Canada:

For many in the Gulf, Canada is the preferred destination when it comes to migration. Ottawa is to allow in 285,000 immigrants this year, up from the 250,000 in 2014. But according to news reports from Toronto, anti-Sikh sentiment is growing. A flyer has been distributed in the Bramalea suburb of Toronto — often sarcastically referred to as “Bram-ladesh”, targeting a community of Sikhs in Brampton It urged Canadians to “Stop the Madness,” and asks Brampton residents to “say no to the massive third-world invasion of Canada,” adding that immigrants will reduce white Canadians to a minority. It also has the face of a Sikh man covered by a “prohibited” symbol.

Germany:

Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German Finance Minister, said that immigration is good for the country and politicians must explain better that everyone stands to gain from it, in response to the rise of a new movement opposing an influx of Muslim immigrants. The number of asylum seekers in Germany, many from Syria, has more than doubled this year to around 200,000, and net immigration is at its highest level in two decades. Many Germans are concerned about the related costs and worry about refugees taking jobs. Immigration is a particularly sensitive subject in Germany due to its Nazi past. Germany’s asylum rules are among the most liberal in the world. Schaeuble said politicians must get better at explaining the changes in daily life, and he echoed comments made by President Joachim Gauck at the beginning of 2015 saying people should not be afraid. “People are right to fear Islamist terrorism. But not Islam,” he said.

France:

After the Charlie Hebdo attacks of three weeks ago, the French government is planning to fix troubled schools and restive suburbs. The government plan focuses on healing social and religious fractures by starting with schools, which Prime Minister Manuel Valls called the “essential link” in transmitting French values of secularism and freedoms that are often absent in notorious suburbs, or “banlieues.” Tinderboxes of discontent, the banlieues house France’s poorest, especially minorities with immigrant roots, including many Muslims from former French colonies.

Concern about schools jumped to the forefront of national debate after some children refused to observe a minute of silence for victims of the January 7-9 attacks on a kosher market and satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Twenty people were killed in the attacks, including the three gunmen, who had lived in impoverished neighbourhoods in Paris and its suburbs.

Valls shocked many by referring to a “territorial, social, ethnic apartheid” that especially affects the suburbs, and convened a special government meeting to tackle this societal divide.

Britain:

With one eye on a general election just four months away, Prime Minister David Cameron has sketched out proposals to make Britain less attractive to immigrants that, he acknowledged, would require tough negotiations with European Union partners and changes to union treaties. Cameron said that if re-elected, he would move to stop immigrants from the European Union from claiming welfare assistance, including social housing and child benefits, in their first four years in Britain.

Critics have seized on government figures showing that net immigration over the year from June 2013 was 260,000, up from 182,000 over the same period the year before, despite pledges from. Cameron to get it down to “tens of thousands” a year.

Cameron has backed away from proposing an outright cap, or quota, on the number of immigrants Britain would accept from fellow nations of the European Union, which his European partners have made clear is unacceptable. But Cameron did say they should not be allowed to take advantage of government help for low-wage workers. He has pledged to prevent immigrants from receiving child benefit payments if their children live outside Britain.

Before they arrive, he said, they should have firm job offers, and if they do not find work within six months, they should leave.

Australia

Asylum-seekers have sewn their lips together at a detention centre in Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and hundreds more of asylum-seekers are on hunger strike at the Australian immigration centre — with many reporting to be self harming themselves.

Australia’s Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, confirmed a “number of incidents of self-harm within Manus,” adding he was worried about the “volatile situation” at the camp. An asylum-seeker at Manus, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, there were also clashes involving security guards and prisoners were threatened. “They threatened the boys. They told them tomorrow ... the new group will come from Australia and we will come and will enter into the camp and we will beat you,” ABC reported. Australia sends asylum-seekers who try to enter the country by boat to offshore detention centres on Papua New Guinea and Nauru in the Pacific, with no prospect of being settled on the mainland, even if they are genuine refugees. Hundreds of people are known to have drowned making the perilous journey to Australia, fleeing conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia.

— Compiled from agencies, Al Jazeera

Maram Zbaeda is an intern at Gulf News