June 6-13, 2022 Mixed Migration—hebdo
This week, Mixed Migration—hebdo turns a year old, which feels weird. But the world keeps spinning & the news keep emerging so this newsletter, weird feelings notwithstood, enters year 2 of existence.
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
Tomorrow is 1 year since I published the first issue of started Mixed Migration—hebdo.
At one point I changed the name, though I have yet to update the logo.
This has been a solo project since. It’s been a lot more work than I expected to sustain this space. I can’t be sure if I’ll be able to sustain it another year. Not that I don’t want to.
Thank you to the 415 subscribers that have signed up over the year—the most recent of whom joined just 2 hours ago. Thank you to the 8 paid subscribers who are helping me sustain this space. Thank you to Anita Makri for worming this idea into my head (you should all read and subscribe to her newsletter, by the way). Thank you to those of you who share MMh—it’s incredibly helpful in growing readership.
Thank you, above all, to the journalists out there working too hard and earning too little to keep public attention focused on migration. I hope this newsletter does justice to your vital work.
Thank you for reading MMh. If you like what you’re reading, you can subscribe here. If you’ve already subscribed, please share and help new readers find MMh.
On to the news…
Asia
Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Tuesday, the WFP appealed for $1.2 billion to expand its food assistance from the 10 million beneficiaries to 19 million by the end of the year—as the U.S. Special Rapporteur tallies that 70% of people in Afghanistan cannot provide for themselves. | On Friday, demonstrations by Afghan refugees in Pakistan entered their 57th day, with protesters lamenting that the invasion of Ukraine has monopolized global attention, paving the way for their neglect. On the same day, the Washington Post highlighted the ongoing difficulties of families separated in the chaotic August 2021 Kabul evacuation, with U.S. authorities lacking precise figures on the number of direct relatives yet to be reunited with evacuees on U.S. soil, and advocacy groups estimating totals in the tens of thousands. | On Saturday, TOLOnews highlighted the plight of ~3.000 families displaced by flooding from their homes in Baghlan Province, just north of Kabul, in late August, now accommodated in open terrain lacking basic facilities, sanitation, education, or healthcare. | On Sunday, al Jazeera highlighted the difficulties faced by displaced Afghans in Iran, squeezed between painful reforms to Iran’s economy and a populist backlash against increasing irregular arrivals from Afghanistan. On the same day, Voice of America tallied that over the second half of 2021, over 1.750 applications by Afghan refugees in Pakistan for Special Immigrant Visas to the U.S. were denied, while just over 1.400 were issued. Also on Sunday, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Kelly T. Clements arrived in Kabul for discussions with Afghan officials and civil society leaders on the plight of the 6 million Afghans currently exiled abroad and on how to facilitate their future return.
Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Monday, villagers in Myanmar’s central Sagaing Region accused junta troops of burning ~320 homes in Kantbalu Township as part of an ongoing campaign to brutalize civilians that has seen ~20.000 homes burned across Myanmar since the Februrary 2021 coup, ~15.000 of those in Sagaing. | On Tuesday, Voice of America tallied that between 2.000 and 3.000 Rohingya refugees have fled Jammu state in northern India for Bangladesh over the last month, with Bangladeshi authorities announcing they have instructed border police to push arriving Rohingya back into India. On the same day, Human Rights Watch urged Thai authorities to allow UNHCR to access 59 asylum seekers stranded in the week prior by smugglers on Koh Dong island in southern Thailand, and conduct reasonable fear interviews to assess their refugee status (see HRW’s full statement here). | On Wednesday, Fortify Rights issued a report documenting the Burmese military junta’s accelerated issuance of National Verification Cards to Rohingya remaining in Rakhine—identifying them as Bengali rather than as Rohingya or Burmese (see FR’s full report here). | On Thursday, U.S. State Department official Derek Chollet visited Mae La refugee camp, hosting ~28.000 Burmese refugees across the Moei River from Myanmar—some since 1984—meeting with local authorities and CSOs to better understand the issues affecting Burmese refugees in Thailand. | On Friday, Rohingya community leader Md Azimullah was assaulted and killed in the Balukhali refugee camp near Cox’s Bazaar, as suspected retribution for his collaboration with Bangladeshi law enforcement. | On Sunday, local civilians accused junta troops of assaulting Budalin Township in Sagaing province, burning ~50 homes and abducting 60 civilians for use as human shields. | This Monday, Bangladshi police charged 29 suspects, all from the Rohingya community, for the September 2021 murder of Rohingya civil society leader Mohib Ullah.
