Before reading this week’s articles, I was very much ignorant of recent developments and trends in migration across the US. My first reaction and point I want to address centers on scale; the number of migrants in a specific time that the articles highlight, and how my perspective changed upon being able to reflect with relativity to the reception and intake of Ukrainian refugees.

The NYT’s interactive infographic was a particularly insightful tool in understanding the spread of migrants as a result of Governor Abbott’s bus policy. As the swarm of dots increased it relayed to me the increasing gravity and impact of such large numbers of migrants – or so I thought. My initial reaction to the seemingly immense number of arrivals after reading the NYT migrant busing article was of an unwilling understanding of the seemingly infeasibility of the current situation regarding migrant arrivals of such as scale in Texas, especially after having read the having read the City & State timeline, which relayed all the funding and budget complications, backtracking and inefficiencies with the Adams administration’s handling of their then arrival in NYC. However comparing the numbers (119,000 bused over two years to the democrat led cities) to the 535,000 Ukrainians who arrived over a similar span of time made me question the framing of this as an inevitable crisis rather than one that could have been managed in a more organized and humane way. Additionally to this, I wondered more about the funding of these programs and schemes. In the UK, many current and previously proposed programs spend thousands and thousands on the deportation and creation of schemes to house immigrants offshore in order to avoid legal obligations; funds which if had been more directly funneled to immigrants would have helped with their settlement and integration in many cases; there tends to be a common theme of misspending and wasteful allocation of resources, motivated by political schematics of not wanting to be seen as giving migrants handouts, leaving many in the situations detailed in the NYT article on homeless migrants.

 

Governor Abbott’s policy highlights to me however the importance of equal migrant distribution. The articles made it clear that there was a pointed political aim behind busing them to exclusively democrat-run cities; however, it did bring direct attention to the issue and pointedly showed how difficult the unstructured reception of migrants can be. However it does highlight the potential for such a method to be implemented successfully if done either in a proportional manner to the state’s population and ability to receive migrants (for example if they have the necessary accommodation and infrastructure) or areas potentially facing labor shortages. Nations, such as states should be prepared to take on more equal roles in receiving migrants; the UK is as guilty of this by creating furour and anti-immigrant rhetoric despite taking in far less migrants and refugees proportionally than many worse hit southern European states.

 

The last thing I wanted to drop in was a reaction to Title 42 upon learning about it – can the way this was implemented have gone against Geneva conventions? I understand the impetus for blocking people from certain nations when preventing the spread of disease, but when other types of travelers were being allowed to enter the US with no restrictions or testing, refusing asylum seekers seems like a violation of refugee rights. Where does the line get drawn balancing receiving asylum seekers and containing diseases; especially when quarantine and testing are options?