Month: September 2024 (Page 2 of 5)

One in ten unaccompanied migrant children in Arizona say they were physically abused while in the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency’s custody since January of 2023, according to a September report by the non-profit Florence Project for Refugee and Migrant Rights

Based on a fifteen-month investigation and hundreds of individual interviews, the report also found that one in four of the interviewed unaccompanied minors say they were verbally abused. Many more report a lack of hygiene products, medical supplies, warm clothes, and food.

“Kids shouldn’t be held in inhumane conditions, subjected to abuse,” said Jane Liu, director of Policy and Litigation at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. “There really is just very little accountability.” Her organization works with the Florence Project, part of a collective effort to bring visibility to the conditions unaccompanied immigrant children are held in.

Detention centers for unaccompanied minors have long been criticized, and the Florence Project’s report is the most recent update in a history of attempts at change, says Liu. “Every couple years we’ve been raising these issues . And nothing has been done.”

The Customs and Border Patrol agency was created in 2002 as a subsidiary of the DHS, explains Luis Coronado, history professor at the University of Arizona and member of the Binational Migration Institute. Before then, the paths of unaccompanied migrant children were determined by Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS).

“If you think things are bad now, it was horrendous back in the 80s and 90s,” said Liu about detention facilities. Litigation against the US government for its treatment of unaccompanied immigrant children started in 1985, with the Flores v. Reno case. It was dismissed in 1993 after a long legal battle.

Despite the case’s closure, public pressure persisted, and in 1997 the Clinton administration signed the landmark Flores Settlement, the nation’s first formalization of unaccompanied migrant children standards for care.

Since then, CBP has become responsible for unaccompanied migrant children after their apprehension. Updates in 2008 resulted in CBP’s promise to hold minors for no more than 72 hours (notably excluding “exigent circumstances”) at which point they should be transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

But the reality inside the facilities often differs harshly from CBP’s promises.

In 2019, the agency apprehended an all-time high of 76,136 unaccompanied immigrant children, prompting what CBP called a “crisis.”

Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, reported that at CBP’s Clint Texas facility that year, children were being held for over a month, without access to showers or sufficient food.

Between September 2018 and May 2019, six migrant children died in government custody – the first deaths in a decade. Then in June of 2019, Trump administration lawyers appeared in court arguing that the government isn’t legally required to give unaccompanied immigrant minors toothbrushes, towels, or “sleep.”

Just a week later, the state of Texas was sued for the inhumane conditions in the facilities of Rio Grande Valley and El Paso.

The facilities promised to improve, but in 2023 Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez, 8-years-old, died in Texas CBP custody. An independent investigation attributed the failure to “systemic weaknesses.”

Despite the fact that unaccompanied migrant children apprehensions have steadily declined since 2019, CBP was sued again in February of 2024, this time for their open air detention sites – transitory spaces which, they argued, didn’t fall under the purview of the Flores settlement.

CBP declined to comment about any previous suits or allegations against them, including the Florence Project’s most recent report.

Liu fears that there will be no improvements even after the Florence report documents on-going abuse, “kids will tell us about literal abuse that they’ve suffered. But they don’t want to raise complaints because they fear retaliation.” She said that as a result, most abuse goes unreported.

Even when unaccompanied minors do raise formal complaints, they often don’t know the names of the officers. “It’s a bit of a black box in there,” said Liu. CBP facilities are inaccessible for non-government agencies, so reports like that of the Florence Project can only be taken retroactively.

Speaking of CBP’s internal failings, Coronado said, “It’s not because they don’t want to pay attention, but because it’s very functional for them to not pay attention.” Holding individual officers accountable, he explained, threatens their system.

There are reports that CBP is internally investigating over 200 of their officers, but Liu said she wasn’t aware of any internal investigation. Regardless of any internal efforts, she didn’t think CBP had been making the necessary systematic changes.

“The bottom line is that the CBP facilities are really temporary holding facilities,” says Liu. “They’re not meant for anyone, to be honest.”

This week, I appreciated the focus on war—and specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—as a cause of migration. Migration does not occur in a vacuum. Whenever there are mass movements of people across international borders, they can always be attributed to social or economic events that push migrants out, attract them to other countries, or keep them in their home countries by creating immobility. The United Nations is the only body that can determine refugee status. Its definition states that refugees are “people forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country.” As we can see, there are push factors at play, making it important to pay attention to phenomena like wars for how they can produce refugeehood.

