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German voters are choosing a new government in an election on Sunday dominated by worries about the years-long stagnation of Europe's biggest economy, pressure to curb migration and growing uncertainty over the future of Ukraine and Europe's alliance with the United States. The centre-right opposition is favoured to win, while polls point to the strongest result for a far-right party since World War II. Germany is the most populous country in the 27-nation European Union and a leading member of NATO. It has been Ukraine's biggest second-weapons supplier, after the US. It will be central to shaping the continent's response to the challenges of the coming years, including the Trump administration's confrontational foreign and trade policy. What are Germans voting for? More than 59 million people in the nation of 84 million are eligible to elect the 630 members of the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, who will take their seats under the glass dome of Berlin's landmark Reichst
The Trump administration Monday ended use of a border app called CBP One that has allowed nearly 1 million people to legally enter the United States with eligibility to work. A notice on the website of Customs and Border Protection Monday just after Trump was sworn in let users know that the app that had been used to allow migrants to schedule appointments at eight southwest border ports of entry is no longer available. The notice said that existing appointments have been cancelled. The move adheres to a promise Trump made during his campaign and will please critics who say it was an overly generous magnet for more people to come to Mexico's border with the United States. The CBP One app has been wildly popular. It is an online lottery system to give appointments to 1,450 people a day at eight border crossings. They enter on immigration parole, a presidential authority that Joe Biden used more than any other president since it was introduced in 1952.
Germany is trying to reduce the illegal migration while protecting its very liberal immigration policy at the same time, German Ambassador to India Philipp Ackermann has said. He made the remarks during an interview with former Indian Diplomat Vijay Gokhale at Pune Public Policy Festival, on the topic - 'Trump's world: How the rest will deal with political change in the United States.' Responding to a question related to Germany being bearing the brunt of immigration, Ackermann said the core of the country's internal politics is migrational. "You have to imagine that 30 per cent of the German population has one non-German parent and 20 per cent of the German population (German nationals) have two non-German parents. "Basically, our country has turned in the last 20 -25 years to a complete immigration country, therefore saying that closing the door is absurd because we have lived from migration and from migration," he said. He claimed that Germany has the most liberal immigration l
More than 10,000 migrants died while trying to reach Spain by sea this year, a report released by a Spanish migration rights group said on Thursday. On average, that means 30 migrants died every day this year attempting to reach the country by boat, Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) said. Overall deaths rose 58% compared to last year, the report added. Tens of thousands of migrants left West Africa in 2024 for the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago close to the African coast that has increasingly been used as a stepping stone to continental Europe. Caminando Fronteras said most of the 10,457 deaths recorded up until Dec. 15. took place along that crossing, the so-called Atlantic route considered one of the world's most dangerous. The organization compiles its figures from families of migrants and official statistics of those rescued. It included 1,538 children and 421 women among the dead. April and May were the deadliest months, the report said. Caminando Fronteras also n
The number of domestic migrants is estimated to have lowered by around 12 per cent to 40.20 crore between 2011 and 2023, indicating increased economic opportunities across the country, said a report by prime minister's economic advisory panel EAC-PM. According to a working paper by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), the number of domestic migrants stood at 40,20,90,396 in 2023, which was 11.78 per cent lower compared to the figure registered as per Census 2011. The paper titled '400 Million Dreams! Examining volume and directions of domestic migration in India using novel high frequency data', said as per Census 2011, the total number of migrants stood at 45,57,87,621. "Overall domestic migration in India is slowing. We estimate the overall number of migrants in the country, as of 2023, to be 40,20,90,396. This is about 11.78 per cent lower as compared to the number of migrants enumerated as per Census 2011 (45,57,87,621)," it said. Consequently, the pape
Democratic senators are urging President Joe Biden to extend temporary protections for migrants in the US before he leaves office, warning that millions of people could be forced to return to unsafe countries once President-elect Donald Trump retakes the White House. The senators have been quietly urging the White House to take executive actions that would attempt to extend legal protections for migrants into Trump's administration, and the White House has been discussing what steps to take. But any actions from the outgoing president would happen in the wake of an election that Trump won on promises of hardline immigration enforcement. The Democratic Party is also debating internally how it should approach immigration and border security after its election losses. The Biden administration earlier this week made permanent a rule that extends work authorisations for asylum seekers, but has not made commitments on other priorities for immigration advocates and Democrats. With just wee
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Saturday said the day is not far when the problem of migration will be eradicated from the state through the creation of employment opportunities. Addressing a function at the police lines here on the occasion of the state's foundation day, Dhami said Uttarakhand is progressing rapidly in various sectors, including tourism, agriculture, horticulture and industry, due to which businesses, self-employment and job opportunities, in general, are on the rise. "The day is not far when we will be able to eradicate the problem of migration from the state by increasing employment opportunities," the chief minister said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also greeted the people of the state on the occasion through a video message, saying a 'mahayagna' of development is currently underway in Uttarakhand. He showered praises on the state government, saying policies begun by it are serving as models for other states. "Uttarakhand is proving that thi
Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he will double funding for Britain's border security agency and treat people-smuggling gangs like terror networks in an attempt to stop migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats. In a speech Monday to a meeting of the international police organization Interpol, Starmer will say the gangs behind irregular migration are a serious threat to global security. Arguing that the world needs to wake up to the severity of this challenge, Starmer will say that we're taking our approach to counterterrorism, which we know works, and applying it to the gangs, according to extracts released by his office. He'll call for more cooperation between law-enforcement agencies, closer coordination with other countries and unspecified enhanced powers for law-enforcement. Starmer plans to increase the U.K. Border Security Command's two-year budget from 75 million pounds ($97 million) to 150 million pounds ($194 million). The money will be used to fund high-tech .
European Union leaders will use a summit Thursday to seek ways to make the bloc a more hostile destination for migrants and asylum seekers following a recent surge in support for the extreme right, which has fomented opposition to foreigners. As the summit opens in Brussels, the 27 EU leader are looking at plans to speed up initiatives to get unwanted migrants out of the bloc and process asylum applications far outside their borders. The tenor of the debate is a far cry from 2015, less than a decade ago, when the EU was faced with a migration crisis. Well over a million migrants and refugees sought help then, mainly from the Middle East and Afghanistan. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the EU's dominant national leader at the time, famously said, We can manage that. Now, EU leaders want to manage and seal off their borders ever more tightly, embracing initiatives that would have looked unacceptable only a few years ago. In recent weeks, Poland has said it wants to temporarily suspe
Germany on Monday began random checks at its borders with five Western European nations as it seeks to crack down on irregular migration, expanding a system of controls that are already in place at four other borders. The police controls began at the borders with France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Denmark on Monday morning and are due to continue for six months. Germany has already been carrying out the checks at its borders with Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland since last year. Germany, a European Union member, announced last week that it was expanding border checks to all nine of its land borders this week as part of an effort to crack down on irregular migration and crime following recent extremist attacks. Last month, a knife attack blamed on a Syrian asylum-seeker in Solingen killed three people. The suspect claimed to be inspired by the Islamic State group. In June, a knife attack attributed to an Afghan immigrant left a police officer dead and