After its surprisingly strong showing in Italian parliamentary elections last week, the quasi-separatist, anti-immigrant Northern League Party is likely to take over several key posts in Silvio Berlusconi's cabinet including the interior, reforms, and agriculture ministries. The League's control of the Interior Ministry puts Italy's immigration policy is in the hands of a party whose leaders have suggested that the navy fire on rafts carrying illegal immigrants.

Italy's new deputy prime minister is likely to be Roberto Calderoli, a guy who proudly wears T-shirts emblazoned with the Danish Mohammed cartoons, promoted a "pig day" protest in a Muslim neighborhood, and, after the Italian team's World Cup victory, dismissed their French opponents as "negroes, communists and Muslims."

Berlusconi, who mocked his Spanish counterpart for appointing too many women to top posts, may want to watch his words considering the classy fellows in his own cabinet.

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Within the fragile coalition that has brought Silvio Berlusconi back to power, the big winner appears to be the Lega Nord, a separatist party that advocates federalism or even complete independence for Northern Italy (or Padania, as they call it.) The Lega won about 8.3 percent of the vote out of a total of 47 percent for Berlusconi's center-right coalition.

There's already speculation that the Lega will use its new influence to push for tougher immigration laws. The Lega has become known for its extreme anti-immigrant sentiment in recent years due to neighborhood patrols aimed at intimidating immigrant communities, racist campaign posters, and the inflammatory rhetoric of party leader Umberto Bossi, who once said that the Italian navy should open fire on boats carrying illegal immigrants. The party has already used its influence over Berlusconi to nix an idea he had hinted at during the campaign for giving immigrants the right to vote.

The Lega's position in Italy's governing coalition means that it will probably have to soften its Padanian separatist stance, but the party might still push to give regional governments more autonomy and budgetary control. That will be a tough pill for Berlusconi to swallow, but with all the challenges he's facing, he'll need all the help he can get. After all, a defection by the Lega brought down another Berlusconi government in 1994. He's not likely to cross them this time.

This week’s Tuesday map comes to us from a billboard controversy south of the border.

Created by advertising agency Teran/TBWA and launched a few weeks ago in Mexico, the Absolut billboard ad depicted pre-1848 North America -– before the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo turned Mexican territories into what is now the American South West.

The campaign was obviously intended for a Mexican audience, as Favio Ucedo, creative director of a top Latino advertising firm, explained:

Many (Americans) aren’t going to understand it. Americans in the East and the North or in the center of the county -- I don’t know if they know much about the history… Probably Americans in Texas and California understand perfectly, and I don’t know how they’d take it.”

But Absolut quickly learned just how some Americans would take it: not well.  Although the ad never appeared in the U.S., it was picked up by American media outlets, causing a flurry of complaint from U.S. citizens (some more creative than others).

As of Friday, Absolut’s maker Vin & Spirits had decided to withdraw the apparently offensive advertisement even though it "was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Mexican sensibility... [and was] in no way was meant to offend or disparage, nor...advocate an altering of borders..."

The Department of Homeland Security has quietly eased restrictions on U.S. companies looking to hire looking to hire non-immigrant science and technology students. It's probably a step in the right direction for immigration policy, since there's always more demand for these visas than supply. But it's unfortunate that that DHS had to use administrative procedures that are normally reserved for emergencies in order to get around Congress.

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Last year, FP's "Top 10 Stories You Missed" highlighted an issue that hadn't yet gotten a lot of attention in the press -- the fact that nearly half of the 700 miles of fence being built along the U.S.-Mexico border was actually slated to be "virtual" fence. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have said they prefer virtual to more conventional fencing. But it might be time for both campaigns to go back to the drawing board. After evaluating a virtual fence pilot project, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has thrown cold water on the notion that such fences can be relied upon to secure the border any time soon:

The pilot virtual fence included nine mobile towers, radar, cameras, and vehicles retrofitted with laptops and satellite phones or handheld devices. They were to be linked to a near-real-time, maplike projection of the frontier that agents could use to track targets and direct law enforcement resources. GAO investigators said that [the virtual fence] could not process large amounts of sensor data. The resulting delays made it hard for operators in a Tucson command center 65 miles to the north to lock cameras on targets. Radar systems were also triggered inadvertently by rain and other environmental factors. Cameras had trouble resolving images at five kilometers when they were expected to work at twice that distance...."

