News: Africans & Immigration

South Africa: More Than 2,000 Zimbabweans Flee, Fearing Attacks

Fearing a resurgence of xenophobic attacks, around 2,500 legal Zimbabwean immigrants have taken refuge in government buildings in De Doorns, a farming town about 140km [87 miles] from Cape Town, South Africa, after some of their shacks in an informal settlement were attacked and demolished this morning. The local police station commander said local residents were unhappy that farm owners had been employing Zimbabweans for "less money", and had complained that farmers were "excluding the local community". The residents threatened to prevent the Zimbabweans from going to work today. The global economic recession has hit South Africa hard; the government's latest labor force survey said 484,000 jobs had been lost in the last six months, and unemployment stood at 24.5 percent for the period July to September 2009.

In May 2008 a tide of xenophobic violence erupted in Johannesburg and quickly spread through most parts of the country, killing more than 60 people and displacing about 100,000 others.

African Immigrants Drift Toward Latin America

Hat tip to reader Dragon Horse for this one. Stowed away on cargo ships and unsure where their dangerous journeys will take them, increasing numbers of African immigrants are arriving in Latin America as European countries tighten border controls. In Brazil, Africans are now the largest refugee group, representing 65 percent of all asylum seekers. There are now more than 3,000 African immigrants living in Argentina, up from just a few dozen eight years ago. The number of asylum seekers each year has risen abruptly, to about 1,000 a year, and a third of them are African.

For many, their journey starts by dodging port controls in Africa and then surviving on water and biscuits for weeks. Instead of being forced on slave ships as during the colonial era, nowadays Africans might arrive on cargo ships or commercial planes and then seek asylum or overstay tourist visas. In Argentina, they can obtain temporary work visas shortly after arriving and renew them every three months. Africans in Argentina can also obtain taxpayer-funded health services and some take Spanish lessons taught by Catholic charities. The majority earn a living selling jewelry on the streets of Buenos Aires. Although some of the African immigrants interviewed said they faced racism in Argentina, they agreed that it was minor compared to the xenophobia and anti-immigration laws that African immigrants face in Europe.

During the 1990s a large number of Angolans fled the civil war and settled in Brazil. Now increasing numbers of immigrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo are escaping violence and civil war back home and seeking asylum in Brazil, which can be an easy country for African immigrants to adapt to because it has the largest black population outside of Africa.

More and more immigrants from Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia are also making their way to Mexico and Central America via cargo ships, hoping to eventually reach the United States over land. The number of Africans passing through the detention center in Tapachula, a city near Mexico's southern border, was more than 600 last year, three times as many as in 2007.