Monthly Archives: June 2013

The Health Toll of Immigration

Sabrina Tavernise

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BROWNSVILLE, Tex. — Becoming an American can be bad for your health.

A growing body of mortality research on immigrants has shown that the longer they live in this country, the worse their rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. And while their American-born children may have more money, they tend to live shorter lives than the parents.

The pattern goes against any notion that moving to America improves every aspect of life. It also demonstrates that at least in terms of health, worries about assimilation for the country’s 11 million illegal immigrants are mistaken. In fact, it is happening all too quickly.

“There’s something about life in the United States that is not conducive to good health across generations,” said Robert A. Hummer, a social demographer at the University of Texas at Austin.

For Hispanics, now the nation’s largest immigrant group, the foreign-born live about three years longer than their American-born counterparts, several studies have found.

Why does life in the United States — despite its sophisticated health care system and high per capita wages — lead to worse health? New research is showing that the immigrant advantage wears off with the adoption of American behaviors — smoking, drinking, high-calorie diets and sedentary lifestyles.

Here in Brownsville, a worn border city studded with fast-food restaurants, immigrants say that happens slowly, almost imperceptibly. In America, foods like ham and bread that are not supposed to be sweet are. And children lose their taste for traditional Mexican foods like cactus and beans.

For the recently arrived, the quantity and accessibility of food speaks to the boundless promise of the United States. Esther Angeles remembers being amazed at the size of hamburgers — as big as dinner plates — when she first came to the United States from Mexico 15 years ago.

“I thought, this is really a country of opportunity,” she said. “Look at the size of the food!”

Fast-food fare not only tasted good, but was also a sign of success, a family treat that new earnings put in reach.

“The crispiness was delicious,” said Juan Muniz, 62, recalling his first visit to Church’s Chicken with his family in the late 1970s. “I was proud and excited to eat out. I’d tell them: ‘Let’s go eat. We can afford it now.’ ”

For others, supersize deals appealed.

“You work so hard, you want to use your money in a smart way,” said Aris Ramirez, a community health worker in Brownsville, explaining the thinking. “So when they hear ‘twice the fries for an extra 49 cents,’ people think, ‘That’s economical.’ ”

For Ms. Angeles, the excitement of big food eventually wore off, and the frantic pace of the modern American workplace took over. She found herself eating hamburgers more because they were convenient and she was busy in her 78-hour-a-week job as a housekeeper. What is more, she lost control over her daughter’s diet because, as a single mother, she was rarely with her at mealtimes.

Robert O. Valdez, a professor of family and community medicine and economics at the University of New Mexico, said, “All the things we tell people to do from a clinical perspective today — a lot of fiber and less meat — were exactly the lifestyle habits that immigrants were normally keeping.”

As early as the 1970s, researchers found that immigrants lived several years longer than American-born whites even though they tended to have less education and lower income, factors usually associated with worse health. That gap has grown since 1980. Less clear, however, was what happened to immigrants and their American-born offspring after a lifetime in the United States.

Evidence is mounting that the second generation does worse. Elizabeth Arias, a demographer at the National Center for Health Statistics, has made exploratory estimates based on data from 2007 to 2009, which show that Hispanic immigrants live 2.9 years longer than American-born Hispanics. The finding, which has not yet been published, is similar to those in earlier studies.

Still, the data does not break down by generation. Ms. Arias cautioned that subsequent generations — for example, grandchildren and great-grandchildren — may indeed improve as they rise in socioeconomic status, which in the United States is strongly correlated with better health.

Other research suggests that some of the difference has to do with variation among American-born Hispanics, most of whom still do better than the rest of the American population. Puerto Ricans born in the continental United States, for example, have some of the shortest life spans and even do worse than whites born in the United States, according to research by Professor Hummer, dragging down the numbers for American-born Hispanics. But Mexican immigrant men live about two years longer than Mexican-American men, according to the estimates by Ms. Arias.

