European parliament president says ‘history made’ with vote to pass changes, which have been criticised by NGOs

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Sweeping changes to the EU’s migration laws have been passed in a knife-edge series of votes in the European parliament, with supporters of the new laws calling the move historic but NGOs saying they are a step back for human rights.

The vote on Wednesday, which is now expected to be rubber-stamped by the member states, ends eight years of deadlock over repeated efforts to tighten up border management and asylum processes in the 27-member bloc.

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MEPs asked to vote on more than 10 different bills aiming at reforming incoherent migration laws across bloc, amid criticism from Left group

Malin Björk from the Swedish Left Party said the vote will not resolve problems, and that the Left group will not be supporting it.

There is no real solidarity, and there will be more of what is not working, she said. There will be detention, dehumanisation, violence, humiliation, she added.

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Proponents of legislation for bloc say it will take away far-right arguments but critics claim the opposite

The European parliament is to vote on Wednesday on sweeping new laws to overhaul its migration policy amid renewed criticism that it is feeding the agenda of the extreme right rather than protecting vulnerable people.

Ylva Johansson, the home affairs commissioner who was the driving force behind the legislation, said on Tuesday that with the reforms aimed at “managing migration in an orderly way”, the 27-member bloc was taking a step towards neutralising the populist far right.

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A new income threshold means only the richest 30% of employed Britons will be able to bring their partners here. It’s unspeakably cruel

Six years ago almost to the day, with my 15-month-old daughter strapped to my chest, I fought back tears, waved my husband off at Bengaluru airport in India and boarded a plane back to the UK. I wasn’t sure when I’d see him again, or when he’d see his child.

Even though he was the foreign spouse of a British citizen (at that point, we had been married for more than five years) and the father of a British child, he had no right to accompany us when we relocated to the UK. This despite the protestations of friends and relatives, who felt sure we’d not done our research properly.

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Interior minister says island’s facilities at breaking point and calls for aid to Lebanon similar to recent Egypt pact

The EU must help Cyprus deal with record numbers of Syrian migrants from Lebanon, the island’s government says.

Before a visit to Beirut to discuss the emergency on Monday, Cyprus’s interior minister appealed for support from Brussels, saying the country’s reception facilities were at breaking point.

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Palestinians arriving in Australia on visitor visas are facing hardship – and community organisations are stepping in to help

Alaa leans back in his chair after a hearty iftar at Shanglish, a Sydney restaurant that has been offering free dinners to Palestinian refugees.

“Without their generosity, we would struggle to eat at all,” he says.

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Two teenage boys star in Matteo Garrone’s passionate exposé of how greed, trauma and corruption drive the modern-day slave trade in would-be migrants

Matteo Garrone’s new film is part adventure story, part slavery drama; the slavery which did not in fact vanish with the end of the American civil war, but thrives in the globalised present day without needing to shapeshift too much, driven by the age-old forces of geopolitics and the market.

Seydou and Moussa, played by nonprofessional acting newcomers Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall, are 16-year-old cousins in Dakar, Senegal, dreaming of escape to the fabled land of the EU as refugees, where they expect to go viral and make a fortune as music stars like the people they’re watching on TikTok. For years they have been writing songs and secretly working on building sites while pretending to go to football practice, amassing cash savings which in the succeeding months they will hand over to various gangmasters, fixers and corrupt gun-wielding soldiers.

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Exclusive: Visas created hastily to solve labour shortages expose people to ‘hyper-precarity’ and exploitation

Visas created hastily to solve labour shortages as a result of Brexit have put workers at greater risk of modern slavery and exploitation, research has found.

Strict conditions on agricultural and care visas created after Britain left the EU expose workers to “hyper-precarity” and increase their vulnerability to exploitation, a study by a coalition of leading universities and charities has concluded. Since Brexit, farm workers and care home workers have had a route to Britain on time-limited visas with stringent conditions.

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As a young Liberian woman in survival mode, Cynthia Erivo carries Anthony Chen’s unassuming drama

Understated, but with a mesmerising, shell-shocked stillness, British actor Cynthia Erivo’s arresting central performance gives this earnest drama by Singaporean director Anthony Chen ( Ilo Ilo , Wet Season ) its emotional heft. She plays Jacqueline, a traumatised refugee from war-torn Liberia who has recently arrived on a Greek island. The jagged, rocky terrain of her new home evokes her fractured mental state. But even in survival mode, subsisting on scavenged leftovers and small change, Jacqueline is too proud to beg. That same dignity prompts her to invent a story – a husband and a hotel room – when she strikes up a friendship with an empathic American tour guide, Callie (Alia Shawkat). This portrait of lost souls connecting is unassuming, but quietly powerful.

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