"…lawlessness at the Melilla border fence is inevitable when migration policymaking begins and ends with bordering."
June 27-July 4, 2022 Mixed Migration—hebdo
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
Last week, NATO issued a new Strategic Concept at its Madrid summit, including irregular mass migration among potential hybrid threats to be monitored and countered in coming years. That this happened just a few days after NATO member Greece was credibly exposed, yet again, to be conducting horrendously violent illegal pushbacks on the Greco-Turkish land border; that this happened just a few days after several dozen asylum seekers were killed at the border of NATO member Spain; reflects how unaware, or how uncaring, (or both,) Western leaders have become to the consequences of managing migration exclusively as a security issue.
Short of doing away with state sovereignty altogether, borders will always be a part of our lives, and it’s unlikely that borders will ever evolve to operate in a way that leaves no one dissatisfied. Just because borders are entrenched into our geopolitics, however, doesn’t make it necessary—or justifiable—for states to operate their borders with such violence. We’re long past the point of needing further study to understand the complexity of migration, as a phenomenon that brings together human rights and development economics, the pursuit of political asylum and the free flow of labor, statesmanship and group psychology. No amount of fencing can reverse the reality that half of Africa’s youth wish to migrate from their countries of residence in the next 3 years. Border securitization, in a world as grotesquely unequal as the one we inhabit, addresses only (and poorly) the symptoms of the mass irregular migration designated by NATO as a threat—all while criminally neglecting its underlying causes.
This toxic feedback loop, where the West treats the consequences of immiseration beyond its borders not by addressing the immiseration, but rather by fortifying its borders, visits only further misery on those trying to flee it. It makes situations like those at the Greco-Turkish and Moroccan-Spanish borders inevitable. If your only tool is hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Lawlessness along the Evros River, lawlessness at the Melilla border fence are inevitable when migration policymaking begins and ends with bordering—all while remaining willfully ignorant to all the remaining complexities of what migration actually is, and how migration actually works.
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On to the news…
Asia
Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Tuesday, U.S. officials leaked that they are discussing possible mechanisms with Taliban leadership to provide funding to the Afghan Central Bank, while erecting mechanisms around any disbursements to ensure they are only used by technocrats to alleviate poverty among Afghan civilians, rather than misused by Taliban leadership to buttress its power. | On Wednesday, German authorities disclosed that, out of just over 33.250 Afghan civilians whom it granted evacuation visas, just under 21.400 had arrived on German soil as of early June, with just over 12.850 still awaiting transfer. | On Thursday, USAID pledged to disburse $55 million to assist victims of last week’s earthquake in Khost and Paktika provinces. | On Friday, the Guardian revealed that UK authorities have yet to evacuate over 170 former embassy staff, all eligible for the Arap evacuation scheme, who remain at risk in Afghanistan 10 months after the initial evacuation despite promises of prompt evacuation last August. On the same day, CBS News revealed that, following critical reporting on the low approval rate for humanitarian parole claims filed by Afghan civilians, USCIS had loosened standards in the spring to expand eligibility beyond those at invidual risk of physical violence. | On Sunday, TOLOnews revealed the displacement of at least 30 families from Afghanistan’s central Sar-e-Pul to Bamiyan provinces following disturbances, relaying their call for humanitarian assistance from officials and NGOs. | This Monday, UK authorities disclosed they had launched a new scheme to allow former employees of the British Council to submit visa applications immediately—though it is yet unclear how they would leave Afghanistan once visas are awarded—and that only 2.000 more Afghan nationals would be resettled to the UK this year.
Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Tuesday, youth in a Rohingya refugee camp near Cox’s Bazaar assaulted an NGO-employed woman teaching in a community center, leading to her hospitalization in critical condition. On the same day, UN-OCHA released its latest humanitarian report on Myanmar, tallying over 758.000 IDPs, ~55.700 of whom were displaced within June (see OCHA’s full report here). | On Thursday, Burmese authorities grounded all maritime transport in and out of Sittwe, in response to the abduction of 2 naval officers by the Arakan Army a week prior, severely restricting human mobility and commercial activity in Rakhine State. | On Friday, another ~7.500 civilians were displaced from Yinmabin Township in Myanmar’s central Sagaing Province as Tatmadaw troops, known to abuse civilians, deployed to the area. | On Saturday, over 250 refugees fled into Thailand from Myawaddy, a border town in Myanmar’s southeastern Kayin State, following deadly airstrikes by Burmese air forces. | On Sunday, between 10.000 and 15.000 civilians were displaced by heavy fighting between the Tatmadaw and resistance groups in Myanmar’s central Sagaing province.