The initial phase of the virtual fence -- covering approximately 100 miles near Yuma, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas -- was supposed to be completed by the end of 2008. But the GAO now estimates that it will take until the end of 2011 to complete that initial 100 miles of virtual fence. That means it will take until nearly the end of the next president's first term to deploy a virtual fence along a tiny 100-mile stretch of the border. After that, friends, there's just 1,900 miles to go. I figure we can get the whole thing "virtually secured" sometime around the turn of the century.

Listening to the Democrats talk about using science to secure the southern border is like listening to Republicans talk about using technology to solve climate change. Technology, we are assured, will solve all of America's problems without us having to make any real changes. Sadly, in both cases, that's just cover for not having a real policy to address the problem.

The Public Policy Institute of California has just issued a surprising new report finding that immigrants to the Golden State are far less likely to commit serious crimes than those who are native-born. The study finds that even though foreign-born residents make up 35 percent of California's population, they make up only 17 percent of those incarcerated. Among men aged 18-40, the most likely to commit crimes, immigrants make up an even lower percentage. Native-born Americans in that age group who were born in the Untied States are 10 times more likely to be in county or state prison than immigrants. Hopefully, the study will put some xenophobia to rest.

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If you were were looking for a hard number to sum up the state of Cuba's political leadership, try 70. That's the average age of Raúl Castro and the six vice presidents appointed this past weekend. The acension of these longtime Raúlistas to the top spots in Cuba's government is as good an indication of any that Raúl has no immediate plans for major reform. In a conference call organized by the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American studies, Senior Research Associate Brian Latell characterized Cuba's new government as a "gerontocracy... old men dealing with the possibility of an upheaval and instability among the younger generation of Cubans."

His colleague, University of Miami Assistant Provost Andy Gomez, said his interviews with young Cubans in recent days indicated a disturbing trend of authorities arresting youths on trumped up charges, possibly to prevent major demonstrations. Gomez worries that unless major reforms are undertaken soon, we might soon see a major outward migration of young Cubans to the United States and elsewhere:

I do think that we might see a movement of this young generation trying to leave the island in any possible direction. My concerns here are multiple. First, the United States is in the process of a presidential election. I don't think that this administration or any of the candidates want to deal with a mass migration… The current infrastructure in the state of Florida is not prepared to deal with such a large migration. The state of Florida and the Miami-Dade public schools have [budget] shortfalls. We are just not prepared. This could be a problem for the United States like we haven't seen before.  

It's also unlikely to help alleviate the already toxic state of the U.S. immigration debate. 

If you've seen the recent Irish film Once -- which just won an Oscar for best song -- you may understand how much the social fabric of Ireland has been changing over the last 10 years. In the film, an Irish street performer falls for a young Czech immigrant, who lives with her mother and daughter in a small flat, shares one TV set with her entire building in a poor Dublin neighborhood, and sells flowers in the street to make ends meet. Although living in difficult circumstances, the immigrant family still manages a happy ending. According to the New York Times, however, such characters typify the new Irish identity, and not everyone in Ireland is thrilled about it.

In the last decade, Ireland has seen an explosion in immigration equal to that experienced in Britain over the last 50 years, and from over 150 different nations. For over a century before that, Ireland was better known for its emigration rate, which may be partly why no thoughtful immigration laws were ever put in place. And although FP put the country on a list of the world's most immigrant-friendly countries, some on the Emerald Isle fear a threat to Irish culture and history.

