May 30-June 6, 2022 Mixed Migration—hebdo
This week, MMh is back! We kick off with a quick reflection on how the West shouldn't (and will) react to the displacement crises in Africa it ignores at its own peril, before turning to global news.
Welcome (back) 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.
Thank you for your forbearance these last 2 weeks as I took a welcome bit of time off. I’m excited to be back and look forward to celebrating MMh’s 1-year anniversary this month!
Thank you to the readers who access MMh through a paid subscription. Your support means the world to me! MMh is freely available, and will remain so for as long as I can sustain it. If you appreciate what you find here every week, and you’d like to help me keep it coming, please consider switching to a paid subscription. I’ve set rates as low as I can. If you can’t afford to, no problem—you can still share MMh and help me grow this space! Thank you for your support.
Spotlight
Last week, the Norwegian Refugee Council issued its annual list of the world’s 10 most neglected displacement crises. For the first time, all 10 crises are to be found in Africa.
The West’s response to humanitarian crises is all too often framed by a focus on preventing irregular migration. The priority is misplaced and frankly racist—though it isn’t necessarily a bad thing to assist vulnerable people where they are, rather than pressure them into costly, high-risk irregular migration. Either way—responding to regional displacement crises before they become global displacement crises requires vision, subtlety, and nuance. Enter the EU.
Last week, European Commissioner for Promoting our European Way of Life stated to a Dutch newspaper that he gives no credence to reports of (thoroughly documented) unlawful asylum seeker pushbacks authored by journalists or NGOs—all while failing to acknowledge additional reports to the same practice by EU and UN agencies.
There’s one take-away here: the EU remains fundamentally unserious about setting functional policies to deal with irregular asylum seeker arrivals to Europe. So long as unserious ideologues like Commissioner Schinas hold policymaking levers in Brussels, and choose instead to spew bile against independent media and civil society, Europe will remain a source of harm for asylum seekers and migrants—and remain vulnerable to manipulation by third countries seeking advantage from targeting the black hole that is European migration policy.
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
On Tuesday, Germany’s Foreign Ministry disclosed that it has issued ~18.500 visas to former Afghan collaborators from its regional embassies since the fall of Afghanistan’s internationally-recognized government last August, and that it continues relocating ~200 Afghans per week from Pakistan alone. | On Friday, UNHCR tallied 1.3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, 52% of whom are children, suggesting that the number’s reduction from a prior tally of 1.4 million may be the result of returns or of refugees holding back from renewing expired status cards.
Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Monday, Rohingya IDPs in Rakhine State accused Burmese forces of firing mortars and live ammunition into the Maha Muni and Nyaung Chaung camps, hosting 4.000 IDPs, amid increasing tensions between the Arakhan Army and the Tatmadaw. | On Wednesday, police in Silchar transferred 26 Rohingya refugees into immigration detention, after detaining them as they traveled from Kashmir through India’s northeastern Assam state the prior Sunday. On the same day, Burmese forces detained 104 Rohingya transiting without permit from Rakhine state toward Yangon. Also on Wednesday, Hasina Begum—a UNHCR-registered Rohingya refugee deported from Kashmir to Myanmar in spring 2021, and deported to Myanmar a year later—managed to reunite with her family in Cox’s Bazaar, after she and her family crossed into Bangladesh irregularly from Myanmar and India, respectively. | On Thursday, the murder of a Hindu in Kashmir triggered fresh protest by Kashmiri Pandits for assistance in departing Kashmir, a short few years after settling in India’s contested northern region under a government campaign to incentivize Hindu immigration into Kashmir. | On Friday, Indian police detained 8 Rohingya refugees trying to cross irregularly into Bangladesh from India’s northeastern Tripura province. | On Sunday, Thai police rescued 59 Rohingya refugees stranded on Dong Island, near the Malaysian border, where smugglers stranded them several days prior, telling them they had reached Malaysia. | This Monday, The New Humanitarian reported dramatically increasing scabies infection rates in Rohingya refugee camps near Cox’s Bazaar, with over 20.000 cases between mid-March and early May alone, and an overall prevalence rate assessed at 10.2%. On the same day, local media relayed demands by Karenni civil society organizations for urgent humanitarian assistance to be provided to ~200.000 IDPs in Myanmar’s eastern Karen State. Also this Monday, Thai police announced they had detained 66 Burmese irregular migrants in 4 separate operations.