Displacement within and toward India
Last Tuesday, al Jazeera highlighted the displacement of 30 families—some of them for the 3rd time in 65 years—to make way for a coal mine in Sambalpur, in India’s eastern Odisha State. | On Thursday, 4 Sri Lankan asylum seekers arrived in India’s southeastern state of Tamil Nadu, adding up to 96 total arrivals on the heels of Sri Lanka’s economic meltdown.
Sources: The Washington Post, InfoMigrants, TOLOnews, the Guardian, CBS News, New Age Bangladesh, the Irrawaddy, the Nation Thainland, al Jazeera, SNS.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Ethiopia’s wars
Last Monday, Ethiopian authorities announced their 7-man negotiating team to open peace talks with the TPLF in Kenya. On the same day, officials in Ethiopia and Sudane traded accusations of bloodletting in the contested al-Fashqa region, with Sudanese officials claiming 7 of their soldiers had been lured across the border and then executed, as Ethiopian officials claimed the fatalities were the result of an armed clash. | On Wednesday, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission denounced the illegal detention of over 8.550 Tigrayan civilians in squalid conditions in Afar State, demanding their immediate release. On the same day, the World Bank announced it had approved $180 million in development funding to provide services and livelihood opportunities to ~2.5 million displaced people, in complement to existing short-term humanitarian programming. | This Monday, UNICEF disclosed that aid delivery into Tigray has accelerated since the ceasefire agreed to in March, with April’s 170 truck deliveries expected to grow to 1.000 per month in coming months—still far short of the 3.000 monthly deliveries needed.
Displacement and labor mobility in the Great Lakes region
Last Tuesday, provincial health authorities tallied just over 330.000 IDPs in the DRC’s southeastern Tanganyika province, nearly 300.000 of whom are sheltered by host families, nearly half of whom were displaced in the 18 months. On the same day, authorities in Kenya saw off the first 19 Kenyan nurses recruited into the UK’s NHS pursuant to a year-old agreement, a first cohort to be followed by a second 80-strong cohort later this year. | On Wednesday, DRC troops attacked M23 guerillas in North Kivu province, displacing ~5.000 civilians, most of whom fled into Uganda. | On Friday, Save the Children issued a report tallying the displacement of 50.000 civilians, including 30.000 children, from Mozambique’s embattled Cabo Delgado region last June (see StC’s full report here).
Conflict and displacement in the Sahel and Gulf of Guinea
Last Tuesday, community leaders denounced that food supplies were dangerously insufficient at the Katsina IDP camp in northern Nigeria, lamenting 15 fatalities of disease and starvation in recent weeks as a result. | On Wednesday, local officials signaled that increasing fighting in Nigeria’s southeastern Cross River has displaced ~10.000 from the state’s western town of Nko, appealing for humanitarian organizations to urgently deploy. On the same day, authorities in Cameroon completed a 1-week exercise to issue national ID cards to ~6.000 refugees from the CAR, allowing them full mobility across Cameroonian soil and access to the labor market, as the pilot phase for Cameroon’s adoption of responsibility for registering refugees present on its soil—hereto now held by UNHCR.
Sources: AP, Reuters, Addis Standard, Sudan Tribune, VOA, HumAngle, the EastAfrican, Business Day, Daily Post.
Middle East and North Africa
IDP care and maintenance in Syria
Last Monday, the UN Security Council began discussing the renewal of UNSC Resolution 2585, which provides for cross-border aid provision from Turkey into Idlib—90% of whose 4.4 million inhabitants need humanitarian assistance, and 2.8 million of whom are internally displaced—with the Assad regime, patronized by Russia in the Security Council, pushing for the closure of aid corridors as dramatic increases in food prices limit aid effectiveness. | On Tuesday, UN-OHCHR tallied just under 307.000 civilian fatalities over the first 10 years of Syria’s ongoing civil war (see the full UN report here). On the same day, UN Resident Coordinator in Syria Imran Riza disclosed that 106 people have been murdered since January 2021 in the al-Hawl detention camp in northeast Syria, which holds ~56.000 people with suspected ISIS ties—including ~12.000 Europeans whom their home countries have refused to repatriate.