I also appreciated the historical context provided by the BBC, which notably pointed out that Russian “disenchantment” with the failure of Westernization to deliver on its promises led to “a retreat from the nation state and a return to a more assertive imperial stance toward its ‘near abroad’.” This explanation was very important for understanding Russia’s gradual shift toward authoritarianism that today, in conjunction with China, threatens to create a new world order that “pits the world’s democracies against the world’s authoritarian regimes.” The broader geopolitical implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have almost certainly played a role in generating support for Ukrainian refugees in the Western world, particularly in the United States. From the perspective of these countries, this is no ordinary conflict. Governments immediately understood what was at stake: the existing world order. Those who want to preserve the status quo have an incentive to staunchly oppose Russia, and many who want to see it change might take a more pragmatic approach. This is the case in many African countries, where Russia’s influence has grown in recent years, according to the head of the U.S. Africa Command on CNN. Many African countries are deeply frustrated by the consequences of Western interventionism on their continent and by a “simmering resentment over a lack of representation in international institutions,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Amos’s piece on accountability makes this abundantly clear by pointing out how international organizations are suspected of being “a tool to deal with the weak.” In fact, since its creation in 2002, the ICC has convicted only six people for its core crimes out of 32 cases. All of those convicted have been from Africa, according to a recent video by Al Jazeera.

photo on American University

There is mounting evidence that international institutions have been disadvantageous to those who hold little geopolitical power. There are arrest warrants against Putin and one pending against Netanyahu, but they are not likely to lead to any arrests or prosecutions. It is important to be aware of these geopolitical dynamics as they are able to shape the future of migration flows through the generation of conflicts and inequality, moving forward.

When former President Trump stood on the debate stage and spread the baseless claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating pets, Springfield Pastor Carl Ruby was in disbelief.

“My heart sank. I knew what was going to happen,” he told me.

What Ruby foresaw came true. After Trump’s September 10 debate comment came a deluge of bomb threats to local schools and businesses, as well as hate groups such as the Proud Boys descending onto the streets of Springfield. Migrants – who entered the country and settled in Springfield legally – feared for their lives as a direct result of the misinformation. Ruby, who is a senior pastor at Central Christian Church in Springfield and a long-time advocate for the town’s migrants, called it “complete chaos.”

“I told people my worst fear is that he mentions it at the debate. And he did. And from then on, it just took off,” Ruby said.

During the debate, Trump said, “In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there.” The false claim that Trump made was parroted from his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who posted on X the previous day:

“Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?”

The next morning, the morning of the debate, Vance posted again on X, admitted that “it’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.” But he still encouraged his followers to “keep the cat memes flowing.”

He later defended himself on CNN, saying, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

PolitiFact fact checker Louis Jacobson says that immigration has been a highly-misinformed-about topic “since Trump came down that golden escalator” in 2015. But since the debate comment, the topic has “become a piece of centrality of misinformation in the campaign.” He says that PolitiFact has had to hire multiple fact-checkers that specialize in immigration since 2015, and a PolitiFact analysis of Trump’s lies shows that he the policy area he lies about the most is immigration.

The newest claims have been repeatedly debunked by journalists – including those at PolitiFact – in addition to the Republican mayor of Springfield and the Republican governor of Ohio. The Springfield woman behind an early Facebook post that claimed her neighbor’s cat might have been kidnapped and eaten by Haitian neighbors apologized to NBC News, saying, “It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen.” Another Springfield resident, Anna Kilgore, had filed a much-spread police report about Haitian neighbors stealing her cat – but when the Wall Street Journal talked to her, she said she found her cat, Miss Sassy, in her basement a few days later.

But the recantations and fact-checks didn’t matter. National figures from Senator Ted Cruz to Elon Musk listened to Vance and posted the false claims on social media, where it spread like wildfire. Posts about Springfield ranged from threats to AI images of Trump “saving” a duck and cat in a pond, with the caption, “Protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio!” – posted to X by the Republican House Judiciary Committee, an official government account.

