European cities ask EU

to be more involved in elaboration of immigration policies. This shift from the general/global level to the particular - and with an approach closer to the real situation - it is more than necessary. Immigration policies should be concerned with individuals and their needs. General policies could neglect the specifics - demographic and social aspects. Local communities are able to offer the feed-back and the information in order to reevaluate those policies according to the demands.

We love aliens

but not illegal kids.

Or how the political choices are reflected into the movie subjects and, mainly, their fundings.

Think Tank: New Ideas For The 21st Century: Immigration and welfare: a bad mix

How benefits can be a divisive force in a pluralist society

Christopher Caldwell
Sunday Times
April 26

On Tuesday French riot police rounded up 200 migrants near an encampment called “the Jungle” outside Calais. To listen to Eric Besson, the French immigration minister, the immigrants themselves were a side issue. The raid’s real goal was to rid France of “traffickers”. Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, saw it differently. For her, the problem was “nos amis britanniques”. Once migrants set foot in Britain, she said, “their situation is too comfortable and we [in Calais] can no longer tolerate being taken hostage by that”. Britain’s overgenerous asylum and welfare policies were drawing the world’s poor to the ports of France.

Probably more Britons agree with the mayor than with the minister: welfare policies do lure immigrants. Immigration and welfare are a bad mix in other ways, too. Comprehensive welfare systems (transfers, pensions, healthcare) tend not to arise in societies of mass immigration, such as the United States. In the present downturn, many assume that one path to recovery is to give up some economic dynamism and return to the welfare model that existed from Attlee to Thatcher. But Britain is not the place it was until the 1970s. Welfare states require consensus and society may now be too multicultural to provide it.

Immigrants can be good for an economy, but their contributions tend to go to the private sector through cheap labour. As for the public sector, almost everywhere, immigrants and their dependants take more out than they put in. Native Germans between the ages of 20 and 65 pay out more in taxes than they collect in services, but Turks in Germany do that only between the ages of 28 and 57. These figures worsen over time. The number of foreign residents in Germany rose steadily between 1971 and 2000 – from 3m to about 7.5m – but the number of employed foreigners in work held steady at roughly 2m people.

Until recently politicians suggested that immigrants might actually save European welfare states, replenishing the ratio of workers per retiree which has declined rapidly because of low European birth rates. It won’t work. Immigrants, too, age and retire and the system must take care of them and their large families when they do. But the amount of wishful thinking invested in this idea is impressive. “In the long term, migrants themselves will age and contribute to the increasing dependency ratio,” a Home Office report admitted in late 2007, “but only assuming that they remain in the UK during retirement.” What other assumption can be made? Are we to imagine that migrants will work to fund cushy retirements for Europeans, then slink obligingly back to the Third World to pass their own retirements in poverty?

Immigration also weakens welfare states by making native taxpayers less willing to fund them. Five years ago David Goodhart of Prospect magazine warned that social programmes arise out of a sense of obligation to fellow citizens, which gets harder to maintain when fellow citizens have a different culture.

This seems to be true empirically: Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser, the Harvard economists, have shown that roughly half of Americans’ antipathy towards European-style socialism can be accounted for by the ethnic diversity of the United States. This view is given support by the recent work of Robert Putnam, the sociologist, who finds that people living under conditions of diversity “hunker down”. They trust their neighbours less – even neighbours of their own kind. They are less philanthropic, less social and less inclined to pay taxes.

It makes sense. Citizens authorise the state to make welfare payments not just to keep the less fortunate in a living, but also to keep them in a way of life. Once immigrants learn their way around they may have a different idea of the purpose of government benefits. Instead of using them to pay for, say, a British working-class lifestyle, they may use them to pay for, say, Islam. Two-thirds of French imams are on welfare. So are many British ones: Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, head of Britain’s “Muslim parliament”, said in 2005: “Our mosques are largely tribal and controlled by old men on the dole with no understanding of the changing world around them.”