Sources: InfoMigrants, InfoMigrants, the Irrawaddy, the Times of India, BNI, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Northeast Now, Reuters, The New Humanitarian, Bangkok Post.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Monday, the TPLF accused Eritrean forces of invading Tigray, and claimed it had pushed back the invasion force at Adi Awala in the region’s north. On the same day, UNHCR tallied 73.000 Ethiopian refugees displaced in Sudan, the majority coming from embattled Tigray. | On Saturday, the FAO announced it was targeting agricultural inputs and training toward 620.000 households in Tigray, Amhara, and Afar states. | On Sunday, Tigrayan health authorities lamented they had been forced to suspend services at Ayer Referral Hospital in Mekelle, due to power outages, lack of medicines, and fuel shortages. | This Monday, Ethiopian authorities called for tighter controls on humanitarian deliveries into Tigray, charging that aid groups were delivering more fuel than was mandated, as well as unspecified material that could aid the TPLF’s military efforts.
Displacement in the Sahel and West Africa
Last Monday, several dozen farmers in Gusau, in Nigeria’s northwestern Zamfara State, were forced to evacuate their farmland after repeated threats from local armed groups, contributing to both internal displacement and food insecurity in Nigeria. | On Wednesday, 300 refugees living in the Cabo Badzere refugee camp in Cameroon signaled they were ready to return to the CAR, with another ~2.200 returns expected by the end of this year out of the ~300.000 CAR refugees currently living in Cameroon. | On Thursday, Reuters highlighted the displacement of ~6.000 Senegalese and Gambian civilians in recent weeks from along the border of The Gambia and Senegal’s southern Casamance province, fleeing conflict between Senegalese forces and separatist fighters. On the same day, commanders of the regional Multinational Joint Task Force congratulated themselves on major operations against Boko Haram around Lake Chad, which they claimed would allow the resumption of commerce and return of displaced people. | On Friday, HumAngle highlighted the plight of young children arriving to IDP camps in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, often with little or no memory of their parents’ identities, after having been rescued from Boko Haram camps cleared in military operations. | On Saturday, MSF disclosed that Mahamat Ahamat, a local employee of the NGO working as a medicines dispenser, had been shot and killed by a CAR soldier in the town of Moyenne-Sido, 500 kilometers north of Bangui.
Displacement in the Great Lakes area and southern Africa
Last Wednesday, authorities in South Sudan indicated they would be willing to receive returned refugees should Kenyan authorities make good on a prior commitment to close the Kakuma refugee camp by June 20 of this year, but demanded UNHCR assistance coordinating the effort and ensuring all returns were voluntary. On the same day, Africanews highlighted continuing protests by Burundian and Congolese refugees in South Africa, denouncing poor living conditions and xenophobia, and demanding that UNHCR facilitate their resettlement to third countries or repatriation to their country of origin. | On Friday, Namibian officials tallied ~8.000 refugees currently in Namibia, the majority from the DRC, while celebrating the return of all but 6 Namibian refugees from Botswana, in late 2019, on the heels of unrest triggered by a secession movement in Namibia’s northeastern Caprivi strip. | On Sunday, the Washington Post highlighted increasing concern in South Africa with the resurgence a populist movement known as Dudula, or pushback, which targets immigrants in with xenophobic abuse.
Sources: Addis Standard, Sudan Tribune, ENA, the EastAfrican, AFP, HumAngle, Voice of America, Reuters, the City Review, Africanews, New Era, the Washington Post.
