According to a report by the Foreign Office, an estimated 500,000 Moroccans and 21,000 Congolese live in Belgium legally. Moroccans compromise the largest African community in Belgium, with an estimated 81,000 choosing to maintain their nationality. Not included in the report are estimates of illegal migrants, numbering at about 100,000.
Over 100 youths of Turkish background were arrested in Brussels after clashing with Belgian police during an anti-Kurdish demonstration. Tensions have run high after the killing of twelve Turkish soldiers earlier this month in an attack by PKK rebels in northern Iraq. The youths were detained for destroying cars, bus stops, and garbage bins in…
More than 100 students have failed to show up for school this fall, a month after the school year started. Officials fear the truant children, most of them from immigrant families, have been sent back to their parents’ homeland. Some of the truant children may be attending Koran or military schools in Pakistan or other…
A record number of fingerprints – over 100,000 a month – are now being collected from foreign nationals overseas applying to come the UK, the Government announced last Friday. Visa applicants in 100 countries worldwide are required to provide fingerprints if they want to visit to the UK for work, study or tourism. The Government…
The campaign recently launched by representatives of the Swiss right to prohibit the construction of minarets on mosques “puts the security of the Swiss in danger” according to the President and Swiss Minister of Immigrant Affairs, Micheline Calmy-Rey. Politicians of the Union d_mocratique du centre (UDC, right populist) and Union d_mocratique f_d_rale (UDF, Christian right)…
