company to attend the so-called English Melting Pot School. White supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan recruited millions of members to terrorize and attack Eastern and Southern European immigrants across the country. The 1917 October Revolution in Russia triggered the first Red Scare in the United States. The U.S. government was convinced that communists were among Eastern and Southern European immigrants, and used this excuse to arrest and deport them in large numbers.

The fear of foreign immigrants eventually led to the adoption of a race-based quota system. Following the Chinese Exclusion Act, the U.S. government enacted a series of laws to restrict immigration, which culminated in the Immigration Act that the U.S. Congress passed in 1924. This Act stipulated that the annual number of immigrants from each country to the United States shall not exceed 2 percent of the number of foreign-born population of that nationality as recorded in the 1890 census. Since Americans was mainly made up of immigrants from Western and Northern Europe before 1890, the Act effectively banned Asian immigration and restricted immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe. Quotas for immigration from different countries were actually allocated based on skin color, race and religious beliefs. The primary goal was to ensure that the majority of Americans were Anglo-Saxon Protestants. It was not until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was passed that the restrictions based on ethnic origins were formally abolished, and that immigrants from different countries were granted a relatively equal right of entry.

Hispanic immigrants, especially Mexican immigrants, have been among the most rejected by the United States since the 1920s. Most of the immigrants arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol since its establishment in 1924 have been Mexicans. In 1929, the United States made illegal entry a felony in an attempt to stop Mexican immigration. During the Great Depression, tens of thousands of Mexicans were deported from the United States. After the passing of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Mexico became the largest source of immigration to the country, with arrests and deportations of Mexican immigrants often accounting for 90 percent of the total. In the late 1970s, the number of Mexican immigrants arrested each year was close to 800,000, and then rose to 1.5 million by the late 1990s. The influx of Mexican immigrants once again stoked strong xenophobia within the United States. American political scientist Samuel Huntington points out in his book Who Are We that Mexican and Hispanic immigration "could eventually change America into a country of two languages, two cultures, and two peoples." Hispanic immigrants are often a target of white supremacists in the United States. In 2019, angry at the ongoing "Hispanic invasion" in Texas, a white supremacist man drove more than a thousand kilometers to El Paso in West Texas and shot 23 people dead at a Walmart store. It was the largest domestic terrorist attack against Latinos in modern American history.

After the 9/11 incident, Muslim immigrants became a key target of U.S. surveillance and exclusion. Shortly after 9/11, more than 1,200 people, mostly Arabs and Muslims, were arrested and detained by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Many were held for months without charges and denied access to lawyers and family. Most ended up deported for minor immigration violations. More than 80,000 adult males from 25 Muslim countries were required by the U.S. government to be fingerprinted and photographed, among whom 13,000 migrants went into deportation proceedings and 2,870 were detained. The USA Patriot Act, enacted after 9/11, greatly expanded government powers, allowing the U.S. government to arbitrarily surveil and deport foreign nationals suspected of being involved in terrorism, and Muslims have become the main target group. The 9/11 incident had a strong impact on American society and allowed Islamophobia to penetrate deep into American politics. In 2017, the U.S. government enacted a Muslim ban, requiring that citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen be barred from entering the U.S. for at least 90 days.

II. The human rights violations against refugees and immigrants in the United States see no improvement

In the 21st century, successive U.S. administrations have increasingly restricted immigration and treated immigrants harshly and inhumanely, with arrests, detentions, deportations and repatriation of immigrants on a large scale every year. The U.S. government arrested 850,000 migrants in 2019 and more than 1.7 million in 2021, a record high since 1986. The number of immigrants detained has grown rapidly. In August 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detained more than 203,000 illegal immigrants from Mexico. In fiscal year 2022, more than 2.3 million refugees and immigrants were arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border. A record high of more than 430,000 immigrants were deported from the United States in 2013. The number still reached 360,000 in 2019. More than 100,000 have been repatriated each year. In large-scale arrests, detentions, deportations and repatriation, the human rights of immigrants are grossly violated, and humanitarian disasters occur frequently. In September 2021, more than 15,000 refugees from Haiti gathered in the Texas border town of Del Rio, waiting for a slim chance to enter the United States. The refugees were brutalized by U.S. border enforcement agencies, with patrols on horseback wielding horse whips, charging into the crowd, and driving them into the river. The CNN commented that the scene was reminiscent of the dark periods in American history when slave patrols were used to control black slaves. On 25 October 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Council condemned the systematic and large-scale deportations by the United States of Haitian refugees and immigrants without assessing their individual situations as a violation of international law.

