Reforms agreed to on Dec. 20 by the EU on the Pact on Migration and Asylum “will set European asylum law back for decades to come and lead to greater human suffering,” said Amnesty International.

The agreement covers the political elements of five EU laws that “touch upon all stages of asylum and migration management,” the European Council said in a statement, adding that all five are components of the pact on migration and asylum proposed by the European Commission in 2020, CNN reported.

“This agreement will set back European asylum law for decades to come. Its likely outcome is a surge in suffering on every step of a person’s journey to seek asylum in the EU. From the way they are treated by countries outside the EU, their access to asylum and legal support at Europe’s border, to their reception within the EU, this agreement is designed to make it harder for people to access safety,” said Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office.

European bishops “have raised serious concern over the potential risks of the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, which they say, is likely to have a negative impact on human rights of migrants and asylum seekers,” reported Lisa Zengarini in the Vatican News.

“The danger is that this new pact will increase the suffering of migrants and asylum seekers, producing massive detentions at our borders, even of families and small children, and the deportation of people to third countries that are not as ‘safe’ as often depicted,” the Catholic Church in the European Union said in a statement.

“There is the real risk that with this Pact on Migration and Asylum the EU will fail to protect the right to asylum and other human rights,” it said.

Countries participating in the just completed Global Refugee Forum agreed to resettle one million refugees by 2030, supported by a new global sponsorship fund.

The fund aims to assist an additional three million refugees in accessing third countries through innovative community sponsorship schemes, the United Nations said in a news release.

Speaking at the closing of the Global Refugee Forum on Dec. 15, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said that protection and help for these most vulnerable of people, was “an obligation shared by all of humanity.”

The Second Global Refugee Forum, which will take place on Dec. 13-15 in Geneva, is “a much-needed moment of global unity, where those who are determined to keep searching for solutions will come together to meet the huge challenge of forced displacement,” writes Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in the Guardian.

“An array of participants – states, the private sector and charitable foundations, international financial institutions, UN agencies, humanitarian and development organizations of all sizes, cities and local authorities, NGOs, refugee-led organizations, faith groups and others – will make concrete and transformational pledges and contributions, and take stock of the progress made since the first forum in 2019,” he wrote in the Op-Ed.

Additional information about the forum is available here.

Rust Belt communities including Pittsburgh, Pa., are proactively looking to have migrants move to their cities and towns, many of which are facing a continued exodus of workers and a fall in populations.

“Whatever the sentiments about irregular immigration, there is bipartisan agreement that Southwestern Pennsylvania needs to figure out a way to attract new residents, and fast,” writes Tim Craig in the Washington Post in a Dec. 8 article, “Some states spurn migrants. The Rust Belt wants them.”

“We are not here to reject any immigration. As a matter of fact, we want to make this the most safe, welcoming, thriving place in America, and you can’t do that without immigration,” Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey (D) told Craig. The mayor does not make distinctions on the basis of someone’s immigration status or how the person entered the country. “Why wouldn’t we want them?”

Craig reports that in recent months, communities including Detroit; Dayton, Ohio; and Erie, Penn. “— all places experiencing population loss — have been working with outside experts on how to transform city services to meet the needs of immigrants. One city, Topeka, Kan., is being even more aggressive, offering legal migrants up to $15,000 to move there.”

Craig notes in his story that “immigrants remain the one demographic group that is keeping Pittsburgh from bleeding even more population, the American Immigration Council (AIC) concluded in a September report.”

The report found that Pittsburgh’s population dropped by 1.3 percent from 2014 to 2019. “The decline would have been more than double, 2.7 percent, without immigrants moving to the city. Immigrants constitute 9 percent of Pittsburgh’s population of 303,000, the report noted,” Craig wrote.