As Afghan refugees are released from U.S. military bases “to start rebuilding their lives in the United States, they are bumping up against an unexpected obstacle: the housing crisis,” reports Miriam Jordan in the New York Times.

“Resettlement agencies have been scrambling to find rentals in cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix and St. Louis as well in towns like Owensboro and Reno, Nev., where lease properties are in short supply, expensive or both. The coronavirus pandemic, complaints of discrimination and the sheer number of newly arriving Afghans have also posed challenges,” Jordan notes.

According to the article, as of Monday, more than 40,000 Afghans had completed their processing and departed for new homes, while another 30,000 remained on seven military bases “that the government hopes to empty as soon as possible.”

For months, Afghan evacuees have been living in temporary camps on U.S. military bases. “Now, as they move into permanent homes, some will be heading to communities with long histories of offering refuge to people fleeing danger. But not necessarily to the bustling and multicultural cities you may imagine,” National Geographic notes in a recent article about refugee resettlement in the U.S.

“In small town America, refugee resettlement programs have won over residents by reversing population declines and replenishing shrinking labor pools, data show. Religious traditions that encourage care for foreigners, as well as close-knit communities, have proved conducive to forming neighborly bonds,” reports Nina Strochlic in her article.

The first follow-up to the Global Refugee Forum starts Dec. 14. The meeting, a two-day virtual event, will bring together senior government officials, refugees and various stakeholders, to take stock of progress on how the world responds to refugee situations.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is co-hosting the meeting together with Switzerland. It will be opened by the President-elect of the Swiss Confederation, Ignazio Cassis and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi.

The meeting is one of the main vehicles for follow-up and review under the Global Compact on Refugees. Under the Compact, Global Refugee Forums are to be held every four years while the High-Level Officials Meeting are to be held two years later from each Forum.

Additional information about the Global Refugee Forum is available here.

This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for refugee resettlement in the U.S., leaders of three refugee groups argue in a recent opinion piece for Religion News Service.

About 35,000 Afghan evacuees are still waiting on U.S. military bases for the chance to be resettled in communities where they can start their new lives, note Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, Richard Santos, president and CEO of Church World Service, and Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

.”Each of our organizations has deployed staff members to the military bases to help with processing and welcoming Afghan families. They have told us about the inspiring resilience, strength and optimism they have encountered there,” they wrote.

Military bases were never meant to be a long-term solution, they note. “It is time for these families to finally start the next chapter of their lives in their new homes. As the leaders of three of the nation’s nine resettlement agencies, we know resettling these newest neighbors will require all the resources, creativity and compassion the United States has to offer. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for refugee resettlement in this country.”

After nearly five years of historically low refugee arrivals, “our local partners are just now rebuilding. They are hiring staff; contacting landlords, employers and schools; and otherwise getting ready to welcome Afghan families into their communities. While they are working around the clock to prepare and welcome Afghan families, we simply can’t do it all on our own.”

Across the nation, “Americans from all backgrounds must come together to welcome Afghan families.”

Click here for the full opinion piece.

 

One of the many things that continues to impress me about Pope Francis is his unwavering commitment to the plight of refugees and migrants.

In traveling to Cyprus, Francis “has sought to inspire the country, a European Union member state, to embrace its history as a crossroads for different cultures, enriched by new migrants, and to be a model for the rest of Europe,” the New York Times reported.

Francis arrived in Cyprus on Thursday, “beginning a five-day trip that would also bring him to Greece and its island of Lesbos, where in 2016 he made a defining visit to refugees living in horrid conditions and brought some back to Rome on his plane,” the Times noted. The trip “reflects his determination to maintain a global focus on the plight of migrants and lands torn by strife.”

In an address to participants at the 2021 Rome MED – Mediterranean Dialogues, Francis

The Pope said that the events of past years have shown that “effective intervention can only result from a combined effort” by not only the border countries but also the continents of which they are a part of. He added that the migration issue shows us that “everything is connected” and that any stable solution calls for “an approach capable of taking into account its multiple aspects.”

“No one should be left alone to manage this enormous problem,” the Pope said. “Everyone needs to feel responsible, for everyone is in fact responsible, as we are reminded by God’s question to Cain in the first pages of the Bible: “Where is your brother?”

Turkey banned Syrian, Yemeni and Iraqi citizens from flights to Minsk on Friday, “potentially closing off one of the main routes that the EU says Belarus has used to fly in migrants by the thousand to engineer a humanitarian crisis on its frontier,” reports Reuters.

The move by Turkey comes as tensions continue to rise between the European Union and Belarus over the fate of migrants at the border between Poland and Belarus.

EU officials on Wednesday “accused Belarus of state-sponsored ‘trafficking’ of human lives by luring desperate migrants to the Polish border — the edge of the EU — where many are now stuck in makeshift camps in freezing weather,” the Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko has threatened to cut deliveries of gas to Europe via a major pipeline as he “promised to retaliate against any new EU sanctions imposed in response to the crisis at the Poland-Belarus border,” the Guardian reported.

