London:

Thousands of anti-racism demonstrators rallied across the UK on Saturday to protest recent rioting blamed on the far-right in the wake of the Southport knife attack that killed three children.

Crowds massed in London, Glasgow in Scotland, Belfast in Northern Ireland, Manchester and numerous other English towns and cities, as fears of violent confrontations with anti-immigration agitators failed to materialise.

It followed similar developments on Wednesday night when anticipated far-right rallies up and down the country failed to materialise. Instead, people turned out for gatherings organised by the Stand Up To Racism advocacy group.

Up until that point, more than a dozen English towns and cities — and Belfast too — had been hit by anti-migrant unrest, following the deadly July 29 stabbings which were falsely linked on social media to a Muslim immigrant.

Rioters targeted mosques and hotels linked to immigration, as well as police, vehicles and other sites.

Recent nights have been largely peaceful in English towns and cities, prompting hope among the authorities that the nearly 800 arrests and numerous people already jailed had deterred further violence.

Despite the respite, UK media reported Saturday that Prime Minister Keir Starmer had cancelled plans to go on holiday next week to remain focused on the crisis.

 ‘No to racism’ 

In Northern Ireland, which has seen sustained disorder since last weekend, police said they were investigating a suspected racially motivated hate crime overnight.

A petrol bomb was thrown at a mosque in Newtownards, east of Belfast, early Saturday, with racist graffiti sprayed on the building, said the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

The petrol bomb thrown at the property had failed to ignite, it added.

“This is being treated as a racially motivated hate crime, and I want to send a strong message to those who carried this out, that this type of activity will not be tolerated,” PSNI Chief Inspector Keith Hutchinson said.

Overnight, there were also reports of damage to property and vehicles in Belfast, as nightly unrest there rumbled on.

While the disturbances in Northern Ireland were sparked by events in England, they have also been fuelled by pro-UK loyalist paramilitaries with their own agenda, according to the PSNI.

Around 5,000 anti-racism demonstrators rallied in Belfast on Saturday “largely without incident”, police said.

Fiona Doran, of the United Against Racism group which co-organised the gathering, said it showed “that Belfast is a welcoming city… that says no to racism, to fascism, to islamophobia, to antisemitism, or misogyny”.

 ‘Delivering justice’ 

In London, thousands massed outside the office of Brexit architect Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party before marching through the city centre, accompanied by a large police presence.

They blame Farage and other far-right figures for helping to fuel the riots through anti-immigrant rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

“It’s really important for people of colour in this country, for immigrants in this country, to see us out here as white British people saying ‘no, we don’t stand for this’,” attendee Phoebe Sewell, 32, from London, told AFP.

Fellow Londoner Jeremy Snelling, 64, said he had turned out because “I don’t like the right-wing claiming the streets in my name”.

He accused Reform party founder Farage of having “contributed” to the volatile environment.

“I think he is damaging and I think he’s dangerous,” Snelling added.

Meanwhile, suspected rioters continued to appear in court on Saturday.

Stephen Parkinson, the head of the prosecution service, said hundreds of alleged participants in the violence would soon face justice as a “new phase” of “more serious” cases worked through the system.

Those convicted could face jail terms of up to 10 years under the most serious offence of rioting, he warned.

“It’s not about exacting revenge, it’s about delivering justice,” Parkinson said, in comments reported by the Sunday Times.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

 President Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled a massive immigration relief policy to non-citizens offering a path to citizenship to non-citizen spouses and children of American nationals, a move that will protect approximately half a million spouses of US citizens, several thousands of whom are Indian-Americans.

“This action will protect approximately half a million spouses of US citizens, and approximately 50,000 non-citizen children under the age of 21 whose parents are married to a US citizen,” the White House said.

Biden, who is seeking re-election in the November 5 presidential election, has directed the Department of Homeland Security to take action to ensure that US citizens with non-citizen spouses and children can keep their families together.

Also read: Bipartisan National Security Agreement provides 100K work authorisation to spouses and children of H-1B visa holders

This new process will help certain non-citizen spouses and children apply for lawful permanent residence – status that they are already eligible for – without leaving the country, the White House said.

These actions will promote family unity and strengthen our economy, providing a significant benefit to the country and helping US citizens and their noncitizen family members stay together, it added.

The action is aimed at appealing to key Latino constituencies in battleground states, including Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, that will be crucial for Biden’s chances to claim a second term, CNN reported.

The move is an olive branch to immigration advocates and progressives, many of whom have sharply criticised Biden for previous restrictive actions, including taking steps this month to limit asylum processing at the US southern border, it said.

Biden has also directed to allow individuals including DACA recipients and other Dreamers, who have earned a degree at an accredited US institution of higher education in the United States, and who have received an offer of employment from a US employer in a field related to their degree, to more quickly receive work visas.

“Recognising that it is in our national interest to ensure that individuals who are educated in the US are able to use their skills and education to benefit our country, the Administration is taking action to facilitate the employment visa process for those who have graduated from college and have a high-skilled job offer, including DACA recipients and other Dreamers,” the White House said.

“Dreamer” originally referred to the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, a piece of legislation that would have given immigrant youth legal status and a path to US citizenship.

According to the White House, to be eligible, non-citizens must – as of June 17, 2024 – have resided in the United States for 10 or more years and be legally married to a US citizen, while satisfying all applicable legal requirements. On average, those who are eligible for this process have resided in the US for 23 years.

