Tag Archives: Migrants

U.S. must go on taking refugees, EU migration chief to say in Washington

EU dude for migration saying that the U.S. needs to take migrants/refugees

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union’s top migration official will tell the new U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly in Washington on Wednesday that the United States cannot shut its doors on refugees despite President Donald Trump’s orders.

The EU’s migration commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, will be the first senior Brussels official to visit Washington since Trump’s inauguration more than two weeks ago.

Much of this time has been dominated by uproar over Trump’s decision to stop allowing refugees into the United States and barring almost any travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, a move he said was needed to ensure his nation’s safety.

The EU is also trying to curb immigration after some 1.6 million people arrived in the bloc in 2014-2016, an uncontrolled influx that caught it unprepared, triggered bitter political disputes between member states and raised security concerns.

The bloc has resorted to tightening its borders, rejecting labor migrants more stringently and tightening asylum rules for refugees. These measures, however, do not go anywhere near Trump’s ban on refugees, which the EU has criticized.

“Refugee resettlement is a global responsibility and it cannot be shouldered by just a handful of countries,” Avramopoulos told Reuters on the eve of his talks with Kelly.

“Nations with a long experience in this field, having hosted millions of migrants and refugees, I hope will continue playing their responsible leading role,” he said in emailed comments.

Should the United States rescind more permanently the international law obligation to help people fleeing war or persecution, it would leave the EU under even more pressure.

Separately on Tuesday, a European court cast doubt on the bloc’s strategy to deal with the migration crisis, by saying EU countries cannot refuse entry to people at risk of torture or inhuman treatment. [nL5N1FS27L]

Avramopoulos and Kelly will also discuss security during their first face-to-face meeting that comes at a delicate time for the transatlantic relationship, with the EU worrying Trump could turn his back on America’s European allies.

“Democracy, equality, the rule of law – these are all values we share with the US. Of course our openness should not come at the expense of our security – but our security objectives should never come at the expense of our fundamental values of openness and tolerance either,” Avramopoulos said.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Alison Williams)

Worried about Trump, asylum seekers walk cold road to Canada

Canadian side of U.S.-Canada border

By Rod Nickel and Anna Mehler Paperny

WINNIPEG, Manitoba/BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) – Refugees in the United States fearing a worsening climate of xenophobia in the wake of a divisive U.S. presidential campaign are flocking to Canada in growing numbers.

Manitoba’s Welcome Place refugee agency helped 91 claimants between Nov. 1 and Jan. 25 – more than the agency normally sees in a year. Most braved the freezing prairie winter to walk into Canada.

“We haven’t had something before like this,” said Maggie Yeboah, president of the Ghanaian Union of Manitoba, which has helped refugees get medical attention and housing. “We don’t know what to do.”

A temporary restraining order by a U.S. judge of President Donald Trump’s executive order that blocked nationwide the implementation of key parts of the travel ban has provided a reprieve for refugees trying to come to the United States.

But Canadian advocacy organizations are bracing for a greater influx of asylum-seekers, driven in part by the contrast between the ruling Liberal government’s acceptance of Syrian refugees in Canada with Trump’s anti-foreigner rhetoric.

“They will make a dash for Canada, whether they are going to go through cold weather to die or not,” said Abdikheir Ahmed, a Somali immigrant in Manitoba’s capital Winnipeg who helps refugees make claims.

Since late summer, 27 men from Ghana walked to Manitoba from the United States, Yeboah said. Two lost all their fingers to frostbite in December and nearly froze to death.

More than 7,000 refugee applicants entered Canada in 2016 through land ports of entry from the United States, up 63 percent from the previous year, according to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

Over 2,000 more entered “irregularly” during a similar time period, without official authorization, such as across unmonitored fields.

Four hundred and thirty asylum seekers crossed Manitoba’s border irregularly in the first nine months of 2016-17, up from 340 the entire previous year, CBSA said.

“The U.S. presidential campaign, putting undocumented immigrants and refugees in the spotlight, terrified them,” said Ghezae Hagos, counselor at Welcome Place. “The election and inauguration of Mr. Trump appears to be the final reason for those who came mostly last month.”

In Quebec, 1,280 refugee claimants irregularly entered between April 2016 and January 2017, triple the previous year’s total.

In British Columbia and Yukon, 652 people entered Canada irregularly in 2016, more than double the previous year.

