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.

The Biden administration plans to maintain refugee admissions to the United States at 125,000, according to a draft report obtained by CNN, “and admit a larger share of refugees from the Western Hemisphere amid unprecedented movement in the region,” reports CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez.

Alvarez reported that the State Department has proposed admitting between 35,000 to 50,000 refugees from Latin America/the Caribbean in fiscal year 2024, according to the draft report. “That’s up from 15,000 in fiscal year 2023, though only around 5,500 refugees from that region have been resettled in the US as of August 31, according to federal data,” writes Alvarez in her story, which was posted on CNN’s website.

More than seven million refugee children are out of school globally, according to United Nations data.

“With the displaced population rising every year, there is a significant and increasing proportion of the world’s children who are missing out on their education,” said Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Friday that by the end of 2022, the total number of school-aged refugees globally jumped nearly 50 per cent from 10 million in 2021 to 14.8 million, driven mostly by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In a new Education Policy Brief  — Education on Hold —  UNHCR reported that only around half of Ukrainian refugee children were enrolled in schools in host countries, for the 2022-2023 academic year.

The factors contributing to low enrollment rates include administrative, legal and language barriers and a lack of information on available education options. 

While the media’s focus these days is on the influx of immigrants in New York City, a recent New York Times article points out that there are plenty of business owners who would love to be able to hire these new arrivals to New York State.

The problem? Federal government policy stands in the way.

“Across the state, many large and small employers have expressed an overwhelming willingness to hire recent asylum seekers; migrants are even more eager to work. But bringing the two sides together is far harder than it might seem,” write Jesse McKinley and Luis Ferre-Sadurni in the New York Times article.

They note that migrants are prohibited by federal policy from securing work permits until 180 days after an asylum application is filed, “a process that has resulted in monthslong backlogs and has frustrated both business and elected leaders, especially in upstate New York, where farms and small rural towns mix with a series of often hard-strapped Erie Canal cities.”

In related news, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul Gov. Kathy Hochul recently “called on the federal government to provide New York State relief in the midst of the migrant crisis by speeding work authorizations for asylum-seekers arriving in regions that include Buffalo,” reports Harold McNeil in the Buffalo News.

Five months after Canada reached a deal in 2022 to stanch the flow of asylum seekers entering from the U.S., “the overall number of people filing refugee claims in Canada has risen instead of falling,” Reuters reported.

“Many now come by air, while others sneak across the border and hide until they can apply for asylum without fear of being sent back, people working with migrants told Reuters.”

“The numbers show how hard it is for countries to shut the door on desperate people and the challenge unexpected numbers of asylum seekers can pose: In Toronto, hundreds slept on the streets this summer as they struggled to find beds,” wrote Wa Lone and Anna Paperny in their article.

The Biden Administration appears to have “hit on a successful formula for managing dysfunction at the border—at least for now,” writes Andrew Selee, President of the Migration Policy Institute, in Foreign Affairs.

The new migration policy “is built around a three-part strategy: tightening enforcement at the U.S.-Mexican border, expanding legal pathways for entry, and vetting candidates for asylum and humanitarian protection in countries of origin rather than primarily at the border itself,” he notes.

The new approach faces challenges including whether U.S. courts deem it legal. “But if the strategy works over the long term, it will mark an ambitious effort to reimagine how governments manage the flow of migrants in a safer, more organized way that moves the admittance process much farther upstream, long before most potential migrants reach the border,” writes Selee.

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.