Migrant crisis is the intense difficulty, trouble, or danger situation in the receiving state (destination country) due to the movements of large groups of immigrants (displaced people, refugee or asylum seeker) escaping from the conditions (natural or artificially created) which negatively affected their situation (security, economic, political or societal) at the country of origin (departure). The "crisis" situation is not the refugee numbers (number of migrants seeking protection) but the system's failure to respond in an orderly way to the government's legal obligations. [1] Some notable crises are; European migrant crisis, English Channel migrant crisis and World War II evacuation and expulsion.
A refugee crisis refers to a movement of "large" groups of displaced people, and may or may not involve a migrant crisis. The US government's legal obligations inadvertently created the 2014 American immigration crisis. The crisis developed because of unaccompanied children [2] who do not have a legal guardian to provide physical custody (USA ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child), and care quickly overwhelmed the "local border patrols" creating a migrant crisis. [3] Push-Pull view: The "refugee crisis" is a humanitarian one for those adopting the "Push" factors as main cause, while they acknowledge that reasons for migration may be mixed, even the refugees as weapons. For those focusing on "Pull" factors, the "migration crisis" has its roots in border enforcement policies (Immigration system) that were perceived as not sufficiently strict and the need for cheap workers for US business (family separation policy), severe (Operation Streamline), or careful (catch & release) by potential migrants. [4] Compared to refugee crisis (refugee is a refugee), migrant crises also have a separate or distinguish between the “deserving” refugee from the “undeserving” migrant and play into fear of cultural, religious, and ethnic difference in the midst of increasing intense, excessive, and persistent worry and fear about everyday situations and lacking in predictability, job security, material or psychological welfare for many in Europe (such in closure of Green Borders). [5]
"Migrant crisis management" involves dealing with issues ("immigration system", "resource management", etc.) before, during, and after they have occurred. According to Global Crisis Centre, migrant crisis management is shaped using the definitions and responsibilities outlined in the UN's Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and subsequent Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and international solidarity and burden-sharing with collaboration, communication and information dissemination, which are needed for solving migratory issues of the world. [6]
Immigrant receiving states need effective management strategies at achieving a set of tasks for responding to the threat [reasons of crisis] to re-establish a perceived normalcy. [7]
"Transboundary crisis management" (migration is transboundary) involves co-decision, shared procedures and collective instruments in aligned with the steps below: [8]
Management of the crisis shows succession of four scenarios. [9]
Institution that works in this area is the Migration Policy Institute. Global Crisis Centre of PricewaterhouseCoopers works on migrant crisis management.
Broken immigration system (Crisis) is what immigration experts and lawyers refer to as failure in management of "push and pull factors." Push forces for the displaced people are summarized as running from horrors and poverty in the departure country toward a broken immigration system in the receiving states. Pull forces are receiving states having a functioning economy, the safer-faster journey with the help of communication technology (organize and warn) and established smuggler networks which has safer-faster ways to move people. For a full description Human migration#Push and Pull. The condition of refugee or asylum seekers in receiving countries, from the perspective of governments, employers, and citizens, is a topic of continual debate (debate on migrant crises), and on the other end, the violation of migrant human rights is an ongoing crisis. [10]
According to Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International,
“It is within world leaders’ power to prevent these crises from spiralling further out of control. Governments must halt their assault on our rights and strengthen the defences the world has put in place to protect them. Human rights are a necessity, not an accessory; and the stakes for humankind have never been higher.”
Broken resource management toward the immigrants is part of the inability to develop efficient responses to people in need, causing crisis. The asylum offices in USA, United Kingdom and Australia manages the immigration services.
During the 2014 American immigration crisis, immigration courts as well as the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) asylum system are completely under-resourced and confronting an unmanageable caseload. [1] In June, 2019 (five years into crisis), more than 350 "unaccompanied children" have been removed from a holding facility in Texas to bring it into compliance as designed to hold around 120. [11]
Resource management towards the immigrants in USA includes "private sector" involvement as listed in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Law mandates that all companies must help the federal government. Specific immigration areas where human resource managers must ensure compliance by meeting the legal requirements of this immigration reform regulation by incorporating the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) Form I-9 into their hiring processes.
Another case for resource management for migrant crisis is the Trump wall, which is a colloquial name for President Trump's solution to immigration. President Trump signed Executive Order 13767, which formally directed the US government to begin attempting wall construction. Executive Order 13767 followed with the 2018 federal government shutdown because of presidential veto on any spending bill that did not include "resource" on wall funding. In February 2019, Trump signed a Declaration of National Emergency, saying situation is a "crisis," officially declaring a "Migrant Crisis" in the Mexico–United States border.