Recently, Enda Kenny, leader of the Irish parliamentary party Fine Gael, released a statement calling for a "genuine national debate" on immigration and for immigrants to acknowledge that they have both rights and responsibilities -- not least of which to realize that Ireland is a "Christian celtic" state. He has since been forced to defend those comments, which were characterized by commentators as highly xenophobic. While the debate has not yet reached the levels of rancor found in other European countries, Ireland is clearly reaching a threshold, and films like Once may have very different endings in this uncertain Irish future. 

iStockphoto.com

Ireland may be one of the best places to be an immigrant, and now there are so many newcomers from right-hand-traffic countries that an Irish senator has proposed that the Emerald Isle switch to driving on the right, too.

Such a change would be "not even remotely feasible," the country's Automobile Association told the Independent. But the senator, Donnie Cassidy, cited the case of Sweden. It switched from left to right in 1967 after spending $120 million in preparations, and it was two entire days before a fatality ensued.

Senator Cassidy isn't all about changing the country's ways to accomodate foreigners' driving habits, however. He has also proposed a special lower speed limit of 80 kmh (50 mph) for noncitizens, compared with speed limits up to 120 kmh (75 mph) for the Irish.

But perhaps it's the senator who needs to slow down and think things through. He admitted to Reuters:

I know when I go to America it takes me five or six days to adjust.

To our U.S. readers: If you happen to see an Irish politician barrelling at you head-on at 75 miles an hour, please e-mail Passport.

Following Mitt Romney's withdrawal speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain had this to say about the topic that has gotten him into such hot water with conservative activists and voters:

On the issue of illegal immigration, a position which provoked the outspoken opposition of many conservatives, I stood my ground aware that my position would imperil my campaign. I respect your opposition for I know that the vast majority of critics to the bill based their opposition in a principled defense of the rule of law. And while I and other Republican supporters of the bill were genuine in our intention to restore control of our borders, we failed, for various and understandable reasons, to convince Americans that we were. I accept that, and have pledged that it would be among my highest priorities to secure our borders first, and only after we achieved widespread consensus that our borders are secure, would we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law and does not encourage another wave of illegal immigration. [UPDATE: Watch McCain getting booed here.]

That's pretty much what he's been saying on the campaign trail thus far, and it's been a good enough fudge to net him the nomination. Will conservatives be satisfied with this answer? Probably not, but it seems McCain may have smoothed over some rough patches today. David Freddoso of the National Review writes, "I think the proper reaction to McCain's victory is: Don't Panic. The world has not been destroyed just yet." Mission accomplished?

UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru chimes in— 

I'd prefer it if McCain took one more small step. It isn't enough that the border be secure; the illegal population has to start shrinking. (A lot of illegal immigrants came here legally and overstayed their visas, so securing the borders doesn't solve the problem.)

Personally, I think it's wrong to look at illegal immigration as a law-enforcement problem rather than a black-market problem. You can build all the walls you want, but you won't dry up illegal immigration until you drastically raise the number of legal immigrants you let in. But that is for another post and another day.

The Times of London has a great story on how Hamas secretly brought down the border wall between Gaza and Egypt:

[A] Hamas border guard interviewed by The Times at the border today admitted that the Islamist group was responsible and had been involved for months in slicing through the heavy metal wall using oxy-acetylene cutting torches.

That meant that when the explosive charges were set off in 17 different locations after midnight last night the 40ft wall came tumbling down, leaving it lying like a broken concertina down the middle of no-man's land as an estimated 350,000 Gazans flooded into Egypt.

I was watching footage on Al Jazeera today, and it was like nothing I've ever seen—thousands of Gazans streaming across the border in search of Egyptian bargains and a little breathing room.

I'm sure Lou Dobbs has already thought of this, but I wonder how this kind of imagery is going to play in the immigration debate in the United States. I'll be on the lookout for statements from the candidates on this, if they haven't made them already.

ADEK BERRY/AFP/Getty Images

It's no secret that Japan has traditionally been averse to immigration. Many long-term immigrants wait eternally for Japanese citizenship. The Japanese parliament also recently approved a plan to fingerprint and photograph all adult foreigners entering Japan.

