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Tag: Political refugees

  • US citizens get chance to play role in resettling refugees

    US citizens get chance to play role in resettling refugees

    WASHINGTON (AP) — A government program launched Thursday is giving American citizens the chance to play a role in resettling the thousands of refugees who arrive every year in the United States.

    During the first year of the Welcome Corps, the State Department aims to line up 10,000 Americans who can help 5,000 refugees adjust to life in the United States.

    “By tapping into the goodwill of American communities, the Welcome Corps will expand our country’s capacity to provide a warm welcome to higher numbers of refugees,” the department said in announcing the effort.

    When refugees from around the world arrive in the U.S., they face a dramatically different way of life. To ease that transition, the department traditionally has worked with nonprofit groups that specialize in refugee issues. Under the new program, five or more Americans could form a group and help fill this role, as well.

    They would apply to privately sponsor refugees to resettle in the U.S. and would be responsible for raising their own money to help the refugees over the first 90 days. Assistance would include everything from greeting refugees at the airport to finding them place to live and getting kids enrolled in school.

    A consortium of nonprofits with expertise in refugee resettlement will help oversee the vetting and certification of people and groups who want to be private sponsors. They also will offer training so private sponsors understand what’s needed to help refugees adjusting to life in America. The consortium will be responsible for monitoring the program.

    The program will roll out in two phases. First, private sponsors will be matched with refugees already approved for resettlement under the U.S. Refugee Assistance Program. That will start during the first half of 2023.

    Later, private sponsors could identify refugees abroad they would like to help and then refer those people to the Refugee Assistance Program and assist them once they arrive in the U.S.

    The program is different from a recent initiative that allows 30,000 people into the country a month from Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela. They also need a sponsor but are being admitted to the U.S. under a humanitarian parole designation that lasts two years and offers no path to becoming permanent residents or citizens.

    Under the refugee program, people fleeing violence or persecution can come to the U.S. and stay permanently. Since the Refugee Act was passed in 1980 the U.S. has admitted a little over 3 million refugees.

    The Welcome Corps program comes on the heels of a similar, smaller scale endeavor under which Americans were able to sponsor Afghans or Ukrainians. That program launched in October 2021 and has helped just over 800 people coming to America through a network of 230 certified sponsor circles that included a total of about 5,000 people.

    Sasha Chanoff, founder and chief executive of Boston-based RefugePoint, which supports Afghan refugees, said Canada has long used a similar model to help resettle refugees. Chanoff said the sponsor circle program capitalizes on the huge amount of goodwill among Americans to sponsor refugees, something that crosses political divides.

    “This represents perhaps a unique opportunity in our history — certainly in our recent history — to really open up space for Americans to protect lives by sponsoring a family,” he said. “We’ve seen the incredible interest among the American public — Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, veterans, so many others across the political spectrum.”

    President Joe Biden pledged in a 2021 executive order to restore the U.S. as the world’s haven and he called for private sponsorship of refugees. Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. had largely rolled back the refugee program.

    But Thursday’s announcement comes as the U.S. is woefully off track if it hopes to meet Biden’s goal of 125,000 refugees admitted into the U.S. during the 2023 budget year. According to State Department data, the U.S. has admitted just 6,750 refugees to the country through December — three months into the fiscal year.

    Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service commended the Biden administration’s “forward-thinking” program which has “potential to strengthen ties between refugees and the communities they will call home.” But Vignarajah also noted the low number of refugee admissions. The group is a national nonprofit that helps refugees, asylum seekers, and other immigrants.

    “The Biden administration must prioritize the streamlining of refugee admissions, which remain regrettably low this fiscal year. Without urgent action to increase efficiency, it risks letting the compassion of individual sponsors and the expertise of professional refugee resettlement organizations go to waste,” Vignarajah said in a statement.

    Assistant Secretary of State Julieta Valles Noyes told reporters Thursday that the agency responsible for interviewing refugees overseas had conducted over 20,000 interviews during the first quarter of the year and that she was “confident” that the numbers of refugees arriving in the months ahead would increase.

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    AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

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    Follow Santana on Twitter @ruskygal

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  • Lebanese and UN troops rescue migrants vessel, 2 killed

    Lebanese and UN troops rescue migrants vessel, 2 killed

    Lebanon’s navy and U.N. peacekeepers have rescued more than 200 migrants from a boat sinking in the Mediterranean Sea hours after it left northern Lebanon’s coast, the military said in a statement

    BEIRUT — Lebanon’s navy and U.N. peacekeepers on Saturday rescued more than 200 migrants from a boat sinking in the Mediterranean Sea hours after it left northern Lebanon’s coast, the military said in a statement. Two migrants were killed in the incident.