Click here for live updates from CNN on the crisis.

With migration increasing throughout the Americas, “border policy is no longer a sufficient means to control immigration,” writes Andrew Selee, President of the Migration Policy Institute in a recent opinion piece published in the New York Times.

“The United States must enlist other countries in the hemisphere to become partners in measures to prevent recurrent political and humanitarian crises that force people to flee their homelands,” writes Selee.

He notes that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Colombia’s foreign minister, Marta Lucía Ramírez, convened a hemispheric conversation in October to begin this process.

“The temptation will be to create a new regional arrangement to make borders harder to cross by increasing enforcement and deportations,” writes Selee.

But cooperation around deterrence “is particularly hard to sustain among countries with varying capacity to welcome migrants and distinct concerns about migration,” he notes.

Selee floats the idea of countries in the region seeking to reach a common understanding of what cooperation around migration means. “However, these almost certainly have to be broad principles rather than specific agreements, which will have to be negotiated around much more specific issues with countries that share similar concerns and approaches.”

The Migration Policy Institute is a nonpartisan think tank that seeks to improve migration policies.

Selee is the author of “Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together.”

Do you want to help refugees? Here’s a unique way to do so.

A group called Miles4Migrants is a 501(c)(3) charity dedicated to using donated frequent flyer miles to help people impacted by war, persecution, or disaster start a new beginning in a new home.

Click here for more information about the group and how to donate your frequent flyer miles.

The White House recently released a report that marks the first time the U.S. Government is officially reporting on the link between climate change and migration.

“Migration in response to climate impacts may range from mobility as a proactive adaptation strategy to forced displacement in the face of life-threatening risks,” the report said, “This mobility may occur within or across international borders.”

This report provides an overview of climate change and its impact on migration that informs a proposal for how U.S. foreign assistance can better address the effects of climate change impacts on displacement and migration. It also outlines options for protection and resettlement of individuals displaced directly or indirectly from climate change and identifies opportunities for the United States to work with other stakeholders, including through multilateral engagement, to address migration resulting directly or indirectly from climate change.

The report concludes with a primary recommendation and a list of considerations for further evaluation that may guide the United States’ approach to climate migration, if funding and policy priorities allow.

The report recommends the establishment of a standing interagency policy process on Climate Change and Migration to coordinate U.S. Government efforts to mitigate and respond to migration resulting from the impacts of climate change that brings together representatives across the scientific, development, humanitarian, and peace and security elements of the U.S. Government.

President Biden directed the issuance of the report in his February “Executive Order on Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration.”

“The Biden administration’s report is a major milestone, representing the first time the U.S. government has formally recognized the link between climate change and migration,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

“It is an important acknowledgement of a troubling lack of a policy framework to protect those uprooted by the climate crisis. We are grateful that federal officials are taking proactive steps to align outdated public policy with the reality of this 21st century challenge and to expand access to refuge to those increasingly impacted by climate disaster,” she said.

She said that the “time for action to protect climate-displaced people is overdue, and the U.S. is uniquely positioned to lead the way. As one of the world’s largest carbon emitters, we have a moral responsibility to strengthen protection pathways for people who are losing their homes and livelihoods to the climate disaster.”

The report is available here.

States across the U.S. are taking steps to prepare for an increase of refugee arrivals after President Biden set a goal in May to admit 125,000 refugees into the U.S. next fiscal year.

“With renewed interest in refugee resettlement coming from the top of the federal government, North Dakota officials and nonprofit workers anticipate the state will take in about five times as many refugees in the next federal fiscal year as it has this year,” reports Jeremy Turley in the Grand Forks Herald newspaper.

In Connecticut, the need to help refugees coming to the state has grown, notes Mary O’Leary in a New Haven Register article.

“Integrated Refugees and Immigrant Services hopes to welcome close to 250 refugees to Greater New Haven this year and in 2022, as well as 100 refugees for settlement in Greater Hartford with 50 to be supported throughout the state with the help of private groups, usually organized by religious organizations,” writes O’Leary in the article.

In the Midwest, Wisconsin refugee agencies “expect to welcome more refugees into the state in the coming months and years, many likely from Myanmar, as President Joe Biden’s administration lifts restrictive policies on refugee admissions put in place under his predecessor,” reports Sarah Volpenhein in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

A unique project created by award-winning photographer Robin Hammond called “One Thousand Dreams” seeks to change prevailing refugee narratives through a storytelling project that tells the stories of 1,000 refugees across Europe. The project is entirely authored by storytellers with a refugee background.

The 1,000 interviews, conducted entirely by storytellers with a refugee background, “amplify the voices of refugees and open a door to their misunderstood and misrepresented world,” the project’s website notes.

Click here for a story about the project published in the Guardian.