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President-elect Donald Trump attends the America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 14, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Trump talks tough tariffs, Opposition wins in Uruguay, DHL plane crashes in Lithuania, Israeli drone targeted journalists, Ireland asylum claims spike
25: President-elect Donald Trump took aim at Canada and Mexico via Truth Social on Monday, posting about his plan to charge the countries — currently America’s No. 1 & No. 2 trading partners, — a whopping 25% tariff on all products entering the US. The tariff would be enacted on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump said, and would “remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” He then posted that he would charge China, where the precursor chemicals to fentanyl are made, “an additional 10% tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America.”
49: Uruguay’s left-wing opposition leader Yamandú Orsiwon the small South American country’s presidential election with 49% of the vote in a neck-and-neck runoff contest on Sunday. It was yet another rebuke of an incumbent party — the theme of many global elections this year — but not to worry: Uruguay is remarkably stable, and Orsi is a moderate with no radical plans.
1: One crew member died on Monday when a DHL cargo flight crashed during its attempted landing in Vilnius, Lithuania, with surveillance video showing a huge ball of flames as the plane went down. Lithuanian officials said they could not rule out whether Russia played a role in the crash, following months of suspicions over Moscow’s possible role in other cases of sabotage against the German shipping giant. Germany, meanwhile, is sending investigators to Vilnius to aid with the probe.
3: Human Rights Watch has determined that an Israeli drone strike that killed three journalists in Lebanon last month was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians, which is a war crime. More than 3,500 people in Lebanon have died amid Israel’s invasion, and more than 1 million have been displaced from their homes in the 5.3-million-strong country.
300: Asylum applications in Ireland have spiked 300% so far this year – with a fourfold increase from Nigeria – compared to last. The rise has been driven by tougher immigration stances in the UK, including a quixotic plan to house asylum-seekers in Rwanda. The uptick is becoming a political issue in Ireland, with voters increasingly concerned by the impact of increased migration on scarce housing.A statue of McGill University founder James McGill is seen on the campus in Montreal, October 2, 2009.
Trouble on the northern border
Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Millerwarned Canada on Sunday of an “alarming trend.” Foreign students are making asylum claims – the latest issue to confront his government as it struggles to get the immigration system under control.
In recent years, Canadian universities and colleges have increasingly relied on foreign students, who pay higher tuition than Canadians, to deal with funding shortfalls. But the wave of students – more than a million were admitted in 2023 – is being blamed for everything from a shortage of rental accommodations to security fears. A Pakistani national arrested as he was allegedly en route to New York to conduct a mass shooting at a Jewish centre came to Canada on a student visa.
Miller has twice decreased the number of visas available to foreign students, but more than 70,000 already in Canada are now facing deportation when their visas expire. In the next three years, 396,235 foreign student work permits will expire. If Canada gets tougher on students and other temporary foreign residents, a think tank warns that some could try their luck in the United States, increasing tension on the border.
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Center for North American Prosperity and Security wrote in the Wall Street Journal that a surge of migrants is already starting to enter the United States, crossing into New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont. There were 180,000 interactions with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on the northern border between January and August, up from 27,180 in all of 2021.
The Canadian side may want to redouble its efforts to get a handle on the problem. Polling shows immigration is one of Donald Trump’s strongest issues, so any influx along the normally quiet northern border could give him a boost in the swing states where he and Kamala Harris are locked in a razor-close race.
And Canadians may want to avoid that. A report released Thursday from the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated that Trump’s tariffs would cost the Canadian economy US$60 billion over the first three years.
A group of migrants who said they were from Djibouti and Somalia follow railway tracks towards the Canada-U.S. border as seen from Emerson, Manitoba, Canada, March 27, 2017. Picture taken March 27, 2017.
US deters asylum-seekers entering from Canada
The United States haschanged its northern border policy in a bid to limit the number of asylum-seekers crossing into the country from Canada as the number of migrants seeking shelter in the US continues to rise. Border Patrol has already detained 16,500 illegal migrants at the US-Canada border so far this year – up from just 10,000 last year and 2,200 in 2022.