    The army statement said the vessel was carrying people “who were trying to illegally leave Lebanon’s territorial waters.” It said three Lebanese navy boats and one from the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, recused 232 migrants.

    Reports from the northern city of Tripoli — Lebanon’s second largest and most impoverished — said Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian men, women and children were on the boat that left northern Lebanon after midnight Friday. Residents of Tripoli who are in contact with survivors said the dead were a Syrian woman and a Syrian child.

    UNIFIL said in a statement that the Maritime Task Force is assisting the Lebanese navy in search and rescue operations in the sea between Beirut and Tripoli “where a boat in distress with a large number of people on board was found. Our Indonesian and Greek ships are on the scene.”

    “We will continue to provide assistance,” UNIFIL said.

    Lebanese security forces have been working to prevent migrants from heading to Europe at a time when the small nation is in the grips of the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history.

    A crowded boat capsized on Sept. 21 off the coast of Tartus, Syria, just over a day after departing Lebanon. At least 94 people were killed, among them at least 24 children. Twenty people survived and some remain missing.

    It was one of the deadliest ship sinkings in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in recent years, as more and more Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians try to flee cash-strapped Lebanon to Europe to find jobs and stability.

    The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says risky sea migration attempts from Lebanon over the past year have surged by 73%.

    Lebanon’s economic meltdown that began in October 2019, has left three- quarters of the country’s 6 million people, including a million Syrian refugees, living in poverty.

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  • Afghan refugees in US face uncertainty as legislation stalls

    Afghan refugees in US face uncertainty as legislation stalls

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress has failed so far to create a path to residency for Afghans who worked alongside U.S. soldiers in America’s longest war, pushing into limbo tens of thousands of refugees who fled Taliban control more than two years ago and now live in the United States.

    Some lawmakers had hoped to resolve the Afghans’ immigration status as part of a year-end government funding package. But that effort failed, punting the issue into the new year, when Republicans will take power in the House. The result is grave uncertainty for refugees now facing an August deadline for action from Congress before their temporary parole status expires.

    Nearly 76,000 Afghans who worked with American soldiers since 2001 as translators, interpreters and partners arrived in the U.S. on military planes after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. The government admitted the refugees on a temporary parole status as part of Operation Allies Welcome, the largest resettlement effort in the country in decades, with the promise of a path to a life in the U.S. for their service.

    Mohammad Behzad Hakkak, 30, is among those Afghans waiting for resolution, unable to work or settle down in his new community in Fairfax, Virginia, under his parole status. Hakkak worked as a partner to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan as a human rights defender in the now-defunct Afghan government.

    “We lost everything in Afghanistan” after the Taliban returned to power, he said. “And now, we don’t know about our future here.”

    For the past year, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, backed by veterans organizations and former military officials, has pushed Congress to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would prevent the Afghans from becoming stranded without legal residency status when their two years of humanitarian parole expire in August 2023. It would enable qualified Afghans to apply for U.S. citizenship, as was done for refugees in the past, including those from Cuba, Vietnam and Iraq.

    Supporters of the proposal thought it might clear Congress after the November election because it enjoys overwhelming bipartisan support. But they said their efforts were thwarted by one man: Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees immigration issues.

    “We’ve never seen support for a piece of legislation like this and it not pass,” said Shawn Van Diver, a Navy veteran and head of #AfghanEvac, a coalition supporting Afghan resettlement efforts. “It’s really frustrating to me that one guy from Iowa can block this.”

    Grassley has argued for months that the bill as written goes too far by including evacuees beyond those “who were our partners over the last 20 years,” providing a road to residency without the proper screening required.

    “First of all, people that help our country should absolutely have the promise that we made to them,” Grassley told The Associated Press. “There’s some disagreement on the vetting process. That’s been a problem and that hasn’t been worked out yet.”

    Proponents of the legislation reject those concerns. More than 30 retired military officers, including three former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote Congress saying the bill not only “furthers the national security interests of the United States,” but is also ”a moral imperative.” The White House also has called for passage.

    Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre said, in mid-December that it is “important to take care of Afghan allies who took care of us.”