The migrant truck tragedy shows how rampant human smuggling and trafficking is in the United States. On 27 June 2022, a tractor-trailer packed with illegal immigrants was found on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas. The truck came from Laredo, a border city in Texas 150 miles away from where the vehicle was found. Local human smugglers planned to transport illegal immigrants by truck via San Antonio to the U.S. hinterland. The truck, which was abandoned on the roadside due to mechanical failure, was found with no water or air conditioning in its compartment and nearly 100 people crammed in. Among them, 53 people died from the stifling heat as local temperatures peaked at 38 degrees Celsius. It was the nation's most serious migrant death case to date. Human trafficking and forced labor have been widespread in the United States due to long-standing ineffective law enforcement and lack of justice. Recent years have seen thousands of human smuggling and trafficking cases taking place annually and the frequent occurrences of similar migrant truck tragedies. In fiscal year 2021 alone, 557 illegal immigrants died along the southern border of the United States.

After COVID-19 broke out, the U.S. government used COVID as an excuse for large-scale deportations of illegal immigrants. In 2020, the U.S. government invoked Title 42 of the United States Code to prohibit immigrants from entering under the pretext of stemming the spread of COVID. Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the practice lacks a public health rationale and could instead increase the likelihood of the epidemic spreading. Through this practice, the U.S. government has made over 1.8 million deportations, expelling at least 215,000 parents and children, of whom 16,000 are unaccompanied children. The immigrants who were not deported for the time being were sent to detention facilities and continued to be subjected to inhumane treatment.

The United States has set up the world's largest immigration detention system. Currently, there are more than 200 detention facilities in its border states. In order to save costs, the U.S. government often hands construction and operation of the immigration detention camps over to private companies, making them de facto private prisons. The abysmal conditions in the camps make those detained highly susceptible to physical and psychological illness or death. In July 2019, after visiting border patrol stations on the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she had witnessed that the women being detained were held without drinking water and that detention officers told them to drink out of the toilet. She said that border patrol stations treat migrants like animals, constituting systemic abuse. A total of 21 people died in U.S. immigration detention facilities in fiscal year 2020, CNN reported, more than doubling the death toll in fiscal year 2019 and the highest number since 2005. Up to 80 percent of the more than 1.7 million immigrants detained in the United States in fiscal year 2021 were held in private detention facilities, including 45,000 children. The El Paso Times reported on 25 June 2021 that private contractors had exacerbated the horrible chaos at the U.S. Fort Bliss shelter where nearly 5,000 children were held. In the shelter, about 1,500 children were jailed in a stockyard-like, jam-packed and terrible environment that resulted in severe physical and mental trauma.

The U.S. immigration policy has caused a serious humanitarian disaster to immigrants. To stop illegal immigrants from entering the country, the U.S. government has implemented a "zero tolerance" policy since April 2018, forcibly separating illegal immigrants from their minor children and detaining them in deplorable conditions. Footage provided by U.S. CBP shows some children even being held in cages with only thin blankets on their bodies. On 18 June 2018, at a meeting of the Human Rights Council, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, called the practice of forcing parents to part with their children as "government-sanctioned child abuse." UN human rights officials also called on the United States, the only country in the world that had not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to join the Convention as soon as possible and to respect the rights of all children. Hundreds of thousands of people across the 50 states of the United States staged demonstrations with the theme "Families Belong Together" to protest against the "zero tolerance" immigration policy that has resulted in the separation of at least 2,300 children from their families.

