The Know Daily - Thursday 6 June 2024

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🗣️ Immigration on the agenda | 🧖‍♀️ This summer’s workplace trend | 🔬 A bowel breakthrough 

A science museum in northern Italy has created a butterfly forest modelled on the Udzungwa Mountains in Tanzania, a biodiversity hotspot. The model was designed to bring attention to the important work being done in Tanzania to study and protect butterflies, who play a bunch of important roles in the local ecosystem and are highly sensitive to environmental changes 🦋

🗣️ Immigration on the agenda

Immigration is shaping up to be a hot topic in both the US and UK elections, as all major candidates appear to shift to the right on the issue. 

What’s going on in the US?
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that will allow authorities to quickly deport migrants who are caught crossing the US-Mexico border, if the daily number of crossing exceeds 2,500 (which they do on a regular basis at the moment). The move has been criticised by human rights activists, as those crossing the border will have little chance to seek asylum. Meanwhile, Republicans have said the policy does not go far enough.

Why is Biden’s move significant? 
It’s the most restrictive immigration stance from a Democratic politician in decades, and shows how politics around immigration have shifted to the right in recent decades. According to CNN, Biden has pulled from his rival Donald Trump’s “immigration playbook”, as he looks to address one of his most pressing political problems ahead of the presidential election in November.

Biden’s new border shutdown plan uses the same executive authority that Trump used while in office to ban people from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US. Nevertheless, CNN pointed out that Trump and Biden do still talk about immigration differently, as while Trump tends to use “over-the-top rhetoric to demonise migrants”, Biden has expressed an “openness” to immigrants. 

So what’s going on in the UK?
Across the pond, immigration has also been a key topic ahead of the general election on 4 July, featuring prominently in the TV debate between Labour leader Keir Starmer and PM Rishi Sunak on Tuesday night. 

Both leaders made it clear that they want to reduce immigration, although they differ on how to get there. Sunak still wants to go ahead with his flagship scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda - and while Starmer has said he would cancel that policy, he has promised to get immigration down by “reducing reliance on overseas workers”. However, business groups have expressed concern at such a pledge, pointing out that the UK needs foreign workers to help ease labour shortages.