If immigrant welfare recipients do not share the broader society’s values, then the broader society will turn against welfare or turn against immigrants. Immigrants are innovators. They have fresh ways of doing things. That is what makes them valuable in a competitive market society. But competitive market societies are in bad odour just now and, anyway, welfare programmes are supposed to be a refuge from them. It should not surprise us that scepticism about immigration should rise at a time when people are running in panic towards any such refuge they can find.

Christopher Caldwell is a columnist for the Financial Times. His book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West will be published on May 7 by Allen Lane

"Digging to America"

The stereotypical description of America is the "dreamland", the "land of choice", the "land of freedom". Also, the "melting pot". You are born and became American citizen by choice. Your American identity is becoming part of your other identities, without a serious clash, because the chance offered is to be yourself. (This is a stereotypical statement too)

The best way to explore America is through the variety of different personal stories. Collected and told from a generation to another, kept in oral history archives or turned into literature or movies. Ruthanne Lum McCunn's Thousand Pieces of Gold is starting from a real story of a Chinese young woman, bought from China for the prostitution ring and arriving in America in the times of gold's fever. Another experiences of Chinese immigration are shared by the amazing Amy Tan in his The Kitchen God's Wife, based on her personal life experiences of many generations under the same American roof, trying to introduce local habits and customs into the daily US context.

A literary perspective, this time about the Iranian and Korean adopted children is offered by Ann Tyler's Digging to America.

Beyond the usual stereotypes about America, they are millions of very personal stories. More or less related, with easier or difficult or impossible adaptation. And this multiplicity of histories is always enriched and always changing.

US: Some Immigrants Who Lose Freedom Face Loss of Custody

Ginger Thompson
The New York Times
April 23

When immigration agents raided a poultry processing plant near here two years ago, they had no idea a little American boy named Carlos would be swept up in the operation.

One of the 136 illegal immigrants detained in the raid was Carlos’s mother, Encarnación Bail Romero, a Guatemalan. A year and a half after she went to jail, a county court terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to her child on grounds of abandonment. Carlos, now 2, was adopted by a local couple.

In his decree, Judge David C. Dally of Circuit Court in Jasper County said the couple made a comfortable living, had rearranged their lives and work schedules to provide Carlos a stable home, and had support from their extended family. By contrast, Judge Dally said, Ms. Bail had little to offer.

“The only certainties in the biological mother’s future,” he wrote, “is that she will remain incarcerated until next year, and that she will be deported thereafter.”

It is unclear how many children share Carlos’s predicament. But lawyers and advocates for immigrants say that cases like his are popping up across the country as crackdowns against illegal immigrants thrust local courts into transnational custody battles and leave thousands of children in limbo.

“The struggle in these cases is there’s no winner,” said Christopher Huck, an immigration lawyer in Washington State.

He said that in many cases, what state courts want to do “conflicts with what federal immigration agencies are supposed to do.”

“Then things spiral out of control,” Mr. Huck added, “and it ends up in these real unfortunate situations.”

Next month, the Nebraska Supreme Court is scheduled to hear an appeal by Maria Luis, a Guatemalan whose rights to her American-born son and daughter were terminated after she was detained in April 2005 on charges of falsely identifying herself to a police officer. She was later deported.

And in South Carolina, a Circuit Court judge has been working with officials in Guatemala to find a way to send the baby girl of a Guatemalan couple, Martin de Leon Perez and his wife, Lucia, detained on charges of drinking in public, to relatives in their country so the couple does not lose custody before their expected deportation.

Patricia Ravenhorst, a South Carolina lawyer who handles immigration cases, said she had tried “to get our judges not to be intimidated by the notion of crossing an international border.”

“I’ve asked them, ‘What would we do if the child had relatives in New Jersey?’ ” Ms. Ravenhorst said. “We’d coordinate with the State of New Jersey. So why can’t we do the same for a child with relatives in the highlands of Guatemala?”

Dora Schriro, an adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, said the agency was looking for ways to deal with family separations as it prepared new immigration enforcement guidelines. In visits to detention centers across the country, Ms. Schriro said, she had heard accounts of parents losing contact or custody of their children.