But is the tide against foreigners turning in Japan? Possibly. According to a recent Mainichi newspaper telephone survey, 63 percent of respondents favored allowing the immigration of unskilled foreign laborers, even though the Japanese government generally opposes such measures—opting instead for a "cautious" approach toward unskilled workers. Out of the 63 percent, 58 percent supported accepting unskilled foreign workers in fields facing worker shortages, and 5 percent believed that entry-level foreign workers should be accepted without conditions.

Hidenori Sakanaka, head of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, believes the shift in favor of foreigners may be due to Japan's enormous demographic challenge associated with its rapidly aging society. He also suggests the Japanese may gradually be appreciating the work already done in Japan by entry-level foreign workers in fields from nursing to agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Necessity may be the mother of invention—or in this case, acceptance—but it remains to be seen whether this is really a cultural shift toward embracing immigration. If legislation follows, I may be convinced.

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European attitudes toward immigrants from outside of the continent are well known — they're generally not liked. But in recent months, a new hostile sentiment has been growing toward Europe's internal immigrants. Under the EU's free movement policy, any citizen of an EU member state can pick up and move to any other member state. National borders don't matter. Anyone who lives in an EU country is a citizen of Europe. So as the EU has grown, older member states like England and Italy have seen a large influx of people from former Soviet bloc countries. These immigrants generally only speak their native language, so assimilation has been difficult.

The debate over how to deal with these immigrants, until recently, was mainly civil. Now, in Italy, it's openly hostile. Following the October murder of an Italian woman by a Romanian immigrant, Italy's Senate approved a law on Thursday that would allow them to deport non-native EU citizens. The bill still has to be approved by the lower house, but if it passes, it would give Italy the power to expel anyone, thus contradicting the free movement policy.

The English haven't gone that far, but their patience with non-native speakers is waning. Local councils are being instructed to spend less on translating signs and other materials into the languages of local immigrants. Instead, they are being advised to spend on English classes — a stance that is not openly hostile, yet not exactly welcoming.

Controversies over internal immigration raise an important issue regarding the future of the EU: the fear that national identities could be lost. What does it mean to be Italian if anyone can live in Italy? Do you have to speak English to be English? A common currency and trade policy and open borders are great, but they aren't conducive to preserving how individual nations define themselves.

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It was only a matter of time: The European Commission today unveiled its new "Blue Card," modeled on the United States Green Card, in a bid to attract more skilled workers to the European Union. For several years now, the EU has been facing an increasingly serious labor shortage, which has spread to "new" EU member countries in Eastern Europe. The EU believes it will face a shortfall of 20 million workers in the next two decades, a problem exacerbated by declining birth rates and an aging population. "The EU as a whole ... seems not to be considered attractive by highly qualified professionals in a context of very high international competition," according to the European Commission. But with easier access to jobs, and with the United States' H1B visa quota restrictions, this is likely to change.

So what benefits can prospective recipients of a Blue Card expect? Aside from being covered by a common set of standards across the EU, Blue Card holders would be able to live, work, and travel in the EU without additional restrictions; they could have their families join them within six months; and they would be treated in the same way as EU nationals in terms of tax benefits and many social-security benefits. After five years, card holders would automatically become eligible for permanent residency where they are working. In order to qualify for the card, applicants will need to have an EU job contract lasting at least a year that guarantees a salary of at least three times the minimum wage (or twice for applications under 30), plus health insurance—quite typical demands for working visas around the world.

It seems like a win-win situation for prospective skilled migrants and their European host countries. Nonetheless, I'll bet the Blue Card scheme won't have an easy passage once trade unions and immigration opponents in Europe inevitably start to voice their complaints.

Here's an odd story from the Wall Street Journal. Israelis are taking an advantage of an obscure 1994 law to become U.S. citizens:

For decades, U.S. citizenship could only be transmitted to a child by a parent. But 1994's section 322 of immigration law has provided another way in, and Israelis are taking advantage of it. [...]