While talking about misinformation, Jacobson quotes satirist Jonathan Swift: “Lies spread around the world while the truth gets its pants on.” He says that even though PolitiFact fact-checks claims like the Springfield story when it was still a social media post, that doesn’t stop it from going viral. This process is possible through an agreements with Meta and TikTok: when the social media company flags a post to PolitiFact, they research and fact-check the post, which is then downgraded in the algorithm and has a fact-check alert. Still, Jacobson says this is a flawed system that reflects Swift’s quote.

“It takes us time to get the fact check. Before we can finish, it’s already spread virally,” Jacobson said. “It’s not instantaneous. It takes time, there’s not much you can do about that.”

For the migrants and their advocates like Ruby, the misinformation and the fallout has them living on edge.

“I think there were a total of somewhere between 30 and 50 bomb threats,” Ruby said. “Schools canceled, hospitals closed, grocery stores closed. … Everyone was nervous. People are afraid. My family is very afraid. Some people have been afraid to come to church because of the publicity that I have had as a spokesman for the Haitians.”

The day after the debate, one anonymous Springfield Haitian migrant told The Haitian Times, “She [my niece] was scared [to go to school], but I told her to go, that God would protect.”

Another told The Haitian Times, “I’m going to have to move because this area is no longer good for me. I can’t even leave my house to go to Walmart. I’m anxious and scared.”

Ruby himself has been a target for hate and misinformation.

“I was accused of trafficking Haitians into town. I was accused of owning rental properties and making money off of them, all sorts of just bizarre, totally false things that just took off on social media,”  Ruby said. “I would get threats online saying Carl Ruby is a piece of sh*t who needs to be run out of town, or Carl Ruby is a coyote. I’m just not looking at their social media because it’s not really helpful for me to see.”

Still, Ruby says that with all of the hate, there has also been an outpouring of support from within Springfield and across the world.

“People have really rallied to [the migrants’] defense and people are welcoming them, telling them that they’re glad that they’re here,” Ruby recounted. “I expected lots and lots of angry phone calls and angry messages, and there have been a couple. But for every negative one, there’s been 100 positive ones.”

I found the CSIS article on the digitization of refugee crisis response very interesting, as it highlights how internet penetration and access to social media play a role in refugee response. Social media allows Ukrainian refugees to maintain communication with family and friends, and digital access also allows countries hosting refugees to respond to the influx more efficiently through digital platforms. However, these technologies also bring up concerns regarding privacy and protection, as well as concerns over digital exclusion or disparities resulting from the fact that some populations do not have the same ease of access of ability to utilize these technologies. I was not aware that many Ukrainians had a smartphone app (Diia) which functioned as a digital wallet for official documents and carries the same weight as their physical equivalents. A few questions come to mind as I read this piece. First, I wonder whether it is possible to use this same idea of official government documents in other contexts with high digital penetration to facilitate access to government services more broadly. Second, if this approach is applied to other contexts, I wonder how the digital governance environment can account for the fact that not all countries have the same level of rigor for privacy guidelines as the EU’s GDPR (and even with the GDPR, the article highlighted the near impossibility of digital privacy protections). Third, it would be interesting to observe how this landscape evolves as tools such as AI become more advanced and readily available (the article mentioned early cases of countries using AI to screen refugee applications).

Similarly, the HIAS program provides another example of an innovative approach leveraging technology to better integrate refugees into their host community by matching them to a group of volunteers. It also provides a more positive approach to using an algorithm in which the end results accommodates the refugees’ preferences, as opposed to the CSIS article which highlighted some of the potential dangers of AI such as reinforcing bias and discrimination because. Algorithms are trained on pre-existing data, which is often biased, and can further reinforce trends we would not want to see in crisis and humanitarian response. One potential role for journalists in this area is to focus on investigative pieces which dissect/unpack/criticize the algorithms being used for refugee crisis response to highlight the ways in which they are either helping or harming refugee communities.

I was also intrigued by the NYT articles on Ukrainian dancers and choreographers because it shows a different angle not often discussed in the context of migration and forced displacement: how artistic individuals contend with the reality of war and displacement as well as how experiences that are traumatic for the body can affect people differently depending on their experiences. I was struck by Ratmansky’s decision to incorporate a haunting image of the war into his work, and he acknowledged it feeling like forbidden territory. Various forms of artistic expression, including dance, are often seen as forms of joy, but it is also important to acknowledge and tell the stories of artists using their craft to express themes of war and displacement.

