As World Comes to Halt Amid Pandemic, So Do Migrants

Since the coronavirus pandemic started to spread at the end of March, there has been a significant decline in migratory traffic from South America, Central America, and Mexico to the United States. A migrant shelter in southern Mexico that serves as a way station for migrants saw around 2,000 travelers last year. In the past weeks, COVID-19 slowed down migration from Mexico on an unprecedented scale. The shelter has seen less than 100 migrants pass through.

Farms in western Europe are seeing labor shortages as a result of travel bans. Thousands of Venezuelans who had been working in Colombia have been heading back to Venezuela, as have Afghans from Iran and Pakistan, and Haitians from the Dominican Republic. Gillian Triggs, the assistant high commissioner for protection at the United Nations Refugee Agency, notes in in a recent NY Times article that “Many of those [immigrants] who are returning barely had a toehold in the informal labor sector in their adopted countries, and were denied access to social safety nets.”

The Trump administration tightened border restrictions in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19. As a result, however, the processing of undocumented migrants and blocking access for asylum seekers has halted. Governments are closing their borders to refugees not only in the United States but around the world as well. More than 120 countries have ordered some form of the border closure. 30 of these countries are giving separate consideration to asylum seekers. Hundreds of Rohingya refugees on boats have been turned away in Malaysian ports by authorities citing pandemic restrictions. Stranded migrants are not able to practice social distancing, putting them at a more prominent risk of exposure to the virus.

Post written by Isabel Wang, Colgate Class of 2021.

Source: Semple, Kirk. “As World Comes to Halt Amid Pandemic, So Do Migrants,” The New York Times. May 4, 2020.

Great video about immigrants in Utica, NY

Chapter 14 profiles Utica, NY, an old industrial town that has been revitalized as a result of receiving large numbers of immigrants. PBS NewsHour did a great segment on the town.

The refugee crisis in the EU

Refugees surging into the EU have dominated the headlines in recent weeks. The situation has been building over time and recently reached crisis point, with thousands of migrants streaming into Greece and Hungary every day. The current situation is largely rooted in continued unrest and desperate conditions in Syria; earlier this summer, the influx was largely due to instability in Libya that is resulting in large numbers of migrants setting off from there to Greece and Italy. The latest wave is also setting off for the EU from Turkey.

A set of EU rules called the Dublin Regulation requires that asylum seekers--people asking to be declared refugees and granted the right to stay in the EU--apply for asylum in the first EU country they reach. This means huge numbers of applicants in Greece, Hungary and other countries in southern and eastern Europe. Those ports of entry are relatively poor and offer few government-funded benefits to refugees. Many migrants therefore want to go to Germany and other relatively wealthy countries in northern and western Europe. Some countries in northern and western Europe are welcoming the asylum seekers, most notably Germany, while others are trying to discourage them, such as Denmark. Indeed, Germany's non-enforcement of the Dublin Regulation and its relatively generous benefits to refugees may be contributing to the influx. 

Important economic issues related to the crisis include: Are the migrants refugees or economic migrants? How do the policies of the EU or its member states affect the inflow of migrants? How should the EU and its member states respond?

Here's a great graphic on the current scale of the migration crisis in the EU. The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) has lots of information about the crisis. The EU is discussing whether to adopt quotas to distribute refugees across member states. The Common European Asylum System explains much of the EU rules regarding asylum seekers.