    The proposal, if passed, would provide a streamlined, prioritized adjustment process for Afghan nationals who supported the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. The Homeland Security Department would adjust the status of eligible evacuees to provide them with lawful permanent resident status after they have had rigorous vetting and screening procedures. It also would improve and expand ways to protection for those left behind and at risk in Afghanistan.

    “The Afghan refugees are a very high priority and had some good Republican support, but unfortunately, the Republican leadership blocked it,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., recently told reporters. “These are people who risked their lives for our soldiers and for our country, and we should be rewarding them as we have done in the past.”

    Several congressional aides explained the holdup on the bill by pointing to a seven-page, single-spaced letter, obtained by The Associated Press, that Grassley’s office circulated to all 50 Republican senators in August. The memo outlined his issues with the proposal, resulting in months of back-and-forth negotiation as the sponsors of the bill tried to address them.

    U.S. national security and military officials have outlined the stringent screening process that evacuees went through before arriving on American soil. Those security screenings, conducted in Europe and the Middle East, included background checks with both biographic information and biometric screenings using voiceprints, iris scans, palm prints and facial photos.

    But Republicans say the vetting system is not fail-safe. They pointed to a September report from Homeland Security’s inspector general that said at least two people from Afghanistan who were paroled into the country “posed a risk to national security and the safety of local communities.”

    As a result, mandatory in-person interviews for all Afghan applicants were written into the bill as well as requirements that relevant agencies brief Congress on proposed vetting procedures before putting them in place.

    Despite strengthening the vetting process over months of negotiations, the bill never made it out of the Judiciary Committee and failed to win inclusion in the just-passed $1.7 trillion government funding bill.

    Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., was one of the lead sponsors of the bill. “If this is what we do when they come to our country, and we don’t have their backs,’” she said, “what message are we sending to the rest of the world who stand with our soldiers, who protect them, who provide security for their families?”

    But Klobuchar and the lead Republican co-sponsor, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, pledged to bring the bill back up again in the new session of Congress starting in January.

    “This is the right thing to do,” Graham, an Air Force veteran, told the Senate recently. “There’s no other ending that would be acceptable to me.”

    He added: “The people who were there with us in the fight, that are here in America, need to stay. This will be their new home.”

    Most people in the United States appear to share that sentiment.

    A survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research taken the month after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan found that 72% of respondents regarded giving the Afghans refuge from any Taliban retaliation as a duty and a necessary coda of the nearly 20-year war.

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  • Turkish, Syrian, Russian defense chiefs hold surprise talks

    Turkish, Syrian, Russian defense chiefs hold surprise talks

    ANKARA, Turkey — The Turkish, Syrian and Russian defense ministers have held previously unannounced talks in Moscow, the Turkish and Russian defense ministries said on Wednesday. It was the first ministerial level meeting between rivals Turkey and Syria since the start of the Syrian conflict 11 years ago.

    A Turkish defense ministry statement said the Turkish, Syrian and Russian intelligence chiefs also attended the talks in Moscow which, it said, took place in a “positive atmosphere.”

    The discussion focused on “the Syrian crisis, the refugee problem and efforts for a joint struggle against terror organizations present on Syrian territory,” the ministry said.

    It added that the sides would continue to hold trilateral meetings.

    Russia has long been pressing for a reconciliation between Turkey and the Syrian government — Moscow’s close ally — which have been standing on opposite sides in Syria’s civil war.

    Turkey backed rebels trying to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad. Damascus for its part denounced Turkey’s hold over stretches of territory in northern Syria which were seized in Turkish military incursions launched since 2016 to drive Kurdish militant groups away from the frontier.

    Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed that the three ministers discussed ways to resolve the Syrian crisis, the refugee issue and to combat extremist groups.

    The parties noted “the constructive nature of the dialogue … and the need to continue it in the interests of further stabilizing the situation” in Syria and the region as a whole, the short statement said. It didn’t provide any other details.

    The previously unannounced talks in Moscow follow repeated warnings by Turkey of a new land incursion into Syria after a deadly bombing in Istanbul last month. Turkish authorities blamed the attack on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and on the Syria-based People’s Protection Units, or YPG. Both groups denied involvement.

    Russia has opposed a new Turkish military offensive.

    The efforts toward a Turkish-Syrian reconciliation also comes as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — who faces presidential and parliamentary elections in June — is under intense pressure at home to send Syrian refugees back. Anti-refugee sentiment is rising in Turkey amid an economic crisis.