JRN449 Reading Response Class 4 – Allison Jiang

In these week’s readings, we saw how novel and special creations sprouted from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a central and shared experience of the Ukrainian communities impacted. 2-years out from the inciting event of the Russo-Ukrainian War, these articles bring to light new technological and artistic infrastructures built in response to the shared experiences and needs of Ukrainians.

In the utilization of digital tools, there is the advent of new technology has reshaped the approach of immigration agencies that are aiming to optimize the efficiency, accessibility, and accountability of supporting Ukrainian refugees. Notably, I was surprised by the private tech sector’s involvement in the situation, with organizations such as Airbnb and Uber rising up through “#TechforUkraine.” In continuation of last week’s discussion around the discrepancy between attitudes toward Ukrainian refugees and the Haitians, Venezuelans, Mexicans, and Ecuadorians passing through the Southern border, we see this response expanded into how profitable companies completely removed from government are willing to implement themselves in a social justice-adjacent advocacy role. It’s important to note that the article on digital tools was posted on the site of the platform housing these very tools; perhaps this explains this rather saccharine picture of Ukrainian settlement.

But, with tech comes the inevitable onslaught of security and protection issues. With the vulnerability of the digital system that’s been crafted, the extended application of technology clearly threatens the refugees’ safety if private information is breached. However, there remains a question about access, especially for rural Ukrainian refugees who may not have the means to communicate with family back home, creating a hole in the aid for refugees who don’t have accessible coverage plans.

Dance for Ukrainian artists has also taken on a different identity under a shared trauma, one built on the history of censorship by the Soviets as well as the current military attacks. These artists have spoken to the notion of “selfhood” in the context of claiming their Ukrainian culture. While books and language were banned, the performance arts remained as a mode of preserving the self and culture of a group. Katja Kolcio, professor of dance who worked closely with Ukrainian war-relief workers, the Ukrainian National Guard, Ukrainian Armed Forces and veterans said: “It was such an explicit attempt to erase a sense of Ukrainian-ness,” she said, and yet that was preserved “through the embroidery, through the chants and songs and movements.”

When examining the theme of selfhood within the trauma-rife and emotionally stripping experiences of being a refugee, this art has functioned as an “uncomfortable intermingling of life and art” for some. For example, ballet choreographer Alexi Ratmansky has found his thoughts entangled with the war in Ukraine, where his family lives. “My parents in Kyiv are awoken at night by explosions,” he said in an interview at Lincoln Center. “It gets harder and harder and heavier because no one sees any light. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

The violence of the Russian airstrike has transferred to the work he creates, perhaps in a cathartic way that creates emotional solidarity and resonance in a puzzling and conflicted time for Ukrainians.

I found a lot of the articles this week incredibly engaging and particularly useful in connecting some of our past readings and clips to what was being discussed pertaining to Ukraine.

The first article I read, “Ukraine war: Putin has redrawn the world – but not the way he wanted” by BBC’s reporter Alan Little was interesting in the way that it went about calling out the people. When Little writes, “If these tactics are unfamiliar to you, you haven’t been paying attention” I found this quote so incredibly interesting because it calls out those who have not been made aware or are paying attention to what is going on around them. In a way, it’s calling out these people and making fun of them, calling out their naivety and asking them to wake up and take in what is going on. How much of what is going on is a byproduct of people not paying attention? Are people not paying attention to the route because things are only escalating and getting worse? If this is the case, should we ensure that we pay attention to make certain that things are not escalating and that money doesn’t continue to be laundered and used fraudulently?

At the end of the day, we can understand that many of these war trends or conflicts come down to wanting freedom from another entity and feeling as though they have to push back against governing bodies to achieve that freedom. This is seen especially in the case of Ukraine and Russia currently. However, upon further investigation, we can understand that history repeats itself the same way these conflicts between varying countries repeat themselves. In a sense, complete denomination or control over another country is achieved by stripping it of its identity or narrative. In the case of Ukraine, this is something that they are currently fearful of and believe is happening to them. The BBC article explicitly states, “Ukraine’s identity, too, will be strengthened further by the Ukraine’s have fought.” In order to sustain its identity, Ukraine needs to continuously push back and stand up for itself, fighting against Russian suppression.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought up an old question” was also incredibly engaging from the very beginning. I felt as thought the lead was incredibly engaging and immediately caught my attention by prompting “Is aggressive war legal?” This opening lead prompts an interesting question about the legality of war. Often, we think of war as just a byproduct of differences between two different countries and groups of people. However, when does the legal point of view interfere with the law? Can actual charges be made regarding the law? How are these boundaries set up, and how do we make sense of them in the context of defending ourselves in war?