Asylum in South Korea, labor migration from Indonesia
Last Monday, Middle East Eye relayed the testimony of Syrian refugee Amer Fadou regarding his ill treatment in South Korea’s asylum and migrant detention systems, a month after his release from 22 months’ imprisonment on spurious charges—following years of living under 1-year humanitarian visas allowing only limited access to the labor market and no access to public services (as do most of the ~1.200 Syrian and ~800 Yemeni refugees in South Korea). | On Wednesday, Indonesian authorities ratified a regulation standardizing recruitment procedures international shipping and fishing companies, intended to protect laborers from injury and abuse.
Sources: TOLOnews, the Washington Post, the Irrawaddy, VOA, al Jazeera, AP, RFA, bdnews24, MEE, Mongabay.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Monday, Ethiopian federal officials voiced their trust in the AU’s mediation efforts working to bring peace to embattled northeast Ethiopia, as AU officials stressed the importance of increasing humanitarian aid flows into Tigray to build trust between Mekelle and Addis Ababa. On the same day, Chinese authorities announced a peace conference for the Horn of Africa, to be held in late June. | On Tuesday, U.S. authorities issued a statement acknowledging that, over the previous week, 1.100 aid trucks had entered Tigray to deliver humanitarian assistance, while calling on authorities to restore basic services such as telecommunications and banking. On the same day, former UN Humanitarian Coordinator Mark Lowcock accused Ethiopian authorities of interfering with the IPC mechanism—used to determine the existence and severity of imminent and ongoing famines—to obstruct the issuance of a famine determination in Tigray in late 2021. Also on Tuesday, MSF announced it was resuming activities in Ethiopia’s southwestern and southeastern Gambella and Somali provinces, suspended due to a government order in July 2021. | On Wednesday, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Horn of Africa released a report documenting deteriorating human rights conditions in Eritrea and Tigray, including, inter alia, deliberate blocking of roads from Sudan into Tigray by Eritrean forces to prevent humanitarian access into Tigray, and the targeting of Eritrean refugees in Tigray—whose number has declined from ~96.000 to ~25.000 since the outbreak of hostilities (see the full report here). | On Thursday, MSF issued a report highlighting deteriorating health conditions in Afar State, as communities displaced by the ongoing war in Tigray stress already scarce locally available resources (see MSF’s report here). | On Sunday, Ethiopian officials leaked they had reached a hereto then secret agreement with the TPLF to promptly restore electricity, banking, and phone services to Tigray.
Conflict and displacement in the Sahel and central Africa
Last Monday, HumAngle highlighted the efforts of Nigerian refugees living in Cameroon for planting ~360.000 trees in and around Minawoa camp, turning an arid desert area into lush greenery over 5 years. | On Wednesday, clinicians running the Mamfe District Hospital in the anglophone Southwest Region of Cameroon, bordering Nigeria, accused separatist fighters of opening fire on hospital patients and staff and then burning all but its pharmacy to the ground. On the same day, IDPs living in Dikwa, a small town in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, buried 12 youth killed by Boko Haram while scavenging for scrap metal to sustain their families. | On Saturday, local authorities issued starter packs to 15.000 IDPs recently returned to Kirawa, in northeastern Nigeria, after a 6-year long internal displacement.
Environmental disaster and displacement in eastern Africa
Last Thursday, Agence France-Presse highlighted the increasing human toll of drought in Somalia, with physicians at Banaadir Hospital in Mogadishu reporting an increase from 120 to 230 monthly child malnutrition intakes between January and June of this year—as meteorologists predict yet another failed monsoon season later this year. On the same day, authorities in North Kivu, in northeastern DRC, accused the Nyatura rebel group of attacking the Rujagati IDP camp and killing 7 IDPs over the previous night. | On Friday, the Telegraph highlighted the poor living conditions faced by refugees relocated from Libya to the Gashora Transit Centre in Rwanda, where residents complain that many lack viable resettlement prospects, and that almost all lack economic opportunity and sufficient shelter, nutritional, or medical support. | On Sunday, The Star highlighted demands by IDPs in Nyamira, displaced since Kenya’s 2007-2008 electoral violence, to receive financial assistance and relocation support—threatening to boycott August elections if their demands are not met.