Middle East and North Africa
Yemen’s civil war
Last Tuesday, OXFAM implored warring parties in Yemen’s civil war to extend the Ramadan truce begun last April 2, set to expire on June 1 (see OXFAM’s full statement here). On the same day, the IOM disclosed that ~27.800 people from the Horn of Africa have made irregular crossings into Yemen thus far this year—exceeding the total figure for all of 2021—to seek livelihood opportunities in the Persian Gulf. | On Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to the UN lamented that extension negotiations remained at risk, as Yemen’s internationally-recognized government urged UN authorities to pressure Ansar Allah to loosen its blockade of the roads leading into Taiz as a condition to extend the truce. | On Thursday, UN Envoy Hans Grundberg announced that all parties to Yemen’s civil war had agreed to extend the existing truce by another 2 months, despite no breakthrough on the issue of Ansar Allah’s blockade of Taiz.
Asylum seeker (im)mobility in North Africa
Last Tuesday, UNHCR evacuated 132 asylum seekers from Libya to Rwanda, for a total of just under 8.300 such evacuations since 2017. | On Wednesday, MSF issued a statement denouncing asylum seeker pushbacks from Algeria and Libya into Niger, documenting over 14.000 such pushbacks from A.geria between January and May of this year (see MSF’s full statement here). On the same day, Libya’s Government of National Unity granted citizenship to 130 of 289 applicants, including the children of Libyan women married to foreign national.
Sources: al Jazeera, UN News, The Libya Observer, the New Arab.
Maritime Migration Routes to & through Europe
Central and western Mediterranean
Last Monday, the Ocean Viking (SOS Meditérrannée) received authorization from Italian authorities to disembark 294 asylum seekers it had rescued from 4 distressed vessels over the previous 5 days. On the same day, the Aurora (Sea-Watch) disembarked in Lampedusa 85 asylum seekers it had rescued the evening prior from a distressed vessel in the Maltese search-and-rescue zone. Also on Monday, IOM disclosed that 727 asylum seekers had been intercepted at sea by the Libyan Coast Guard and refouled to Libyan shores between May 22 and 28. | On Thursday, 44 asylum seekers arrived autonomously to Cyprus from Turkey, signaling 1 more person—whose lifeless body was eventually retrieved by authorities—had gone missing near land. On the same day, the Sea-Watch 3 rescued 148 asylum seekers from 2 distressed vessels in the Central Mediterranean. | On Friday, Italian Coast Guard vessels rescued 281 asylum seekers from multiple vessels in waters off of Lampedusa, as the Mare Jonio (Mediterrania Saving Humans) and the Sea Watch 3 rescued 29 and 85 asylum seekers, respectively. On the same day, the Libyan Coast Guard announced it had intercepted and pulled back to Libya 302 asylum seekers trying to reach European waters over the previous 3 days.
Ruta Canaria
Last Wednesday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 217 asylum seekers from 4 distressed vessels in waters off of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. On the same day, 47 asylum seekers arrived autonomously to the port of Restinga, on the southern coast of El Hierro. | This Monday, Spanish police announced it had dismantled 2 illicit organization smuggling asylum seekers from Morocco to the Canary Islands, which had facilitated just over 200 successful crossings, at a cost of €3.000 each.
Sources: InfoMigrants, EFE.
Europe
European migration policymaking
Last Monday, interim Frontex Director Anja Kalnaja addressed EU parliamentarians, admitting that Frontex needed a change in culture that reflected the input of its fundamental rights officers, while revealing that former Director Fabrice Leggeri’s tenure and fall from grace were traumatic for the organization. | On Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on the H.M. and Others v. Hungary case, finding that Hungarian authorities had subjected an Iraqi Kurdish asylum seeking family to inhuman and degrading treatment over 4 months of detention following their arrival to the Tompa transit zone to demand asylum in Hungary, during which time they were confined but for urgent medical appointments, which they could only attend under invasive police surveillance. | On Friday, Europol announced it had dismantled a smuggling network responsible for the irregular arrival of ~10.000 asylum seekers into EU states, arresting 8 suspected ringleaders and seizing €900.000 in assets. | This Monday, Estonian media reported that authorities are preparing a legislative measure—similar to measures approved in Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia—that would allow border police to conduct pushbacks in the face of mass irregular migration events.
Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Monday, Bulgarian authorities announced the termination of a program hosting ~90.000 Ukrainian refugees in Black Sea coastal hotels, compelling refugees to either transition to self-financed accommodation or to relocate to hosting facilities in Sofia and Elhovo, with advocacy groups criticizing the last-minute, poorly messaged termination. | On Tuesday, Czech firefighters erected a 150-bed tent facility to relocate Romani Ukrainian refugees who had been living informally in Prague’s railway station. | On Thursday, Frontex tallied that, since the Februrary 24 invasion, ~7 million refugees have fled Ukraine, including third-country nationals, ~2.3 million of whom subsequently returned, as another ~7 million people are believed to be internally displaced within Ukraine. | On Friday, Czech authorities relocated another 30 Ukrainian Romani refugees living informally in Brno’s central station. On the same day, Spanish authorities offered to relocate 2.000 Ukrainian refugees from Moldova. | On Sunday, Czech authorities approved a measure restricting allowances for Ukrainian refugees, capping health insurance coverage to 150 for all but vulnerable groups and cutting €200 payments to those living in state-provided accommodation—nominally to combat supposed ‘benefit tourism’ by Romani Ukrainians. On the same day, Swiss NGO Campex lamented that of the ~24.000 home placements it had facilitated for ~57.000 Ukrainian refugees among Swiss families, only ~4.500 have been approved by regional authorities.
Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Tuesday, the Home Office announced its first relocation flight removing asylum seekers to Rwanda would lift off on June 14, offshoring a yet-unknown number of asylum seekers currently in UK detention to Kigali. On the same day, the Home Office cancelled a deportation flight set to return 30 rejected asylum seekers to Iraqi Kurdistan after Kurdish authorities, who had not received returnees’ identifying details, refused to admit it. Also on Tuesday, local authorities in Linton-on-Ouse denounced the Home Office’s shambolic planning and messaging after receiving a last-minute notification that the relocation of the first 60 of 1.500 asylum seekers to be contained in a nearby RAF base, set to commence this week, would be postponed indefinitely. | On Wednesday, UK advocacy groups denounced that the passenger manifest for the June 14 relocation flight to Rwanda includes refugees from Syria and Afghanistan, as shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper accused the Home Office of chasing headlines with the announcement. | On Thursday, the Home Office admonished several asylum seekers, on hunger strike to protest their impending deportation to Rwanda on June 14, that their striking may lead to the deferral of their removal proceedings, but could also accelerate them. On the same day, UNHCR signaled that it considers the vast majority of irregular arrivals to the UK to be likely refugees, admonishing the Home Office’s claims to the contrary. | This Monday, asylum seekers pending removal revealed that they have been offered the option to return to their countries of origin as an alternative to removal to Rwanda, and that they have no option to appeal their inadmissibility determinations.
Med5 migration (mis)management
Last Tuesday, Italian authorities let expire the regulation mandating offshore COVID-19 isolation, on quarantine ships, for arriving asylum seekers. | On Friday, Spanish authorities disclosed that, as the result of a reform to its citizenship laws approved last October, ~9.300 refugee youth had obtained residency and work permits, after arriving to Spain as unaccompanied minors, and then aging out of UAM protection and losing regular status and access to services. | On Saturday, Italian authorities announced a 75.000-strong migrant worker admission quota for 2022. On the same day, 2 asylum seekers perished and another 12 were injured in a car accident that occurred near Greece’s northern city of Thessaloniki when a trafficker tried to evade a police checkpoint. | On Sunday, Spain and Morocco resumed regular ferry passage across the Straits of Gibraltar, ceased for months due to the Coronavirus pandemic and to diplomatic tensions. On the same day—after at least 5 days since arrival, dozens of distress calls, and an ECHR Rule 39 order to act—Greek police reached a group of ~50 asylum seekers stranded on an islet in the Evros River, making the Greco-Turkish border, after which point advocates lost contact with the group.