Why is a harder question to answer, researchers say. Some point to smoking. Andrew Fenelon, a researcher at Brown University, found in 2011 that half of the three-year life expectancy advantage that Hispanic immigrants had over American-born Hispanics was because they smoked less. The children of immigrants adopt health behaviors typical of Americans in their socioeconomic group. For second-generation Hispanics, the group tends to be lower income, with higher rates of smoking and drinking.

Other researchers say culture contributes. Foreign-born Hispanics are less likely than American-born Hispanics to be raising children alone, and more likely to be part of large kinship networks that insulate them from harsh American economic realities that can lead to poor health.

“I’d love to have my wife at home taking care of the kids and making sure they eat right, but I can’t afford to,” said Camilo Garza, a 34-year-old plumber and maintenance worker whose grandfather immigrated from Mexico. “It costs money to live in the land of the free. It means both parents have to work.”

As a result, his family eats out almost every night, leaving his dining table abandoned.

“It’s a decoration,” said Mr. Garza, who is overweight and a smoker. “It’s a place where we set groceries before sticking them in the refrigerator.”

The lifestyle takes its toll. The county in which Brownsville is situated, Cameron, has some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the country. The numbers are made worse by a lack of physical activity, including walking. Immigrants said they felt so conspicuous during early attempts to walk along the shoulder of the roads that they feared people would suspect they were here illegally. Ms. Angeles recalled that strolling to a dollar store provoked so many stares that she felt like “a bean in rice.”

“In Mexico, we ate healthily and didn’t even know it,” said Ms. Angeles, who has since developed diabetes. “Here, we know the food we eat is bad for us. We feel guilty. But we eat it anyway.”

Still, immigrants have better health outcomes than the American-born. A 2006 analysis by Gopal K. Singh, a researcher at the Department of Health and Human Services, and Robert A. Hiatt, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, found that immigrants had at least a 20 percent lower overall cancer mortality rate than their American-born counterparts.

Mortality rates from heart disease were about 16 percent lower, for kidney disease 18 percent lower, and for liver cirrhosis 24 percent lower.

“When my daughter was born, my doctor told me that if I wanted to see her 15th birthday I needed to lose the weight,” said Gerry Ortiz, 37, a first-generation Mexican-American in Brownsville. He managed to lose 75 pounds, motivated in part by his grandfather, a farmer in rural Mexico who at 93 still rides his bicycle every day. He stares down at the family from a black-and-white photograph hanging in Mr. Ortiz’s living room. Four of the family’s six siblings are obese and have diabetes.

And health habits in Mexico are starting to look a lot like those in the United States. Researchers are beginning to wonder how long better numbers for the foreign-born will last. Up to 40 percent of the diet of rural Mexicans now comes from packaged foods, according to Professor Valdez.

“We are seeing a huge shift away from traditional diets,” he said. “People are no longer growing what they are eating. They are increasingly going to the market, and that market is changing.”

Joseph B. McCormick, the regional dean of the University of Texas School of Public Health in Brownsville, said, “The U.S. culture has crept across the border.”

Perhaps more immediate is the declining state of Hispanic health in the United States. Nearly twice as many Hispanic adults as non-Hispanic white adults have diabetes that has been diagnosed, a rate that researchers now say may have a genetic component, particularly in those whose ancestry is Amerindian from Central and South America, Dr. McCormick said.

Hispanic adults are also 14 percent more likely to be obese, according to 2010 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate is even higher for Hispanic children, who are 51 percent more likely to be obese than non-Hispanic white children.

“We have a time bomb that’s going to go off,” said Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. “Obesity rates are increasing. Diabetes is exploding. The cultural protection Hispanics had is being eroded.”