The U.S. law enforcement agencies have never stopped abusing migrant children. In 2019, over a thousand children were still separated from their parents, and 20 percent of them were under the age of five. After COVID-19 struck, the U.S. government enforced the provisions in Title 42 of the U.S. Code, which exacerbated the humanitarian disaster arising from the separation of children and their parents.

According to a CNN report on 23 April 2021, more than 5,000 unaccompanied children were in U.S. CBP custody, and many were kept for longer than the legal limit. Records show that among the 266,000 migrant children held in government custody in recent years, more than 25,000 have been detained for longer than 100 days, nearly 1,000 for more than a year and at least three for over five years.

On 26 June 2019, The New York Times covered a visit by an inspection group consisting of lawyers, doctors and journalists to a detention center of a border station in Clint, Texas. They found that children there were held in prison-like conditions. Hundreds of children were locked in one cell with virtually no adult supervision. A member of the inspection group likened the conditions to "torture facilities."

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet was deeply shocked by the overcrowded U.S. detention facilities, the poor sanitation conditions and the lack of access to adequate healthcare or food, according to a UN website report on 8 July 2019. She stated that detaining migrant children may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that is prohibited under international law.

According to a report on the website of The Guardian on 11 October 2021, between 2016 and 2021, U.S. border agents engaged in more than 160 cases of abuse of asylum seekers, including children. Leading law enforcement agencies, notably CBP and U.S. Border Patrol, were involved.

Even if illegal immigrants manage to escape from detention and deportation, it is difficult for them to be treated equally in American society and they tend to become victims of crimes. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that illegal immigrants enjoy the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In reality, however, illegal immigrants often suffer from legal and institutional discrimination and hardly enjoy basic rights and benefits. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 abolished most forms of public relief for illegal immigrants and even banned their children born in the United States from being automatically granted citizenship and access to public benefits.

Many illegal immigrants have fallen victim to human trafficking and forced labor in the United States. The Associated Press revealed on 10 December 2021 that for years, illegal immigrants smuggled into the United States ended up forced to toil on farms, cowing to threats of deportation and violence by overseers while they lived in dirty, cramped trailers with little food or clean water. Identification documents of the laborers were withheld, preventing them from leaving and seeking help.

The U.S. Department of Justice website released an indictment on a human trafficking case on 22 November 2021. The document showed that dozens of workers were illegally imported from Mexico and Central America to farms in the State of Georgia. Trapped in illegal detention and forced labor in brutal conditions, the workers became victims of modern-day slavery. Promised high wages to work on farms, they were instead forced to dig onions with their bare hands, and got paid only 20 cents per filled bucket as men with guns kept them in check. At least two of them died, and another was raped repeatedly.

Today, the serious discrimination in American society against immigrants and their descendants remains. "Asia Hate" has been particularly prominent in recent years. According to a 2022 survey by Stop AAPI Hate, the organization had reported 11,467 hate incidents targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) over the past two years. Only 49 percent of AAPIs felt safe going out and 65 percent worried about the safety of family members and elders. As many as 72 percent of AAPIs who experienced hate incidents named discrimination against them as their greatest source of stress, even ahead of their health concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

III. Multiple domestic factors behind the entrenched immigration and refugee problem in the United States

Deep-rooted racial discrimination in the United States is an important cause of its immigration problem. Racism is embedded in U.S. immigration policies and its attitude toward immigrants. A country founded with Anglo-Saxon Protestants as the mainstay, the United States continues to view the culture of this population group as the core of its national identity. Immigrants who are not Anglo-Saxon Protestants are often regarded as the inferior race. With the influx of Hispanic and Asian immigrants, the United States is increasingly diverse in ethnicity and culture. In recent years, immigrants accounted for 40 percent of U.S. population increase. With the white population seriously ageing, immigrants are expected to contribute even more to U.S. population growth. The demographic change has left many white people worried about their own status. Hence, they are giving stronger support to conservative political stances, regardless of their party affiliation. A poll indicated that 56 percent of American voters believed the United States remained a racist society, and 70 percent of black respondents believed that more than half of white Americans believe in white supremacy.

