June 20-27, 2022 Mixed Migration—hebdo
This week, we briefly reflect on a dispiriting week for human rights in the U.S. & UK, and on the confluence of migration rights & reproductive rights amid the outsized power wielded by the far right.
Welcome to Mixed Migration—hebdo! Here, in the time it takes to read one feature, you get a global sweep of the last week's most relevant migration policy developments, along with links to all the articles you need to dig deeper.
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Spotlight
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made access to abortion a constitutionally protected right. A few days prior, the UK introduced a bill to overturn the 1998 Human Rights Act, which codified the European Convention on Human Rights into British Law, to replace it with a domestic bill of rights.
Both moves culminate generational far-right political projects. The campaign against reproductive rights in the U.S. is coterminal with movements to reduce immigration into, and repress immigrants within, U.S. soil. The UK’s intended repeal of the Human Rights Act, for its part, is a direct reaction to the European Court of Human Rights’ intervention to enjoin its inaugural deportation flight to Rwanda two weeks ago, pending the completion of litigation in UK courts on behalf of potential deportees.
Global migration is complex and should never be explained in binary terms. At risk of committing malpractice, I would like to propose that—generally—labor migrants tend to (try to) move from places of lesser opportunity to places of greater opportunity, and that asylum seekers tend to (try to) move from places of lesser political freedom to places of greater political freedom. The U.S. and UK did not become two of the world’s most attractive destinations for migrants by chance. Flawed as they are, they remain remarkably successful nations in offering opportunity and political freedom; flawed as they are, the U.S. and UK remain host to vibrant debates and to brilliant civil society initiatives to smooth out their respective flaws. These initiatives exist apposite from far-right movements—claiming to represent a majority of people, actually representing just a minority of voters—that, by taking advantage of anachronisms in each country’s electoral mechanisms and political institutions, have seized outsized power and are using it to keep politics firmly in the hands of declining white majorities.
Grievance politics, turbo-charged by social media, delivered self-destructive nihilism in electoral form in the 2016 Brexit referendum and U.S. Presidential election. Six years on, rights-protection was grievously wounded, this last week, in two of the world’s most inviting countries (again, flaws notwithstanding) to be an immigrant. Make no mistake: the rights of migrants are inextricably bound up with the broader civic and human rights of every person in the U.S. and UK. Protecting migrant rights and reproductive rights are coterminal projects—and desperately important ones at that.
Last week could represent the high-water mark for the U.S. and UK’s toxic far-right. It could also represent just a waystation in a prolonged descent—from inclusive societies capable of acknowledging and correcting their flaws, however slowly, to exclusive societies committed to preventing the many from accessing the rights of the few. Civil society has a gargantuan task ahead—its first step the toppling of the present UK government, its second a convincing defeat of the far right in this November’s U.S. Congressional elections.
At the moment, neither outcome feels any likelier than a coin toss to me—and yet we have no choice. The promise of rights, reproductive or migratory, is a genie that will not go back into its bottle. The choice is not between resistance and submission to the status quo as of July 2022, but rather between resistance and further rights-repression—which can only lead us from (small-d) democratic decline to democratic atrophy, and in the long run to conflict. No matter how disadvantaged our political position, the present moment is our last best chance to protect our rights—and to preserve our democracy.
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On to the news…
Asia
Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Monday, a bomb attack targeted the town of Shirgar in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar Province, killing 2 civilians and wounding 28. | On Tuesday, The New Humanitarian highlighted alarming increases in measles transmission across Afghanistan, with NGOs struggling to keep up as malnutrition weakens infected individuals’ ability to combat the virus. On the same day, border dwellers near Qandahar reported problems crossing into Pakistan at the Spin Boldak and Chaman border crossings, complaining of Pakistani border police turning back those holding valid documents. | On Wednesday, a 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province, killing ~1.000 people and injuring another ~600. On the same day, Afghan authorities reported that flooding across 19 central and eastern provinces had killed ~400 civilians and displaced unknown numbers. | On Thursday, authorities revised upwards the casualty toll of the prior day’s earthquake to 1.100 fatalities and 1.600 injured. On the same day, German authorities announced a deal with Pakistan to relocate ~10.000 Afghan refugees who had formerly collaborated with Germany’s mission to Afghanistan, and have since then fled across the Durand Line. | On Friday, authorities tallied 3.000 destroyed homes in Afghanistan’s eastern Pakitka and Khost provinces. | This Monday, UN-OCHA head Martin Griffiths announced the release of $10 million in support for earthquake victims in Afghanistan. On the same day, educational authorities in Afghanistan’s eastern Nuristan province tallied that just 60 of its 214 schools had functional buildings, leaving the majority of the province’s children to study outdoors or in temporary structures.
Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Monday, several thousand civilians were displaced by artillery strikes on their villages from Yinmabin township in Myanmar’s central Sagaing province. | On Tuesday, local authorities issued updated reports on the scale of flooding in India’s northeastern Assam State and in northern Bangladesh, with 100 fatalities, 9.5 people stranded by floodwaters, and 4.7 million displaced in Assam State alone. | This Monday, local resistance forces reported that ~7.000 civilians had fled army attacks and the torching of their villages in Myanmar’s southern Mon State.
Shifts (perhaps) in asylum practices in Japan, migrant worker confinement in Singapore
Last Tuesday, the Washington Post highlighted that Japanese authorities have admitted 1.316 Ukrainian evacuees thus far this year—in contrast to 74 refugees from around the world in 2021—with public opinion and political leaders suggesting a tentative interest in shifting from Japan’s historical inaccessibility to refugees. | On Friday, authorities in Singapore lifted strict lockdown requirements on migrant workers, kept in place long past after being lifted for Singaporean nationals, maintaining only the requirement to obtain a permit to visit certain high-footfall areas on Sundays and public holidays.
Flooding-borne displacement in China and India
Last Wednesday, Chinese authorities reported major flooding in southern Jiangxi province, forcing ~500.000 people from their homes, as greater flooding is expected in coming weeks. | On Sunday, authorities reported that ~200.000 people had been displaced to over 564 IDP camps by floods affecting over 2.500 villages across India’s northeastern state of Assam. | This Monday, authorities reported heavy flooding and disruptions in China’s eastern Shandong province, home to 100 million people.
Sources: TOLOnews, TNH, the Guardian, InfoMigrants, the Irrawaddy, al Jazeera, the Washington Post, AFP, AP, Reuters.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Pan-African student mobility
Last Wednesday, the African Union announced the African Credit Transfer system, allowing university students across Africa to transfer credits from one university to another to better integrate university study and improve degree recognition across the continent.
Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Tuesday, former head of UN-OCHA Mark Lowcock accused the Chinese and Russian missions to the UN of delaying discussions of the Tigray conflict in the UN Security Council, deflecting attention from the fighting and its humanitarian impact. | On Thursday, Afar State reported that 8.000 IDPs had returned from Dubti camp through June, as a combination of conflict reduction and poor living conditions in camps induce IDPs in northern Ethiopia to chance returning to their home communities. On the same day, on the heels of an EU appeal for fuel deliveries to facilitate humanitarian access in Tigray, Ethiopian authorities dismissed representations of a fuel shortage as a myth propagated by the TPLF to garner international sympathy while rearming itself.
Drought and food insecurity in the Horn of Africa
Last Tuesday, IOM tallied 8 million acutely food insecure people in Ethiopia, the displacement of 300.000, and the death of 1.5 million head of livestock as a result of Ethiopia’s ongoing drought (see IOM’s full report here). | On Wednesday, the WFP made an urgent appeal for a dramatic increase in humanitarian funding for its Horn of Africa response, warning there were 89 million acutely food insecure people across the region—a 90% increase from last year—with 213.000 people in Somalia expected to face famine in September unless aid is immediately scaled up. | On Thursday, the FAO called for the urgent deployment of $96 million in aid to farmers in Tigray, ahead of a promising rainy season, to ensure they do not miss the July-August planting season. | On Friday, the World Bank announced a $715 million deal to provide food security financing to Ethiopia.
Conflict and repatriation in the Great Lakes area
Last Monday, the East African Community approved a troop deployment to North Kivu in the eastern DRC to combat M23 rebels and reduce tensions between Congolese and Rwandan forces. On the same day, authorities in South Kivu tallied the returns of ~1.000 Burundian and 182 Rwandan refugees to their respective countries of origin, with another ~80.000 refugees, mainly from Burundi, remaining in the region. | On Thursday, regional authorities tallied that the first 40 of 80 first-phase households had been relocated from Loliondo to Msmomera in northeastern Tanzania, as part of a controversial plan to remove Maasai pastoralists from a game-controlled area on ancestral Maasai land. | On Saturday, Ugandan authorities disclosed that ~800 children had been separated from their families as a result of fighting in the DRC’s cross-border Rutshuru district. | On Sunday, the Association of Rwandan Refugees in Mozambique appealed for Mozambican authorities to commit to upholding the 1951 Refugee Convention, on the heels of the signing of an extradition agreement between Rwanda and Mozambique earlier this month, which opponents of the Kagame regime exiled in Mozambique fear will be used to target and forcibly return them. | This Monday, health authorities rang the alarm over spiking COVID-19 transmission in Uganda, coinciding with an increase in refugee arrivals from the DRC amid low regional vaccination rates.