But at least for now, the older generation is still enjoying its advantage. In the De Angeles snack bar, a favorite meeting place for elderly Brownsvillians, one regular who is 101 still walks across the bridge to Mexico. Maria De La Cruz, a 73-year-old who immigrated to the United States in her 40s, says her secret is raw garlic, cooked cactus and exercise, all habits she acquired from her father, a tailor who died at 98.

“He had very pretty legs, like mine,” she said, laughing. “You want to see them?”

Check out the New Scholars Network Blog!

Here is the link to the NSN blog. And featured below is a new post from the NSN blog by Petra Diop.  We look forward to featuring/sharing many more resources from this great blog!

Reflections on Relocation, Resettlement, and Respect

By Petra Molnar Diop

“Migrants are heroes.”

This is a sentiment that I heard in passing at a conference not too long ago, but one that has stayed with me as I continue my work in forced migration research and refugee settlement in Canada. I think it is an interesting conceptualization because migrants and refugees are often reduced to simplistic tropes: they are either hapless victims of violence who must flee their native lands and seek asylum and hand-outs somewhere in the Global North; or else they are construed to be scam artists and bogus claimants, out to fleece the so-called benevolent immigration and refugee determination systems of rich and powerful Western countries.

For me, what matters in my work is recognizing the immense sacrifices that people make when they face dislocation and relocation, and when they deal with the precarity that comes with the life-altering decision to move across the globe with immense grace and strength. As a migrant myself, I too know the longing one continues to feel for one’s homeland, culture, and familiar surroundings; even decades after making a new home someplace else, the pain of relocation is still fresh. Nonetheless, what is important to recognize is that migrants have agency and they exercise it in their movements across the globe. With protracted refugee situations rampant across the world and refugee warehousing paradigm sequestering migrants in refugee camps or precarious internal displacement settings for decades at a time, asylum seekers who flee autonomously and seek refugee status abroad should not be vilified for this, but their ingenuity and resourcefulness should be celebrated.

For me, the people I work with are heroes because they inspire me to work towards a better world every single day. Whether from Albania, Colombia, or Zimbabwe, these people truly show me what it means to be a respectful, kind, and open-minded citizen of the world. They remind me how paramount respect is in all human interactions and how you can go a long way when you check your biases and prejudices at the door.

Coming to Canada has blown my own mind wide open and I am so privileged every single day to be able to work with people from every corner of the globe. However, I think my favourite moments are when I get to witness children playing together – children for whom it does not matter that they are of different ages, speak different languages, wear different clothing, or that their skin is a different colour. For them, what seems to matter is that they have found new friends in this strange new land. They are able to see past cultural and societal differences and just play together and learn from each other. There is something so pure and beautiful about this and I feel profound sorrow that adults are unable to trust each other this way. Somehow, we allow differences in culture, wealth, power, and religion to obscure the fact that we are all human beings.

I truly do hope that one day I do not have a job in the field of refugee and forced migration, because that would mean the time is over for millions of people who are displaced, fleeing conflict, and making difficult journeys to strange new lands to escape violence and persecution. It would mean that the world is a safer place, one in which people from different backgrounds and cultures can co-exist and learn from each other, a time when refugees are not “guilty-until-proven-innocent”, a time that is hopefully in the not too distant future.

On, “Why World Refugee Day is so important.”

BY SHEREEN ELDALY

Why World Refugee Day is so important

 

From Rabble.ca

June 20th is World Refugee Day. This is a day dedicated to raising awareness about the plight of refugees worldwide. This year’s campaign theme is: “Take 1 minute to support a family forced to flee.”

While many people might not see the importance or urgency of helping refugees, either because they are scared or wary of them, ignorant about what causes refugee populations in the first place, or who refugees are — or merely because they cannot wrap their heads around the fact that in literally one minute, someone can lose everything and be forced to flee their home — refugee populations are in dire need of international support and protection.

Here is why we should all take one minute and observe World Refugee Day.

