Trump defends US immigration policy
Merkel warned
WASHINGTON, June 18, (Agencies): US President Donald Trump blamed migrants in Europe for violently changing the culture and for what he inaccurately described as a rise in crime in Germany as he sought on Monday to defend his administration’s widely criticized policy on illegal immigration.
Immigration activists, medical professionals, religious leaders, Democrats and some in Trump’s own Republican Party have condemned his administration for separating nearly 2,000 children from their parents at the US-Mexican border between mid-April and the end of May.
Administration officials have defended the tactic as necessary to secure the border and suggested it would act as a deterrent to illegal immigration - which Trump has long made a key goal of his presidency.
In the face of criticism, which on Sunday included protests at immigration detention facilities in New Jersey and Texas and a sharply worded message from former first lady Laura Bush, Trump responded with a series of Twittter messages on Monday.
“The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!” he tweeted.
In May, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero tolerance” policy in which all those apprehended entering the United States illegally, including those seeking asylum, would be criminally charged, which generally leads to children being separated from their parents.
Trump has previously falsely accused Democrats for creating the need for the family-separation policy. He has said their support for passage of a broader immigration bill would end the separations. In another tweet on Monday, Trump said Democrats were “weak and ineffective with Boarder (sic) Security and Crime.”
“Tell them to start thinking about the people devastated by Crime coming from illegal immigration. Change the laws!” he said.
Hardliners
Meanwhile, Hardliners in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc on Monday gave her a two-week ultimatum to tighten asylum rules or risk pitching Germany into a political crisis that would also rattle Europe.
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer’s CSU party at a meeting unanimously backed his call to give Merkel a fortnight to find a European deal on the burning issue by a June 28-29 EU summit, failing which he would order border police to turn back migrants.
Three years after her decision to open Germany’s borders to migrants fleeing war in Syria and Iraq and misery elsewhere, Merkel is still struggling to find a sustainable response to complaints from the CSU, her Bavarian allies, over her refugee policy.
Merkel’s woes come as European Union countries are once again at loggerheads over immigration, triggered by Italy’s refusal this month to allow a rescue ship carrying 630 migrants to dock.
Malta also turned the vessel away, sparking a major EU row until Spain agreed to take in the new arrivals.
Seehofer has been one of the fiercest critics of Merkel’s liberal stance, under which over one million asylum seekers have been admitted into the country since 2015.
He wants to turn away at the border new arrivals who have previously been registered in another EU country — often their first port of call, Italy or Greece.
But Merkel says that would leave countries at the EU’s southern periphery alone to deal with the migrant influx. Instead, she wants to find a common European solution at the EU summit in Brussels.
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PARIS: A majority of French citizens support the government’s decision not to offer safe harbour to a ship carrying 630 rescued migrants after Italy refused to let it dock, an opinion poll released Monday showed.
Fifty-six percent of respondents said they backed the government, while 42 percent said it should have offered to let the ship dock, according to the OpinionWay poll.
The Aquarius, run by French charity SOS Mediterranee, was eventually allowed to dock in Spain on Sunday after being stranded for days while both Italy and Malta refused to let the migrants ashore.
Local leaders on the French island of Corsica had offered to welcome the Aquarius, but the move was slapped down by the central government, which argued that under international law the ship had to dock at the closest port.
Tensions flared after President Emmanuel Macron accused Rome of “irresponsibility”, although he later said he had not meant to offend France’s southern neighbour.