Those who are approved after DHS’s case-by-case assessment of their application will be afforded a three-year period to apply for permanent residency. They will be allowed to remain with their families in the US and be eligible for work authorisation for up to three years. This will apply to all married couples who are eligible.

Also read: Nearly 66K Indians took oath of American citizenship in 2022: CRS report

According to the White House, this programme will protect approximately half a million spouses of US citizens, and approximately 50,000 non-citizen children under the age of 21 whose parents are married to a US citizen.

More than 1.1 million undocumented spouses married to a US citizen, thousands of whom are Indian-Americans, have lived in the US on average 16 years, and many have been married to their US citizen spouses for at least a decade. The announcement is expected to impact approximately 500,000 undocumented spouses of US citizens and 50,000 undocumented children of US citizens nationwide.

Opposing the move, the rival Trump campaign said that Biden’s mass amnesty plan will undoubtedly lead to a greater surge in migrant crime, cost taxpayers millions of dollars they cannot afford, overwhelm public services, and steal Social Security and Medicare benefits from American seniors to fund benefits for illegals — draining the programs Americans paid into their entire working lives.

“Biden has created another invitation for illegal immigration through his mass amnesty order,” said Trump campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

US Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, applauded Biden’s announcement to offer relief to hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including DACA holders and undocumented spouses and children of US citizens.

“Allowing those who have lived here at least ten years a chance to continue living here without fear of deportation is fair and long overdue. The Republican Party and its chosen leader see immigration in terms of fear and hate and ‘poisoning the blood’ of America. President Biden understands that, as challenging as it may be, immigration is at the heart of who we are as Americans. I commend President Biden for today’s announcement. It’s the right thing,” said Durbin.

Panama is on the verge of a dramatic change to its immigration policy that could reverberate from the dense Darien jungle to the U.S. border.

President-elect José Raúl Mulino says he will shut down a migration route used by more than 500,000 people last year. Until now, Panama has helped speedily bus the migrants across its territory so they can continue their journey North.

Whether Mr. Mulino is able to reduce migration through a sparsely populated region with little Government presence remains to be seen, experts say.

“Panama and our Darien are not a transit route. It is our border,” Mr. Mulino said after his victory with 34% of the vote in Sunday’s election was formalised on May 9 evening.

As he had suggested during his campaign, the 64-year-old Lawyer and former security Minister said he would try to end “the Darien odyssey that does not have a reason to exist”.

The migrant route through the narrow isthmus grew exponentially in popularity in recent years with the help of organised crime in Colombia, making it an affordable, if dangerous, land route for hundreds of thousands.

It grew as countries like Mexico, under pressure from the U.S. Government, imposed visa restrictions on various nationalities including Venezuelans and just this week Peruvians in an attempt to stop migrants flying into the country just to continue on to the U.S. border.

But masses of people took the challenge and set out on foot through the jungle-clad Colombian-Panamanian border. A crossing that initially could take a week or more eventually was whittled down to two or three days as the path became more established and entrepreneurial locals established a range of support services.

It remains a risky route, however. Reports of sexual assaults have continued to rise, some migrants are killed by bandits in robberies and others drown trying to cross rushing rivers.

Migrants dead, missing after boat capsizes off Panama coast

Even so, some 147,000 migrants have already entered Panama through Darien this year.

Previous attempts to close routes around the world have simply shifted traffic to riskier paths.

“People migrate for many reasons and frequently don’t have safe, orderly and legal ways to do it,” said Giuseppe Loprete, chief of mission in Panama for the UN’s International Organisation for Immigration.

“When the legal routes are not accessible, migrants run the risk of turning to criminal networks, traffickers and dangerous routes, tricked by disinformation.” Loprete said the UN agency’s representatives in Panama would meet with Mr. Mulino’s team once its member are named to learn the specifics of the president’s plans.

If Mr. Mulino could be even partially effective, it could produce a notable, but likely temporary, impact. As with the visa restrictions that unintentionally steered migrants to the overland route through Panama, if the factors pushing migrants to leave their countries remain they will find other routes. One could be the dangerous sea routes from Colombia to Panama.

In a local radio interview on May 9, Mr. Mulino said the idea of shutting down the migration flow is more philosophical than a physical obstacle.

“Because when we start to deport people here in an immediate deportation plan the interest for sneaking through Panama will decrease,” he said. By the time the fourth plane loaded with migrants takes off, “I assure you they are going to say that going through Panama is not attractive because they are deporting you.” Julio Alonso, a Panamanian security expert, said what Mr. Mulino could realistically achieve is unknown.

“This would be a radical change to Panamanian policy in terms of migration to avoid more deaths and organised crime using the route,” he said.

Among the challenges will be how it would work operationally along such an open and uncontrolled border.

“In Panama, there is no kind of suppression with this situation, just free passage, humanitarian aid that didn’t manage to reduce the number of assaults, rapes, homicides and deaths along the Darien route,” Mr. Alonso said.

Mr. Mulino’s proposal is “a dissuasive measure, yes, (but) whether it can be completely executed we will see”.

It’s also unlikely that much could be accomplished without a lot of cooperation and coordination with Colombia and other countries, he said.

Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, said that “without considering the risk of returning migrants to dangerous situations, in mathematical terms I don’t know how they hope to massively deport” migrants.

“A daily plane, which would be extremely expensive, would only repatriate around 10 per cent of the flow (about 1,000 to 1,200 per day). The United States only manages to do about 130 flights monthly in the entire world,” Mr. Isacson said.