This year, World Refugee Day comes amid efforts by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to deal simultaneously with four major emergencies: in Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Syria. This is in addition to the other major refugee crises of concern to the UNHCR, in Côte d’Ivoire, Libya and Somalia, as well as the millions of other refugees from protracted conflicts, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just a few weeks ago, the UN Refugee Agency launched its largest financial appeal in history to help assist the thousands of families affected by the war in Syria, and this week the agency released its “annual global trends in displacement report,” where it reported that there are now more than 45.2 million people around the world who have been displaced from their country of origin due primarily to conflict and violence. In 2012, 23,000 people per day were forced to flee their homes around the world.

While the statistics are alarming, the reality on the ground is even more heart-wrenching.

Last fall I had the privilege of interning with the UNHCR in Beirut, where I worked with refugees from all around the Middle East and North Africa (MENA region.) Among these refugees were hundreds fleeing from the neighboring civil war in Syria. But I also had a chance to interact with asylum-seekers and refugees from Iraq, Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Somalia, Bahrain and Turkey.

The atrocities, brutality, and challenges that refugees face on a daily basis either in the country of origin or in their host countries are mind-blowing.

Lebanon, for instance, is just one of many countries which have not signed the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees or its 1967 Protocol. Therefore, the Lebanese state does not offer asylum to asylum seekers, nor does it have any legislation or administrative practices in place to address the specific needs of asylum seekers and refugees. Consequently, if an asylum seeker enters Lebanon illegally or overstays his/her visa, they are considered to be illegal migrants, and are at risk of being fined, detained (often for a significant amount of time), and/or deported. As a result, most asylum seekers and refugees live in very difficult circumstances and struggle to meet their basic needs.

Imagine living in a foreign country with your family, not knowing the local population or customs, not being able to make a living, constantly depending on International organization for basic assistance and not knowing when or if you will ever be safe again, or what your fate is going to be.

Counselling Syrian refugees was particularly difficult, as these people were fleeing from a civil war that was happening less than 80 km away from where I was at the UNHCR offices in Beirut and they were describing the tragedy of the war in a way that no amount of articles or videos can ever quite accurately capture.

Each asylum-seeker and refugee had their own particular account of struggle and survival, each more horrifying yet oddly inspiring than the other, and from them I learned what the human consequences of war were. Having witnessed the situation, I can therefore safely say that help is desperately needed.

While the UNHCR and other international organizations, including world governments, work hard at trying to solve the problems that cause people to flee their homes in the first place, most of the solutions that are currently offered to refugees are only temporary resolutions at best, and are often not sufficient answers to their problems, and nor are they sustainable options.

The time is now to help refugees across the world. So take one minute and help spread the word, because remember, no one chooses to be a refugee.

**Shereen Eldaly completed her Master’s in Public and International Affairs at the University of Montreal. She also holds a degree in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies from McGill University. The focus of her studies and work has been conflict resolution and the Middle East. She has worked for the the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Canadian NGO Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME). Follow on Twitter: @shereeneldaly

Support World Refugee Day on June 20th !

World Refugee Day 2013

logo

1. The focus of World Refugee Day 2013 is on the impact of war on families. The core message is “1 family torn apart by war is too many.”

2. The campaign call-to-action is to “Take 1 minute to support a family forced to flee.”
In 1 minute, a family can be torn apart by war, a child can be separated from his or her parents, and a lifetime of work can be destroyed. Yet in 1 minute, we can also act – reuniting a family, protecting a child, providing shelter. Please donate now and help UNHCR assist refugees. Your 1 simple action will help thousands of uprooted people today.

3. Photo Gallery:
UNHCR has launched a project sourcing photos and stories from forcibly displaced people from around the world, who show and describe the most important thing they brought with them when they fled from their homes. We encourage our partners and stakeholders to participate in the photo project. More information coming soon, please check back!