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  • UN agency probes origin of Rohingya refugees in Indonesia

    UN agency probes origin of Rohingya refugees in Indonesia

    PIDIE, Indonesia — A United Nations agency is seeking information about the voyage of over 100 Rohingya Muslim refugees who landed on an Indonesian beach this week, and warned Tuesday that there will likely be more.

    A distressing video circulated widely in social media showed the dehydrated and exhausted Rohingya, crumpled weakly and emaciated, many crying for help.

    At least 185 men, women and children disembarked from a rickety wooden boat Monday at dusk on Ujong Pie beach at Muara Tiga, a coastal village in Aceh’s Pidie district, said local police chief Fauzi, who goes by a single name.

    “They are very weak because of dehydration and exhaustion after weeks at sea,” Fauzi said.

    Muhammad Rafki Syukri, the Protection Associate at United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said the agency would provide Rohingya language translators and counseling to determine if they were from the group of 190 Rohingya who were reported by United Nations to be drifting in a small boat in the Andaman Sea for a month.

    “With prolonged-conflict and insecure situations in their country of origin, it is possible that the movement of refugees to find safe places will continue to grow,” he said.

    Chris Lewa, the director of the Arakan Project, which works in support of Myanmar’s Rohingya, confirmed Tuesday that the boat that landed Monday on Ujong Pie beach was from the group of 190 Rohingya.

    But Syukri said the UNHCR could not verify that information and was still coordinating with governments in the region.

    “But we will continue to search for further information to ensure the actual data,” Syukri told reporters Tuesday while visiting the Rohingya refugees at a school that was closed for the holiday season in Muara Tiga village.

    Lewa told AP by email that the arrivals were among five groups of Rohingya refugees that had left Cox’s Bazar district in Bangladesh in late November by smaller boats to avoid detection by local coast guards before they were transferred onto five larger boats for their respective journeys.

    The fourth and fifth boats “finally landed in northern part of Aceh, Indonesia, early Sunday and late afternoon on Monday,” Lewa said, after weeks of her organization pleading with south and southeast Asian countries to help.

    One of the refugees who spoke some Malay and identified himself as Rosyid, told The Associated Press that they left a camp in Bangladesh at the end of November and drifted on the open sea. He said at least “20 of us died aboard due to high waves and sick, and their bodies were thrown into the sea.”

    Myanmar security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and burning of thousands of homes belonging to Rohingya, sending them fleeing to Bangladesh and onward.

    Malaysia has been a common destination for many of the refugees arriving by boat, but they also have been detained in the country.

    Although neighboring Indonesia is not a signatory to the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention, the UNHCR said that a 2016 presidential regulation provides a legal framework governing the treatment of refugees on boats in distress near Indonesia and helps them disembark.

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    Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.

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  • More Rohingya refugees reach Indonesia after weeks at sea

    More Rohingya refugees reach Indonesia after weeks at sea

    PIDIE, Indonesia — A second group in two days of weak and exhausted Rohingya Muslims landed on a beach in Indonesia’s northernmost province of Aceh on Monday after weeks at sea, officials said.

    At least 185 men, women and children disembarked from a rickety wooden boat at dusk on Ujong Pie beach at Muara Tiga, a coastal village in Aceh’s Pidie district, said local police chief Fauzi, who goes by a single name.

    “They are very weak because of dehydration and exhaustion after weeks at sea,” Fauzi said.

    They were taken to the village hall and will stay there while they receive help from residents, health workers and others.

    Fauzi said that immigration officials and police were trying to identify the refugee to determine if they were from the group of 190 Rohingya who were reported by United Nations to be drifting in a small boat in the Andaman Sea for a month.

    The UNHCR on Friday urged countries to rescue the refugees, saying reports indicated they were in dire condition with insufficient food or water.

    “Many are women and children, with reports of up to 20 people dying on the unseaworthy vessel during the journey,” the agency said.

    Also on Friday, another group of 58 Rohingya — all men — arrived in Ladong village in Aceh Besar district.

    Azharul Husna, who heads the Aceh brach of KontraS, an Indonesian rights group, said Monday that the men in the group all carried UNHCR cards from refugee camps in Bangladesh and had left in search of a better life in Malaysia.

    Citing one of them, Husna said the 58 refugees left Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where more than 700,000 Rohingya from Myanmar had fled, to work on plantations in Malaysia. Their boat was damaged and the engine failed, leaving them drifting at sea until they came ashore in Aceh.