Child welfare laws differ from state to state. In the Missouri case, Carlos’s adoptive parents were awarded custody last year by Judge Dally after they privately petitioned the court and he terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to Carlos.

In February, immigration authorities suspended Ms. Bail’s deportation order so she could file suit to recover custody. Ms. Bail’s lawyer, John de Leon, of Miami, said his client had not been informed about the adoption proceedings in her native Spanish, and had no real legal representation until it was too late.

The lawyer for Carlos’s adoptive parents, Joseph L. Hensley, said his clients had waited more than a year for Ms. Bail to demonstrate her commitment to Carlos, but the judge found that she had made no attempt to contact the baby or send financial support for him while she was incarcerated. The couple asked not to be named to protect Carlos’s privacy.

Ms. Bail came to the United States in 2005, and Carlos was born a year later. In May 2007, she was detained in a raid on George’s Processing plant in Butterfield, near Carthage in southwestern Missouri.

Immigration authorities quickly released several workers who had small children. But authorities said Ms. Bail was ineligible to be freed because she was charged with using false identification. Such charges were part of a crackdown by the Bush administration, which punished illegal immigrants by forcing them to serve out sentences before being deported.

When Ms. Bail went to jail, Carlos, then 6 months old, was sent to stay with two aunts who remembered him as having a voracious appetite and crying constantly. But they also said he had a severe rash and had not received all of his vaccinations.

The women — each with three children of their own, no legal status, tiny apartments and little money — said the baby was too much to handle. So when a local teachers’ aide offered to find someone to take care of Carlos, the women agreed.

Then in September 2007, Ms. Bail said, the aide visited her in jail to say that an American couple was interested in adopting her son. The couple had land and a beautiful house, Ms. Bail recalled being told, and had become very fond of Carlos.

“My parents were poor, and they never gave me to anyone,” Ms. Bail recalled. “I was not going to give my son to anyone either.”

An adoption petition arrived at the jail a few weeks later. Ms. Bail, who cannot read Spanish, much less English, said she had a cellmate from Mexico translate. With the help of a guard and an English-speaking Guatemalan visitor, Ms. Bail wrote a response to the court.

“I do not want my son to be adopted by anyone,” she scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper on Oct. 28, 2007. “I would prefer that he be placed in foster care until I am not in jail any longer. I would like to have visitation with my son.”

For the next 10 months, she said, she had no communication with the court. During that time, Judge Dally appointed a lawyer for Ms. Bail, but later removed him from the case after he pleaded guilty to charges of domestic violence.

Mr. Hensley, the lawyer for Carlos’s adoptive parents, said he had sent a letter to Ms. Bail to tell her that his clients were caring for her son, as did the court, but both letters were returned unopened. “We afforded her more due process than most people get who speak English,” Mr. Hensley said.

Ms. Bail said she had asked the public defender who was representing her in the identity theft case to help her determine Carlos’s whereabouts, but the lawyer told her she handled only criminal matters. “I went to court six times, and six times I asked for help to find my son,” she said. “But no one helped me.”

Ms. Bail got a Spanish-speaking lawyer, Aldo Dominguez, to represent her in the custody case only last June. By the time he reached her two months later — she had been transferred to a prison in West Virginia — it was too late to make her case to Judge Dally, Mr. Dominguez said.

“Her lifestyle, that of smuggling herself into the country illegally and committing crimes in this country, is not a lifestyle that can provide stability for a child,” the judge wrote in his decision. “A child cannot be educated in this way, always in hiding or on the run.”

Education and assimilation in schools

the US example and experience, a NY Times feature.

Italian migration policy draws fire

BBC
March 7

Italy has been transformed in recent decades from a nation of emigrants to a target country for mass immigration. Aidan Lewis reports on the Italian government's response to the tensions that have ensued, and the concerns raised by human rights groups and Italy's European partners.

Edward Ampadu stands with his companions in a damp, abandoned factory that is home for the winter to more than 600 African immigrants.

There is just one tap, and the men are living in shelters made from cardboard boxes, squatting while they look for work picking citrus fruit in the fields of Calabria, on the country's southern toe.