“crimes against humanity, genocide and the aim to make war itself illegal, to hold leaders accountable for the crime of aggression, says Douglas.” This quote in itself makes me wonder how we would even go about making war itself illegal and how we would get other countries and people to agree to those standards. To a certain extent, it’s impossible, with the foundation of war being based on arguing and misunderstandings/disagreements. It seems silly to think that a comprehensive agreement could be made regarding the legality of war.

With the article titled, “How an Innovative Algorithm Helps Ukrainian Refugees Find New Homes”by Brian Zumhagen focusing primarily on some of the new systems in place to prioritize the preferences of migrants my attention automatically connected this reading to some of our previous readings.

With established systems in place, like the ones that Max and Yuna utilized to resettle, migrant stationing can be streamlined into a much faster process that makes things easier for both the migrants and the host country. In addition, having these set programs and foundational structures in place before migrants come over can alleviate the stress placed on systems that might be full or abundant with too many people. This technological process and form-filling process make me think of the influx of migrants that New York is experiencing. Especially when thinking about the bus route episodes and content we read and watched last class, I am left wondering if some of these programs are already in place to help alleviate the stress of those coming over or if they are in the process of developing systems to make processing migrants easier.

Another massive part of RUTH is the idea of transparency in this process. Often, I feel it is easy to look at just how efficient a process like this will make things. However, the idea of transparency and ensuring that migrants can be honest and effectively communicate everything that they need in their designated forms is also huge in ensuring primitive safety measures and long-lasting stations for these migrants upon arrival.

I really enjoyed reading perspectives from such different corners of the world and Ukrainian society. I used to be a Slavic major and I have followed the war in Ukraine very closely on Twitter; reading some of the accounts from 2022 reminded me of the shock and chaos that unfolded then, and it really did feel like a paradigm shift in which anything could happen. I enjoyed Allan Little’s overview of the conflict and his explanation of the historical context. I read Catherine Belton’s book Putin’s People, which explains how the KGB never really relinquished control of Russia and how many of the current Kremlin elite’s worldviews are informed by Soviet ideas of a greater Russia and a traditional Russian sphere of influence. It was interesting to see his experiences chatting to older Russians chime with this sense of a greater Russia.

I was very interested by Gia Kourlas’ piece in the NYT. What does it mean to profile one small segment of Ukrainian society in the midst of a war? I saw an article of a similar genre in the Times of London today profiling a casino in Beirut that is undeterred by the prospect of war with Israel. I think the effect of these pieces is that they can show how far war penetrates society. It leaves nothing untouched. Wars, like pandemics, touch more things than you could possibly think of by yourself.  I think there is also something very interesting about profiling dancers who are attuned to the effects of trauma on the body. This subject matter allows the journalist to show how the war has affected on a physical as well as situational level. I also like how the article draws upon the history of ballet dancing in Ukraine and is able to locate the dancers within the history of their country and culture. This all adds up to a profile of Ukraine as a country and society without ever having to say Ukrainians are x,y, or z.

I was fascinated by the topic of refugees and technology. The report by Preputnik, Nzuki, Yayboke, and Strouboulis did a great job of giving an overview of the implications of Ukrainians being so internet and smartphone-connected and how this is generally unprecedented in historical refugee populations. When I was reading the report, I kept thinking about how there must be a million human stories of technology being some kind of deus ex machina event in refugees’ lives. For example, being able to begin the asylum process online, receiving money from the UN on the DIIA app, or connecting with someone to take you and your family in abroad through social media. However, there must also be all kinds of horror stories of people being exploited in ways that were not previously possible. In this report and the article on HIAS by Zumhagen, technology was generally presented as a positive thing: for example, refugee preferences being taken into account in ways that were never before possible in granting them aid etc., but I think a job for journalists now and in the coming years will be telling the stories of the fewer people for whom technology was not helpful and may have actually made things much worse.

I sat in a silent room full of people doing homework, and said out loud, “oh my God, I love this graphic.”

