Italy’s top appeals court has established that sending sea migrants back to Libya is unlawful, “a ruling hailed by charities and human rights groups,” reports Reuters on Feb. 18.

The Court of Cassation upheld the conviction of the captain of an Italian towboat, Asso 28, who in 2018 rescued 101 migrants from a rubber dinghy and returned them to Libya, Reuters said.

The ruling is final, upholding earlier decisions by two lower courts, the news agency noted.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) on Feb. 15 published a report, The Fiscal Impact of Refugees and Asylees at The Federal, State and Local Levels From 2005-2019, which examines the fiscal impact of refugees and asylees on the U.S. government and economy.

Some of the key findings include:  

Net Fiscal Impact: Refugees and asylees had a positive net fiscal impact on the U.S. government over the 15-year period, totaling $123.8 billion. The net fiscal benefit to the federal government was estimated at $31.5 billion and approximately $92.3 billion to state and local governments. When compared with the total U.S. population on a per capita basis, refugees and asylees had a comparable net fiscal impact.

Government Revenue: Refugees and asylees contributed an estimated $581 billion in revenue to all levels of government. Through payroll, income, and excise taxes, they contributed an estimated $363 billion to the federal government, and through income, sales, and property taxes, they contributed $218 billion to state and local governments.

Government Expenditures: Over the 15-year period, governmental expenditures on refugees and asylees totaled an estimated $457.2 billion. Expenditures by the federal government represented 72.5 percent of the total, at $331.5 billion, while state and local government expenditures were 27.5 percent of the total, at $125.7 billion.

A Feb. 10 article in the New York Times details the latest example of how migrants are increasingly being used as political pawns in Europe, with Finland accusing Russia of assisting asylum seekers to reach the border of Finland, which is holding a vote on Sunday for its new president.

“Poking up through the snow drifts on the Finnish-Russian border lies a symbol of Moscow’s biggest provocation yet toward NATO’s newest member: a sprawling heap of broken bicycles,” the story notes.

“The battered bikes are sold for hundreds of dollars on the Russian side to asylum seekers from as far away as Syria and Somalia. They are then encouraged — sometimes forced, according to Finnish guards — to cross the border. Finns say it is a hybrid warfare campaign against their country, using some of the world’s most desperate people, just as it is staking out a new position in a shifting world order,” writes Erika Solomon.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban has also been accused of easing the path of migrants through Hungary to neighboring Slovakia.

Kelly Greenhill wrote about this disturbing trend in a 2022 piece published in Foreign Affairs.

She is a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at SOAS University of London, Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, and a Senior Research Scholar at MIT.

“In the fall of 2021, the leaders of several European countries announced that they were being confronted by an entirely new security threat: weaponized migration,” wrote Greenhill.

Over the course of a few months, Alexander Lukashenko, “the authoritarian leader of Belarus, enticed thousands of migrants and would-be asylum seekers, primarily Kurds from Iraq and Syria, as well as some Afghans, to his country with promises of easy access to the European Union.”

“Although it has multiple uses, weaponized migration is often employed as an instrument of state-level coercion, undertaken to achieve a wide range of geopolitical and other foreign policy goals that have been frustrated by other means,” Greenhill notes. 

She said that when weaponized migration is used, it is often successful. “In nearly three-quarters of the 81 cases I have identified, the tactic achieved at least some of the desired objectives; in well over half, it obtained most or all of what was sought.”

The State Department recently highlighted the success of Welcome Corps after one year since its inception.

Under Welcome Corps,  Americans form sponsor groups to help refugees build new lives in the United States. This involves greeting refugees at the airport, securing and preparing initial housing, enrolling children in school, helping adults secure jobs, and helping them settle into their new communities.

A consortium of nonprofit organizations specializing in resettling refugees has partnered with the Department to implement the program and support sponsors.

The consortium, led by the Community Sponsorship Hub, includes Church World Service, the International Rescue Committee, International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS), HIAS, and Welcome.US.

Beyond the consortium, dozens of community organizations have signed up to serve as private sponsor organizations (PSOs), providing technical expertise and support to sponsor groups as they carry out core services for refugees once they arrive in the United States. 

In the year since the State Department launched Welcome Corps, more than 15,000 American sponsors have applied to receive more than 7,000 refugees through Welcome Corps, exceeding the Department’s first year mobilization goal. 

“Included in that milestone are more than 100 private sponsor groups from 32 states that have signed up to be matched with refugees they did not know from around the world. Under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, these refugees, from around the world, were already being considered for U.S. resettlement,” the State Department noted.

Welcome Corps is one of the ways the State Department is expanding domestic resettlement capacity and reaching the Administration’s target of admitting up to 125,000 refugees in fiscal year 2024. 

Baltimore, Maryland-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service on Jan. 17 said that it was changing its name to Global Refuge.

The rebrand to Global Refuge “marks a new phase for the nonprofit as it seeks to further grow its service impact and build a bigger table of supporters at a time when more than 114 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes by escalating violence, persecution, and climate disaster, according to the United Nations,” the group said.

Accompanying the launch of the Global Refuge brand is a new website that enhances user experience and leans into rich, human-centered storytelling. The organization’s logo, inspired by the Statue of Liberty’s torch, has undergone a modernization, taking a circular form in keeping with its “global” theme, serving as a timeless reminder that immigration is an integral part of the American Dream, it said.

“We are thrilled to embark on an exciting new chapter rooted in our profound purpose, rich history, and enduring commitment to walking faithfully alongside newcomers at every stage in their journey,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, President and CEO of Global Refuge.

“The word ‘Global’ not only describes the diverse backgrounds of the children and families we serve, but also conveys the scale of our vision to grow our humanitarian leadership as a beacon of hope and welcome,” she said. “‘Refuge’ is inspired by our Lutheran heritage and conveys a meaning of shelter that extends across all people, faiths, and denominations, just as our work does. At its core, our new name speaks to the place we are creating for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in need, the world over.”

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.

Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety, and Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) on Nov. 16 announced the reintroduction of the Climate Displaced Persons Act.

The bill would “enact a national strategy that would provide a more equitable immigration pathway to the United States for people displaced by climate change and critical support for people affected by climate disasters internationally,” Markey’s office said in a news release. The legislation would also create a Global Climate Change Resilience Strategy “to protect people before displacement strikes.”

Specifically, the legislation would, among other things, create a U.S. resettlement pathway for climate-displaced persons, require agencies to collect data on who climate visas are awarded to and use this data to more equitably allocate visas in subsequent years and create a government-wide Coordinator for Climate Resilience position.

More than 100 hundred organizations recently sent a letter to Congressional leaders voicing support for the legislation.