Most arrived by a dangerous route through the Sahara desert and across the Mediterranean, and most have no legal right to be in Italy.

"Everybody here is struggling," says Edward, a 42-year-old from Ghana. A poor harvest means fewer jobs to go round this year, he says, and the migrants say they need help to survive.

"We are appealing to the authorities. They know that people are here, and therefore they need to help."

These agricultural workers illustrate the challenges facing a wandering, immigrant underclass in Italy.

But while the migrants look to Rome for help, Rome looks to Europe.

Italy and other "frontline" Mediterranean countries have been offered little help as they struggle with an issue that concerns all of Europe, the government says.

Its reaction to the problem, meanwhile, has drawn sharp criticism from human rights groups and European institutions.

Amid public alarm over an immigrant influx it has sent soldiers on to the streets, fingerprinted Roma (Gypsy) communities, and encouraged rapid expulsions and repatriations.

Some observers say Italy's recent focus on border controls and security neglects integration policy, at a time when the immigrant population has grown to more than four million, almost 7% of the total.

"Italy's becoming a caricature," said Sergio Carrera, a research fellow at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies.

"It's becoming the example of a very extreme political discourse framing migration as a security issue, and justifying the implementation of very restrictive policies, having huge implications for human rights, fundamental rights, and social inclusion."

Sea patrols

Immigration is now an emotive, front-page issue in Italy, and a rallying cry for the Northern League, a partner in Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government.

IMMIGRANTS IN NUMBERS

Foreign residents: 3.7 million

Irregular immigrants: 650,000

Arrivals in 2007: 346,000

Arrivals by sea, 2008: 36,000 Sources: Istat, Caritas-Migrantes, UNHCR

The focus of media attention is often Lampedusa, the tiny Italian island south of Sicily that is the arrival point for most of those - including many of the farm workers in Calabria - who complete the journey from North Africa.

Analysts say those arriving by sea make up only a fraction of total annual arrivals, and that most irregular immigrants in Italy enter legally then overstay.

But the government points out that the estimated 36,000 would-be immigrants landing on Italy's shores last year accounted for more than half the irregular entries to Europe by sea.

Roberto Maroni, Italy's Northern League interior minister, said in January that 2009 would mark the "end of the landings", promising that a long-awaited pact to patrol coasts with former colony Libya would come into effect.

To the anger of islanders and immigrants, who both staged protests, he also announced that all adults would be kept on Lampedusa while asylum requests were processed. This quickly led to severe overcrowding and the decision was reversed, but concern remains over conditions on the island, and alleged political pressure for rapid expulsions.

Together with Greece, Malta and Cyprus, Mr Maroni also issued a new plea for the EU to "make a more effective effort" at stemming the flow of immigrants, including through its recently established border patrol agency, Frontex.

"We believe that [border] security in the Mediterranean is directly connected to the security of the whole European Union," he said.

Frontex ran 150 days of joint sea patrols in the central Mediterranean in 2008.

In a separate initiative earlier last month, EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner offered Libya 20m euros (£18m) to help boost border controls.

Security bill

Italy's hardline approach to immigration policy is not unique, says Hugo Brady, an expert at the Centre for European Reform in London.

"In the main they only reflect sentiments which can be seen in a lot of other West European countries - that the time for tolerant immigration policy in their mind is past," he says.

Even so, he said the Italians had been "marked out by their extremity".

Among the measures that have caused concern among EU partners is the Italian government's decision to declare a state of emergency in Rome, Milan and Naples last summer, deploying troops in the streets as part of a crackdown on illegal immigration.

Last month, an emergency decree designed to tackle rapes - many of which have been blamed on immigrants - gave official blessing to the formation of citizens' street patrols.

A security bill awaiting final approval in the Italian parliament also contains several controversial provisions, including:

• procedures for medical staff to denounce illegal immigrants
• making illegal immigration a criminal offence punishable by a fine of 5,000-10,000 euros (£4,400-8,800)
• prison terms of up to four years for those who defy expulsion orders

Thomas Hammarberg, Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe, a pan-European body that promotes democratic principles, says he is worried about a decision to extend the deployment of troops on the streets.

