In a recent episode of a Migration Policy Institute podcast, Ama Francis, a Climate Displacement Project Strategist at the International Refugee Assistance Project, proposes that the U.S. consider creating a climate humanitarian visa.
“The way that I imagine this looking is that we would have a new visa category that was for people from climate vulnerable areas,” Francis said during the podcast episode.
Such a visa would involve two-step eligibility. The first step would be establishing that a person is from a climate vulnerable region. “You could have a U.S. agency. for example, responsible for determining — based on scientific data — which areas of countries are particularly prone to climate impacts. And if you are a person coming from one of those regions, sub-regions in a country, or from a country, you would be just prima facie eligible for this visa,” she said.
“But then you’d have to meet this other layer of eligibility which could be based on vulnerability,” she said. With the climate visa, “you could design it so that people who might have difficulty accessing other forms of immigration relief….could actually migrate.”
Click here for the full episode of the Migration Policy Institute podcast featuring Francis.
The Immigration and Refugee News Digest 