Displacement in the Sahel
Last Monday, authorities in Burkina Faso ordered civilians to evacuate two regions, in northern Soum province near the border with Mali, and in a southern nature preserve near the border with Benin, ahead of military operations against sectarian insurgents. | On Friday, Nigeria’s Committee on the Repatriation, Returns and Resettlement of Displaced Persons in the North-East ordered preparations for the return to northeastern Borno State of ~20.000 refugees currently exiled in Cameroon. | On Saturday, Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency distributed food aid to 26.000 households encamped in Madinatu, intending to expand assistance to further IDP camps in northeastern Borno State.
Sources: the EastAfrican, Devex, VOA, Addis Standard, the Guardian, HumAngle, Mail & Guardian, Reuters, BusinessDay, Vanguard.
Middle East and North Africa
Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region
Last Monday, Médecins San Frontières issued a report tallying barely over 1.650 humanitarian from Libya’s ghastly asylum seeker detention centers last year, out of a total population of ~40.000, imploring host states to step up and dramatically increase evacuations (see MSF’s full report here). | On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkey’s 2014 forcible repatriation of Muhammad Fawzi Akkad, a Syrian refugee holding a valid Turkish residency permit, violated domestic and European law (see the full ECHR ruling here). On the same day, authorities operated the 94th deportation flight to depart Turkish soil thus far this year, having repatriated over 42.500 asylum seekers since January, including just under 24.350 Afghans and just over 6.000 Pakistanis. | On Thursday, Deutsche-Welle relayed the testimonials of 2 of the 38.000 Ethiopians detained in abusive conditions over the last 2 years in Saudi Arabia, and repatriated in the last 3 months following an agreement between Riyadh and Addis Ababa. | On Friday, a disturbance broke out at the border of Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla as 2.000 asylum seekers tried to rush the fence, killing at least 23 asylum seekers and injuring another 76, as well as 140 Moroccan border police. | On Saturday, Spanish NGOs denounced the gratuitous violence employed by security forces at the border of Morocco and Melilla on the day prior, attributing to it an updated estimate of 37 fatalities.
Sources: HumAngle, Reuters, Daily Sabah, DW, AFP, eldiario.
Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West
Ruta Canaria
Last Monday, Moroccan authorities announced they had intercepted 105 asylum seekers in the Atlantic, attempting to reach the Canary Islands, returning them to Moroccan soil for processing by national gendarmes. | On Wednesday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 44 asylum seekers from a distressed vessel in waters ~110 nautical miles south of Gran Canaria. | On Saturday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 54 asylum seekers, including a pregnant woman, from a distressed vessel in waters off of Lanzarote.
Central and western Mediterranean
Last Monday, IOM disclosed that, over the week prior, Libyan Coast Guard vessels had pulled back 590 asylum seekers and retrieved 6 lifeless bodies from at least 8 interceptions. | On Thursday, the Sea-Eye 4 and the Aita Mari (Maydayterraneo) disembarked 470 and 112 asylum seekers, respectively, in Sicily. | This Monday, the Civil Fleet announced that the Sea-Watch 4, the Ocean Viking (SOS Méditerranée), and the Louise Michel had rescued 519 asylum seekers over the previous week, as the Nadir (RESQSHIP) disembarked 19 asylum seekers in Lampedusa.
Aegean Sea
Last Monday, Greek authorities announced they had arrested 6 asylum seekers from the 108 rescued from a distressed vessel near the Aegean island of Mykonos in the weekend prior, charging them with human trafficking, endangerment, and forming part of a criminal organization. | On Wednesday, Alarm Phone signaled that a group of 29 asylum seekers had reached the uninhabited islet of Barbarias just off the coast of Lesvos on the night before, urging their quick rescue and registration with the asylum service. | This Monday, the lifeless bodies of 2 asylum seekers washed up on a beach in Lesvos, as Greek authorities claimed to have prevented the maritime arrivals of 1.130 asylum seekers over the weekend.
Gulf of Mexico
Last Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard repatriated 190 Cuban and Haitian asylum seekers, intercepted at sea in operations off of Haiti and the Florida Keys, and reported they had retrieved 2 lifeless bodies from the sea. | On Saturday, 22 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously in Key West, where they were apprehended by the Border Patrol.