Sources: euobserver, InfoMigrants, ERR, bne IntelliNews, romea.cz, euractiv, swissinfo, the Guardian, Sky News, ANSA, el País, AP, Voice of America, the New Arab.
The Americas
U.S. migration policymaking
Last Monday, Mexican authorities disclosed that, between January and March of this year, U.S. authorities had repatriated just over 7.000 children to Mexico, nearly 5.500 of whom had entered U.S. soil as unaccompanied minors. | On Wednesday, DHS disclosed that 6.500 Ukrainian refugees have arrived to the U.S. under the United for Ukraine scheme, and that another 27.000 resettlement visas have been issued, joining an additional 22.000 Ukrainian refugees admitted across the U.S.-Mexico border in the last 3 months. | On Thursday, DHS officials disclosed that novel expedited asylum and removal proceedings, announced in March, had entered into effect this week, allowing USCIS officials to issue asylum decisions without the intervention of an immigration court and intended to decongest the chronically backlogged U.S. asylum adjudication system. On the same day, U.S. officials leaked emerging agreements with Canada and Spain to increase their resettlement of refugees from across Latin America, with Spain also slated to multiply its employment visa issuance to Central American migrant workers. | On Friday, Reuters highlighted setbacks U.S. plans to tackle root causes of migration in Central America as USAID has been forced to cancel major projects to capacity-build Guatemala’s and El Salavdor’s judiciaries in recent years, as a result of political interference in these countries’ judiciary institutions. On the same day, Canadian officials announced a one-off payment of $3.000 per adult, and $1.500 per child, to Ukrainian families recently settled in Canada to help them meet immediate needs upon arrival. | On Sunday, CNN highlighted a dramatic increase in cell phone application-based tracking of asylum seekers both inside and outside of immigration detention across the U.S., from ~6.000 just 3 years ago to ~185.000 nowadays.
Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Monday, the UN disclosed that, since 2016, its intranational mobility and livelihoods program has relocated just under 22.000 asylum seekers from southern Mexico to labor-scarce cities across the rest of the country, with 92% of those relocated subsequently finding formal employment. | On Tuesday, Centro de Dignificación Humana Director Luis García Villagrán announced that there were ~11.000 asylum seekers ready to depart Chiapas in a caravan set to begin transiting toward northern Mexico on June 6, when ongoing rains cease. | On Wednesday, Mexican authorities issued an unprecedented letter authorizing the Centro de Dignificación Humana’s caravan to begin transiting from southern Mexico toward the U.S.-Mexico border. | On Thursday, the Washington Office on Latin America issued a report denouncing Mexican immigration policies, documenting the abuse and endangerment faced by asylum seekers at Mexico’s southern border as a result of policies that prioritize containment over meeting humanitarian needs (see WOLA’s full report, in Spanish, here). On the same day, Guatemalan police turned over 52 irregular migrants to immigration authorities for registration and processing. | On Friday, Ecuadorian authorities announced a forthcoming status regularization campaign to register and offer residence permits to the ~513.000 displaced Venezuelans currently in Ecuador. On the same day, UNHCR signaled that, under Mexican law, permanent residency is not required for formal employment, lamenting that numerous employers in Tijuana, apparently unaware of this, wrongfully deny employment to holders of temporary humanitarian visas. Also on Friday, Cuban Red Cross officials confirmed that just over 585 of the nearly 850 Haitian asylum seekers, who had arrived irregularly in Cuba after a failed maritime crossing toward Florida, had been repatriated, with the remainder expected to be returned to Haiti in the coming week.
Sources: Expansión, CBS News, Voice of America, Axios, Reuters, Ukrinform, CNN, Excélsior, la Razón, EFE, AP, AGN, Deutsche-Welle, el Sol de Tijuana, Cubadebate.
Thank you for reading MMh all the way through! If you like what you just read, you can subscribe and share below. See you again next week!
Quite shocking. It makes me sad that apparently the European Way of Life is to push back refugees. That's not my European way of life.