Reading task (Term 3 Week 8) Highlight key points from the passage and answer the following question

(at least 1 paragraph). This shall serve as a mini AQ practice. According to the author, high levels of employment and economic uncertainty have exacerbated in anti-immigrant sentiment. Using one of the points provided by the author, discuss whether this is a concern in your society. Xenophobia at work
BY NAYAN CHANDA FOR THE STRAITS TIMES

TWO years ago, when the global financial crisis erupted, one feared its impact on employment and immigrant labour. Millions of jobs were lost in mature economies as well as in the Gulf states. Airports saw long queues of migrant workers returning home. Now, as high levels of unemployment settle like miasma, a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment is hitting the developed world. As is often the case, economic fear has provoked and exacerbated cultural anxiety. If the recession deepens, anti-immigrant sentiment could have far-reaching and unpredictable consequences. In Australia, for example, unemployment figures have improved in recent months but even so, the downturn and growing fears of overcrowding have pushed the government to toughen its immigration policy. Afraid of a backlash in the next election, the nation's Labor government is now arguing that the country needs a "sustainable population". All across Europe, with unemployment at 10 per cent and austerity measures beginning to bite, sentiment against immigration is hardening. With jobs disappearing, the sight of non-natives still employed has been stirring resentment and political parties have been quick to capitalise on the atavistic sentiment. In a recent election in the Netherlands, anti-Islam activist Geert Wilders' antiimmigration Party for Freedom tripled in strength in Parliament. In addition to restricting immigration, the French government is even considering stopping the outsourcing of call centre operations to Francophone countries like Morocco, Tunisia and Senegal. Economic anxiety has joined with the cultural fear of others to push centre-right parties towards racist, anti-immigrant policies, from legislating against building minarets in Switzerland to banning face veils in France. In Italy, the centrist People of Freedom bloc has joined hands with the pro-fascist National Alliance party to oppose immigration. The British government recently joined the wave and ordered a cap on the number of non-European Union migrants who can work in Britain.

Such behaviour is not restricted to the West. The mayor of the Israeli port city of Eilat has launched a campaign to "save the city" from African migrants, the majority of whom are asylum seekers from war-ridden Eritrea and Sudan, or economic migrants from Central Africa. Even the central American state of Ecuador (a quarter of whose 14 million population are immigrant workers in Spain and the United States) has begun expelling thousands of illegal immigrants from Cuba and Nigeria. It seems many went to Ecuador as a way station to the US. Anti-immigration sentiment in the US has reached a new high, with Arizona passing legislation to detain and deport illegal immigrants. The measure enjoys strong popular support and politicians in 18 states plan to follow Arizona's lead. The US has shed eight million jobs since the Great Recession began and the government concedes that unemployment will not fall below 9 per cent for at least another year. In this climate, politicians find it easy to take tough stands against immigrants. "There are 15 million unemployed workers in America and 8 million illegal immigrants in the labour force," says a Republican congressman from Texas. "We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers." If it were only that simple. Most of those jobs are of a kind with few takers. As if to prove the point, the US farm workers' union set up a website detailing the gruelling labour required and urging hardworking but unemployed Americans to apply. Over 8,000 inquired, but only three persevered to actually get hired. Such inconvenient facts will not deter politicians even if it is clear that deporting millions of people would be difficult to implement and virtually impossible to pay for, not to mention the high price of removing a vast labour force that does all kinds of manual work and basically keeps America running. The long-term solution would be to legalise illegals on paying a fine, and turn them into tax-paying citizens. But such a policy, however sensible, is a tough sell to an electorate seized with fear. The author is director of publications at the Yale Centre for the Study of Globalisation, and editor of YaleGlobal Online.