"We're talking about police functions here," he said. "It just dramatises the problems and tends to lead to hysteria."

'European solution'

Asked to justify the government's security-focused approach to immigration, Mr Maroni cites crime statistics for 2007.

"The percentage of crimes linked to non-Italians was more than 35% and the non-Italians do not account for 35% of the people in Italy," he says.

"All interpretations are legitimate. My concern as interior minister is to guarantee the highest possible levels of security, first and foremost by combating clandestine immigration."

On some issues the government has been forced to back down, under pressure from the EU.

These include a provision for the expulsion of EU citizens that was devised for Romanian Roma and judged to clash with European rules on free movement.

It was withdrawn last year after the European Commission threatened to start infringement proceedings.

Italian policies are coming under increasing scrutiny as the EU struggles against concerns over sovereignty to devise a common immigration approach, analysts say.

In October EU states took a step towards this by signing a non-binding immigration pact that encourages readmission treaties with countries of origin, selective immigration, and an end to mass amnesties for illegal immigrants of the kind introduced in Spain and Italy.

But for some human rights activists, the EU needs to play a firmer role protecting immigrants in member states and backing integration.

Mr Hammarberg criticises Italy's criminalising of immigrants as the "wrong approach".

"I think it is beginning to spread that there is a need for a European solution," he says.

"The situation with Greece and Italy in particular calls for a much faster process of integrating the European countries' policies on migration, so that you don't have a competition downwards where people introduce fairly draconian policies in order to avoid people coming to their country."

See also:

Time on-line: Pope urges Romans to "welcome" immigrants

FT - Gypsy vaccination scheme starts

Italy Cracks Down on Sexual Violence and Illegal Immigration

Sabina Castelfranco
Rome
Voice of America
February 20

Silvio Berlusconi

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government on Friday approved tougher measures to crack down on sexual violence and illegal immigration.

The Prime Minister issued an emergency decree at a cabinet meeting Friday in response to a series of rapes blamed mostly on foreigners.

The rapes in the last weeks have shocked Italy. Two Romanians were arrested for the rape of a 14-year-old girl on Valentine's Day.

The newly approved government package, which must be approved by Parliament, increases jail sentences for rape, gives free legal counsel to victims of sexual violence and makes stalking a crime.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said mayors have also been allowed to organize patrols of unarmed citizens so that they can point out to police forces where there are risks for urban security or situations of social degradation.

The government says the aim of such patrols, which have drawn criticism from the center-left opposition, is to boost security on city streets.

The opposition says the government is promoting vigilante justice but Maroni Friday defended the measure, saying that setting up organized groups of volunteers would avoid the creation of "do-it-yourself" patrols seeking to take matters into their own hands.

The decree also allows authorities to detain immigrants for six months, up from two months, while they work to identify them, process asylum requests and expel those not entitled to stay.

Romania's foreign minister Cristian Diaconescu said, meanwhile, that his country does not want citizens suspected of committing crimes in Italy to be repatriated.

The minister said Romania would like to overcome this abnormal situation through dialogue and cooperation with its Italian partners in the near future.

Diaconescu is expected to travel to Italy on Monday, where he plans to discuss the issue with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini. Some one million Romanians are estimated to live and work in Italy.

Immigration issues and racism on Facebook. Concerns in Italy

The on-line environment and the social networks are the favorite and cheapest way to share fast and cost-free your ideas and thoughts. The principle of the freedom of speech is an advantage able to wave on various occasions. Including when you use it for expressing your hate, and even the incitement to kill.

In Italy the anti-immigration campaign is continuing, two days before the discussion of the security package by the Council of Ministers. The package was drafted by the Minister of Interior, Roberto Maroni, representing the anti-immigration Northern League. He also announced its intention to call for a G8 reunion, this May, dedicated to countering the illegal immigration. Also this Friday, the Senate is expected to discuss an anti-rape decree, issued by the same minister, aiming to prevent and counter those crimes. Last Saturday, the Italian media covered the case of a 14 year old girl, raped by a man of Romanian origin.

The Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano, rejected recently one of the key of the security package, the creation of volutarily militia units, working alongside the police force in the operations of identification of people considered a security problem. In the last two years, such units operated at informal level in various towns in Italy and were involved in various actions against the Roma people and immigrants, including the arson attack on the Roma settlement from Milan, in 2007. Between November 2005 and June 2007 the so-called “Black Panda Gang” made up of private citizens and members of the police force, were guilty of many cases of beatings, violence and kidnapping carried out against illegal immigrants.

Among the provisions of the package it is also the requirement for doctors to denounce to the police their patients, if they detain information they are illegal immigrants. According to Vivere Italia, Sveva Belviso, in charge with the social policies at the Mayory of Rome, created a Facebook group where the members are encouraged to offer information about the illegal Roma camps. Out of the 352 members - as for yesterday - 14 of them already reported such situations.

Also on Facebook, a couple of groups - whose age range of the members is mostly between 20-40 - are preaching various actions against the immigrants, mainly Romanians (rom+rum, Quelli che odiano i romeni, Piacere di conoscerti??? /ironisation of the logo a recent public affairs campaign of Romania in Italy etc.) - but also Chineses, Albanians, Tunisians. You could find there: anti-immigration posters; calls for expelling of all Romanians or even for coordinate action to aggress and kill them; solidarity with the victims of rape, violence and murder; call for individuals to do justice "by themselves, as long as the Italian justice is inefficient"; expulsion of Chinese immigrants. On the other side, the Romanian and anti-racism groups are almost absent, groups as "Against fingerprinting of the Roma community" or "Stop Discrimination against Romanians" aren't active for one, respectively almost two years.

The anti-immigration discourse is a constant of the last years in the Italian politics. As a leader of the opposition, in November 2007, the current prime-minister, Silvio Berlusconi, urged Italy to close its borders to Romanian workers and a conservative ally, from the Northern League called for an expulsion of tens of thousands of immigrants, after a wave of alleged crimes by foreigners.

The targets of the "citizen justice" are not only Romanians - after the rape of the 14 year girl, in the North of Sardinia, ten Italians entered and attacked in their house two men and one woman of Romanian origin - but other immigrants as well. On February 4, the Italian president called for a stop to xenophobia and racist violences, after an Indian man was beaten and set on fire near Rome. Navtej Singh Sidhua, a 35 year-old homeless working in constructions, was attacked while sleeping rough at a train station at the seaside town of Nettuno near Rome. Police have arrested two adults and a minor, who have confessed pouring petrol on him and setting him on fire. The reason: according to the Police sources quoted by ANSA news agency, the group wanted to "cap off" a night on the town, fuelled by drugs and alcohol, by doing something "sensational, to experience an intense emotion". In late October, a Chinese immigrant was beaten up by teenagers, while waiting for a bus in Rome and a young student from Ghana was beaten by Parma traffic police who mistook him for a drug posher.

According to statistics covering more than ten years, the assumption of a possible increase of the level of crime under the effect of the recent immigration waves is not covered by the reality.

A new way to earn UK citizenship

Analysis By Dominic Casciani Home affairs reporter, BBC News January 15

The idea of "probationary citizenship" is the key development

Migration is a journey - and the British government wants to make it a little bit longer and harder to complete.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's proposals to overhaul how a migrant becomes a UK citizen are being published later ahead of going before Parliament.

And the big theme is that migrants will need to take extra steps to "earn" citizenship and become fully paid-up members of society.

Ministers say that when a migrant steps into the arrivals lounge, that should not be the end of the journey they take to living in Britain.

In future, they will need to spend the next six to eight years proving their worth to the UK as part of a personal journey and contract with British society.

At present, an immigrant living in the UK can apply for permanent settlement after about five years.

But that can often be the end of the process - there is no compulsion to take the final step towards becoming a British citizen.

So it's this conveyor belt of belonging that will now change.

Under the new system, ministers say migrants - excluding those from the European Economic Area - will pass through three clear stages.

