The Washington Post: “Fans of Trump’s view on immigration should remember how figures like him targeted their ancestors”

President Trump’s recent comments calling Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations “shithole countries,” has been met with strong reactions. House Speaker Paul Ryan, reflecting upon the hardships that Irish immigrants like his ancestors had once faced, called the president’s choice of language “very unfortunate" and "unhelpful” and said “the Irish were really looked down upon back in those days.” Ryan’s reference to the Irish offers a teachable moment about US immigration history, explains Hidetaka Hirota, a professor of American history at the City University of New York-City College and author of Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy. It was the backlash in large part against poor Irish immigrants that led to the first US immigration policies and law, Hirota says.

Read more

Reuters' The Wider Image: "Isle Landers"

The worsening migrant crisis in Europe has led to increased attention paid to the thousands of refugees and migrants making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean Sea. For the past decade, Reuters photographer Darrin Zammit Lupi has been documenting their journeys to Malta, which receives the greatest percentage of migrants per population than other country in Europe:

When I started covering this story, most people arrived on boats carrying about 30 people. The trend has changed in recent years to larger vessels and dinghies, carrying anything between 100 and 400 migrants: men, women - many of them pregnant - and children. I’m amazed at the contrasts between people on different boats. Some arrive in a relatively good state of health, the men clean-shaven, indicating that they’ve possibly only been at sea for a couple of days at most. Others can barely stand on their own two feet, and have to be lifted ashore, often to waiting ambulances. When a boat has been at sea for several days, the debris left behind once the immigrants have disembarked is a nauseating sight: old water bottles, food packaging, empty fuel tanks, torn clothing, shoes, excrement, vomit.

His photos show capsized boats, sunburnt and damaged faces, and one woman who gave birth shortly after being rescued at sea. '''I was cold. Everybody was afraid. After some time, people started suffering hallucinations. Our skin was peeling away with the fuel and sea water. I was very sick…I kept thinking of my unborn child,'" she said. Another photo essays documents life for Afghan, Iranian, and Sudanese migrants living off food scraps and with no electricity in two abandoned factories in the economically-depressed port of Patras, Greece, as they try to find a way to Italy and the rest of Europe. One is twenty-six-year-old Azam from South Sudan, who has already had multiple failed attempts to stow away on ferries, but said: "'I want to go to northern Europe and find a decent job and live a good life...I'll never give up.'"

The Guardian: "UN says 800 migrants dead in boat disaster as Italy launches rescue of two more vessels"

A shipwreck this past weekend off the coast of Libya has led to the death of 800 migrants and has prompted calls for the European Union to address the worsening migrant crisis in Europe. The boat, which set sail from Tripoli and is one of many unseaworthy vessels that human smugglers use, contained nationals of Gambia, Ivory Coast, Somalia, Eritrea, Mali, Tunisia, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh and Syria, and included children between the ages of ten and twelve. With only a reported twenty-seven survivors, it is the worst such disaster in the Mediterranean Sea. Italian authorities arrested a Tunisian man who is believed to be the captain of the boat as well as a Syrian national, who were charged with human trafficking and the captain also charged with reckless multiple homicide. The overall migrant death toll in the Mediterranean Sea this year has already surpassed 1,500 victims—a drastic increase from the same period last year. The record number of migrants including children seeking haven in Europe is reminiscent of the US/Mexico border surge and crisis last year.

Italian rescuer Vincenzo Bonomo told La Repubblica: "'It was a sight that broke the hearts of even men of the sea like us. I saw children’s shoes, clothing, backpacks floating in the water. Every time we saw a shoe or a bag, any sign of life, we thought we might have found a survivor. But every time we were disappointed. It was heart-breaking[.]'"

In response, the European Union agreed after emergency meetings to launch military operations against the networks of smugglers in Libya deemed responsible for sending thousands of people to their deaths in the Mediterranean in addition to increasing maritime patrols as well as naval search-and-rescue missions. Anas el-Gomati, a researcher at the Sadeq Institute, a Libyan think-tank, questioned the effectiveness of the European response: "'Military action is a deterrent; it’s not a substitute for a coherent and robust policy...It will do nothing to stop the flow of migrants coming from sub-Saharan Africa and address the reasons as to why they choose to take a perilous route such as the western coast of Libya.'"

Nigerian refugee Hakim Bello, who previously survived the dangerous sea voyage and now lives in Berlin, called the Mediterranean Sea "the deadliest border in the world" and tried to explain what motivates migrants to undertake the dangerous journey: "We all have different reasons for doing it: some people think they’ll find a better life in Europe, others just want to get away from a war zone. But everyone feels they have no other option."

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of Malta said: "'What happened on Sunday was a game changer...There is a new realization that if Europe doesn’t act as a team, history will judge it very harshly, as it did when it closed its eyes to stories of genocide—horrible stories—not long ago.'"