refugees – Page 2 – Lone Candle

How Armenia and Azerbaijan’s conflict could still destabilize the region

Posted on September 29, 2023 by Lone Candle

“A decades-long conflict in the Caucasus flared up last week — only to seemingly finally be decided.
Azerbaijan on September 19 launched an “anti-terror” strike aimed at Nagorno-Karabakh, the semi-autonomous, majority-Armenian region within its internationally recognized borders. One day later, the breakaway government agreed to disarm and dissolve its military. It was the second time in three years that Azerbaijan’s government made decisive gains in a conflict with Nagorno-Karabakh.

Now, many of those ethnic Armenians are fleeing the territory — 50,000, according to authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh, although some estimates are as high as 70,500. The breakaway region’s leaders told Reuters that as many as 120,000 people — essentially the entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh — would leave, out of fear of ethnic cleansing by Azerbaijan’s government after the region’s de facto government capitulated to Azerbaijan last week.

A member of Nagorno-Karabakh’s former government, Ruben Vardanyan, has also been taken into custody by Azerbaijani border guards while trying to flee to Armenia, Al Jazeera reported Thursday. Armenian outlets have reported that David Babayan, an adviser to the region’s former president, has also turned himself in to authorities.

While tensions obviously remain high, and much of what’s happening on the ground is unclear, it does appear the “anti-terror” strike will dissolve the territory altogether. It’s a result that could echo far beyond Azerbaijan’s borders, as it has escalated an already difficult humanitarian crisis and is roiling Armenian politics.”

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/9/23/23886844/conflict-nagorno-karabakh-azerbaijan-armenia-russia-turkey-explained

Debate: Despite the Welfare State, the U.S. Should Open Its Borders

Posted on May 21, 2023 by Lone Candle

“Should you need government permission to take a job offer from a willing employer, rent an apartment from a willing landlord, or buy a product from a willing merchant? Most libertarians will rush to say, “No; these are basic human rights.” Do all human beings have these rights? Most libertarians will rush to say, “Yes; we hold these truths to be self-evident.”
If you snap these two answers together, they imply a policy of free immigration. If an American doesn’t need government permission to take a job offer from an American, why should a Mexican need government permission to take such an offer? Yet today, many libertarians oppose free immigration. Plenty favor even stricter regulations than we already have.”

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“Per Gallup’s 2021 polling, about 900 million adults across the world would leave their countries if they could; about 160 million of these name the U.S. as their top destination. The desire to leave is strongest in some of the world’s poorest nations, such as Sierra Leone and Honduras. A 2011 study by the pollster, based on earlier rounds of the same survey, found that 40 percent of would-be migrants to the U.S. had an elementary education or less.

Adding 160 million people would increase the U.S. population by close to half. To be sure, U.S. immigration policy is not the only obstacle these individuals face (so that estimate might be too high). And the number doesn’t include kids, or folks who might come to the U.S. even though it’s not their top choice (so it might also be too low). But the true number would, without a doubt, be huge.”

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“imagine it: Our nation of 330 million finds itself committed to grow by some unpredictable but large fraction (a quarter, half, double, who knows?) over an equally unpredictable amount of time until the pent-up demand is satisfied, and then will accept elevated immigration levels afterward too.

Adding tens to hundreds of millions of immigrants, largely from poor nations, would have any number of effects. The newcomers could contribute great inventions, serve in our military, and introduce delicious cuisines; they could also bring with them the institutions, political beliefs, and cultures that made their home countries worth leaving, stress our housing and labor markets, and ignite ethnic conflict, both with each other and with U.S. natives.

Of all the downsides of open borders, the burden on the welfare state might not be the biggest. In theory it could even be one of the easier problems to address: Just ban immigrants from state support.

In practice, though, it’s difficult to welcome millions of poor people without giving them some help. Witness the struggles of New York City to handle just 40,000 asylum seekers, who amount to roughly 0.5 percent of the city’s 8.5 million population. Or contemplate millions of seniors without health care while homeless encampments grow in the nation’s already-housing-starved cities. Further, thanks to the U.S. rule of “birthright citizenship,” all children born to immigrants here are automatically citizens, which complicates any effort to exclude them from welfare programs.”

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“An open-borders policy, beyond being unrealistic, represents an insane gamble with the stability of the most powerful nation on the planet. Those who want looser immigration laws should set their sights lower and calibrate their rhetoric to match.

Here’s a different approach: Start with the easy cases, such as those with valuable skills and perhaps refugees as well, and try to push those numbers up. If you can show the public that higher numbers in these categories improve the country, they might be tempted to follow you further.”