At first they will be classed as temporary residents - the status they receive as a worker, relative or recognised refugee.

After five years they will be given an entirely new status for a minimum of another 12 months - probationary citizen.

This probationary status will ultimately lead to someone becoming a British citizen or permanent foreign resident - or being told it's time to move on.

On probation

The critical difference between the current situation and the proposals is around the idea of a probationary period.

During this phase migrants will no longer have access to a full range of benefits that are currently available to permanently-settled foreign nationals.

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME We had to get our people to adapt to this new life so that they would be accepted, rather than rejected Mahendra Kaul, presenter of 1960s BBC series to help people integrate How TV tried to integrate migrants

The home secretary says probationary citizenship seeks to address national concerns about how well people are integrating into society.

In other words, it will no longer be enough for a migrant to prove they are living in the UK - they will have to prove that they are actively taking steps to fit in.

So how will they be expected to do this?

Migrants will effectively be required to jump through more hoops.

They will have to show that not only have they made some effort to learn English - but they are making progress.

They will have to obey the law and where possible prove they are "active citizens".

On criminality, the equation is simple. Serious crimes will become a bar to achieving citizenship - and may lead to deportation. Minor offences would slow down the process.

Active citizenship is more nebulous. Assessors will be looking for proof that someone is more than just a taxpayer - and the more "active" they are in the local community the quicker their journey to citizenship will become.

Acceptable activities could include voluntary work, involvement in local groups or the school parent-teacher association. Migrants will need to find referees to vouch for these good deeds.

The scheme's architects think this idea of active citizenship will make the journey from migrant to citizen much more significant because it creates a social contract between individuals and their new society.

Crucially, ministers believe migrants would meet more British people more quickly and learn more quickly how to integrate.

Question of benefits

But there are some tougher measures still.

The government says it recognises that the past few years of record migration and mobility have created pressures on public services.

The Prince of Wales at the first citizenship ceremony in 2004

Under the proposals, would-be migrants will pay a levy on their normal visa fees towards a local impacts fund.

The Home Office says this could be operational from April 2009 and raise tens of millions of pounds.

This has already led to accusations that migrants, who are net contributors to the economy, will become "cash cows" who are being denied reasonable rights.

Secondly, there is the issue of withheld benefits. Migrants who are clearly settled but not naturalised currently have access to all main benefits, along with the right to send their children to school and use the NHS.

Other than schools, this picture may change dramatically. The new system proposes withholding a dozen key benefits to anyone who has not reached the final stage of citizenship or permanent foreign residency.

We don't know at this stage whether or not that will include access to some or all of the NHS - the Department of Health is separately reviewing foreign nationals' entitlement to the service.

Ministers know there is currently enormous concern among some grassroots Labour supporters about the effect of migration, particularly in areas that have seen significant upheaval since the arrival of Eastern European workers and are now facing the pressures of the credit crunch and downturn.

There is some anger and a perception that newcomers have become entitled to benefits in society without having first earned their way. These reforms are directly targeted at those fears.

Why should we learn "subjonctif imparfait"?

A movie with only one professional actor, taking place exclusively "entre les murs" of Collège Francoise Dolto from the 20e arrondissement of Paris, based on the novel with the same name of François Bégaudeau, a teacher himself.

If we don't have too much knowledge of the social map of Paris, and we don't know too much about the ZEPs - Zones d'Education Prioritaire, the name of school, of the French psychanalist, purposive or not, might be took as a suggestion of interpretation. Among others, she supported the idea of the childhood as an important part in the evolution of the individual, stressing the way in which the feelings represent a basis for the development of intelligence and and ways to express them as sign of inner troubles encoutered at the beginning of the life. Also, the language of the body needs to be considered on equal foot with the spoken language, mainly when it is about small children. And this finding could be took into consideration when we try to go deeper into the movie's core ideas.

