Immigration key in Austrian elections
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Austrians began voting Sunday morning in national elections that could swing the alpine republic back to the political center after more than six years of influence by the extreme right.
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LAKE LOUISE, Alberta -- Humbled at home, the mighty Austrian men arrived in Lake Louise for the first speed races of the Alpine World Cup campaign eager to flex their muscles and reaffirm their nation&#39;s status as the ski world&#39;s superpower.
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Most limit such voting to local elections and legal immigrants. But state legislatures often intercede.
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A nationalist party rode an anti-immigrant wave Sunday to the best showing of any party in parliamentary elections since World War I, while the Greens made gains by appealing to environmental concerns, according to partial results and projections.
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WARSAW (BBC News) - People in Poland are voting in general elections called two years early, after the collapse of the ruling coalition in a row over a corruption investigation. Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's conservative Law and Justice Party is being challenged by the Civic Platform, led by centre right rival Donald Tusk.  Both parties have their roots in the anti-communist Solidarity movement. Some Poles still believe a coalition between them would give Poland its best chance of stable government. Some are calling these elections the most important since the fall of Communism in 1989. Swiss Votes Being Tallied BERN, Switzerland (SwissInfo) - The rightwing Swiss People's Party and the Greens look set to make the biggest gains in Sunday's parliamentary elections, according to a first nationwide exit poll. The centre-left Social Democrats will most likely be the big losers for the first time in nearly 30 years, according to a survey commissioned by SwissInfo's parent company, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. Switzerland's system of proportional representation means the party cannot hope for an overall majority.  But the campaign has caused deep unease among the large immigrant community. One single issue dominated the election campaign: foreigners. Twenty percent of Switzerland's population is foreign and the now notorious poster from the right-wing Swiss People's Party, in which three white sheep kick a black sheep out of Switzerland, was widely regarded as racist.
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Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, left, and Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, right, during a meeting at the parliament in The Hague, Netherlands, Tuesday, Dec.Comment
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Dutch voters picked a new parliament Wednesday in an election that could determine whether the country's tight immigration rules get even tougher or follow what the opposition calls a more humane path.
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Swiss voters ratified new asylum and immigration laws Sunday making it more difficult for refugees to receive assistance and effectively blocking non-European unskilled workers from entering the country.
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MADRID, Nov 10 (IPS) - Activists, teachers and politicians with the ruling   socialist party in Spain are worried about a decision by  authorities in  schools in the provinces of Madrid and Valencia,  which are governed by the  centre-right Popular Party, to bar  undocumented immigrants who have  completed the 10 years of  compulsory schooling from continuing their  education.
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Swiss voters rejected controversial reforms making it easier for second and third generation immigrants in Switzerland to gain citizenship, official results in a referendum showed.
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A party that openly espouses xenophobic and neo-Nazi views made further inroads in a regional election.
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VENICE, Dec 10 (IPS) - With waves of opposition to tides of immigrants in  Europe, Peter Schatzer has his job cut out. And seeing that the  Mediterranean is the favoured route for migration into Europe,  whether documented or not, he is at the forefront of presenting  the human face of migration before political opposition to it.
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SCHWERIN, Germany  - A far-right anti-foreigner   party has embarrassed German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a   regional election in her home state and delivered a wake-up   call to her 10-month-old government.
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Germany, which has one of the world's fastest growing Jewish communities, is set to tighten liberal immigration laws granting automatic entry to all Jews from the former Soviet Union.
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Investor's Business Daily - Austria's chancellor and Slovakia's prime minister sawed through a red and white border barrier in a symbolic extension of the EU's passport-free zone to former Eastern Bloc nations: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Support for the move is mixed, with the head of the EU's border watchdog agency warning that it will fuel illegal immigration.
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GENEVA - Voters in Switzerland - where one in five residents is foreign-born - rejected liberalizing tough rules on granting citizenship Sunday.    Reflecting the divide between French-speaking areas and the more conservative German region, two government-backed citizenship proposals failed to win support in a majority of the 26 cantons, official results showed by early afternoon...
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In an election-year battle over  immigration, congressional Republicans said on Tuesday they  plan to take the issue directly to voters with hearings across  the country on whether millions of illegal immigrants should  have a path to citizenship.