According to a New York Times article, thousands of people that migrated to the US in 2022 will fail to meet asylum requirements due to limited access to resources and legal assistance. [12]
The financial burden of crises: Germany allocated roughly 10 billion Euros for the cost of refugee care and acceptance in 2015. [13] On the other hand, Greece was exempt to pay from EU-wide refugee sharing initiatives between 2013 and 2015. The migrant crisis is thought to have influenced policies in countries seeking accession to the EU, such as Serbia. [14]
Resource management toward the immigrants in UK managed under National Asylum Support Service (NASS) which is tasked with the responsibility for regulating entry to, and settlement in the interests of sustainable growth and social inclusion. [15] NASS is a section of the UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) division of the Home Office which support "otherwise be destitute." Provision of accommodation is part of the process.
Since 1945, immigration to the United Kingdom, controlled by British immigration law and to an extent by British nationality law, has been significant, in particular from the Republic of Ireland and from the former British Empire, especially India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Caribbean, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Hong Kong. Since the accession of the UK to the European Communities in the 1970s and the creation of the EU in the early 1990s, immigrants relocated from member states of the European Union, exercising one of the European Union's Four Freedoms. In 2021, since Brexit came into effect, previous EU citizenship's right to newly move to and reside in the UK on a permanent basis does not apply anymore. A smaller number have come as asylum seekers seeking protection as refugees under the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention.
The Dublin Regulation is a Regulation of the European Union that determines which EU member state is responsible for the examination of an application for asylum, submitted by persons seeking international protection under the Geneva Convention and the Qualification Directive, within the European Union.
Immigration to Germany, both in the country's modern borders and the many political entities that preceded it, has occurred throughout the country's history. Today, Germany is one of the most popular destinations for immigrants in the world, with well over 1 million people moving there each year since 2013. As of 2019, around 13.7 million people living in Germany, or about 17% of the population, are first-generation immigrants.
The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) is an American liberal think tank established in 2001 by Kathleen Newland and Demetrios G. Papademetriou. The Migration Policy Institute is supportive of liberal immigration policies.
Opposition to immigration, also known as anti-immigration, is a political ideology that seeks to restrict the incoming of people from one area to another. In the modern sense, immigration refers to the entry of people from one state or territory into another state or territory in which they are not citizens in contrast, but closely correspond to emigration which refers people leaving one state or territory in which they are citizens. Illegal immigration occurs when people immigrate to a country without having official permission to do so. Opposition to immigration ranges from calls for various immigration reforms, to proposals to completely restrict immigration, to calls for repatriation of existing immigrants.
Immigration to Greece percentage of foreign populations in Greece is 7.1% in proportion to the total population of the country. Moreover, between 9 and 11% of the registered Greek labor force of 4.4 million are foreigners. Migrants additionally make up 25% of wage and salary earners.
Refugees of the Syrian civil war are citizens and permanent residents of Syria who have fled the country throughout the Syrian civil war. The pre-war population of the Syrian Arab Republic was estimated at 22 million (2017), including permanent residents. Of that number, the United Nations (UN) identified 13.5 million (2016) as displaced persons, requiring humanitarian assistance. Of these, since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011 more than six million (2016) were internally displaced, and around five million (2016) had crossed into other countries, seeking asylum or placed in Syrian refugee camps worldwide. It is often described as one of the largest refugee crises in history.
The 2014 American immigration crisis was a surge in unaccompanied children and women from the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA) seeking entrance to the United States in 2014. According to U.S. law, an unaccompanied alien child refers to a person under 18 years of age, who has no lawful immigration status in the U.S., and who does not have a legal guardian to provide physical custody and care.
During 2015, there was a period of significantly increased movement of refugees and migrants into Europe. 1.3 million people came to the continent to request asylum, the most in a single year since World War II. They were mostly Syrians, but also included significant numbers from Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq, Eritrea, and the Balkans. The increase in asylum seekers has been attributed to factors such as the escalation of various wars in the Middle East and ISIL's territorial and military dominance in the region due to the Arab Winter, as well as Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt ceasing to accept Syrian asylum seekers.
Voluntary return or voluntary repatriation is usually the return of an illegal immigrant or over-stayer, a rejected asylum seeker, a refugee or displaced person, or an unaccompanied minor; sometimes it is the emigration of a second-generation immigrant who makes an autonomous decision to return to their ethnic homeland when they are unable or unwilling to remain in the host country.
This is a timeline of the European migrant crisis of 2015 and 2016.