4. UNHCR Canada will distribute posters to agencies organizing World Refugee Day events. Please send your request along with a description indicating the type of event you are organizing to appear on www.unhcr.ca/wrd to:
mcfarlan@unhcr.org or nyembwe@unhcr.org

The deadline for receiving requests is 01 June 2013.

En Francais

Journée mondiale du Réfugié 2013

1. La campagne de la Journée mondiale du réfugié 2013 met en avant le slogan « 1 seule famille déchirée par la guerre, c’est déjà trop ».

2. Le HCR lance un appel à l’action dont le thème est « Prenez 1 minute pour venir en aide à une famille déracinée ».
En une minute, une famille peut être déchirée par la guerre, un enfant peut être séparé de ses parents, une vie de travail peut être réduite à néant. Pourtant, en une minute, nous pouvons également agir – par le regroupement familial, la protection de l’enfance, la fourniture d’un abri. Faites un don maintenant pour permettre au HCR de venir en aide aux réfugiés. 1 simple geste peut aider des milliers de personnes déplacées dans le monde.

3. Galerie de photos :
Le HCR a lancé un projet dans le but de recueillir des photos dans lesquelles des réfugiés décrivent et montrent l’objet le plus important qu’ils ont apporté pour leur fuite en exil. Nous demandons au public et à nos partenaires de faire de même via les plateformes de réseaux sociaux en téléchargeant par exemple une photographie d’eux-mêmes avec l’objet qu’ils apporteraient s’ils étaient contraints de fuir en exil. Consultez notre site Web pour plus d’informations.

4. Le HCR Canada distribuera des affiches aux agences qui organisent des festivités à l’occasion de la Journée mondiale du réfugié 2013. Vos requêtes accompagnées d’une description de l’événement à être postée sur le site www.unhcr.ca/wrd doivent être envoyées à
mcfarlan@unhcr.org ou nyembwe@unhcr.org

La date limite de réception des commandes est le 1er juin 2013.

You can download the poster for the 1 Minute Campaign here: UNHCR & also find out about relevant events in your area here : www.unhcr.ca

The Economist on Swedish Riots: ” Is the integration of immigrants failing?”

HUNDREDS of cars set on fire, a school in flames and angry youths hurling stones at the police. This is not the banlieue in France but suburbs in supposedly peaceful Sweden. Six nights of arson and violence in Stockholm’s poorer suburbs, where a majority of residents are immigrants, have shaken the Nordic country and created international headlines.

For much of this year, discrimination of immigrants and racism have been hotly debated in a country where 14% of its 9.6m people are foreign born. Now the riots could make immigration and integration the pivotal debate in Swedish politics.

On the night of May 24th cars were set ablaze in several Stockholm suburbs but fewer incidents were reported compared to previous nights. Instead, unrest spread to other towns, including Örebro, 160 kilometres west of Stockholm, where masked youths threw stones at the police and damaged a police station.

The riots, which started in the suburb of Husby, are not as violent and widespread as those in Paris in 2005 and in London in 2011. But the quickly spreading rioting has shaken local residents and politicians, putting a spotlight on what many see as a long-time failure of society to integrate immigrants.

In suburbs like Husby unemployment is more than double the country’s average, income much lower and residents complain of being neglected by politicians. Although Sweden is still one of the world’s most equal countries, recent reports by the OECD, a think tank, show income inequality is on the rise.

Many say anger over a fatal police shooting of a 69-year old Husby resident this month triggered the unrest. Others claim the rioters are trouble-makers just looking for an excuse to fight. Some of the young men arrested during the riots have criminal records.

Fredrik Reinfeldt, the prime minister, has condemned the violence but offered no new solutions for the suburbs. Immigration and integration are highly sensitive issues in Swedish politics. There is broad popular support for helping refugees. In 2012, 44 000 asylum were accepted from countries like Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia, making Sweden of the world’s most welcoming countries for asylum seekers. Earlier this year there a public outcry erupted when it was revealed that police tried to track illegal immigrants by randomly asking foreign looking people to show their ID-cards.