The U.S. Took in 271,000 Ukrainian Refugees in a Year. It Can Handle More.

Posted on April 16, 2023 by Lone Candle

“Nearly a year after Biden’s announcement, the Department of Homeland Security says that over 271,000 Ukrainian refugees have been admitted to the United States. More than 117,000 came through the “Uniting for Ukraine” program, a private refugee sponsorship scheme through which Americans can volunteer to financially support Ukrainians. Another 150,000 came to the U.S. through pathways like the traditional refugee resettlement program or by crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Bringing in 271,000 refugees, while a modest accomplishment compared to what countries such as Poland, Germany, and Canada have done, is a huge deal in the context of American immigration politics—especially with as little controversy as it provoked. It speaks volumes about America’s ability to absorb large numbers of people without changing something fundamental about its culture, which immigration restrictionists often doubt. Judging by the scores of Americans who stepped up to welcome Ukrainians, American culture is equipped to absorb.”

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“assimilation potential is a slippery concept. Take language skills: According to EF Education First’s English Proficiency Index, Ukrainians fall into the same proficiency band as Cubans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans. This is roughly true of their economic circumstances as well. Ukraine’s per-capita gross domestic product was $4,835 as of 2021, per the World Bank—roughly $200 lower than Guatemala and $300 higher than El Salvador.

Given those factors, Ukrainian refugees may not be as different from other migrant groups as might appear. What has been unique is the way Uniting for Ukraine has been successful in capitalizing on and building public buy-in. It offered migrants an organized, predictable, low-drama pathway, and it allowed Americans to contribute to relief efforts directly by sponsoring migrants. Ukrainians leaned into the legal immigration option, and American sponsors gladly helped them do so—both in large numbers. Contrast that with the traditional government refugee resettlement process, which resettled just 12 Ukrainian refugees in the first month following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

How the US is failing refugees, in one chart

Posted on July 12, 2022 by Lone Candle

“For the first time on record, the global number of people forced to flee their homes has crossed the staggering milestone of 100 million, according to recent data from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

That 100 million includes refugees, asylum seekers, and those displaced inside their borders by conflict. If they were a single country, it would be the 14th most-populous nation in the world.

“It’s a record that should never have been set,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a press statement. “This must serve as a wake-up call.”

It should especially serve as a wake-up call for rich countries like the United States that have fallen short of their moral and political responsibilities to the displaced.

“We very much have a national mythos around being a safe haven and being a nation of immigrants,” said Elizabeth Foydel, the private sponsorship program director at the nonprofit International Refugee Assistance Project. “And for a long time, the US was the top country in terms of resettlement. But I think it’s definitely fair to say that we’ve been falling short over the past several years. You see a pretty significant decline overall.””

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“Part of the work of rebuilding the US resettlement program is undoing the damage that was done under previous administrations. That means staffing up the government agencies that do resettlement and streamlining the security vetting process.

The Biden administration is also working on getting a private sponsorship program up and running by the end of this year, one that would allow Americans to sponsor not only Afghan refugees, as I’ve previously written about, but refugees from any country.”

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“For anyone interested in becoming a sponsor through this program, it’s a good idea to start preparing now, since it will likely require a fair amount of money. Canada’s highly successful private sponsorship program, for example, requires a sponsor to raise nearly $23,000 USD to bring over a family of four refugees. The US equivalent of that program could easily require money on a similar scale.

But it would be well worth it, since it would provide an immigration pathway so more vulnerable people can enter the US. Importantly, the State Department has signaled that any refugees who come to the US via private sponsorship will be in addition to the number of traditional, government-assisted resettlement cases.”

‘Things Will Only Get Worse.’ Putin’s War Sends Russians Into Exile.

Posted on April 11, 2022 by Lone Candle

“While the exodus of about 2.7 million Ukrainians from their war-torn country has focused the world on a burgeoning humanitarian crisis, the descent of Russia into new depths of authoritarianism has many Russians despairing of their future. That has created a flight — though much smaller than in Ukraine”

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“Some who have fled are bloggers, journalists or activists who feared arrest under Russia’s draconian new law criminalizing what the state deems “false information” about the war.
Others are musicians and artists who see no future for their crafts in Russia. And there are workers in tech, law and other industries who saw the prospect of comfortable, middle-class lives — let alone any possibility for moral acceptance of their government — dissipate overnight.

They left behind jobs and family and money stuck in Russian bank accounts that they can no longer access. They fear being tarred as Russians abroad as the West isolates the country for its deadly invasion, and they reel over the loss of a positive Russian identity.

