The Trump administration’s travel ban on refugees entering the U.S. includes “people with potentially deadly — yet treatable — illnesses,” reports Kevin Sieff in the Washington Post (Dec. 26, 2017).

“Some refugees with severe medical conditions have already died while waiting for the admissions to resume, advocates say,” writes Sieff.

The article profiles several refugees who are being directly affected by the U.S. refugee policy.

In a Dec. 28 article, Sieff details his visits to a refugee camp in Kenya.

A research paper published in Science magazine “suggests that weather shocks are spurring people to seek asylum in the European Union,” the New York Times reports.

“The researchers found that over a 15-year period, asylum applications in Europe increased along with ‘hotter-than-normal temperatures’ in the countries where the asylum seekers had come from,” writes Somini Sengupta.

Sengupta notes that under international law, only those who have fled their countries because of war or persecution are entitled to refugee status. “People forced to leave home because of climate change, or who leave because climate change has made it harder for them to make a living, don’t qualify,” she writes.

But refugee advocates “fear that if the 1951 refugee treaty were opened for renegotiation, politicians in various countries would try to weaken the protections that exist now.”

The research paper is available here.

Comparing migrants to Mary and Joseph, Pope Francis urged Roman Catholics to remember the plight of millions of migrants “driven from their land,” during Christmas Eve Mass.

“So many other footsteps are hidden in the footsteps of Joseph and Mary. We see the tracks of entire families forced to set out in our own day. We see the tracks of millions of persons who do not choose to go away, but driven from their land, leave behind their dear ones,” Francis said.

Pope Francis in August released “a 20-point action plan to governments on refugees and migrants to try to galvanize their response to an issue seen by the Vatican as one of the biggest global challenges of the 21st century” (the Guardian, Aug. 21, 2017).

In 2016, Francis created the Vatican’s migrants and refugees section. The section’s website notes that it “helps the Church worldwide to support those who are forcibly displaced by conflict, natural disaster, persecution or extreme poverty; those who are making their difficult way to safety or are stuck; and those who fall victim to human trafficking.”

Australia has accepted the first group of refugees from Central America under a prior agreement made with the Obama Administration.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/first-30-central-american-refugees-arrive-in-australia-after-fleeing-gang-violence-20171216-h05s4p.html

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has agreed to honor a prior agreement reached between President Obama and Australia to accept into the U.S. refugees who were refused entry into Australia, with a key modification ….those accepted will not include refugees from the list of countries included under Trump’s travel ban.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/15/second-cohort-of-nauru-and-manus-refugees-to-be-resettled-in-us

The New York Times examines the plight of refugees who remain on Manus Island.

Here is a recent sampling of articles detailing how states and local communities are helping refugees settle in the U.S.

“Local organizations are fighting for refugees” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Nov. 7, 2017)

“Building new lives: Syrian refugees find support, friendship from churches” (Baltimore Sun, Nov. 7, 2017)

“Refugee and now U.S. citizen, interpreter helping resettle Somalis” (Joplin, Ill., Globe, Nov. 4, 2017)

The Trump administration has given 2,500 Nicaraguans with provisional residency 14 months to leave the United States, announcing this week “that it will not renew the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation that has allowed them to remain in the country for nearly two decades,” reports the Washington Post.

At the same time, the White House “deferred a decision for the much larger group of 57,000 Hondurans who have been living in the United States with the same designation, saying the Department of Homeland Security needed more time to consider their fate,” writes the Post’s Nick Miroff.

“The Trump Administration’s cruel decision affecting deeply-rooted Nicaraguans in the U.S. is part of its effort to roll back TPS in order to advance its mass deportation strategy,” said Frank Sherry, Executive Director of America’s Voice Education Fund, in a statement after the announcement.

The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants recently launched its “In Their Own Voices” podcast in which refugees are interviewed.

Check out the first podcast here.

For more information about the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, click here.

A new Pew Research Center analysis finds that the number of refugees annually resettled by the U.S. in recent years has not consistently grown in step with a worldwide refugee population that has expanded nearly 50% since 2013.

Pew based its analysis on data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the State Department.

The new analysis comes in the wake of President Trump recently signing an order lowering the number of refugees allowed into the United States next year to 45,000, which is the lowest cap since Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980.

Having read several articles in the past few days about the pending White House decision on the number of refugees that will be allowed to come into the country annually, one thing is clear: White House policy adviser Stephen Miller is apparently doing as much as he can to push that number to historic lows and has allegedly tried to spike a report showing that refugees offer a net positive economic impact.

Vanity Fair notes in a recent article that every year on October 1, the president of the United States is required to set the number of refugees that will be allowed into the country for the fiscal year, as decreed by the Refugee Act of 1980.

“Given that the current president is Donald Trump, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that his administration is currently considering slashing the limit to its lowest level since the Refugee Act was created,” writes Bess Levin.

According to reports, “certain members of Team Trump want the number to be fewer than 50,000, which would be less than half of the 110,000 refugees Barack Obama said should be admitted in 2016. It probably also won’t come as much of a shock to learn that in making this argument, certain members of the administration are choosing to actively ignore the government’s own cost-benefit analysis of refugees,” writes Levin.

Writing in Mother Jones, Kevin Drum reports that as part of his executive order banning refugees, Donald Trump ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to produce a report about the economic impact of refugees.

“The answer, according to HHS, is that refugees contributed $269 billion in tax revenue and used $206 billion in services, for a net positive impact of $63 billion over the past decade,” writes Drum.

But when the final report was released, “it presented only half the story,” Drum reports.

In a Sept. 20 editorial, the Washington Post, citing a New York Times article, said that the administration “sent the report back for a redo, insisting that any mention of revenue be dropped. The Department of Health and Human Services obliged in a final, three-page report this month, which concluded that per-person departmental program costs for refugees were $3,300, compared with a per-person cost of $2,500 for the U.S. population as a whole.”

Miller “is leading the charge to slash the number of refugees admitted in the fiscal year starting in October, below even the cap of 50,000 that Mr. Trump imposed this year — itself the lowest number in more than 30 years,” the Post said.

The New York Times “reported Tuesday that Miller has advocated for around 25,000 refugees, and that the Department of Homeland Security proposed a cap of 40,000,” the Atlantic reported.