Even so, resentment against immigrants is growing.  Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration party, which shocked the political establishment by winning 5.7% of the vote in the 2010 election (and for the first time getting seats in parliament), has steadily gained ground. It was Sweden’s third most popular party in a May poll by Demoskop, a research institute.

Sweden Democrats blame the riots on what they say is an “irresponsible immigration policy creating deep cracks in the Swedish society”. Jimmie Åkesson, the party leader, has called for a parliamentary debate on the unrest and mocks those who believe in dialogue and more resources to the suburbs. “These cracks will not be fixed by more youth centres or by police grilling sausages with teenagers”, he writes on the party’s website, saying less immigration is the only solution.  National and local elections next year will reveal what voters think of his advocacy of pulling up the drawbridge.

(Photo credit: AFP)

Toronto city council backs radical change to ranked ballots and letting non-citizens participate

Champions of democracy and inclusion are applauding Toronto city council for supporting a pair of pioneering motions that could fundamentally rewrite the city’s election rules and change the face of local politics.

By:  City Hall Bureau reporter,  News reporter,
Published on Tue Jun 11 2013. Available here

Champions of democracy and inclusion are applauding Toronto City Council for supporting a pair of pioneering motions that could fundamentally rewrite the city’s election rules and change the face of local politics.

On Tuesday, council voted to ask the province to give permanent residents the right to participate in municipal elections, and to allow the city to adopt ranked choice balloting, which would give voters the option to rank candidates in order of preference.

If the province agrees to make the necessary legislative amendments, experts say it could open the door to similar changes in jurisdictions across Canada.

“It would set a serious precedent,” said André Côté of the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance at University of Toronto. “If a city like Toronto decides that they want to move ahead with a significant electoral reform like this, people would certainly take notice elsewhere.”

Officials in Premier Kathleen Wynne’s office said they were closely watching the city council decision.

“The Toronto population is truly diverse. We obviously just heard council’s vote and we will review it, have conversations before making any firm decision,” a senior official said late Tuesday.

The new system could be in place for the 2018 civic election, although it’s not yet clear how the province would change Toronto’s election rules, which are spread across the City of Toronto Act, the Municipal Elections Act and the Municipal Act.

But Debbie Douglas, executive director of the Ontario Council for Agencies Serving Immigrants, sees council’s hard-won support as the most crucial step to extending voting rights to permanent residents.

“We’re very pleased that Toronto is once again leading the country in terms of progressive policies,” said Douglas.

That motion, which would allow 250,000 non-citizens to vote in municipal elections, barely squeaked through, by a vote of 21-20.

Mayor Rob Ford was among those who believe that Torontonians should be Canadian citizens to vote.

“It doesn’t make sense. How can someone that’s not a Canadian citizen vote?” he said. “I just think we wasted six hours because I don’t believe the province is going to do anything with this.”

While similar policies are in place internationally, Douglas said Toronto would be the first city in the county to welcome non-citizens into the ballot box.

Ranked balloting, which passed by a vote of 26-15, would also be a first in Canada.

Under such a system, voters are free to either select their one favourite or rank their favourites in order of preference: A “1” for their top candidate, a “2” for their next-best candidate, a “3” for their third.

If a candidate gets a majority of first-place votes — 50 per cent plus one — the election is over. But if no candidate achieves a true majority, an “instant runoff” is carried out: the least popular candidate is knocked out, and the second-place votes of that candidate’s supporters are added to the totals of the candidates who are left. This process continues until someone has a majority.

“City council is moving forward on a really positive step to make local elections more fair, and less polarizing,” said prominent local activist Dave Meslin, who spearheaded the drive for ranked ballots leading a group called Ranked Ballot Initiative of Toronto (RaBIT).

“Now it’s in the hands of Queen’s Park. We’re hoping they respect the wishes of council and give permission the council needs to make this change happen for 2018,” Meslin said.