Asylum seeker mobility and morbidity in the MENA region
Last Monday, a coalition of human rights advocates, politicians, and multilateral officials condemned Moroccan authorities’ conduct toward asylum seekers trying to cross the Melilla border fence irregularly on the Friday prior, denouncing not just the violent conduct of border guards, but also national authorities’ fatality undercount and their haste to bury victims without conducting forensic examinations or even identifying them. | On Tuesday, Spanish Justice Minister Dolores Delgado announced an investigation into the fatal incident at the Melilla border fence, as the UN-OHCHR condemned the use of excessive force by Moroccan border guards. On the same day, IOM field teams rescued over 100 migrants stranded in Obock, near Djibouti’s Red Sea coast, after smugglers desisted from helping them cross into Yemen, and from there into Saudi Arabia, abandoning them in life-threatening conditions in Djibouti’s northern desert. Also on Tuesday, Libyan authorities announced they had found the lifeless bodies of 20 asylum seekers who appear to have gotten along the desert border of Libya and Chad, perishing some 2 weeks prior to being found. | On Wednesday, the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya released its latest report on asylum seeker treatment in Libyan detention, describing systematic horrific abuse, up to and including the coercion of detained women into sexual assault in exchange for food rations (see the UN mission’s full report here). On the same day, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pledged full collaboration with Spanish and Moroccan investigators probing the prior week’s deadly Melilla border fence incident, voicing his regret over the lives lost—on the heels of prior statements hailing security forces’ defense of Spanish sovereignty in the face of invasion. | On Thursday, Nigeren authorities announced they had found the lifeless bodies of 10 asylum seekers in northeastern Niger, whom they assume perished of thirst while trying to reach the Libyan border. On the same day, UNHCR relocated 95 asylum seekers from Libya to Italy via a humanitarian corridor supported by Italian authorities and civil society. Also on Thursday, IOM facilitated the return of 131 asylum seekers from Libya to Nigeria via assisted voluntary return. | On Friday, the escape of 35-55 Afghan asylum seekers from a detention center in Turkey’s south-central Osmaniye province triggered a wave of popular violence, as locals joined security forces trying to apprehend the escapees, meting out mob violence unto those they caught. | On Sunday, security forces in Turkey’s southeastern Van province opened fire on a truck trying to evade its control, which turned to be smuggling 40 asylum seekers toward northwestern Turkey—1 of whom was killed, and 12 injured, by the gunfire.
Yemen’s civil war
Last Tuesday, al Jazeera highlighted continued economic hardship in Yemen, as a $3 million deposit from Saudi Arabia, whose announcement alone had stabilized the value of the Yemeni riyal, has yet to be deposited in Yemen’s central bank, leading confidence in the currency to evaporate and its value to resume its decline. On the same day, civilian residents of the Socotra archipelago island of Abd al-Kuri denounced repeat civilian evictions by occupying Emirati security forces intending to build a military base on the island. | On Wednesday, a bomb attack targeting a local official killed 4 soldiers and 3 civilians in Aden. On Friday, TradeWinds highlighted that the UN crowdfunding campaign launched to raise $5 million to contribute to the $80 million fund to salvage the FSO Safer had stalled at just $100.000 collected, as the stricken ship continues decaying and as inclement weather approaches.
Sources: TNH, al Jazeera, the Guardian, InfoMigrants, IOM, AFP, the Libya Update, The Voice for African Migrants, Ahval, Anadolu Angency, Middle East Monitor, the New Arab, TradeWinds.
Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West
Ruta Canaria
Last Monday, the Senegalese Red Cross rescued 91 asylum seekers, retrieved 13 lifeless bodies, and tallied over 40 missing persons after a boat carrying ~150 asylum seekers toward the Canary Islands caught fire and capsized off the coast of Senegal. | On Friday, the Spanish Interior Ministry signaled that 5 vessels had arrived bringing 159 asylum seekers to the Canary Islands in the second half of June, for a total of just under 8.750 arrivals thus far this year, a ~25% increase compared to mid-year 2021. | This Monday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 106 asylum seekers, and tallied 1 fatality, from 2 vessels in waters off of Fuerteventura.
Central Mediterranean and Aegean Seas
Last Monday, the GeoBarents (MSF) rescued 71 asylum seekers—1 of whom shortly perished—and tallied 22 missing persons from a distressed vessel in the Central Mediterranean. | On Thursday, Turkish Coast Guard officers rescued 32 asylum seekers from a distressed vessel Turkish waters, whom they believe had been returned there from European waters. | On Friday, the Ocean Viking (SOS Meditérannée) rescued 22 asylum seekers in 2 operations, bringing the total number of people on board and needing disembarkation to 228. | On Sunday, the Ocean Viking rescued another 63 asylum seekers in its 7th rescue operation in 10 days.