Political polarization in the United States is worsening its immigration problem. In recent decades, the immigration issue has become more entangled with economic, racial and ideological issues as well as cultural values. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party have kept attacking each other, and a compromise is hard to reach. Democrats accuse Republicans of embracing nativism and white supremacy and inciting xenophobia and racial discrimination to win votes from the white population. Republicans accuse Democrats of accepting immigrants to gain more votes from ethnic minorities and more seats in the Congress. The partisan divide has prevented any significant immigration reform bill from passing Congress since the comprehensive Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Both Democrats and Republicans had put forth their own immigration reform proposals, but they all hit a dead end very soon.

Since the midterm election cycle began in 2022, both parties have used the refugee and immigrant issue as a political leverage. The administration pandered to voters and relaxed immigration control to some extent. With the "American Dream" rekindled, illegal immigrants flooded in across the borders. Some Republican governors transported refugees and illegal immigrants with buses and chartered planes from theirs to blue states and cities in an attempt to embarrass the federal government. In September 2022, Florida's Republican Governor flew 50 refugees from Texas to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Republican Governor of Texas bused over 100 Latin American refugees and immigrants right to the Vice President's doorstep. These immigrants were promised well-paid jobs before being transferred, only to find that still no proper settlement is available at their destination.

Conservative politicians and media in the United States are hyping up the immigrant threat and stoking anti-immigration sentiment. The far-right forces and conservative media have been disseminating a so-called "great replacement" theory, claiming that white Americans are being deliberately replaced by immigrants and ethnic minorities. This extreme idea has led to multiple terrorist attacks targeting immigrants and ethnic minorities in the country, the worst of which is the shooting incident in a shopping mall in El Paso. Since 2018, white supremacists have committed the most killings among violent extremist groups in the United States. In recent years, the Republicans have been playing up the immigrant threat in election campaigns, and drawn the attention from the conservatives to the immigration issue. They have rolled out many extreme anti-immigration measures, grossly violating the human rights of immigrants. For its part, the Democratic administration dare not to relax expulsion or detention of immigrants in fear of conservative opposition and in order to gain support from white voters, resulting in massive humanitarian disasters continuing in the United States. U.S. conservative politicians and media have also been depicting immigrants as grabbing jobs from low-skilled American workers, lowering wages, squeezing welfare resources, and increasing local government expenditure on education, healthcare and relief. They scapegoat immigrants for U.S. domestic problems, yet ignore their long-term, generally positive effect on the U.S. economy, such as supplying a large workforce, filling up low-level jobs that Americans won't take, and mitigating the impact of population ageing.

IV. The United States is the primary cause of the global refugee crisis

The United States follows hegemonic and militaristic policies. Throughout the country's more than 240 years of history, only 16 years were without wars. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter candidly referred to the United States as "the most warlike nation in the history of the world." The country's aggressive behaviors have led to waves of refugees. Since 2001, U.S. invasions have resulted in over 800,000 deaths and 20 million refugees in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other affected countries. According to a Brown University project entitled "the Costs of War," military operations launched by the United States in 85 countries in the name of "fighting terrorism" since 2001 have costed 6.4 trillion U.S. dollars and claimed more than 929,000 lives. Up to 38 million people were displaced in the fightings.

In Asia, U.S. involvement in the Korean War resulted in over 3 million civilian deaths and around 3 million refugees. The trauma of war persists to this day. Many Korean families were divided because of the long-standing confrontation on the Peninsula. Official data from the ROK alone indicate that the number of people registered as divided family members exceeds 132,000. Many senior citizens worry that to reunite with their families in the DPRK would be too distant a dream in their lifetime. In the 1970s, after losing the Vietnam War, the United States withdrew hastily from Saigon, displacing innumerable refugees out of the country.

