CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT IN THE NEWS
Indeed, Haiti is considered the most climate-vulnerable nation in Latin America and the Caribbean. But the far-reaching effects of climate vulnerability, such as diminished crop yields in largely agriculture-dependent societies and resultant poverty, play out in countries around the region, posing an urgent challenge to the US as it emerges from years of blatantly anti-immigrant and anti-science policies.
“Climate change is driving displacement and increasing the vulnerability of those already forced to flee. Forcibly displaced and stateless people are on the front lines of the climate emergency. Many are living in climate “hotspots” where they typically lack the resources to adapt to an increasingly inhospitable environment. The dynamics of poverty, food insecurity, climate change, conflict and displacement are increasingly interconnected and mutually reinforcing, driving more and more people to search for safety and security.”
Aid alone has not shown to be a viable long term solution. Under the Obama administration, then VP Biden’s multi-million dollar economic development package intended to stimulate local growth and slow migration did the exact opposite, showcased by record migrant arrivals in 2019. That aid package proved what many experts have pointed to throughout the years: international aid does not always reach those most in need.
A recent story in The Nation recounts the experiences of two climate migrants seeking refuge in the US with one defining difference between the two: legal status. The ease with which one migrant fleeing climate disaster is able to immigrate to the US mainland is juxtaposed to the difficulty of the other, highlighting the time sensitive need for the US to create legal infrastructure for climate migration.
Zaatari Refugee Camp by Amali Tower
As part of the President-elect’s plan to reassert America’s commitment to asylum-seekers and refugees, in his first year in office, Joe Biden plans to raise the annual refugee admissions cap to 125,000, slowly increasing it over time.
Upon taking office in 2017, the Trump White House slashed the refugee admissions number from the previous year’s 110,000 to 45,000, then the lowest in the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), actually resettling only 22,491 refugees - almost 60% fewer refugees than the 53,716 refugees, (not accounting for Syrian refugees), resettled in the Obama administration’s last year.
In the next three years in office, the free fall in admissions caps continued, eventually reaching yet another historic low of 15,000 for fiscal year 2021.
Becca Heller from the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) is correct in pointing out the time it will take to restart the heavily dismantled program in order to meet that ambitious target. Having worked many years in the USRAP, we can attest to the highly secure and contiguous series of security checks, medical clearances, inter-agency coordination and logistics it takes to make the entire vetted program work from overseas referral and processing to US arrival, resettlement and integration. The process is so thoroughly secure and vetted that the average refugee case process is well over two years.
Resettlement agencies that receive refugees in the US do so via cooperative agreements with the State Department. Their budgets are set according to the refugee admissions numbers. The lower admissions numbers then, meant lower budgets, causing many agencies to trim staff and operations or close entirely.
There is a huge backlog of cases - by now well over the 120,000 reported in September. This includes Iraqis who worked for the US military, who are at extreme risk, are qualified refugees, but have been denied assistance by this current administration. In 2020, of the 4,000 Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), reserved for Iraqi refugees and included within the USRAP, only 123 Iraqis were resettled in the US.
Refugees are the most vetted group that arrives in the US. This backlog comprises of people who have passed every clearance required: interviews with UN agencies, US processing staff, official US government immigration and security officers, and a series of security checks, medical and more.
And yet, to further stymie processing, the Trump administration added “Extreme Vetting” to the process, doing nothing more than extremely slowing down the process. Worse yet, the new vetting rules were kept secret until legal action forced the government to disclose its details. (NPR)
Morning Brew via UNSPLASH
Canada’s federal court has invalidated its Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) with the United States in place since 2004 because it has determined that the US violates the human rights of refugees. An STCA requires an asylum-seeker to seek protection in the first safe country they reach. Under this agreement, both countries have been able to turn back asylum-seekers attempting to enter at official crossings because they each recognized the other as safe places to seek refuge.
In a 60-page ruling, Judge Ann Marie McDonald ruled the deal as a violation of Canada’s Charter of Rights that prevents the government from impeding the right to life, liberty and security. The deal was thus declared unconstitutional because of the US government’s practice of imprisoning migrants and asylum-seekers, citing the conditions asylum-seekers face in detention, including the lack of access to adequate health care and legal counsel.
Judge McDonald found the experience of Nedeira Mustefa particularly compelling, a Muslim asylum-seeker from Ethiopia. After Canada returned her to the United States, Mustefa was detained and placed in solitary confinement, where despite telling guards of her religious beliefs, she believes she was fed pork, was placed in solitary confinement, which she said was “a terrifying, isolating and psychologically traumatic experience”
The court ruling is suspended for six months to give Parliament time to respond, which it can appeal, and litigants could potentially appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. Otherwise, the ruling is set to go into effect on January 22.
The agreement has been under fire in Canada since the election of Donald Trump, who has actively sought to limit asylum, refugee resettlement and immigration in the United States, as well as detain and separate migrants. With increasing arrivals of Central American asylum-seekers who are fleeing violence, gang violence, crime but also the impacts of climate change and climate variability that has exacerbated poverty and left many parts food insecure, the US has pursued and entered into Safe Third Country Agreements with several Central American countries.
University of California, Hastings College of Law professor Karen Musalo, who testified on behalf of litigants, called the decision “an indictment of the inhumanity of the American detention system for asylum-seekers.”
We could not agree more.
(BBC, Washington Post, NY Times)
We have written extensively about asylum conditions in the United States and the situation of Central American asylum-seekers, including the climate conditions in their countries of origin. For further reading, here’s one such Feature.