More of these people would enter at border crossings, advocates say, if Canada didn’t have a policy of turning many of them away when they do. The 2004 Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement requires people to apply for asylum in the first of the two countries they arrive in. Advocates argue the agreement inadvertently encourages people to dangerously sneak into Canada and make a claim rather than be rebuffed at the border.

If the government doesn’t abandon this agreement, they say, it could find itself in court.

The number of refugee applicants crossing the land border under exceptions to the Safe Third Country Agreement has risen by 16 percent in the first nine months of 2016 compared to the same time period the year before.

In Buffalo, New York, hundreds of people are streaming through Vive, a shelter that helps refugee applicants to Canada.

Vive’s client numbers, including long-time U.S. residents and refugees, spiked last summer and have stayed consistently high since – two or three times what they’d normally see a year or two ago. Vive’s Canadian service manager Mariah Walker expects to see even more.

“Clients are definitely spooked by (Trump’s) executive orders,” said Walker.

CANADIAN WELCOME

Prime Minister Trudeau took office in 2015 on a commitment to admit tens of thousands of Syrian refugees.

“While the majority of the world is turning their backs and building walls, the fact that Trudeau took this bold humanitarian goal put [Canada] on the map,” said Chris Friesen, director of settlement services at Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia.

But this year, Canada plans to take only 7,500 government-assisted refugees – less than half last year’s number. People eager to sponsor refugees find themselves waiting years to do so.

Anisa Hussein, 20, and Lyaan Mohammed, 19, hired a smuggler to take them from Somalia to Minneapolis in August, where they planned to settle in a large Somali community. But Trump’s anti-refugee rhetoric frightened them into traveling to Manitoba days later.

“(Trump) said he would turn away the refugees and we would go back to Somalia,” said Mohammed, peeking timidly from behind the hood of a thick parka she received in Canada for winter. “We were so scared. We just wanted to be [in] a safe place.”

They rode a bus and taxi to North Dakota, then walked for hours into Emerson, Manitoba and filed refugee claims.

They might have been able to cross at a port of entry if Canada’s policies were different, says Canadian Council for Refugees executive director Janet Dench.

Her organization, as well as Amnesty International and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, are demanding Canada abandon the Safe Third Country Agreement: Trump’s United States is no safe haven, they argue.

The government is standing by the agreement, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen told the House of Commons last week.

If the government doesn’t act, Dench said, her group will sue.

“We are talking about people’s charter rights. … So, yes, we would expect to see something in the courts.”

For a graphic on Csnadian refugee claims, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2keMDuH

(Additional writing by Andrea Hopkins; additional reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver, editing by Edward Tobin)

Stranded migrants in Greek camp protest over living conditions

Refugees and migrants block entrance of refugee camp

ATHENS (Reuters) – A group of migrants and refugees on Monday blocked a Greek minister from entering the former Athens airport terminal, where they have been stranded for months, in a protest against their living conditions.

Dozens of protesters, among them many children, rallied outside a gate chanting “Go, Go!” and “Liar!” to Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas. One migrant handed him a crying child as he reached the chained gate.

The government wants to clear out the entire compound, which consists of venues used in the 2004 Olympic Games and the former Athens airport, as Greece has agreed to lease it to private investors under its bailout program. About 1,600 people, mostly Afghans, are camped in these facilities.

About 600 people live at the former arrivals’ terminal where Monday’s protest took place.

The protest, a day after local media reported that a group of migrants were going on hunger strike, was brief. Mouzalas said some migrants had tried to block food distribution at the camp on Sunday but the reports that they were going on hunger strike were unfounded.

“I completely understand their pain and hardship. We are trying to ease it as much as we can,” Mouzalas told reporters.

About 60,000 refugees and migrants have been stranded in Greece from border shutdowns throughout the Balkans, halting the onward journey many planned to take to central and western Europe.

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris, editing by Pritha Sarkar)

Peru to give visas to thousands of crisis-weary Venezuelans

Peru's president in press conference saying venezuelans will get visas

LIMA (Reuters) – Peru has created a temporary visa that will allow thousands of Venezuelans to work and study in the country, part of a migratory policy that aims to “build bridges” and “not walls,” the Andean nation’s interior ministry said.

