“Hundreds of vulnerable migrants were abandoned to their fates after the UK coastguard ‘effectively ignored reports of small boats in distress during the days leading up to the worst Channel disaster in 30 years when at least 27 people died,” the U.K. Observer reported.

Approximately 440 people “appear to have been left adrift after the coastguard sent no rescue vessels to 19 reported boats carrying migrants in UK waters,” according to an analysis of internal records and marine data seen by the Observer and Liberty Investigates. Experts said the failure to act appears to breach international law.

The incidents occurred across four dates in early November 2021, weeks ahead of the mass drowning when a dinghy carrying migrants capsized, the newspaper reporterd.

Italy’s Senate on April 20 approved the first comprehensive immigration package “by the hard-right government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, which would curb integration efforts, create new government-controlled migrant centers to house those waiting on asylum applications and more detention facilities, as well as establish harsher punishment for people smugglers,” reports Gaia Pianigiani for The New York Times. 

Under the new policies, migrants will have to stay in the centers until their asylum applications are processed, which can take up to two years in Italy, the article notes. “While they wait, they will not be able to seek independent lodging and will have a hard time beginning any organic form of integration into communities. Italy is also planning information campaigns in the migrants’ countries of origin to dissuade them from leaving, in exchange for extra visa quotas.”

Almost two dozen refugees recently graduated from a training program on April 7 by the Community Resource Project in Sacramento, California, to work in the electric vehicle industry, California’s KCRA reported.

The program is funded by a grant from the California Energy Commission.

Click here for the story.

The effects of climate change violence, political instability and economic in Latin American and the Caribbean are forcing millions of people to migrate, reports Marina Franco in a new Axios article.

Ecuador has for at least two decades drawn migrants from nearby countries, Franco notes. “Now people are leaving Ecuador as a rise in gang violence has made living in major cities like Guayaquil untenable for many.” Natural disasters “have also forced more Guatemalans, Panamanians, Dominicans and Hondurans to leave home.”

The story is part of a series in Axios Latino focused on immigration to the United States.

In a March 30 article in the Washington Monthly, Bill Scher details the Biden Administration’s new Welcome Corps program.

“Under this State Department program launched in January, groups of five or more Americans can sponsor refugees vetted by the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and help them permanently resettle in their communities,” writes Scher.

“To what extent Welcome Corps can fix our backlogged immigration system and depolarize the immigration debate may not be known at this point. But let’s make sure as many Americans as possible know about Welcome Corps and let’s see how far it can go,” writes Scher.

Click here for additional details about Welcome Corps.