    Since 2017, Myanmar security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and burning of thousands of homes belonging to Rohingya, sending them fleeing to Bangladesh and onward.

    Malaysia has been a common destination for many of the refugees arriving by boat, but they also have been detained in the country.

    Although neighboring Indonesia is not a signatory to the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention, the UNHCR said that a 2016 presidential regulation provides a legal framework governing the treatment of refugees on boats in distress near Indonesia and helps them disembark.

    Last month, 219 Rohingya refugees were rescued off the coast of North Aceh district aboard two rickety boats.

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    Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia and Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.

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  • Angelina Jolie leaves role as UN refugee agency envoy

    Angelina Jolie leaves role as UN refugee agency envoy

    UNITED NATIONS — Angelina Jolie and the United Nations’ refugee agency are parting ways after more than two decades.

    In a joint statement issued Friday, the actress and the agency announced she was “moving on” from her role as the agency’s special envoy “to engage on a broader set of humanitarian and human rights issues.”

    “I will continue to do everything in my power in the years to come to support refugees and other displaced people,” Jolie was quoted as saying in the joint statement, adding that she felt it was time “to work differently” by directly engaging with refugees and local organizations.

    Jolie first started working with the U.N. refugee agency in 2001 and was appointed its special envoy in 2012. The release described her as “carrying out more than 60 field missions to bear witness to stories of suffering as well as hope and resilience,” most recently traveling to Burkina Faso.

    “After a long and successful time with UNHCR, I appreciate her desire to shift her engagement and support her decision,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi was quoted as saying. “I know the refugee cause will remain close to her heart, and I am certain she will bring the same passion and attention to a wider humanitarian portfolio.”

    In an opinion piece published in The Guardian last month, Jolie alluded to frustration with the lack of global progress in ending sexual violence in conflict.

    “We meet and discuss these horrors and agree that they should never be allowed to happen again. We promise to draw — and to hold — that line. But when it comes to hard choices about how to implement these promises, we run into the same problems time and again,” she wrote, specifically calling out U.N. Security Council members for “abusing their veto power.”

    Jolie began visiting refugee camps in 2001, and was appointed as a UNHCR goodwill ambassador that same year. At the time, the then-high commissioner said he hoped the then-26-year-old actress could direct young people’s attention to the plight of refugees.

    In response to a request for additional comment, the agency declined to offer further details, including whether they would appoint another special envoy to replace Jolie.

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  • Authorities: Migrant paraglided over Melilla border to Spain

    Authorities: Migrant paraglided over Melilla border to Spain

    Spanish authorities are looking for a person who paraglided over a border fence from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Melilla in what appeared to be a new and creative way to migrate irregularly to European territory.

    Two citizens reported seeing the paraglider Thursday afternoon, according to Eder Barandiaran, a press officer for Spain‘s government delegation in Melilla, one of two Spanish territories in North Africa.

    The flyer ran off after landing, leading authorities to suspect the individual was a migrant trying to reach Europe. The person’s identity and nationality remain unknown, but images of the paraglider circulated on social media Thursday.

    The Melilla border has been at the center of a scandal after 23 people died there in June during an attempt by hundreds of migrants and refugees to force their way in, resulting in a stampede. Moroccan police launched tear gas and beat men with batons, even when some were prone on the ground.

    Spanish authorities have also been accused of unlawfully pushing back some migrants to Morocco, allegedly violating their right to seek asylum.

    Several media investigations based on videos and photos of the June incident found that some of the deaths may have taken place on Spanish soil, which Spain’s interior minister has repeatedly denied.

    Of the more than 29,000 migrants who crossed into Spain by land or sea without authorization so far this year, some 1,300 did so through Melilla, according to the Spanish Interior Ministry.

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    Follow AP’s coverage of global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

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  • Mexican asylum seekers set their sights north — on Canada

    Mexican asylum seekers set their sights north — on Canada

    MONTREAL — Pedro Meraz says living in Colima, Mexico, was like living in a war zone, with shootings, burning cars and dismembered bodies being left outside of schools.

    When his wife Rocio Gonzalez, a 28-year-old lawyer who worked with abused women, began receiving death threats from a cartel and the local authorities ignored her pleas for assistance, they knew they had to leave.

    “They knew where we lived and what car we drove,” said Meraz, 41, who taught at The University of Colima, near the Pacific Coast and about 300 miles (485 kilometers) west of Mexico City. “Feeling that you are going to lose your life, or one of your daughters, I don’t mind starting from scratch.”