President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s government issued 20 temporary visas to Venezuelan migrants in Peru this week. Kuczysnki, a centrist, has expressed concern about shortages of food and medicine in Venezuela, mired in a deep economic crisis.

Some 6,000 Venezuelans are expected to receive the permit, which will allow them to study, work and receive health services in Peru for a year, the interior ministry said late on Thursday.

Peru has enjoyed nearly two decades of uninterrupted economic growth and single-digit inflation, a sharp contrast to socialist-led Venezuela, where the ranks of the poor have swollen in recent years.

“We want to offer a different message on migration than what’s offered in other places. We want to build bridges that unite us and not walls to separate us,” Interior Minister Carlos Basombrio said in a statement.

The comment appeared to be a thinly veiled shot at the new U.S. government, which is traditionally an ally of Peru.

U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed a temporary entry ban on refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, and insisted that Mexico will pay for his proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to curb illegal immigration.

Kuczynski, a former Wall Street banker and free-trade advocate who took office last year, has previously compared Trump’s proposed border wall to the Berlin Wall, and said he would oppose it in the United Nations.

Kuczynski and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said last week that they would stand with Mexico and seek to strengthen regional trade, in the wake of rising tensions between Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Trump.

(Reporting by Mitra Taj; Editing by Paul Simao)

More than 1,300 migrants rescued at sea in one day: Italy coast guard

migrants woman praying after rescue

ROME (Reuters) – More than 1,300 migrants were rescued in 13 separate missions in the Mediterranean on Friday, bringing the total helped over the last three days to more than 2,600, the coast guard said.

The migrants, who were aboard 13 vessels, were saved in the central Mediterranean by ships from the Italian coast guard, the Italian and British navies, merchant ships and vessels operated by non-government organizations, a statement said.

Another 1,300 were rescued on Wednesday.

The voyage from Libya across the Mediterranean to Italy is currently the main route to Europe for migrants.

A record 181,000 made the journey last year, most on flimsy boats run by people-smugglers.

More than 5,000 are believed to have died attempting the crossing in 2016.

In the latest in a series of measures pushed by the European Union to stop migrants reaching Europe, Italy launched a new fund on Wednesday to help African countries control their borders.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

German population hits record high of 82.8 million due to migrants

Migrants walk to Germany's customs

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s population grew by some 600,000 last year to reach a record high of 82.8 million people due to the number of migrants who have arrived in the country, the Federal Statistics office said on Friday.

In a preliminary estimate for 2016, the statistics office said the population had eclipsed the previous record high of 82.5 million recorded at the end of 2002, even though the number of deaths in 2016 exceeded the number of births by between 150,000 and 190,000.

Deaths have exceed births in Germany since 1972, with a total of more than 5 million fewer births than deaths.

However, countering that trend, more than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and beyond flocked to Germany in 2015 and 2016, drawn by its strong economy, relatively liberal asylum laws and generous system of benefits.

Since the height of the euro zone debt crisis, Germany is also attracting many migrants from other European countries such as Greece and Spain.

The figures used to calculate net migration were based on numbers signing up at registration offices. Asylum seekers are initially housed in reception centers and generally only registered later.

Steady economic growth since 2010 and generous pro-family policies by successive governments in recent years have helped lift the birth rate but it is still below the death rate.

German government support for refugees has climbed in recent years. For 2016 and 2017 the government set aside 28.7 billion euros ($30.64 billion) in funding to accommodate and integrate the more than one million asylum seekers who entered the country, the ministry said.

(Reporting by Erik Kirschbaum)

U.N. alarmed at migrants dying of cold, ‘dire’ situation in Greece

refugee boy rides bike through snow

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Refugees and migrants are dying in Europe’s cold snap and governments must do more to help them rather than pushing them back from borders and subjecting them to violence, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday.

“Children are particularly prone to respiratory illnesses at a time like this. It’s about saving lives, not about red tape and keeping to bureaucratic arrangements,” Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF told a U.N. briefing in Geneva. “The dire situation right now is Greece.”

UNHCR spokeswoman Cecile Pouilly cited five deaths so far from cold and said about 1,000 people including children were in unheated tents and dormitories on the Greek island of Samos, calling for them to be transferred to shelter on the mainland.

Hundreds of others had been moved to better accommodation on the islands of Lesbos and Chios in the past few days.

