News Briefs: Immigration

• According to the Los Angeles Times there has been an influx of Indian migrants crossing the U.S. border with Mexico. Immigration authorities claimed that the hundreds of migrants make up “the ‘most significant’ human-smuggling trend being tracked by the U.S.” Meanwhile Homeland Security asserts that none of the 1600 Indians caught trying to cross the border last year were classified as terrorists.
• Some immigration rights activists are none too pleased with an iPhone app game depicting smugglers. The app "pokes fun and trivializes the harsh reality of our current immigration policy," said a representative of the New York Immigration Coalition to a local daily. One of the game’s developers claimed, however, that the app is satirical and based on the difficulties his friends had trying to immigrate into the U.S.
• A study by the International Institute for Environment and Development said that climate change will not lead to mass migrations around the world. The report cited studies in countries like Bolivia to conclude that most people displaced by climate change prefer to stay inside their own country.
• In Texas a group of Hispanic Republican legislators are trying to steer the GOP away from backing harsh anti-immigrant measures. In neighboring New Mexico, meanwhile, Republican Governor Susana Martinez has come under fire for her executive order allowing police to seek the immigration status of suspects.
• A U.S. appeals court upheld a $78,000 claims ruling against a rancher who purportedly threatened and assaulted a group of four migrant women. The judge who at one point oversaw the trial, John Roll, received death threats and was killed last month in a shooting that critically injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
• Canada’s Museum of Immigration opened today at Halifax’s Pier 21 which served as a “front door for more than a million immigrants, refugees, troops, wartime evacuees, war brides and their children.”
• Lastly, a Pew Hispanic Center report released last week may have poured some cold water on the “anchor babies” myth.
  

Image- Los Angeles Times (“In Harlingen, Texas, Indian citizens released from an immigration center often are taken to the Greyhound bus station. Many struggle with poor English as they try to call family or friends, or buy travel tickets. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times / February 6, 2011).”)
Online Sources- Economic Times, New York Daily News, Bloomberg, UPI, El Paso Times, Houston Chronicle, SFGate.com, CTV, USA TODAY