Sources: the EastAfrican, Addis Standard, Devex, Tghat, Sudans Post, HumAngle, AFP, the Telegraph, The Star.
Middle East and North Africa
Asylum seeker (im)mobility in MENA
Last Tuesday, the Lebanese military detained 64 people as they attempted to set sail from Sheikh Znad, near Tripoli, toward Cyprus likely to seek asylum. | On Sunday, Turkish authorities announced they had detained just over 2.850 asylum seekers in and around Istanbul over the weekend, on the heels of repatriating 221 Afghan asylum seekers on Friday. | This Monday, Turkish authorities adjusted a law barring foreign residents of Turkey from establishing residence in areas already hosting a foreign pouplation above 20% (down from 25%, as promulgated last February), while barring Syrians refugees from returning to Syria for the mid-July Eid-al-Adha holiday on threat of losing protection status.
Yemen’s civil war
Last Wednesday, Greenpeace implored the Arab League to fund a UN-sponsored rescue of the decaying FSO Safer and ~1.1 million barrels of oil in its hold, moored near the port of Ras Issa in the Red Sea, arguing that the $80 million cost of the rescue operation is a pittance compared to the estimated $20 billion cost of a spill. On the same day, U.S. authorities committed $10 million to help the international community meet the cost of the rescue operation. | On Thursday, 150 Ethiopian civilians stranded in embattled Yemen’s embattled Marib governorate boarded IOM-facilitated voluntary humanitarian returns flights to Addis Ababa. | On Sunday, Saudi Arabia pledged $10 million to the FSO Safer salvage effort, bringing the total pledged funding to at least $53 million.
Displacement, present and future, in Syria
Last Thursday, Turkish-backed Syrian rebel forces paraded in the northeastern town of Azaz, announcing their preparedness to support a renewed Turkish assault against Kurdish forces occupying the area between Kobane, Manbij, and Tal Rifat, to establish a 30-kilometer buffer along Turkey’s southern border inaccessible to Kurdish militia in which to repatriate Syrian refugees currently in Turkey.
Sources: AP, Daily Sabah, InfoMigrants, the New Arab, Upstream Online, Addis Standard, VOA, al Jazeera.
Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West
Central and western Mediterranean
Last Wednesday, at least 113 asylum seekers in 6 vessels reached Spain’s Balearic islands—some autonomously, some rescued by Salvamento Marítimo. On the same day, a vessel carrying 17 asylum seekers capsized off the coast of southeastern Spain, of whom 12 were rescued by a nearby cargo ship and Salvamento Marítimo, which also retrieved 4 lifeless bodies and tallied 1 missing person. Also on Wednesday, the Sea-Watch 3 and the Mare Jonio (Mediterranea Saving Humans) were allowed to disembark in Pozallo the 344 and 92 asylum seekers whom, respectively, each ship had rescued over the week prior. | This Monday, the IOM reported that the Libyan Coast Guard had intercepted just under 530 asylum seekers from the Central Mediterranean over the week prior.
Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea
On Friday, U.S. Coast Guard vessels intercepted 6 Cuban asylum seekers in waters off of Boot Key, taking a dehydrated infant child to hospital for treatment. | On Saturday, U.S. authorities detained 19 Cuban asylum seekers who arrived autonomously to Dry Tortugas Island, some 70 miles west of Key West, after 5 days at sea, 4 days after another 23 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously in Key West. On the same day, Colombian authoriteis rescued 26 asylum seekers from a capsized vessel attempting to grossthe Gulf of Urabá, separating the Colombian town of Necoclí from the border with Panamá and the southern edge of the Darién Gap.
Sources: InfoMigrants, the Libya Update, the Miami Herald, Local 10 News, Semana.
Europe
Refugee and migrant naturalization in Europe
Last Monday, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser issued a proposal to grant residency to migrants holding temporary leave to remain—those whom the state has refused residency or asylum, but also cannot repatriate—which would offer 1-year residency permits to those having held this precarious status for 5 years or more. | On Wednesday, a Spanish appeals court confirmed a lower court’s granting of citizenship to a girl born to a Cameroonian mother on a vessel carrying asylum seekers toward Spain, after determining that denying her Spanish citizenship would render her stateless. | On Friday, German authorities disclosed that, throughout 2021, ~131.600 third-country nationals naturalized as German citizens, including slightly over 19.000 Syrian refugees, 81% of whom were able to access expedited naturalization—in 6 years instead of the usual 8—by demonstrating strong commitment to integrating into German society (find Destatis’ full figures here).
Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Tuesday, Ukrainian officials disclosed they are nearing peak overland grain export capacity, exporting 2 million tons of grain per month—compared to the 6 million exported by sea before the Russian invasion and coastal blockade—as a Turkish initiative to escort cargo ships across the Black Sea foundered over Ukrainian misgivings about demining their ports and inviting a Russian amphibious assault. | On Thursday, Balkan Insight highlighted the increasingly evident shortcomings of Poland’s threadbare refugee integration infrastructure, which has starved Polish schools and medical centers of the support needed to serve Ukrainian students and patients across linguistic barriers, and left municipalities and NGOs to improvise systemic solutions in place of the state. On the same day, the European Commission disclosed that ~185.000 out of the ~1.1 million Ukrainian refugees in Poland have entered the labor market, under an expedited procedure allowing Polish employers to hire Ukrainians not yet issued work permits, so long as employment is registered withing 14 days of hiring. | On Sunday, the UN tallied just over 4.9 million refugee movements out of Ukraine, ~3.2 million registrations for temporary protection in an EU state, ~2.3 million return border crossings into Ukraine, as well as ~4.000 civilian fatalities since the Russian invasion in late February. On the same day, the Guardian relayed the testimony of Ukrainian refugees who reached Georgia via filtration camps in occupied Donetsk, attesting to systemic disorganization, forced deportations to Russia’s far east, and abuse of detainees deemed to have links to the Ukrainian military or to nationalist groups.
European migration (mis)management
Last Tuesday, local media revealed that some of 37 Afghans formerly employed at the Dutch Embassy in Kabul and evacuated to the Netherlands last August, terminated from their prior roles 2 weeks after arrival, have been asked to turn over part of their severance payments to help finance the cost of their accommodation in Dutch refugee reception centers. | On Thursday, Slovenia’s recently-inaugurated center-left government announced it would dismantle the barrier marking about one-third of its border with Croatia, built in 2015 at the height of arrivals via the Balkan Route, committing to control its border instead with drones and electronic sensors. | On Friday, French authorities proposed to the European Council a voluntary solidarity plan that would see non-Mediterranean EU states admit 10.000 yearly asylum seeker relocations from Med5 countries—the latest proposal to try to unblock negotiations on the Commission’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum, initially proposed in late 2020. On the same day, authorities in Poland announced they would lift the state of emergency along the Polish-Belarussian border on July 1—with a 200-meter buffer is to remain off-limits to unauthorized personnel—as contractors complete a barrier running along about half of the border’s length. Also on Friday, UN Special Rapporteur for the Human Rights of Migrants issued a report documenting the widespread use of pushbacks across Europe, but particularly in Poland and Greece, and lamenting their legitimation, via both official legislation and the deliberate non-prosecution of offenders. | On Saturday, an overnight fire ripped through an agricultural farmworker encampment in an informal camp in Palos de Frontera in southern Spain, destroying 100 shelters and injuring one individual. | On Sunday, a small truck carrying asylum seekers near the northeastern Greek region of Thrace crashed while trying to evade the police, killing 1 asylum seeker and injuring another 17.
Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Tuesday, local councils in North Yorkshire convened community meetings to discuss growing concern for the welfare and safeguarding of Ukrainian families hosted in remote UK villages, where, amid limited services and access to public transport, hosted families can become entirely dependent on their hosts’ support. On the same day, a UK Court convicted 2 men to 7 years’ imprisonment for smuggling 31 asylum seekers from Calais to Dover, concealed in cargo vans, between 2016 and 2018. | On Thursday, Ryanair defended its policy of verifying the identity of South African travelers attempting to enter the UK—responding to an apparent increase in circulation of fraudulent South African passports—by administering a test in Afrikaans, despite it being just 1 of South Africa’s 1 official languages, spoken as a native language by just 13% of South African nationals. | On Friday, UNHCR testified before the UK High Court that the Home Office had misled asylum seekers set to be deported to Rwanda by telling them UNHCR was closely involved in the relocation plan, re-asserting its determined opposition to the plan. On the same day, High Court Justice Swift decided against granting interim relief to claimants set to be deported from the UK to Rwanda next Tuesday, ruling there was a material public interest in allowing the Home Office to conduct immigration policy, but granting claimants a right of appeal, setting the stage for further litigation over the Home Office’s imminent first deportation flight to Rwanda this coming Monday. Also on Friday, the Home Office admitted that neither the monitoring board nor the joint implementing committee meant to oversee deportations to Rwanda and reception therein are in place, with the former months away and the latter wholly lacking a timeline for establishment. | This Monday, advocates revealed that of the original 130 asylum seekers issued relocation orders, only 11 remained on the manifest for Tuesday’s inaugural deportation flight to Rwanda, as the previous Friday’s litigants lodged their appeal and yet another lawsuit seeking to enjoin Tuesday’s flight was heard in court on Monday. On the same day, a Court of Appeals upheld the High Court’s Friday judgment allowing Tuesday’s deportation flight to go ahead, revealing that only 8 deportees remained on the flight manifest as of its adjudication.
Sources: InfoMigrants, Deutsche-Welle, the Guardian, BIRN, SchengenVisaInfo, UPI, NU.nl, STA, al Jazeera, UN Human Rights Council, AP, YorkshireLive, BBC, the Independent.
The Americas
U.S. migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, ICE issued a directive instructing agents to refrain from deporting active-duty members of the U.S. military lacking regular immigration status in the U.S., and to consider refraining from deporting former service members or their kin. | On Friday, the Biden Administration released the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection at the Summit of the Americas, describing a series of actions at a pan-American level intended to rationalize migration management across the continent (see the full fact sheet here). On the same day, Canadian authorities announced they had exceeded the mark of resettling 15.000 Afghan refugees since last August, slowly progressing toward a commitment made in August 2021 to resettle 40.000 Afghans by the end of 2022. | On Sunday, the Observer highlighted the pathway that has opened for Cuban emigrants trying to reach U.S. soil—via Nicaragua, which offers visa-free travel to Cubans; and across the border where, once on U.S. soil, Cubans become eligible for permanent residency after a year’s presence (a far from unlikely outcome given the parlous state of U.S. immigration processing and resulting backlogs).
Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Monday, Guatemalan authorities announced they had apprehended 23 asylum seekers, from Venezuela and Haiti, transiting irregularly through Guatemala. | On Tuesday, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced $1.9 billion in private-sector investment in Central America to address impoverishment and lack of employment opportunities as root causes of migration. | On Thursday, a group of ~1.000 asylum seekers split off from the caravan currently advancing toward northern Mexico, opting to rest in Huixtla and wait to be issued exit visas by Mexican authorities, usable to travel regularly across toward the U.S. or use as the basis to apply for asylum in Mexico. | On Friday, Colombia’s national statistics department issued a report finding that just under 40% of Venezuelans displaced in Colombia feel completely integrated in their host country, a figure that rises to just over 73% among those holding a Temporary Protection Permit (see DANE’s full findings here). | On Saturday day, Mexican authorities dispersed a group of ~7.000 asylum seekers participating in the northbound caravan, issuing them immigration documents regularizing their presence in Mexico. | On Sunday, Costa Rican authorities committed to renew the status regularization of Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan asylum seekers present in Costa Rica since before March 2020. | This Monday, Mexican authorities disclosed they had recovered the lifeless bodies of 37 asylum seekers from the Rio Grande over the first 5 months of this year.
Sources: CBS News, al Jazeera, Sudbury.com, the Guardian, AGN, AFP, AP, El Espectador, CNN, CiberCuba, El Universal.
Oceania
Regular and irregular migration to Australia
Last Thursday, the Guardian highlighted that the backlog for 476 visas to Australia, which allow high-skill foreigners to work or study in Australia for 18 months, has stretched out to 41 months, aggravating skills shortages across Australia’s economy and distressing visa applicants. | On Friday, the Nadesalingam family, after a 4-year struggle against Australia’s draconian immigration policies, were allowed to return to Biloela after concerted community pressure compelled Australian authorities to grant them residency. | On Sunday, Sri Lankan authorities detained 38 asylum seekers attempting to sail toward Australia in a fishing boat.
Sources: the Guardian, WION, News1st.
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