immigration

Australia's continued detention of about 1,000 refugees and asylum-seekers on two remote Pacific islands has garnered international criticism as details emerge of alarming rates of attempted suicide and poor medical care.

Yet many Australians see the island detention centers as a necessary deterrent to keep the country from being overrun by a tide of migrant boats from Indonesia.

On this edition of Global Journalist, a look at the conditions for the hundreds of migrants who have spent years in Australian detention on Nauru and Manus and the debate about their fate in Australia.

Climate change has brought more intense storms and worsening “king tides” that flood through homes and gardens in the low-lying Pacific island nation of Kiribati. Even more critically, the encroaching seas are threatening the country’s dwindling supplies of freshwater.

Island nations like Kiribati have been among those most damaged already by climate change - and their situation is likely to grow worse.

Nearly all of these emissions, of course, are generated in large countries thousands of miles away from Kiribati.

On this edition of Global Journalist, we discuss the challenges for island nations like Kiribati threatened by climate change - and the chances that its people will successfully adapt to them. 

Agreements with countries like Turkey, Sudan and Libya have helped the European Union dramatically cut the flow of migrants to the continent.

But some of these partnerships have generated controversy amid concerns that the Libyan and Sudanese forces helping Europe keep migrants away are involved in the illegal detention, torture and trafficking of asylum-seekers.

On this edition of Global Journalist, a look at the costs and benefits of the EU's immigration policy and its efforts to stop would-be migrants hundreds of miles from Europe's borders.

For many people, the thought of spending your life next to the aquamarine waters of the Caribbean is an envious one.

But for many people in the tiny fishing village of Cajio Beach in western Cuba - it’s something they only want to escape. Life for them is a constant struggle and filled with disappointments. 

Few have hope for a better life in Cuba - and so the only promise for many is to board a raft or small boat in hopes of making the 90 mile journey to the United States alive. This glimpse into life in Communist Cuba 59 years after Fidel Castro’s revolution is depicted in a richly detailed new documentary called “Voices of the Sea.”  

Directed by the British-American filmmaker Kim Hopkins, the film screened in March at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri and will air in the fall on PBS as part of its POV strand of documentaries.  

On this special edition of Global Journalist, an in-depth interview with Hopkins about the making of this remarkable film and life in modern Cuba.

Overpopulation has been debated since British economist Thomas Malthus famously warned in 1798 that humans could reproduce far faster than they could increase their food supply.

But since Malthus's time, world population has grown from 800 million to 7.5 billion today. Yet worries about overpopulation are back. In part that's because lots more people are on the way, complicating efforts to deal with problems like climate change and water scarcity.

The UN forecasts that in the near future the world will add about 83 million people annually. By 2100, world population will grow to 11.2 billion.

On this edition of Global Journalist: a look at the growth of human population and the debate about its risks.

Back in 2015, the immigration crisis in Europe was in headlines all over the world. Since then the numbers of people crossing the by sea to the continent has declined from more than 1 million annually to just 126,000 through early September of this year, according to the U.N.'s migration agency. 

But many problems remain unresolved. Not least for the tens of thousands of migrants who arrived in Europe over the past few years and still find themselves in legal limbo. On this edition of Global Journalist, we look at Europe's tortured efforts to address the problem, and get an up close view at conditions for migrants in France and Greece. 

On this two-part edition of Global Journalist, we look at political corruption in Malaysia and a controversial new film about migration to Europe.

In Malaysia, the country's politics have been in turmoil for two years amid a corruption scandal involving the prime minister and allegations of money laundering in a government investment fund known as 1MDB.

Joining the program to talk about why the allegations have received little coverage in the southeast Asian nation's media is Nicholas Cheng of the Malaysian newspaper The Star.

In a separate interview, the Dutch filmmaker Guido Hendrikx speaks about his new film "Stranger in Paradise," a hard-edged look at how migrants are received in Europe. The film has shown at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and the 2017 True/False Film Festival in Missouri.

About 100 people gathered for a lunchtime protest outside Sen. Roy Blunt’s office Tuesday to voice their opposition to various aspects of President Donald Trump’s agenda.

CoMo for Progress, a progressive community group, organized the event to address President Trump’s recent cabinet picks and his executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

Protestors chanted, held signs and delivered letters expressing their concerns to Sen. Blunt’s local office staff.

For months now, the world has watched as more than a million refugees and migrants from countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have risked their lives to try and find safe haven in Europe.

But this influx has created enormous tensions in the European Union about how many newcomers to accept and which countries should take them. Governments in Sweden and Germany have each taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants–and taken criticism both from other European states and their own people.

So, who foots the bill for settling the hundreds of thousands of immigrants? And if no one, where will these people go?

The New York Times published an investigative piece on the high price of cheap nails. The article quickly got people to think twice about bargain salons, and regulation changes are already underway. Missouri School of Journalism professors Amy Simons, Earnest Perry and Mike McKean discuss the issue on the weekly media criticism program, "Views of the News." 

For more, follow Views of the News on  Facebook ,  Twitter, and  YouTube.    

When Jon Slutsky’s dairy farm in Wellington, Colo. is fully staffed, it’s a moment to celebrate. A full roster of employees at Slutsky’s La Luna Dairy is rare these days.

“We’re doing really well with our employee base,” Slutsky said. “A year ago, we couldn’t say that. We were short.”

With the farm’s 1,500 cows waiting to be milked, Slutsky and his wife Susan Moore felt panicked, worried they didn’t have enough hands on deck to milk about 200 cows per hour.

“That’s what pays the bills for a place like this is milk sales,” Slutsky said. “We were short 5 milkers out of 11.”

Don’t waste what can be used to sustain—that’s the idea behind PlanetReuse, a Kansas City-based company that helps contractors exchange reclaimed construction materials that would otherwise be headed to the landfill. Missouri Business Alert’s Yizhu Wang sat down with founder and CEO Nathan Benjamin at Columbia’s Sustainapalooza to talk about the firm and what it means to be the self-described “go-to solution for reuse.”

While doing research for the Harvest Public Media series “In the Shadows of the Slaughterhouse,” reporters Abbie Fentress Swanson and Peggy Lowe called roughly two dozen institutions to get statistics about the children of immigrant and refugee workers at American meatpacking plants. Swanson said she called federal agencies, researchers, unions, and immigration advocacy groups. But she couldn't find anyone who kept data on how many of these children live in the U.S., not to mention their health, education or economic status.

“They’re not on anyone’s radar,” Swanson said. “They’re not being tracked or followed, they’re kind of an invisible population in this country.”

In the Shadows of the Slaughterhouse, part 1: Attracted to stable jobs in the meatpacking industry, communities of immigrants are springing up across rural America. Many small, rural towns, however, struggle to provide much more than instruction.

It’s almost 9 a.m., and Noel Primary School teacher Erin McPherson is helping a group of Spanish-speaking students complete English language exercises. But it’s tough going.

This is the latest installment of Harvest Public Media’s Field Notes, in which reporters talk to newsmakers and experts about important issues related to food production.

Earlier this month, a “Gang of Eight” bipartisan senators introduced an immigration bill that would grant low-skilled immigrant workers the opportunity to stay in the United States legally without a green card, among other reforms. Called “W-visas,” these visas would allow immigrants to fill positions that don’t require bachelor’s degrees for three years.