In this college you have mostly children - 13-14 by age - with "problems" - second or first generation immigrants - from Morocco, China, Mali, Carribean area etc - , with a poor knowledge of French, encountering high social problems, with parents who cannot communicate with the teachers directly, because themselves they don't know French, or illegal immigrants. This unclear status is translated into anomic behaviors and even we don't know almost nothing about their lives beyond the school's wall, we have many hints to guess. As for the teachers, they have good will, at least at the beginning of the school year, but for some of them, the problems faced are overwhelming and even the most tolerant and openminded are failing to resist a mounting pressure from the part of the children.

The short conclusion could be easy: Well, they don't want to learn, it's their responsability, they will fail to get a brighter future than their current present so, why to use your time and energy ? The most disobedients, in order to show an example for the rest, will be expelled from school - and it is what happening with one of them - the rest have to learn this lesson. In fact, is neither black or white. On both parts they are efforts to do better their jobs. The big problem is the failure to make themselves understood because, even they are speaking in French - good or bad, doesn't matter, they could find the common words - the worlds they are communicating through the language are extremely different.

The teachers aren't showed in the movie as visiting the children's homes, their daily environment. The discussions between them and the parents are taking part in the classrooms, the parents sitting with or without their kids at desks, with the teacher sit on the opposite part, in the school teacher's desk. All they could get in a couple of minutes meeting is the professional evaluation versus the inner dreams they all have for their children. And here still they are many inadvertences and reality missing links.

The composition of the classroom is offering a good case of analysis of the diversity at work. Do this diversity works by encouraging the children to share their experiences. Rather not. When it is about a football championship, those who are talking prefer to stress their bad-wishes for the other part, even if they belonging to the same geographical entity, Africa. A Chinese child, with a poor French, but with a big desire to learn is rejected, even his situation could offer many reasons of solidarity with the others.

And this situation is available for the teachers themselves. They fail in explaining the "ways" of a subject they are discussing in the classroom and even the language used is not understood in the same way by the children. Of course, they don't have to speak in slang to rise their popularity or wrap up their subjects matter in a more attractive clothes. On their part, the children simply consider them "bourgeois" and treat them as old-fashioned remnants of a bigoted world they don't think ever will let them go in. And the world they are all in is having well known limits, whose transgression will took generations.

The key of this is, I think, the question asked by one of the kids, at one of the French lessons, about the reason to learn "subjonctif imparfait", not used in the everyday speech, but to be found in formal writing. It sounds as by their own will, at the age of 13-14 they decided to comply with a situation they don't know how to change it. And the teachers don't offer them that the description of the changes, without empowering with them with the tools to do it.

Prejudice Affects Perception Of Ethnic Minority Faces

ScienceDaily (Nov. 27, 2008) — Prejudice can be a powerful influence, biasing the way we think about and act towards ethnic minorities. Now, a new study suggests that this bias even influences what people believe the faces of members belonging to specific ethnic minority groups look like.

Psychologist Ron Dotsch and his colleagues from the Behavioral Science Institute at Radboud University in The Netherlands, investigated how study participants view Moroccans, a highly stigmatized immigrant group in The Netherlands. The researchers assessed the participants’ prejudice levels via the Implicit Association Test, which measured the strength of the volunteers’ negative or positive associations with Moroccan names.

Participants were repeatedly shown photographs of two blurry faces side by side and they were instructed to select the more “Moroccan-looking” face. Little did they know that both of the blurry faces they saw were actually the same face, just with different levels of blurriness and distortion. Based on the participants’ choices, the researchers were able to visualize average faces reflecting what participants think typical Moroccan faces look like. Then, a separate group of participants were asked to look at these visualized faces and judge how criminal-looking they were.

The findings, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that the way people view ethnic faces is related to their level of prejudice. It turns out that the visualized faces based on the choices of prejudiced people were characterized by the second group as being more criminal-looking.

The researchers note that “the present results have important implications with regard to whom people identify as members of stigmatized groups.” They suggest that “prejudiced individuals may find it easier to categorize criminal-looking Moroccan faces as Moroccan than to categorize innocent-looking Moroccan faces as Moroccan.” The authors conclude that this type of generalization “may function as a stereotype-maintaining device.”