    The family is part of a surge in the number of Mexicans who have requested asylum in Canada this year. Due to the relative ease of obtaining asylum in Canada compared to the U.S., visa-free travel between Mexico and Canada, and the threat of violence back home, more than 8,000 Mexican nationals have sought refugee status in 2022. That’s almost five times as many as last year and more than twice as many as in 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions that accompanied it.

    The vast majority of them are flying in to Montreal, which has many direct flights to and from Mexico.

    Among them is Viviana Tapia Gonzalez, a human rights activist and mother of four from Aguascalientes, about 265 miles (425 kilometers) northwest of Mexico City, who said she left Mexico in January after being attacked by the military. She said her work with the families of missing and murdered women and girls made her a target.

    “Death threats were constant,” she said. “I thought it was the last option I had to be safe. I work for many causes and help many people. I did not want to stop helping, but I must also protect (and) take care of myself.”

    Tapia Gonzalez has been living in a Montreal women’s shelter while awaiting a decision on her asylum claim, which she fears might get rejected.

    If her claim is turned down, she wouldn’t be alone.

    In the first nine months of 2022, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, an independent tribunal that investigates and decides asylum cases, finalized more than 2,700 claims by Mexican asylum seekers. Of those, 1,032 were accepted, 1,256 were rejected; and the remaining 400-plus were either abandoned, withdrawn, or had other outcomes, said Christian Tessier, an IRB spokesperson.

    In Canada, claimants must meet the United Nations’ definition of a “convention refugee,” meaning they are outside of their home countries and have a well-founded fear that they would be persecuted if they returned based on their race, religion, political opinions, nationality or affiliation with a social group. Otherwise, they must prove that they need protection and can’t safely return to their home countries without risking torture, cruel or unusual punishment, or death.

    Despite the risk of rejection, though, the surge in Mexicans seeking refugee status in Canada persists.

    The Welcome Collective, a Montreal-based charitable organization that provides essential goods to new asylum seekers, said half of the group’s current clients came from Mexico — a 300% increase compared with earlier this year.

    “They had to run away because of violence and other humanitarian reasons. To find a better place for their children,” said Flavia Leiva, the group’s volunteer and social outreach coordinator.

    As for what is causing the increase in applicants, Leiva suggested that social media is playing a role.

    “There have been YouTubers and some videos on TikTok talking about how easy it is to come to Canada,” she said.

    At least one YouTube video that was published 10 months ago and made for a Mexican audience explains the Canadian immigration process in Spanish and has more than 4 million views.

    It has been harder for Mexicans to seek asylum in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic. A U.S. public health rule that suspends the right to seek asylum on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19 has fallen disproportionately hard on Mexicans. Title 42 authority has been used to expel migrants more than 2.4 million times since it was introduced in March 2020.

    Further adding to Canada’s allure is that Mexicans haven’t needed a visa to travel to the country since the Canadian government lifted the requirement in late 2016.

    Leiva also suggested that more Mexicans might be choosing to come to Canada instead of the United States because they think it’s safer.

    “In the U.S., they are put in cages, the conditions are not as good,” Leiva said. “People do not feel safe or protected.”

    Meraz said he and his family decided that Canada would offer them the best chance to start over.

    “My wife investigated the existence of international treaties to protect people who are at risk,” he said.

    He referenced Canadian policies and regulations protecting women and children in addition to the country’s comparatively low crime rate.

    “The U.S. was never in our minds, since there is a lot of violence … attacks where many innocent people die,” said Meraz. “Canada, statistically, has a very low rate of violence and its quality of life is much better than the USA.”

    He said his family chose Montreal instead of some other Canadian city because of logistics, though he’s having second thoughts.

    “If you were to ask me right now if I would choose another place, then maybe,” said Meraz, noting that he and his family must now learn French.

    Hayet Mohammed, who manages the French language program at Carrefour Solidarité Anjou, a nonprofit that helps newcomers settle in Quebec, said not only is obtaining refugee status easier in Canada, but there are plenty of resources for asylum seekers once they arrive.

    “They can work as soon as they have their refugee status and are entitled to (French) courses given by the (Ministry of Immigration in Quebec) which gives them financial assistance and finally, there are many work opportunities, and they are not at risk of finding themselves unemployed,” said Mohammed.

    “Being a newcomer myself with my little family, there is no other country that gives immigrants so many facilities in terms of training, work and child benefits. All these things make people leave their countries of origin and come to make their lives here, thousands of miles away from their families,” she said.