The English Channel
This Monday, Press Association analysis of Ministry of Defense data revealed that 3.136 asylum seekers had reached UK soil across the English Channel this June, the highest monthly total yet this year.
Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico
On Saturday, 18 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously to Key West, where they were promptly apprehended by the Border Patrol. On the same day, a vessel carrying ~100 asylum seekers toward the southern entrance to the Darién Gap capsized, though naval authorities were able to rescue all passengers and bring them ashore to Panamá.
Sources: AP, EFE, InfoMigrants, Europa Press, PA, CBS Miami, el Pitazo.
Europe
EU migration policymaking
Last Monday, Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitakaris testified before the European Parliament’s Justice and Home Affairs Committee, refusing to address accumulating evidence of wrongdoing by Greek and Frontex border guards along Greece’s borders with Turkey, and accusing NGOs of colluding with smugglers to facilitate irregular migration into Europe. | On Tuesday, Lighthouse Report released yet another investigation documenting violent pushbacks across the Evros River, attesting to the use of coerced labor from asylum seekers dragooned into working as boat conductors to ferry pushback victims back into Turkey (see Lighthouse’s full report here). Also on Tuesday, the French Presidency of the EU Council previewed that it would announce next week the total relocation pledges it has mustered as part of the solidarity mechanism it announced last week to alleviate pressure from EU states facing large-scale irregular arrivals. | On Wednesday, the EUAA signaled that asylum applications in the EU have recovered from pandemic-era lows, reaching ~648.000 in 2021, with the top nationalities remaining Syria and Afghanistan, accounting for over 100.000 claims each. | On Thursday, EU Home Affairs Commission Ylva Johansson admonished Greek officials to cease asylum seeker pushbacks or lose access to EU migration funding, as Greek officials announced a fundamental rights monitoring mechanism to be streamlined into their border security operations starting this September. On the same day, the EU Court of Justice ruled that Lithuanian laws approved last summer, providing for the summary detention of all asylum seekers arriving irregularly and denying them access to asylum proceedings, violated EU law—which will increase pressure on the Lithuanian government to reverse the policies, and could pave the way for EU infringement proceedings. | On Sunday, German authorities indicated they have received just over 48.750 secondary asylum applications from refugees already granted asylum in Greece, and that BAMF has approved 90% of the ~8.000 secondary claims processed thus far.
European migration (mis)management
Last Monday, a fire broke out at a makeshift camp hosting migrant agricultural workers near Regnano Garganico, in southern Italy, killing a 35-year old man. On the same day, an Austrian court convicted a Latvian smuggler, after 2 of 30 asylum seekers he had been transporting last October in the sealed rear compartment of a van suffocated from oxygen depletion, to 7 years’ imprisonment for bodily harm leading to death. | On Tuesday, Cypriot health authorities disclosed to Parliament that, over the past 2 years, nearly 1.100 asylum seekers have been diagnosed with serious transmissible illnesses at the Pournara reception center, including nearly 700 cases of hepatitis B, and 185 cases of HIV. On Wednesday, 2 asylum seekers perished when they were struck by a train near the border town of Miravci, in southern North Macedonia, where they had lain down to sleep near the railroad tracks they were following toward northern Europe. On the same day, local prosecutors filed charges against the administrators of a UAM accommodation center in the Canary Islands, alleging overcrowding and verbal and physical abuse of minors. | On Thursday, authorities in Poland announced they had completed a barrier along 186 kilometers of the Polish-Belarussian border intended to deter further irregular migration into EU soil from Belarus. | On Friday, German authorities announced that a 3-year old pilot program for privately-sponsored refugee resettlement would be made permanent, and expanded to provide for the arrival of 200 refugees in 2023. | On Saturday, violent clashes between asylum seekers and possibly smugglers trying to cross into Hungary led to 1 fatality and 7 injuries in northern Serbia. | This Monday, Reuters relayed the testimonials of aid workers and asylum seekers who continue arriving irregularly from Belarus into Poland, crossing the newly built border barrier with basic tools—with aid workers tallying 132 calls in just 1 week in mid-June, and authorities noting that most new arrivals appear to have transited via Russia before reaching Belarus.
Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Tuesday, municipal authorities in Riga announced that, ahead of a drastic reduction in state funding for Ukrainian refugee accommodation, the municipality would do its best to patch budget shortfalls but that it would be forced to cease welcoming new arrivals into the city and to sunset all reception financing at the end of 2022. | On Thursday, The New Humanitarian highlighted the continuing gap between the coverage of refugee flows from Ukraine and that of internal displacement within Ukraine, signaling the importance of better supporting Ukrainian IDPs ahead of what, otherwise, can only be a difficult winter. On the same day, the Guardian highlighted urgent demands from UK language academies and local charities for government funding to help them expand capacity and meet overwhelming demand for language lessons from recently arrived Ukrainian refugees. | On Sunday, News 24/7’s The Magazine revealed that, in the absence of concrete planning by authorities, the vast majority of the nearly 46.000 Ukrainian refugees in Greece remain hosted by family and friends, with no access to public housing or to public welfare payments.
Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Tuesday, the Nationality and Borders Act entered into effect, increasing the penalty for irregular entry or visa overstay from up to 6 months’ detention to up to 4 years’, and threatening asylum seekers piloting irregular maritime arrivals with life imprisonment. On the same day, the Home Office announced its intention to re-open the Campsfield House asylum seeker detention center, decommissioned 4 years ago after 20 years of local agitation for its closure, to support the current government’s containment- and removal-based migration policies. | On Thursday, a UK-chartered flight deported 21 rejected asylum seekers to Nigeria and Ghana. On the same day, the Home Office announced a new migration management deal with Nigeria to facilitate criminal migrant deportations. | On Friday, Every Child Protected Against Trafficking UK revealed that 45 unaccompanied minors went missing between June 2021 and March of this year out of ~1.500 improperly placed in adult accommodation, while another 692 went missing in 2020 out of 5,263 placed in age-appropriate accommodation (see ECPAT UK’s full report here). | On Saturday, the Independent revealed that statements by the Home Office whereby future irregularly crossing asylum seeker boat pilots would be jailed for life are misleading, as Crown Prosecution Service guidance calling for 2-3 years’ detention remains in place.
Sources: euobserver, the Guardian, The Brussels Times, Reuters, LRT, InfoMigrants, ANSA, Nigeria Abroad, AP, EFE, LETA, TNH, News 24/7, KentOnline, the Independent, InfoMigrants, Forbes, the Telegraph.
The Americas
U.S. migration policymaking
Last Monday, police in the southern U.S. city of San Antonio rescued 16 asylum seekers, and retrieved 53 lifeless bodies, from a truck container lacking refrigeration equipment or water in 40°C heat. | On Tuesday, local police arrested 2 Mexican nationals, living at the registered address for the container in which 53 asylum seekers had perished the day before, finding multiple illegal weapons in their home and that the 2 men had entered the U.S. on temporary visas which had since then expired—on the heels of also arresting the driver of the truck, also suspected of human smuggling. | On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Biden Administration has the prerogative to terminate Migrant Protection Protocols, which compel asylum seekers to await adjudication of their claims in Mexico rather than on U.S. soil. On the same day, federal prosecutors arraigned the driver of the truck hauling the container abandoned in San Antonio with the lifeless bodies of 51 asylum seekers within, who evidently did not realize the container’s refrigeration system had stopped working as he drove north from Laredo. On Sunday, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas signaled that, though the Supreme Court had cleared the way for the end of MPP, the policy itself can only be terminated when a Texas court vacates its injunction that brought the program back to life in the first place—a process that could take another several weeks.
Irregular migration in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean
Last Thursday, officials in Costa Rica disclosed they were considering granting amnesty to arriving Nicaraguan refugees, over 40.000 of whom have arrived thus far this year, in addition to just under 60.000 arrivals in 2021, overwhelming the Costa Rican asylum service’s capacity to process and adjudicate claims. | On Friday, a novel caravan composed of ~3.500 asylum seekers began marching north from Tapachula, reaching Huixtla by Sunday to receive 30-day humanitarian permits allowing them free movement within Mexico to regularize their migratory status. | On Sunday, Mexican authorities released 110 asylum seekers from the container of a smuggler’s truck, which had been stopped in Mexico’s northern state of Nuevo León due to a minor accident.
Sources: CNN, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, Semanario Universidad, Milenio, Reforma.
Oceania
Australia’s evolving demographics and climate stressors
Last Tuesday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its 2021 census, finding that just over half of Australia’s population are first- or second-generation migrants, with over one quarter of the total population born abroad. | On Friday, heavy rains began falling over southeastern Australia, leading to widespread flooding and the evacuation of 32.000 people from at-risk zones as of this Monday.
Sources: SBS, the Guardian.
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