In the Middle East, the United States launched the Iraq War based on fabricated evidence in 2003, in the absence of authorization of the UN Security Council and despite strong opposition from the international community. According to Statista, a global database, around 209,000 Iraqi civilians died in the war and ensuing violent conflicts between 2003 and 2021, and around 9.2 million Iraqis became refugees or were forced to leave their homeland. The United States involved itself deeply in the Syrian War and the internal conflict in Libya through multiple proxies, causing prolonged conflicts and leaving political settlement and social stability elusive. According to UN statistics, U.S. military intervention in Syria has left at least 350,000 people dead, 12 million displaced and 14 million in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. The UN refers to the Syrian refugee problem as "the biggest humanitarian and refugee crisis of our time." According to estimates of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the war in Afghanistan, which lingered for more than two decades, has forced 2.6 million Afghans to flee the country and displaced 3.5 million.

In Europe, U.S. intervention in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s escalated ethnic tensions in the country. The wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo resulted in nearly 300,000 deaths and nearly three million refugees. In March 1999, NATO forces led by the United States blatantly bypassed the UN Security Council to carry out a 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia under the pretext of "averting humanitarian disaster," causing over 2,000 civilian deaths, over 6,000 injuries and around a million displaced people.

U.S. military interventions around the world triggered a refugee crisis in Europe. It is widely held in Europe that U.S. interference and military operations in such countries as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria gave rise to waves of refugees, but it is Europe, not the United States, that received them. Most of the affected people fled to Europe in the wake of the Syrian refugee crisis, exacerbating anti-immigrant sentiments and right-wing populist movements in Europe. By contrast, the Republican administration in the United States was tough on taking Syrian refugees, bringing refugee admission to a 40-year low and categorically banning refugees from seven Islamic countries from entering the country. The Democratic administration urged the EU to admit some Afghan refugees, a move upsetting the EU which feared that another surge of Muslim refugees could again heighten the right-wing populist movements. French President Emmanuel Macron put it bluntly that Europe alone will not be able to assume the consequences of the current situation in Afghanistan.

In Latin America, long-time U.S. intervention in internal affairs led to instability and economic backwardness in the region. As a result, a large number of refugees and immigrants were forced to seek asylum and livelihood in the United States. To check the flow of immigration from Latin America, the United States forcefully expelled and repatriated refugees and immigrants, and made those attempting to leave stay in their country of origin. The United States' vehement expulsion and repatriation of Latino immigrants exacerbated instability, violent crime and humanitarian crisis in the region. "The United States spent decades contributing to regime change and destabilization in Latin America," criticized Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives, "We can't help set someone's house on fire and then blame them for fleeing."

The United States and Latin American countries are at loggerheads over immigration and border issues. After being expelled from the United States, refugees and immigrants often become stranded in Mexico, posing a challenge to the country's ability to host and accommodate them and causing public security concerns for the Mexican government. While the United States keeps urging Mexico to do more to prevent its refugees and immigrants and those of other Central American countries from coming to the United States, Mexico blames the surge of refugees and immigrants on the U.S. immigration policy. In recent years, the Northern Triangle of Central America, i.e. Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras became the top source of refugees and immigrants to the United States. The U.S. government pressed the governments of the three countries and issued stern warnings to potential immigrants. Its tough stance sparked frustration in Central America and triggered backlash domestically.

The eastward expansion of NATO led by the United States is an important root cause of the Ukraine crisis. Being the initiator and biggest driver of the crisis, the United States cannot shirk off its responsibility for the sufferings of Ukrainian refugees. After the conflict between Russia and Ukraine started, however, the U.S. government suggested that Ukrainian refugees should stay in European countries or return to Ukraine as soon as possible, and was reluctant to take them in on a large scale. As of January 2023, UNHCR data indicated that more than 7.91 million Ukrainian refugees were registered across Europe. It was not until the end of July 2022 that the U.S. government claimed to have received 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, a number significantly dwarfed by Europe Union, and the real purpose of the U.S. move was actually for Ukrainian Americans to reunite with their families.