Sources: Morocco World News, Europa Press, EFE, InfoMigrants, GreekReporter, the Miami Herald, 7 News Miami.
Europe
EUropean migration policymaking
Last Monday, Italian National Ombudsman for Detainee Rights Mauro Palma testified before Parliament that irregular arrivals to Italy are back to pre-pandemic levels and likely to remain there for years to come, urging parliamentarians to reform Italy’s hotspot-driven and repatriation-oriented approach. On the same day, Coldiretti tallied just under 360.000 foreign workers in Italy’s agricultural sector—comprising just under 30% of the workforce—and demanded faster and more flexible visa issuance for migrant farmworkers. | On Wednesday, 18 EU member states signed a solidarity mechanism providing for the automatic yearly relocation of ~10.000 asylum seekers from Med5 states. On the same day, Finnish authorities introduced a measure in Parliament to establish a border procedure, allowing expedited review of asylum claims in the event of sudden mass arrivals. | On Friday, 6 Greek CSOs comprising the Informal Forced Returns Recording Mechanism delivered to the European Parliament LIBE committee a report documenting systemic breaches of European migration law at Greece’s external borders (read the full report here). On the same day, Frontex fell under scrutiny, again, for refusing to disclose details of it continuing collaboration with Hungary to conduct rejected asylum seeker repatriations, despite Hungarian authorities’ well-documented and sanctioned violations of European immigration law.
Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Monday, High Court Judge Swift denied temporary relief to 3 Sudanese victims of trafficking demanding to be released from immigration detention pending adjudication of their asylum petitions. | On Tuesday, UK authorities leaked they will announce measures this week authorizing Ukrainian children with valid entry visas and willing host families under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, but intending to travel alone, to enter UK soil with written parental authorization. | On Wednesday, the Oxford Migration Observatory revealed that, of the 3.632 people denied asylum in the UK in 2020, only 314 had been removed from UK soil, with only 113 removals taking place in 2021, suggesting the Home Office may be relying on its hostile environment to impel rejected asylum seekers to move, rather than use its enforcement capacity to compel repatriation. On the same day, the Independent revealed that UK authorities have detained at least 18 newly arrived asylum seekers despite uncertainty as to whether its detention-to-deportation policies will hold up in court. | On Thursday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted it was possible that irregularly arriving Ukrainian refugees could be deported to Rwanda under the Home Office’s relocation plan, though he qualified it was a highly unlikely outcome. | On Friday, inews revealed that in late May, the UK Coast Guard ordered the confinement in port of a decommissioned RNLI search-and-rescue boat formerly sold to Search and Rescue Relief and redeployed to the Mediterranean—presumably beyond the range of its UK-issued search-and-rescue certification. | On Saturday, the Observer and Liberty Investigates revealed that 107 asylum seekers have perished in Home Office accommodation between April 2016 and May 2022—including 17 suicides—a far higher number than previously disclosed. | On Sunday, advocacy organization Refugees for Justice announced the launch of an independent inquiry into the treatment of asylum seekers housed in hotels in Scotland by Home Office contractors during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Wednesday, euobserver highlighted frustrating bureaucratic barriers to receiving and providing for Ukrainian refugees in Brussels, where authorities are slow to turn over residency permits, landlords accustomed to issuing multi-year leases are reluctant to rent to families with 1-year residency permits, with an increasing number of Ukrainians facing homelessness. | On Thursday, municipal authorities in Brno announced they had canceled a plan to build an encampment to host Romani refugees from Ukraine, with city officials and the Czech Human Rights Commission working to identify and stand up suitable long-term accommodation. | On Friday, U.S. authorities issued new data tallying 71.000 Ukrainian refugee arrivals since March, including 22.000 who arrived via the U.S.-Mexico border, 15.000 who arrived through the Uniting for Ukraine visa sponsorship scheme (with another 23.000 approved and awaiting travel), and most of the remainder having used other visa pathways to reach U.S. soil. | This Monday, Europol reported it had conducted an action day in late May and identified 9 traffickers preying on Ukrainian refugees across 42 disingenuous refugee support platforms.