In the first nine months of the 2006-2007 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2006, the U.S. immigration agency processed nearly 4,000 applications for citizenship through grandparents, compared with about 2,000 for all of fiscal 2003-2004. Parents of any nationality can avail themselves of the law, but Israelis comprise 90% of those taking advantage of it, Ms. Tolbert ["an officer in the Chicago branch of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that processes applications"] estimates.

The article doesn't explain why so many Israelis are taking advantage of this clause now, but hints that "Middle East strife" could be the reason. Are Israelis that frightened right now?

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Why is Australian Prime Minister John Howard consistently undermining international efforts to provide humanitarian help to the people of Sudan—even after his government has acknowledged that Darfur is one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters?

In addition to recently rejecting the U.N.'s request to send troops to Darfur (citing Australia's unpopular "war on terror" commitments), Howard has just announced that Australia will no longer accept refugees from Africa under its humanitarian refugee program until at least mid-2008. The government argues that this "freeze" is necessary due to the failure of many Africans, particularly Sudanese, to "integrate" into society. Instead, the government wants to take in more refugees from Asia. Given Howard's previous less-than-generous approach to asylum-seeking Asians, including falsely accusing a number of them in 2001 of throwing their children overboard a ship to blackmail the Australian government—the infamous Tampa incident—Howard's newfound concern for local refugees seems disingenuous, to say the least.

While critics have denounced Howard's refugee decision as racist, supporters argue that it's justified given the problems some Sudanese refugees have experienced settling into Australia, including a number of violent incidents. But are these incidents really surprising? Refugees, by definition, are fleeing from persecution. Many of them, particularly from Sudan, have been traumatized by violence. Instead of simply closing the door, these cases should prompt the government to analyze its refugee counseling programs to try to ensure that refugees are learning the skills, including language skills, to properly "integrate" into Australian society. It is, after all, intended to be a humanitarian effort.

Alas, that's not likely to happen. What's more likely is that Howard will—once again—continue to push Australia's xenophobic buttons in the run-up to Australia's election, just as he successfully did during the Tampa crisis before the 2001 election. Perhaps this time, though, Howard's support for the Iraq war will prove too unpopular for that tactic to succeed.

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A group of violent extremist are arrested. An immigrant population comes under suspicion. Politicians ask why the new arrivals have not been integrated into society and propose tightening immigration restrictions. The storyline might seem familiar, but the groups in question are surprising—to say the least.

Israelis were shocked over the weekend when police in the city of Petah Tivka arrested members of a neo-Nazi group who are accused of numerous attacks on orthodox Jews, drug addicts, and gays. The arrested men are all immigrants from the former Soviet Union who do not consider themselves Jewish but were allowed to immigrate under Israel's Law of Return, which allows foreigners to claim citizenship if a parent or grandparent has Jewish roots. (Incredibly, the grandmother of one of the accused is a Ukrainian holocaust survivor.) 

Unsurprisingly, the arrest and reports that it may not be an isolated case have placed Israel's one million ex-Soviet immigrants, many of whom have tenuous connections to Judaism, under suspicion. Several Knesset members are now calling for the law of return to be amended. As this Jerusalem Post op-ed demonstrates, even those against amending the law are increasingly wary about its effects:

Given the enormous influx into Israel of immigrants from the former USSR for the past two decades, it's hardly surprising that assorted skinheads, Satan-worshipers and even neo-Nazi types appear occasionally on our streets, trickling in via the younger, more ethnically and culturally estranged newcomers.

The absorption of olim, or Jewish asylum-seekers, has always been one of Israel's core values. It will probably take more than this incident to change that. All the same, ex-Soviet Israelis may be feeling a bit defensive. Israel's Moldavian-born Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman was quick to argue that Soviet-Jewish immigrants were not Israel's biggest immigration issue at the moment:

Lieberman said that much more pressing problems were the number of illegal workers and Sudanese - "especially those who are not from genocide-hit regions" - who were entering Israel by the week. "More Sudanese are entering than olim," he said.

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images

Sippenhaft is an old Nazi policy under which family members of criminals were held equally responsible and punished. Now a Swiss political party is using a racist and xenophobic poster to revive the practice.

