“At these low birth rates, we will rapidly age and shrink,” the 87-year-old Lee said in comments released to the local media after the government disclosed that the city-state’s birth rate fell to a record low in 2010.
Extreme right groups threw stones at immigrants, unionists and human rights activists in Athens who were protesting against a wall on the Greek-Turkish border.
The extremists then clashed with police who used tear gas.
Pope Benedict has called on immigrants to respect the laws and national identity of their host countries.
He said that every country had the right to regulate the flow of migration and immigrants had a duty to integrate.
In talks with the Turkish PM German Chancellor Angela Merkel supported the idea of Turkish language instruction in Germany, though not at the expense of German. They also discussed Iran and Turkey’s EU bid.
Serbian and Hungarian police are working to establish the identities and the exact number of illegal immigrants killed in an accident on the Tisa river. Priština says that 15 Kosovo Albanians drowned in the tragedy.
Eva Longoria has said that she is shocked by the vile reaction to immigrants by some Americans.
“The immigration issue is interesting because historically everyone has immigrated, this is a country of immigrants,†Fox News quoted her as telling at Padres Contra El Cancer’s 9th Annual Fund Raising Gala in Hollywood.
“So it kind of shocks me [...]
Immigrants who want to become British citizens will win bonus points if they go to live and work in Scotland, where the population is ageing, Jim Murphy, the Scottish secretary, announced today.
A draft Home Office consultation paper, due shortly, on the government’s new policy of “earned citizenship”, singles out the fact of “having lived or worked in a part of the UK in need of increased population [such as Scotland]” as a point worthy of “favourable treatment”.
The credit of living in Scotland will rank alongside skills in short supply, as well as special talents, in science or the arts, and a “proper attitude” towards the adopted country.
Writing in Scotland on Sunday, Murphy reminded fellow Scots that their average age was now 45 – “almost four years older” than his age – and that such a demographic profile put pressure on the welfare state and on future competitiveness.
Scotland’s population has shown a slight increase, from 5,057,400 in 2003 to 5,168,00 last year, and a better-performing economy under devolution has started to reverse decades of outward migration. But Murphy said: “Our need for a growing population is ranked alongside the need to recruit to occupations where we have a shortage.”
He added: “Over the summer we will be consulting on this new points-based route to citizenship, and I am pleased to say living and working in Scotland is proposed as one way to earn points.
“The new Scotland should be a melting pot, embracing long-established immigrant communities from Ireland and Italy, as well as more recent arrivals from the Indian sub-continent and young eastern Europeans. They’ve changed us for the better and widened our horizons.”
A major poll has found that almost half of all Brits consider the record 1,650 immigrants settling in every day are wrecking the quality of life in UK.
The YouGov poll, commissioned by Optimum Population Trust, also found that two-thirds of the 2,000 people demanded a limit imposed to stem the flow of immigrants to stop [...]
If these children — who are American citizens — experience such a dramatic blow to their already-limited resource bank, the consequences for the entire state will be dire.