Conclusion

A review of U.S. history would expose the country's cruel treatment of immigrants from almost all around the world, including people of African, Irish, Eastern European, Southern European, Jewish, Asian, Latino, and Muslim origins. The U.S. government interferes in the domestic affairs of other countries and launches wars across the world, creating large-scale humanitarian disasters and immigration crises while refusing to take responsibility and shifting the blame onto others. The United States needs to seriously reflect on its terrible record on the issue of refugees and immigrants and correct its course, and make real efforts to improve the situations of foreign refugees and immigrants in the country. It should stop all hegemonic and bullying practices, stop creating new crises, stop acting like a "human rights guardian," and stop using human rights as a pretext to smear and attack others.

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U.S. Human Rights Abuse Against Refugees and Immigrants: Truth ... - China.org

Sydney and Melbourne taking the most migrants as immigration set to surge by 650,000 – Daily Mail

By Stephen Johnson, Economics Reporter For Daily Mail Australia 15:19 29 Mar 2023, updated 01:16 30 Mar 2023

Concerns are growing over how Australia will cope with a record level of permanent migrants entering the country as the nation continues to battle a housing and rental crisis.

The Albanese Government is reportedly planning for a total of 650,000 new migrants to settle here by mid-2024.

Combined with estimates for next year, this means a total of 1.2million extra people will be living Australia in June next year compared to five years earlier.

The floodgates are being opened to skilled migrants, international students and those coming for family or humanitarian reasons, even though Sydney and Melbourne - home to more than half of those who have come to Australia in the last 20 years - have ultra-low one per cent rental vacancy rates.

SQM Research managing director Louis Christopher said surging immigration would make it even harder for people looking for a home to find accommodation, with weekly rents in Sydney soaring by 25 per cent during the past year compared with 22 per cent in Melbourne.

'We still remain very concerned for the situation in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane where most international arrivals first land,' he said.

'The surge in net overseas longer term and permanent arrivals relative to new residential property supply is ensuring extremely tight rental conditions remain with our two largest capital cities.'

Australia's rental crisis is so critical that some families are being forced to live in tents because there is a severe shortage of long-term accommodation.

Kailaeb Vescio-Stanley, who has been sleeping in a Brisbane park with his dad for more than two weeks, told Sunrise host David Koch about the impact it was having on his life.

'I see a lot of people doing it rough, and the majority of the people I see doing it rough in parks are actually teenagers,' he said on Wednesday.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson was so fed up she tweeted her disgust at plans to see net overseas migration surge to 650,000 - which is the amount coming during 2022-23 and 2023-24 combined.

Australia's two biggest cities settled 56 per cent of new migrants between 2000 and 2021.

Sydney became home to 29.3 per cent of new migrants, compared with Melbourne's 26.6 per cent share.

Perth took 12.1 per cent of migrants, compared with Brisbane's 9.7 per cent and Adelaide's 5.6 per cent share.

Regional Queensland, which includes the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast, took in 5.8 per cent of migrants.

This includes 350,000 for this financial year, following an influx since Australia reopened in December 2021.

'Labor's record high immigration is literally forcing Australian families to live on the streets and winter is coming,' she said.

'We have an unprecedented housing and rental crisis. We dont have enough homes for everyone in Australia.

'Australia is in serious trouble.'

The accommodation shortage problem is widespread with Sydney having a rental vacancy rate of just 1.3 per cent compared with 1.1 per cent in Melbourne, 0.4 per cent in Perth and 0.5 per cent in Adelaide.

Brisbane's rental vacancy rate stands at just 0.8 per cent, SQM Research data showed.

Sydney and Melbourne housed 56 per cent of Australia's new migrants between January 2000 and August 2021, new Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed.

