Top 10 Migration Issues of 2006
Top 10 Migration Issues of 2006
Welcome to the Migration Information Source's second annual Top 10 Migration Issues of the year. During 2006, governments' policy focus on assimilation over multiculturalism tops the annual list of leading global migration developments. The 2006 Top 10 also analyzes the competition for skilled workers, the worsening situation in Darfur, crisis in Lebanon, and the United Nations General Assembly's first-ever High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development, among other topics.
Multiculturalism was supposed to be the ideal middle ground where immigrants could adapt to a country's norms and values while maintaining their culture and traditions. Today, different countries are trying to find the right "mode" of conversation with immigrants and where within the society to have that conversation.
For the first time in its history, the United Nations this year hosted a major multilateral discussion devoted exclusively to global migration — a subject that, for years, was considered taboo in international diplomacy.
In January 2004, President George Bush declared the current immigration system "broken" and proposed a temporary worker program open to the unauthorized as well as new foreign workers. Nearly three years later, the United States has not come much closer to that goal although events in 2006 may have changed the political climate in which immigration will be debated next year.
Since 2003, at least 200,000 people by UN estimates have been killed in Sudan's Darfur region, and more than two million have been displaced. Unfortunately, 2006 brought the crisis to new depths as the ethnic violence continued and spread into neighboring Chad. The number of refugees and internally displaced has grown, heightening concerns about destabilization in Chad and the Central African Republic.
The border between the U.S. and Mexico and the water dividing Europe and North Africa continue to be the world's main fronts in the fight against illegal immigration.
It seems the most palatable migrant to the world's developed nations in 2006 is still the one in the medical, scientific, IT, or business and finance fields. The question some countries grappled with this year, though, was how to attract the highly skilled who will actually do well in the labor market.
Lebanon's 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990, forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese to flee to other countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and Brazil. Although this summer's fighting between Hezbollah forces in Lebanon and Israel lasted just over a month (July 12 to August 14), the conflict essentially wiped out 15 years of postwar reconstruction and development and displaced an estimated one million Lebanese, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Not every migrant crosses a vast ocean or flies halfway around the world to reach safety or a land of opportunity. In fact, regional migration has been the major form of migration for centuries, and was noteworthy in North America, Europe, and Asia in 2006.
In the five years since the September 11 attacks, a number of Western governments have become convinced that some legal immigrants and children of Muslim immigrants, although the number may be small, can become radicalized and turn on their home country.