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    Associated Press writer Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.

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  • Some return to war-battered hub of Palestinian life in Syria

    Some return to war-battered hub of Palestinian life in Syria

    BEIRUT — Syria’s largest Palestinian camp was once bustling with activity: It was crowded with mini-buses and packed with shops hawking falafel, shawarma and knafeh nabulsieh — a sweet concoction of cheese and phyllo dough.

    Kids played soccer and brandished plastic guns until men with real guns came in when Syria descended into civil war. Over the past decade, fighting devastated communities across the country, including the Yarmouk camp, on the outskirts of the capital of Damascus.

    Today, Yarmouk’s streets are still piled with rubble. Scattered Palestinian flags fly from mostly abandoned houses, the only reminder that this was once a major political and cultural center of the Palestinian refugee diaspora.

    Two years ago, Syrian authorities began allowing former Yarmouk residents who could prove home ownership and pass a security check to come back.

    But so far, few have returned. Many others have been deterred by fear they could be arrested or conscripted by force. Others no longer have houses to come back to. Still, with the fighting having subsided in much of Syria, some want to see what’s left of their homes.

    Earlier this month, the government opened up Yarmouk for a rare visit by journalists to highlight its push for returnees. The occasion: the launch of a new community center, built by a non-government organization.

    One of those who have returned is Mohamed Youssef Jamil. Originally from the Palestinian village of Lubya, west of the city of Tiberias in present-day Israel, he had lived in Yarmouk since 1960. He raised three sons in the camp, before Syria’s war broke out.

    The 80-year-old came back a year and a half ago, with government approval to repair his damaged house. Of the 30 or 40 families who used to live on his street, there are now four. Many buildings that were not leveled by bombs were looted, stripped of windows, electric wiring — even faucets.

    “I’m staying here to guard it from thieves,” he said of his home.

    Nearby, the right half of Mohamed Taher’s house has collapsed, while he is repairing the still-standing left half. “There is no electricity,” the 55-year-old said, though in some parts of the camp there is water and the sewer system works.

    Yarmouk was built in 1957 as a Palestinian refugee camp but grew into a vibrant suburb that also attracted working-class Syrians. Before the 2011 uprising turned civil war, some 1.2 million people lived in Yarmouk, including 160,000 Palestinians, according to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA.

    As of June, some 4,000 people returned to Yarmouk, UNRWA said, while another 8,000 families received permission to return over the summer.

    The returnees struggle with a “lack of basic services, limited transportation, and largely destroyed public infrastructure,” UNRWA said. Some live in houses without doors or windows.

    The U.N. agency said returns to Yarmouk increased, in part, because the camp offered free housing. At a recent press conference, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said an increasing number of Palestinian refugees in Syria are “basically going back into rubble just because they cannot afford anymore to live where they were.”

    In the past, Palestinian factions in Syria sometimes had a complicated relationship with Syrian authorities. Former Syrian President Hafez Assad and Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat were bitter adversaries.

    However, Palestinian refugees lived in relative comfort in Syria, with greater socioeconomic and civil rights than those in neighboring Lebanon.

    Yarmouk’s Palestinian factions tried to remain neutral as Syria’s civil war broke out, but by late 2012, the camp was pulled into the conflict and different factions took opposing sides in the war.

    The militant group Hamas backed the Syrian the opposition while others, like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command, fought on the Syrian government’s side.

    In 2013, Yarmouk became the target of a devastating siege by government forces. In 2015, it was taken over by the extremist Islamic State group. A government offensive retook the camp in 2018, emptying it of remaining inhabitants.

    Sari Hanafi, a professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut who grew up in Yarmouk, said those returning are doing so because of “absolute necessity.”

    “The others who don’t return — it’s because it’s an unlivable place,” he said.

    A young man from Yarmouk living in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon agrees. With Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government still firmly in place, he said that if he went back, he “would always be living in anxiety and without security.”

    “Someone who returns to the camp, or to Syria in general, is no longer thinking, ‘How much freedom will I have?’ He is thinking, ‘I just want a house to live in,’” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity, fearing for the safety of his relatives back in Syria.

    At the community center’s opening, the governor of Damascus, Mohamed Tarek Kreishati, promised to clear the rubble and restore utilities and public transportation.

    But there’s a long way to go to convince people to go back, said Mahmoud Zaghmout from the London-based Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, aligned with the Syrian opposition.