In Serbia, about 80 percent of the 7,300 refugees, asylum seekers and migrants are staying in heated government shelters, but 1,200 men were sleeping rough in informal sites in Belgrade.

The bodies of two Iraqi men and a young Somali woman were found close to the Turkish border in Bulgaria and two Somali teenagers were hospitalized with frostbite after five days in a forest, Pouilly said. The body of a young Pakistani man was found along the same border in late December.

A 20-year-old Afghan man died after crossing the Evros River on the Greece-Turkey land border at night when temperatures were below -10 degrees Celsius. The body of a young Pakistani man was found on the Turkish side of the border with Bulgaria.

“Given the harsh winter conditions, we are particularly concerned by reports that authorities in all countries along the Western Balkans route continue to push back refugees and migrants from inside their territory to neighboring countries,” Pouilly said.

Some refugees and migrants said police subjected them to violence and many said their phones were confiscated or destroyed, preventing them from calling for help, she said.

“Some even reported items of clothing being confiscated thus further exposing them to the harsh winter conditions,” she said. “These practices are simply unacceptable and must be stopped.”

Joel Millman, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said migrant movements across the Mediterranean had “started out in a big way” in 2017, and the death toll for the year was already 27.

The World Meteorological Organization said a movement of cold Siberian air into southeastern Europe had driven temperatures in Greece, Italy, Turkey and Romania 5-10 degrees Celsius lower than normal. Such cold outbreaks happen about once in 35 years on average, the WMO said.

(additional reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

EU eyes new Libya approach to block feared migrant wave

raft overcrowded with migrants/refugees in the Mediterranean Sea

By Alastair Macdonald

VALLETTA (Reuters) – The European Union plans new measures to deter migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Libya, officials said, as Malta urged the bloc to act on Thursday to head off a surge in arrivals from a country where Russia is taking a new interest.

With options limited by the weakness of the U.N.-recognized government and by divisions among EU states, it is unclear just what the EU may agree. But officials believe a consensus can be found within weeks in support of national steps taken by Italy.

Rome once effectively paid Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi to block migrants. Since he was overthrown with Western backing in 2011, it has struggled to cope with large numbers of new arrivals. Italy is now working with U.N.-backed Prime Minister Fayez Seraj on a new agreement under which Rome will help guard Libya’s southern desert borders against smugglers.

Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who hosted the executive European Commission in Valletta on Wednesday and will host an EU summit discussing migration on Feb. 3, said new Russian contacts with a Libyan rebel commander and intelligence indicating a sharp increase in crossings once the weather improves made urgent EU action imperative.

“Come next spring, we will have a crisis,” he told a news conference, forecasting “unprecedented” numbers following the record 180,000 sea arrivals in Italy last year.

“The choice is trying to do something now … or meeting urgently in April, May, saying there are tens of thousands of people crossing the Mediterranean, drowning … and then trying to do a deal then.”

“I would beg that we try … to do a deal now,” added Muscat, whose government will chair EU councils until June.

The Commission visit to Malta included senior Libya experts, said officials who foresee new EU policy proposals within weeks.

TURKEY MODEL

After all but halting migrant flows to Greece through a deal last year with Turkey to hold back Syrian refugees, the EU wants to cut flows from Libya. It wants to step up deportations of failed asylum seekers and is using aid budgets to pressure African states to cooperate in taking back their citizens.

Some EU states are looking at greater military involvement to disrupt migrant smuggling gangs which have thrived in the absence of effective authority in Libya.

The EU is training the Libyan coastguard in international waters but has not been able to agree for many months on whether to move into Libya’s territorial waters.

But Muscat said he saw an emerging consensus on a new approach, including from a hitherto skeptical Germany, adding Italy’s deal with Libya should be emulated by the EU.

Muscat said the EU should seek Libyan agreement to expand the bloc’s mission – currently involved in search and rescue operations, trying to obstruct traffickers and uphold a U.N. arms embargo – into Libyan waters.

He said the EU should revive an agreement drafted with Gaddafi, which offered funding to Libya in exchange for more checks on migration.

Asked whether he foresaw EU forces patrolling Libyan borders or the EU setting up camps in Libya to process asylum claims, Muscat did not go into detail on how an EU plan would work beyond saying that, as with the Turkey deal, the key element was “scuttling the business model” of smuggling gangs.