The changes include a requirement that asylum-seekers come prepared with documents for review so that border officials can determine if they are eligible for entry or must be sent back to Canada under the joint Safe Third Country Agreement. Previously, migrants could request time to gather documentation while remaining stateside. A second change cuts the time migrants have to consult with an attorney, dropping the window from 24 to four hours.
Canada recentlyconcluded that the US changes are in line with the Safe Third Country Agreement, which the Biden administration claims will lead to a speedier and more “efficient” processing of asylum-seekers.
The updates brings US policy along the northern border in line with processes along the border with Mexico, with the Biden administration hoping it will bring down the number of asylum-seekers who enter Canada first and then seek to migrate to the US – particularly in an election year in which immigration features as atop issue of concern for voters.
Encounters along the US-Canada border have beenrising in recent years, hitting 189,000 in 2023, up nearly 600% from 2021.Undocumented Immigrants from West Africa, Mexico, and Venezuela camp outside the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.
Biden approves hundreds of thousands of work-visas for Venezuelan migrants
As President Joe Biden left the Big Apple last night, his administration announced that Venezuelans already in the country could legally live and work in the US for the next 18 months.
The decision will affect 472,000 Venezuelans nationwide and roughly half of New York City’s migrants, letting them support themselves and easing the strain on New York’s social safety net. (For more on the situation in New York, see our explainer).
The bigger picture: Adams is pushing Biden to extend the authorization to migrants from other nations, but the White House is wary that a broad policy could incentivize even more migrants to cross the border. On the national level, Democratic leaders fear the GOP could sweep suburban house districts in 2024 by weaponizing the migrant issue, as they did with crime in 2022.
A member of the Carabinieri gestures towards migrants outside the hotspot, on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, Italy, September 16, 2023.
Migration makes strange bedfellows of Germany and Italy
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said during a visit to Italy that both countries had reached the “limits of [their] capacity” to accommodate migrants, and called for “fair distribution” of the burdens of migration across the European Union.
The background. In just the last week, over 11,000 people have landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa. They’re part of the 127,000 migrants who have landed in Italy in 2023, more than double the number who had arrived by this point in 2022.
Under current EU asylum regulations, migrants are required to apply for asylum in the member state to which they first arrive. Should they, say, leave Italy to try their chances with Germany’s relatively generous system, they’re to be deported back.
But Rome has recently been refusing to accept back asylum-seekers who leave, citing the disproportionate influx. That caused a row with Berlin, which announced last week it would suspend a voluntary agreement to take in 3,500 asylum seekers who had landed in Italy — before suddenly reversing course.
The European Union received over 519,000 asylum requests between January and June, a 28% year-on-year increase and the most since 2016. Germany fielded 30%, about as many as France and Spain combined. That’s not counting over a million Ukrainian refugees whom Germany hosts, far and away the most in Western Europe.
So when Meloni says the rest of the bloc needs to share the burden, it resonates in Berlin. It’s also in the SPD’s interest to be seen taking a more proactive anti-immigration stance, as their conservative rivals have recently revived the idea of a national migrant cap. It’s part of a larger shift on migration politics in Germany, as even SPD’s left-wing allies in the Green party call for tougher migration standards faced with the ascendance of the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland.
Convincing the rest of the bloc to step up will be difficult. Since migration to Europe from Syria spiked in 2015, the EU has struggled to find consensus on bloc-wide immigration policies due to conflicting pressures in the politics of each member state.
COVID lockdowns in Colombia forcing refugees to return to Venezuela
GZERO World takes viewers to Colombia as Venezuelan refugees risk everything once again—this time to cross back into their home country. As pandemic lockdowns and economic downturn threaten jobs and livelihood in Colombia, many are left with no choice but to return to Venezuela and an uncertain future.
Kendry Fernando tells his story as he walks hundreds of miles with his family, looking for work, and considering a return home to repressive conditions in Maduro's Venezuela.