Australia's net annual immigration in the year up to September 2022 stood at 303,700 people - a 15-year high - taking the overall population above 26.1 million.

This was the biggest overseas increase since late 2008, and included skilled migrants, family reunions and international students.

The number of immigrants was also significantly higher than the October budget forecast of 180,000 for 2022-23, and the 235,000 level projected for 2024-25.

1881: 2.3 million

1918: 5 million

1959: 10 million

1981: 15 million

1991: 17.4 million

2004: 20 million

2013: 23 million

2016: 24 million

2018: 25 million

2022: 26 million

Australia's population surpassed the 25million mark in August 2018, 24 years earlier than predicted in Treasury's 2002 Intergenerational Report.

The 26million milestone was passed in 2022, even though Australia remained closed to immigration in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic.

The immigration surge is also coinciding with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese facing obstacles to his plan to build 30,000 homes under its Housing Future Fund.

Labor's plan to build new social and affordable homes during the next five years has met opposition from the Greens, whose support the government needs in the Senate to get the legislation passed.

A bill to establish the $10billion fund is being put to a parliamentary vote this week but Brisbane-based Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather, who holds the minor party's housing portfolio, is opposed to the program investing money in shares.

'Our point is for the millions of people in this country who need an affordable home, for the hundreds of thousands on the wait list for social housing; their lives shouldn't be dependent on whether or not a gamble on the stock market goes well - imagine doing that for schools or hospitals?' he said.

Migrants to Australia who have already moved their lives Down Under fear the latest massive surge in immigration will throw the current housing crisis into fresh chaos.

Estimates show that 950,000 people will be added to Australia's population from overseas in the five years leading up to June 2024, with 350,000 in this financial year alone.

It will be the biggest-ever surge in net population growth over two years at 650,000 people, overshadowing the previous record of 577,000 in 2008 and 2009 under Kevin Rudd.

But even recent migrants to Australia are questioning where the newcomers will live.

Colombian Alejandro Atehortua, 27, spent two months looking for a home until she was forced to share a single room with her friend in a unit with four other people in Redfern in inner-city Sydney.

'I still have to pay $250 a week for that - we're paying $1,400 a week for the three-bedroom unit with bills on top - and we all share one bathroom,' she said.

'Everything is old and the kitchen and toilet are all old-fashioned and unrenovated. It's just a ridiculous situation - but you don't have any choice.'

MsAtehortua is a fully-qualified dentist in her native Colombia but can only work as a dental assistant in Australia because of strict local medical standards.

Australia's two biggest cities settled 56 per cent of new migrants between 2000 and 2021.

Sydney became home to 29.3 per cent of new migrants, compared with Melbourne's 26.6 per cent share, the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed.

Perth took 12.1 per cent of migrants, compared with Brisbane's 9.7 per cent and Adelaide's 5.6 per cent share.

Regional Queensland, which includes the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast, took in 5.8 per cent of those new migrants.

She combines that with a job as a disability carer to make ends meet while living in Sydney, recently named the second most expensive city in the world for property.

But she said her South American accent has proved a magnet for racists, which she encounters almost every day.

'When people hear my accent and see my skin, or even when they hear my name, it happens' she said. 'My English is not good and sometimes people are just rude.'

But despite the drawbacks, there's still nowhere else in the world she'd rather be after living in Australia for the past four years.

'I really like it,' she admitted. 'It's really safe here compared to my country. I love it. I'd really love to stay here.

'I want to become a dentist here, but it's really hard and really expensive and so is getting permanent residency.'

Cousins Gagan Malhotra, 23, and Amid Bhadia, 27, are international students working as concierges at an apartment block in Pyrmont near the CBD which is packed every weekend with people hoping to rent one of the units.

And they discovered a darker side to the housing crisis on Tuesday when they saw council staff clear away desperate homeless people from a small parkland area opposite their work.