“They didn’t just take away our future,” Polina Borodina, a Moscow playwright, said of her government’s war in Ukraine. “They took away our past.”

The speed and scale of the flight reflect the tectonic shift the invasion touched off inside Russia. For all of President Vladimir Putin’s repression, Russia until last month remained a place with extensive travel connections to the rest of the world, a mostly uncensored internet giving a platform to independent media, a thriving tech industry and a world-class arts scene. Slices of Western middle-class life — Ikea, Starbucks, affordable foreign cars — were widely available.

But when they woke up Feb. 24, many Russians knew that all that was over. Dmitry Aleshkovsky, a journalist who spent years promoting Russia’s emerging culture of charitable giving, got in his car the next day and drove to Latvia.”

Biden’s immigration polices have left Haitians stranded in Mexico

Posted on February 4, 2022 by Lone Candle

“Thousands of Haitians are indefinitely trapped in Mexico. They face pervasive racism, and many are unable to work, have no access to medical care, and are targets for criminals. Most have arrived in the last year, hoping that the Biden presidency would open up an opportunity for them to finally seek protection in the US.

Those hopes were in vain. Now, Mexico is seeing a sharp uptick in Haitian asylum applicants — a surge it is unequipped to manage — all because the United States has offloaded its immigration responsibilities onto its neighbor.

The Biden administration continues to enforce pandemic-related border restrictions that have kept out the vast majority of asylum seekers, including Haitians; it’s deported nearly 14,000 Haitians since September 2021 despite their country’s political and economic crises. As a result, many Haitians face a difficult choice: Try to cross the US border and risk getting deported to Haiti if caught, or attempt to make a life for themselves in Mexico, at least temporarily.”

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“President Joe Biden did allow more than 100,000 Haitians already living in the US before July 29, 2021, to apply for Temporary Protected Status, which allows them to live and work in the US on a temporary basis. But he has largely pursued a strategy of deterrence and exclusion with respect to Haitian migrants outside US borders, despite the fact that their country is still reeling from President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination and the one-two punch of a 7.2-magnitude earthquake and a tropical storm last summer.”

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“The US could have made other choices that would have eased the burden on Mexico. For example, the Biden administration could have expanded TPS for Haitians or allowed them to enter the US temporarily on what’s called “parole,” a kind of temporary protection from deportation. It could have ended its deportation flights to Haiti and its restrictive border policies, or at least created broader exemptions to them. Instead, it has dumped its responsibilities to Haitians onto Mexico, which is ill-equipped to give them the kind of support they need.”

Can US investment really ease Central America’s migrant crisis?

Posted on January 21, 2022 by Lone Candle

“The US’s latest investments aim to address economic hardship in the region in three ways: By bringing more workers into the formal economy, by setting higher wage and labor standards, and by using corporate influence to fight corruption.

That won’t happen overnight. But there is reason to hope that US companies could meaningfully improve living conditions over time and give people a reason to stay.”

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“The region needs sustained investment before its residents will see any meaningful improvement in quality of life that might dissuade them from making the choice to migrate. In the past, US government aid has proved an unreliable source of that kind of investment. Former President Donald Trump decided to slash US aid to the region by a third, turning the clock back on the Obama administration’s efforts. Honduras saw homicides surge thereafter, and funding for social welfare programs ranging from job training for at-risk youths to grants for women entrepreneurs was cut.

The Biden administration hopes that because private companies are behind these latest investments, profit might motivate them to continue investing in the region, regardless of how US policy evolves, creating a more reliable stream of funding for Northern Triangle residents. The danger of this approach, of course, is that these companies could also suddenly pull their investments if they’re found to hurt the bottom line.”

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“At the moment, governments in the region have so far been unable to provide a significant social safety net because they haven’t had the money to do so. In part, that’s because countries in the Northern Triangle have among the lowest effective tax rates in the world. Workers with informal jobs don’t typically pay taxes and local corporations often try to evade them.

Guatemala’s 2019 tax revenue, for instance, was just 13.1 percent of its GDP — the lowest among Latin America and Caribbean countries, which brought in nearly 23 percent of their GDP on average. For comparison, taxation brings in an average of about a third of GDP across high-income countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

In Honduras, that has resulted in a sparse welfare system. There are no government-provided unemployment benefits. Though it has a social security program, only formal workers can pay into it and benefit from it. Public health care services are for the most part only available in large cities, leaving people in rural areas without access to physicians. That lack of support, coupled with pervasive violence and corruption, has left many migrants with no choice but to seek safety and opportunity elsewhere.”

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22836881/biden-central-america-investment-honduras-salvador-guatemala