Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Congresswoman Grace Meng (NY-06) have reintroduced the National Office of New Americans Act. The legislation would establish a National Office of New Americans within the White House to support immigrants and refugees in overcoming common obstacles to naturalization, including language barriers and challenges navigating the search for employment.

In addition, the National Office of New Americans Act would strengthen coordination between federal, state, and local governments to support the social, economic, and civic integration of immigrants and refugees, a news release from Markey’s office notes.

A copy of the legislation can be found HERE.

The Dutch government collapsed on Friday after the parties in its ruling coalition failed to reach an agreement on migration policy, “underlining how the issue of asylum seekers coming to Europe continues to divide governments across the continent,” the New York Times reported.

The government was set up a year and a half ago but the parties have been opposed on migration for some time, the BBC reported.

Mark Rutte, the prime minister, announced that his four-party coalition government would tender its resignation to King Willem-Alexander and there would be an election, according to the Financial Times.

“Rutte had presided over late-night meetings on Wednesday and Thursday that failed to result in a deal on migration policy,” the Guardian reported.

The British government’s plan to fly some asylum seekers to Rwanda “met a significant roadblock on Thursday when one of the country’s top courts rejected it as unlawful, delivering a sharp blow to one of the top priorities of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak,” reports the New York Times.

“In a judgment delivered in London, the Court of Appeal said Rwanda was not a safe country for asylum seekers. In doing so, the judges reversed a ruling in December by the High Court, which dismissed most legal challenges to the government’s plan to deport people seeking refugee status to the African country before their claims are assessed,” the Times reported.

 The U.K. government said it would challenge the ruling at the U.K. Supreme Court. It has until July 6 to lodge an appeal, the Associated Press reported.

The sinking of a migrant boat off the coast of Greece may be “the worst tragedy ever” in the Mediterranean sea, according to the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson.

“We don’t have all information yet on what has happened but it seems like this is the worst ever tragedy we’ve seen in the Mediterranean,” she told a press conference in Brussels on Friday, CNN reported.

The Greek coastguard said nine Egyptian nationals aged between 20 and 40 were also arrested on suspicion of setting up a criminal organization, manslaughter by negligence, exposure to danger, and causing a shipwreck, CNN said.

The BBC on June 18 said it “has obtained evidence casting doubt on the Greek coastguard’s account of the migrant shipwreck in which hundreds are feared to have died.“

Analysis of the movement of other ships in the area suggests the overcrowded fishing vessel was not moving for at least seven hours before it capsized, the BBC said.

“The coastguard still claims that during these hours the boat was on a course to Italy and not in need of rescue,” the BBC reported.

New research from the International Rescue Committee shows that EU states “have consistently neglected the needs of Afghans seeking protection — leaving millions stranded in Afghanistan or neighboring countries, and failing to provide adequate safety and inclusion for the small proportion who manage to reach Europe,” the IRC said on May 31.

Since 2021, around 41,500 Afghans at risk have reportedly been admitted to the EU through humanitarian admissions, including through emergency evacuations in August 2021. “However, this figure is vastly outpaced by rising needs,” the IRC said.

The IRC’s new report, Two years on: Afghans still lack pathways to safety in the EU, “highlights how many of the schemes set up to bring Afghans to safety in Europe are falling short of their targets.”

The European Commission asked Greece to begin an investigation into a New York Times report based on footage showing the country’s Coast Guard abandoning migrants in the Aegean Sea last month, a top official said on Monday, the New York Times reported.

In a statement on Twitter released the day after Greek elections, the EU home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, said her officials had written to Athens with a formal request “that this incident be fully and independently investigated,” the Guardian reported.

More than a million people have been displaced by fighting in Sudan so far, including a quarter of a million refugees, a U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokesperson said on Friday, Reuters reported.

“The latest figure includes some 843,000 people displaced internally and around 250,000 people who have fled across Sudan’s borders, U.N. refugee agency spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh told a Geneva briefing,” the news agency said.

Video evidence shows asylum seekers being rounded up, taken to sea and abandoned on a raft by the Greek Coast Guard, the New York Times reports on May 19.

The Times article includes video footage provided to it by an activist who shared it with The New York Times.

Greece’s government “has consistently denied mistreating asylum seekers and points to the fact that it shoulders a disproportionate burden of managing new arrivals to Europe,” the article noted.

“But the video, provided by an Austrian aid worker, Fayad Mulla, who has spent much of the past two and a half years working on the island and trying to document abuses against migrants, may be the most damning evidence yet of the Greek authorities’ violation of international laws and E.U. rules governing how asylum seekers must be treated.”

The European Union “could see another record number of people seeking to reach its borders this year via irregular crossings, with more migrants driven by poverty and climate change rather than conflict,” the EU’s Frontex border agency said (Reuters, May 12, 2023).

Frontex reported approximately 330,000 unauthorized arrivals via all routes last year, “the highest since 2016, with the increased numbers provoking harsher anti-immigration rhetoric in EU states including Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria,” Reuters reported.

A group of Baptist churches in North Carolina are retrofitting vacant church-owned buildings for refugee housing, Yonat Shimron reports in the Washington Post.

“Organized through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina but open to any religious congregation, a new initiative encourages churches to refurbish church-owned parsonages, office buildings, youth clubhouses or single-family homes and make them available to refugees or humanitarian parolees for a nominal fee,” Shimron noted.

In late April, the network held its first housing and hospitality summit with 210 congregational leaders, “mostly from North Carolina, to learn more about how to use vacant church properties to minister to refugees. The conference made plain twin realities: a glut of underutilized church properties and a severe shortage of affordable housing for newly arrived refugees with few means.”