'They were normal people - not down-and-outs - who were living in tents because they couldn't find anywhere to rent,' said Mr Malhotra. 'They can't find a house.

'We need people coming in to Australia because there are jobs to fill - but we can't afford the people. There's nowhere for them to live.

'Even the properties that are available are so expensive - people are paying $900 a week for two rooms because there's nothing else available.

'The number of homeless people is rising in the country as a result.'

But they had nothing but praise for Australia and said they'd never personally suffered any racism since arriving in the country four years ago.

'The only racism I've ever seen is towards Aboriginal people,' said Mr Malhotra.

'We were in a bar once and the white people there were discriminating against the Aboriginal people there, telling them it was not their country.

'They were very angry. It didn't make me feel good because in our country we don't do that racism thing.

'In India we have multicultural people: all caste, creeds everywhere.'

The pair said when they first arrived before the Covid pandemic, they struggled to find work.

'We had to search a lot and they were paying a lot less money,' said Mr Malhotra.

'The bosses were exploiting people and paying under the minimum wage because new migrants didn't know any better.

'Now though companies like UberEats and Menulog are very good for new arrivals. They support them very well and they can live a decent reliable life thanks to them.

'This is a regular job for people now and it pays well enough - but not for rent. These people are still having to share maybe three people to a room to get by.'

For chai caf waitress Prerana Thapa, 19, the hardest part of moving from Australia has been leaving her parents behind in Nepal, and cleaning up after herself as a result.

'Moving here hasn't been that easy,' she told Daily Mail Australia at the chai caf where she works in Harris Park in western Sydney.

'It's sometimes been tough for me without having my parents doing everything for me.

'I didn't do housework at home - my parents would do it for me, so that's been hard.

'But otherwise everything here is good. The Australian boys are adventurous, which I like - with their surfing and watersports and things like that.

Girlboss Meryanne Sammak, 32, may have Lebanese heritage through her parents - but even just a visit to her family's homeland has little appeal.

'My mum came here when she was two or three and my dad was born overseas,' revealed the beauty business boss with a upmarket salon in Belmore in Sydney's west.

'Because we're born here, we don't feel like migrants. In my mind we're fully Australian.

'But we keep in touch with our heritage through food and religion - all the kind of stuff that brings us together.

'I've never been to Lebanon. It would be beautiful, I'm sure - but life just gets ahead of you.'

She said she would welcome the coming influx of migrants to the country.

'Everyone started somewhere,' she said. 'Everyone's come from somewhere.

'So I'm very accepting of it.'

'It's not as exciting as Nepal though. Everyone is so busy and not as free as they are in Nepal - but I like it here.

'People are very welcoming and it's very multicultural so you can try different foods and meet different people...and the beach lifestyle here is amazing.'

Three generations of Greek migrants admitted they still feel like they don't belong, more than 50 years after their family first arrived in Australia.

'In Greece, we're the Australians and in Australia, we're the Greeks,' admitted new mum Sabrina Mantzios, 27, from Belmore in Sydney's west.

'I see myself as more Australian and can barely speak Greek. I think with each generation the cultural contact gets a little bit more lost and left behind.'

Her motherNatasha Halias, 53, grew up on a tobacco farm near the Victorian border where her migrant parents worked before a brief return to Greece until they settled in Sydney.

'They came her for the opportunity to make some money and originally intended to return to Greece for good - but the life here was so good and Greece was so tough, they decided to stay in Australia,' she revealed.

'There was just so many more opportunities here compared to Greece in the 60s and 70s.'

She said the sudden rise in migration would put pressures on the the new arrivals as well as the nation's housing stock - but she said the first generation of migrants were always a tough bunch.

'They don't have anyone to fall back on - my daughter here knows she will always have a roof over her head with us if she ever needs it,' said Ms Halias.

'But new migrants don't have that. They work very, very hard to make lives for themselves when they arrive - and that's good for the economy.

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Sydney and Melbourne taking the most migrants as immigration set to surge by 650,000 - Daily Mail