The poster shows three white sheep booting out a black sheep, with a caption that translates to "for more security." It's part of an effort to drum up support for a deportation policy in which entire immigrant families would be kicked out of Switzerland if their children committed a violent crime, a drug offense, or benefits fraud.

It's not some fringe, extremist, right-wing political party that's trying to collect 100,000 signatures for a referendum on the policy. Rather, it's the country's largest party—the Swiss People's Party. Back in 2004, this party used the image of black hands reaching into a pot of Swiss passports to successfully campaign for stricter immigration laws. More recently, it proposed banning the construction of minarets.

It all seems part of a larger general trend of racism and anti-Semitism brewing in the region. Uniformed Austrian soldiers recently put a Nazi video on YouTube. Last month, eight men from India were chased down and beaten up by a mob of 50 Germans yelling "Foreigners out!" In eastern Germany, where far-right heckling is a "fact of life" at soccer matches, neo-Nazis took things to a new low in May by targeting a youth match and calling a 14-year-old goalkeeper a "Jewish pig." And last year when Germany hosted the World Cup, a former government spokesman warned dark-skinned visitors to avoid "no-go" areas where racism is a problem. The examples go on …

Obviously, not all Germans, Swiss, and Austrians are cold-hearted extremists, but history is replete with examples of populations that have been radicalized quite fast. This German-speaking part of the world should be kept on our radar screens.

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FP contributor Andrei Lankov reports from the China-North Korea border, which is more porous than you might think. And like in many a U.S. prison, cigarettes are often the coin of the realm:

Corruption in North Korea is shocking even to Chinese visitors, who are not exactly used to a clean government.

A Korean-Chinese who occasionally goes to visit his relatives described his usual experience: "They are so greedy. Officials take bribes in China, too. But perhaps nowhere in the world are the officials so hungry for bribes as they are in North Korea. At customs, they slowly go through the luggage and sometimes put aside a few things they like, and then they say that those things are not allowed into North Korea. This is the hint, and I have no choice but to tell them to take those things, some clothing or small items. And it is a tradition that everybody who checks you should be given some foreign cigarettes. Last time I took five cartons of cigarettes with me, and only one carton reached my relatives. All others I had to give away to the officials."

Lankov's real point, though, is that information about China, which looks to North Koreans "like a perfect paradise," is seeping back across the border. And those North Koreans lucky enough to make it to the promised land—be it as refugees or businessmen known as chogyo—soon learn that South Korea isn't the hell on Earth they've been taught to hate, but is even richer than China. This can't be a sustainable situation.

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Just when you think Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe couldn't get any more tragic or chaotic, a new headline pops up to prove you wrong. Nearly 7500 people have been arrested for hoarding or violating new price controls on basic necessities in the past six weeks. Shops are being forced to sell what meager supplies of bread, meat, and sugar that they have at slashed prices—50 percent or more, as mandated by the state. The program is bankrupting businesses while making nary a dent in the country's runaway 10,000-percent inflation. 

The desperation felt by Zimbabwe's enormous underclass in this utterly stagnant economy has created one of the world's largest tides of illegal migration: poor Zimbabweans pouring across the borders into South Africa and Botswana. It's impossible to put accurate figures to the tide, but estimates suggest that up to 3.5 million Zimbabweans—a quarter of the country's population—have fled to South Africa alone. Thousands make the journey each day.

They are increasingly met by South African vigilante groups not unlike the "Minutemen" who patrol the U.S.-Mexico border. Predominantly white farmers, these freelance border patrolmen argue that the influx of immigrants into South Africa threatens the country's stability and prosperity, and they complain that the government does little to effectively police the border. Their methods may not be supremely popular, but their motivations are utterly mainstream. Ask anyone in South Africa or Botswana today how they feel about Mugabe's Zimbabwe, and they'll tell you that the tide of immigrants concerns them. And the situation along the border has become increasingly fraught as the situation in Zimbabwe worsens.

And lest you think that runs on basic items like bread and flour are affecting Mr. Mugabe personally, don't worry. His local grocery store is fully stocked.