Being a data journalist, I can’t help it when I see a graphic that so elegantly presents information like the migrant movement graphic in the New York Times’s “Bus by Bus” piece. It is such a great illustration of the movement of migrants and why the influx of people is such an issue – the different-colored dots literally bleed into each other. Put together with the rest of the readings, it shows how flooded the system is. I also appreciated the graphs in the Wall Street Journal article about the economic impact of the migrants.

In my opinion, the bussing situation is a (somewhat) shocking display of interstate rivalries and bitterness. We are supposed to be a united country, with states that help each other. What Gov. Abbott did was make his problem other states’ and city’s problems – states and cities that he disagrees with politically. There are much better and safer ways of dealing with the migrant crisis rather than reportedly tricking migrants to get on a bus and ship them to huge cities (that already have homeless crises). And the Wired article about people livestreaming “hunting” migrants is equally troubling – especially the quote from one of the men saying, “I say we shoot ’em all.”

The timeline of how New York City has handled the migrant crisis was also useful in laying out the crisis the city is facing. I’m more surprised that Governor Hochul didn’t step in sooner – especially to help spread out the migrants to different New York counties. And I’m always disappointed when counties fight against being humane and taking some of the burden. The pieces about New York reminded me of an article I read from The Atlantic about how, while the homeless shelters are full, many luxury apartments are vacant; and another more recent from Bloomberg about how more office buildings are vacant with the rise in working from home. I found the discrepancy fascinating.

The story of the Ukrainian refugees is a somewhat hopeful one, but I couldn’t help but wonder why their situation was so different from the migrants from Central and South America. Then Camilo answered it for me: geopolitics and policy – and potentially race. That reminded me of a story I worked on at CBS News: a migrant child died after being denied medical care in a Texas migrant camp. This isn’t necessarily a story about bussing, but it is about the failure of the system – the girl died after a week in the camp, but migrants are supposed to be processed and let out within 72 hours – and the parents told CBS that they suspected racial profiling due to their darker skin. Another interesting statistic that I found: according to a University of Texas/Texas Political Project poll in April 2022, 60 percent of Texans believed that Texas should take in Ukrainian refugees while 22 percent say they should not. The same poll found that 46 percent of Texans believe the state should take in hispanic refugees while 40 percent say they should not.

Much of this week’s reading has focused on state and city approaches to managing migration. Recent events have shown that migration is as much a concern for city and state governments as it is for the federal government. In fact, the impacts of a large influx of migrants—positive or negative—are often highly localized. The case of New York City illustrated how a city can find itself at the center of national debates about how the country as a whole is dealing with migration, and how policies at the federal level—like the elimination of Title 42 or the extension of Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelans and the recent wave of Haitians—have local implications. This case also shows how migration often brings to light (and exacerbates) pre-existing local challenges. Migration does not occur in a vacuum. Migrants are affected by and react to situations on the ground which are then made even more complex by their heightened vulnerabilities. In New York City, migrants have added to the housing and homelessness crisis which the city has been grappling with for a while.

However, migration management is challenging but not impossible. The example of Ukrainian integration teaches us that where there is a will, there is a way. Between 2022 and 2024, a total of half a million migrants have been relocated to the United States under the Unite for Ukraine program in response to Russia’s invasion of its neighbor.

Photo Source: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/putins-war-gives-america-a-chance-to-get-serious-about-refugees (Photograph by Mario Tama / Getty)

The integration of Ukrainians in the Uniting States has been smooth overall. What can we learn from this example and is there anything that can be applied to other such instances? As shown by the CBS News piece, bipartisan support and coordination among federal and local actors play an important role and are proving replicable. The most important aspects of that success are slightly less replicable. This includes a broad consensus that the migrant population “deserves” to be welcomed. This is more difficult to achieve because many factors come into play in this determination, including race, geopolitics, culture, and so on. Montoya-Galvez, the CBS News correspondent briefly discussed these points. So we may ask, to what extent can the success of the Ukrainian refugees really be replicated?

In conclusion, this week’s readings have highlighted one key point: buy-in from local governments (state or municipal) is extremely important for effective migration management policy that seamlessly executes the vision set by the executive. This is easier said than done for the same reasons mentioned above, in addition to the complexities surrounding notions of merit. This is becoming increasingly difficult due to the highly polarized nature of politics today. I hope we can use this week’s class to discuss this issue of merit and whether there is anything to be done when some groups are de facto considered more or less deserving of protection than others.

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?