Border control and migration enforcement across Europe
Last Wednesday, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Mary Lawlor issued a preliminary report following her visit to Greece, where she documented the increasing criminalization of human rights monitors and of asylum seekers themselves (read her statement here). On the same day, Serbian authorities disclosed there are currently ~7.000 asylum seekers and refugees in Serbia, a 55% increase from June 2021, attributing most of that change to the arrival of refugees from Ukraine. | Also on Wednesday, Paris police cleared an informal encampment hosting ~360 asylum seekers in northeastern Paris, returning the following morning to clear another camp hosting another 30. | On Thursday, authorities in Iraq announced they would form a crisis cell to investigate allegations of abuse by Polish security forces against Iraqi asylum seekers trying to enter Poland via Belarus. | On Friday, a Belgian court concluded a criminal probe into Migration Minister Sammy Mahdi’s response to asylum seeker housing shortages, which led to substantial homelessness among displaced youth, finding no criminal wrongdoing. | This Monday, Amnesty International issued a report documenting deterrence methods used against asylum seekers irregularly arriving in Lithuania from Belarus over year prior, detailing arbitrary detention in squalid conditions and violent pushbacks by Lithuanian security forces (see Amnesty’s full report here).
Sources: ANSA, SchengenVisaInfo, RSA, euobserver, the Guardian, the Independent, the Standard, inews, Romea.cz, NBC News, InfoMigrants, the New Arab, The Brussels Times, DW.
The Americas
U.S. migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, Reuters revealed the abduction of 3 asylum seekers awaiting adjudication of their U.S. claims in Mexico, under the renewed Migrant Protection Protocols, while under the provision of municipal official in Nuevo Laredo. | On Wednesday, CBP reported just under 239.500 encounters with asylum seekers in May, the 4th consecutive monthly increase, adding that ~ 25% of those intercepted last May had attempted to irregularly enters the U.S. at least once before, before being summarily expelled under Title 42. | On Thursday, the Associated Press highlighted a substantial acceleration in the release of asylum seekers from confinement on parole—offering 1-year of deportation protection, within which parolees are expected to petition for asylum on their own initiative—with ~207.000 between August 2021 and this May, 51.132 of whom were released this May. | On Friday, a medical examiner’s report into the death of an asylum seeker in Border Patrol custody indicated he had perished of stab wounds, strongly suggesting foul play.
Migration and its drivers in Latin America
Last Tuesday, authorities in Costa Rica signaled that the 60.000 asylum petitions filed by Nicaraguan claimants in 2021 represents a level of flight unseen since Nicaragua’s 1980s civil war, with asylum authorities straining under a backlog of ~130.000 pending claims. On the same day, the leading 500 asylum seekers of the northbound caravan reached the town of Monclova in the border state of Coahuila, with another 5.000 caravan members believed to be approaching the regional capital of Monterrey. | On Wednesday, Mexican authorities disclosed there are ~116.000 asylum seekers in Mexico with pending claims in the U.S. immigration system, as well as another 224.000 in Mexico holding humanitarian set to expire within June 2022. On the same day, Mexican authorities announced a U.S. commitment to disincentivize irregular migration by issuing 150.000 guest worker visas to Mexican and third-country nationals currently in Mexico. Also on Wednesday, Panamanian authorities disclosed that just under 46.500 asylum seekers had crossed Panama thus far this year, nearly doubling the figure for the first half of 2021. | On Friday, a novel caravan composed of ~3.000 asylum seekers set off from Tapachula, mobilizing after its members tried and failed to regularize their status in the southern Mexican city. | On Sunday, authorities disclosed that just under 48.000 Honduran asylum seekers have been repatriated thus far this year, the majority to San Pedro Sula. On the same day, advocates denounced that, despite its illegality, Mexican immigration authorities detained asylum seeking children just under 75.600 times in 2021. Also on Sunday, authorities in Panama announced the launch of construction of a reception center in San Vicente, on the northern side of the Darién Gap, to be completed this July and offer capacity to host 544 asylum seekers. | This Monday, Mexican authorities announced they had dispersed the latest asylum seeker caravan to depart from Tapachula over the weekend, issuing humanitarian visas to its ~3.000 participants. On the same day, Guatemalan authorities announced they expect 15 repatriation flights to return rejected asylum seekers from the U.S. and Mexico over the coming week.
Sources: Reuters, AP, infobae, VOA, La Razón, Expansión, EFE, La Prensa, ZonaDocs, eco, elPeriódico.
Oceania
Australia’s offshore asylum processing system—and its harms
Last Thursday, asylum seekers in offshore containment appealed for help as Nauru’s strict lockdown, reacting to the recent arrival of COVID-19 to the island, has left refugees without access to banking or to the retail outlets they need to obtain food and medication, and meet other basic needs. | On Saturday, the Guardian highlighted the dilemmas facing marginalized Sri Lankans, amid the island’s economic meltdown, as smugglers dangle false promises of asylum and opportunity in Australia, and as Australian authorities double down on shipboard processing of asylum claims and expedited return to countries of origin.
Sources: The Sydney Morning Herald, the Guardian.
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