After talks on Thursday, Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti and EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said in a joint statement that the EU backed engagement with Libya. They said: “The Commission is ready to further support Italy in this engagement politically, financially and operationally.”

(Additional reporting by Isla Binnie in Rome and Gabriela Baczynska and Robin Emmott in Brussels; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Mediterranean death toll is record 5,000 migrants this year

A wooden boat, used by migrants and refugees, is abandoned at a beach on the Greek island of Lesbos November, 2015. The writing on the boat reads "Aegean zero hour"

GENEVA (Reuters) – A record 5,000 migrants are believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea this year, following two shipwrecks on Thursday in which some 100 people, mainly West Africans, were feared dead, aid agencies said on Friday.

Two overcrowded inflatable dinghies capsized in the Strait of Sicily after leaving Libya for Italy, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said.

“Those two incidents together appear to be the numbers that would bring this year’s total up to over to 5,000 (deaths), which is a new high that we have reported during this crisis,” IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a Geneva briefing.

The Italian coast guard rescued survivors and had recovered eight bodies so far, he said. IOM staff were interviewing survivors brought to Trapani, Italy, he added.

Just under 3,800 migrants perished at sea during all of 2015, according to IOM figures.

An Algerian migrant stands in front the Mediterranean Sea in Spain's north African enclave of Ceuta, Spain,

An Algerian migrant stands in front the Mediterranean Sea in Spain’s north African enclave of Ceuta, Spain, December 10, 2016. REUTERS/Juan Medina

UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said the “alarming increase” in deaths this year appeared to be related to bad weather, the declining quality of vessels used by smugglers, and their tactics to avoid detection.

“These (reasons also) include sending large numbers of embarkations simultaneously, which makes the work of rescuers more difficult,” he said

The UNHCR appealed to states to open up more legal pathways for admitting refugees. Resettlement programmes, private sponsorship, family reunification and student scholarships would help “so they do not have to resort to dangerous journeys and the use of smugglers”, Spindler said.

IOM figures show 358,403 migrants and refugees had entered Europe by sea in 2016 up to and including Dec. 21, arriving mostly in Greece and Italy.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams and John Stonestreet)

Italy convicts Tunisian over sinking that killed almost 700 migrants

Mohammed Ali Malek is seen at Catania's tribunal,

By Antonio Parrinello

CATANIA, Sicily (Reuters) – A Tunisian man accused of being the captain of a migrant boat that sank killing almost 700 people was found guilty of multiple manslaughter and people-smuggling on Tuesday and sentenced to 18 years in jail.

Only 28 people survived the disaster in April last year, when the small fishing boat capsized off the coast of Libya, with hundreds trapped in the hold.

Mohammed Ali Malek, 28, was one of those rescued and denied being the captain, saying he had paid for passage like everyone else, but a court in the city of Catania dismissed his defense.

The court also sentenced 26-year-old Syrian Mahmud Bikhit to five years in prison on charges of people-smuggling. Survivors said Bikhit had been Malek’s cabin boy. He had denied any wrongdoing.

Both men were also handed fines of nine million euros ($9.5 million). Their lawyers said they would appeal the convictions.

“We think we have some strong arguments and we will try and work on some of the weaker points of our defense,” said Massimo Ferrante, representing Malek.

Outrage over the incident prompted European Union leaders to bolster its own search-and-rescue mission in the Mediterranean days after the boat went down.

In the past three years, roughly half a million boat migrants have arrived on Italian shores and almost 12,000 have died in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Prosecutors had told the court that Malek mishandled the grossly overloaded fishing boat, which left from Darabli, Libya, carrying men, women and children from Algeria, Somalia, Egypt, Senegal, Zambia, Mali, Bangladesh and Ghana.

They say he caused the vessel to collide with a Portuguese merchant ship that was coming to its aid.

As passengers rushed away from the side of the boat which had struck the ship, it capsized and sank within minutes.

State prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro said in a statement that the case showed Italy had the right to press smuggling charges over incidents in international waters.

The Italian justice system got involved this time because the survivors were brought to Italy. Italy’s navy raised the boat in June and 675 bodies were recovered.

Earlier this year another migrant boat sank in the Mediterranean killing around 500 people, with the survivors taken to Greece. A Reuters investigation found that no official body, national or multinational, has held anyone to account for the deaths or even opened an inquiry.

(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Philip Pullella and Andrew Roche)