Seeking asylum in France is a legal right that is admitted by the constitution of France. Meanwhile, the status of recognized asylum seekers is protected by corresponding laws and Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which France signed on 25 July 1951. France is considered to be one of the main asylum host countries in Europe. According to statistics collected by the World Bank, in 2021 there were 499,914 refugees registered in France. Asylum policies in France are regarded as a concerned topic among the public and politicians, and some controversies also exist in the current system of French asylum policies, such as issues on the assimilation policy, national security problems and living conditions of asylum seekers.
"Refugees as weapons" is a term used to describe a hostile government organizing, or threatening to organize, a sudden influx of refugees into another country or political entity with the intent of causing political disturbances in that entity. The responsible country usually seeks to extract concessions from the targeted country and achieve some political, military, and/or economic objective.
The Turkish migrant crisis, sometimes referred to as the Turkish refugee crisis, was a period during the 2010s characterised by a high number of people migrating to Turkey. Turkey received the highest number of registered refugees of any country or territory each year from 2014 to 2019, and had the world's largest refugee population according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The majority were refugees of the Syrian Civil War, numbering 3.6 million as of June 2020. In 2018, the UNHCR reported that Turkey hosted 63.4% of all "registered Syrian refugees."
The migration and asylum policy of the European Union is within the area of freedom, security and justice, established to develop and harmonise principles and measures used by member countries of the European Union to regulate migration processes and to manage issues concerning asylum and refugee status in the European Union.
Joe Biden's immigration policy is primarily based on reversing many of the immigration policies of the previous Trump administration. During his first day in office, Biden reversed many of Trump's policies on immigration, such as halting the construction of the Mexican border wall, ending Trump's travel ban restricting travel from 14 countries, and an executive order to reaffirm protections for DACA recipients. The Biden administration and Department of Homeland Security, under leadership of Alejandro Mayorkas, dramatically reined in deportation practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), prioritizing national security and violent crime concerns over petty and nonviolent offenses. However, Biden has also faced criticism for extending Title 42, a Trump administration border restriction that arose due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as restarting the use of expediting families in Central America, which can cause families to be sent back in weeks, compared to years for an average immigration case. In the fiscal year 2021, the US Border Patrol confirmed more than 1.6 million encounters with migrants along the US-Mexico border, more than quadruple the number in the previous fiscal year and the largest annual total on record. In January 2023, Biden announced a program to strengthen the admission of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, while at the same time his administration will crack down on those who fail to use the plan's legal pathway and strengthen border security. In May 2023, the Biden Administration approved sending 1,500 more troops to the U.S.-Mexico border following Title 42's expiration.
Pushback is a term that refers to "a set of state measures by which refugees and migrants are forced back over a border – generally immediately after they crossed it – without consideration of their individual circumstances and without any possibility to apply for asylum". Pushbacks violate the prohibition of collective expulsion of asylum seekers in Protocol 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights and often violate the international law prohibition on non-refoulement.
Since at least 2008, Greece has pushed back tens of thousands of migrants, especially at the Evros border with Turkey and in the Aegean Sea. On land, the pushbacks involve taking people who have arrived at the Greek side of the border and transferring them to the Turkish side; most cases involve some form of abuse. Maritime pushbacks typically involve taking migrants who have either entered Greek territorial waters or landed on Greek islands and depositing them in Turkish territorial waters on craft without any means of propulsion. The number of pushbacks has increased following the European migrant crisis and breakdown in EU–Turkey relations in 2020. This incident occurred as a result of Turkey ceasing to prevent migrants from leaving for the European Union in February 2020, and in some instances actively encouraging them.
Externalization describes the efforts of wealthy, developed countries to prevent asylum seekers and other migrants from reaching their borders, often by enlisting third countries or private entities. Externalization is used by Australia, Canada, the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom. Although less visible than physical barriers at international borders, externalization controls or restrict mobility in ways that are out of sight and far from the country's border. Examples include visa restrictions, sanctions for carriers who transport asylum seekers, and agreements with source and transit countries. Consequences often include increased irregular migration, human smuggling, and border deaths.
The European Union response to the 2015 migrant crisis focused on how the countries organized the efforts in response to the 2015 European migrant crisis at the EU level. The European Commission in May 2015 proposed distributing the incoming refugees based on GDP and population. This proposal was divisive with Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic refusing any refugees. Some nation states then called on the EU to reduce funding for member countries who did not want to share burdens and didn't share "values...need to start asking themselves questions about their place in the European Union". This attempt to coalition build failed, the European Commission proceeded to strengthen existing systems such as the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), reforming the Dublin Regulation and centralizing the asylum process. There was also challenges to the European borders which came from the Mediterranean Sea; as a response the European Border and Coast Guard Agency engaged in a new operation called Operation Triton.