The extent to which those changes would touch other municipalities remains to the seen.

A report from the city manager and city clerk called from “extensive public consultation before implementing any change to the current electoral system.”

As their report suggested, the public may be wary: since 2005, major electoral reforms have been defeated in referenda in three Canadian provinces.

Meslin said Premier Kathleen Wynne told him when she was the municipal affairs minister that she does not believe the province should stand in the way of council on this issue. A spokesperson for then-minister Wynne did not dispute Meslin’s account, saying Wynne is a “firm believer in local democracy.”

35 Suspected Illegal Immigrants Charged in Gulu

By Emmanuel Omona

Posted on June 13, 2013

Uganda Picks

The 35 suspected illegal immigrants who were arrested last week end [Saturday] from Elegu border posts, between Uganda and Southern Sudan are have pleaded guilty in the Gulu Court.

Namaganda Kasozi, the Immigration Officer at Elegu while in the Gulu court told court that the 32 were arrested on the 6th of June 2013 from Elegu.

“We have found out that some of the suspects do not have work permits, travel documents and some of them have entered the country illegally”, Namaganda told reporters in Gulu town.

Namaganda also maintained that some of the suspected illegal migrants have valid Visas but have been misusing them.

She said that most of them were from Kenya, Somalia and Cameroon.

The court sessions which were conducted in Kiswahili Language charged the 32 Illegal Immigrants with engaging in illegal employment into Uganda which is Contrary to the Sub section 59  Close 2 [a] of Ugandan constitution.

12 of the illegal Immigrants are to be deported to Kenya through the Malaba boarder where they will be picked by their relatives.

The court also ruled that 20 of the immigrants should be given 14 days to legalize their stay in Uganda.

They are still being detained at Gulu Central Prision and would be released after paying their fines which ranges between 100,000 to 150,000 shillings.

However if they failed to pay the above fine, they would be jailed for 2 months.

This is not the first time suspected illegal Immigrants have been arrested from Northern Uganda.

In 2012, about 150 illegal immigrants mainly of Asian origin were deported to their country after most of them did not have any identification or trading documents including passports, work permits and trading licenses.

They were arrested from Lira, Kitgum and Arua towns during an impromptu operation by the police and officials from the immigration department.

In Lira town, the operation team arrested over 40 Indian nationals and one Pakistani national and in Arua town, the immigration team arrested 70 Indian nationals who have been living and trading in the area without any valid documents.

Most of the illegal immigrants in the country especially Asian nationals come into the country as tourists and later turn into either traders or factory workers.

Schumer: ‘Illegal Immigration Will Be a Thing of the Past’

by Matthew Boyle11 Jun 2013

After the U.S. Senate voted to pass the motion to proceed to floor debate on the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) claimed that this bill would solve illegal immigration and secure the border.

“Illegal immigration will be a thing of the past,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, celebrating the passage of the motion to proceed.

Schumer complained in an impassioned and lengthy speech on the Senate floor that opponents saying the bill does not have border security “is not fair.” Schumer said giving billions of dollars to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will lead to increased border security, even if illegal immigrants are given amnesty first. He promised that assurances of future border security measures would be maintained.

Nonetheless, Schumer admitted the bill “is not perfect.” He pleaded with other senators, “If you have a better idea” on how to secure the border “tell us.” Though Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY) have offered outlines of amendments that would improve the border security provisions in the bill, Schumer did not say he would support them.

Schumer said the Gang of Eight would not compromise by conditioning the path to citizenship on “factors that may not ever happen” like border security. He complained that border security should not be used as a “bargaining chip.”

And while Schumer claims the bill fixes enforcement issues, he also dismissed border security as not a pressing concern.

“We don’t have a problem whereby these people [illegal immigrants] are besieging us with terrorist acts,” Schumer said.

Schumer also said he has been to the border with other Gang of Eight senators and said, “it’s huge.”