    Yarmouk lacks “hospitals, bakeries, gas distribution centers and basic consumer and food items,” Zaghmout said.

    There are those who hope Yarmouk will be restored to its past glory, like Suheil Natour, a Lebanon-based researcher and member of the leftist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

    He pointed to Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camp Ein el-Hilweh, which was razed by Israeli forces in 1982 and later rebuilt. Yarmouk can also be “one day a very flourishing symbol of revival of the Palestinian refugees,” he said.

    Others are skeptical. Samih Mahmoud, 24, who grew up in Yarmouk but now lives in Lebanon, said not much remains of the place he remembered.

    He said he’s not attached to the buildings and streets of Yarmouk. “I’m attached to the people, to the food, to the atmosphere of the camp,” he said. “And all of that is gone.”

    ———

    Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, and Omar Akour in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

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  • UN: Russian invasion has uprooted 14 million Ukrainians

    UN: Russian invasion has uprooted 14 million Ukrainians

    UNITED NATIONS — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has driven some 14 million Ukrainians from their homes in “the fastest, largest displacement witnessed in decades,” sparking an increase in the number of refugees and displaced people worldwide to more than 103 million, the U.N. refugee chief said Wednesday.

    Filippo Grandi, who heads the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told the U.N. Security Council that Ukrainians are about to face “one of the world’s harshest winters in extremely difficult circumstances,” including the continuing destruction of civilian infrastructure that is “quickly making the humanitarian response look like a drop in the ocean of needs.”

    Humanitarian organizations have “dramatically scaled up their response,” he said, “but much more must be done, starting with an end to this senseless war.”

    But given “the likely protracted nature of the military situation,” Grandi said his agency is preparing for further population movements both inside and outside Ukraine.

    In his wide-ranging briefing, Grandi told members of the U.N.’s most powerful body that while Ukraine continues to grab headlines, his agency has responded to 37 emergencies around the world in the last 12 months arising from conflicts.

    “Yet, the other crises are failing to capture the same international attention, outrage, resources, action,” he said.

    Grandi pointed to the more than 850,000 Ethiopians displaced in the first half of the year, and said the recent surge in conflict in that nation’s northern Tigray region has had “an even more devastating impact on civilians.”

    The U.N. refugee agency is also in Myanmar, where the country’s military rulers are facing armed resistance and an estimated 500,000 people were displaced in the first half of the year, Grandi said.

    Humanitarian access remains “a huge challenge,” he said, adding that a return home remains distant for the almost 1 million Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled from Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh.

    In Congo, brutal attacks including sexual violence against women have added more than 200,000 people to the 5.5 million already displaced in the country, Grandi said.

    He lamented that “the horrors” he witnessed when he worked in Congo 25 years ago are repeating themselves, “with displacement being, once again, both a consequence of conflict and a complicating factor in the web of local and international tensions.”

    Addressing a council responsible for ensuring international peace and security, Grandi said: “Surely we can do better in trying to bring peace to this beleaguered region.”

    The refugee chief said these crises and others, including the longstanding issue of refugees from Afghanistan and Syria and the complex flow of migrants from the Americas, “are not only fading from media attention but are being failed by global inaction.”

    Reasons for displacement are also becoming more complex, with new factors forcing people to flee including the climate emergency, Grandi said.

    He urged greater attention and much greater financing for preventing and adapting to the warming planet, warning that otherwise tensions and competition will grow “and spark wider conflict with deadly consequences, including displacement.

    “And what is a starker example of `loss and damage’ than being displaced and dispossessed from one’s home?” he asked.

    Last week, Grandi said he met emaciated Somalis who had walked for days to get help and whose children had died on the way, and Somali refugees “pushed into already drought-affected areas of Kenya.”

    He praised the Kenyan government, despite its own challenges, for “ making a landmark shift from encampment of refugees to inclusion — a transition that I hope all will robustly support.”

    Grandi expressed hope that this month’s U.N. summit on climate change in Egypt and the summit in the United Arab Emirates next year will take into account both climate’s link to conflict and the displacement it causes.

    But Grandi said this is not enough. He said the U.N. refugee agency needs $700 million by the end of the year to avoid severe cuts in its services.

    He further called for strengthened peacebuilding to prevent the recurrence of conflict, including by reinforcing the police, judiciary and local government in fragile countries. He said that security also must be improved for humanitarian workers who are under increasing threat and that the Security Council needs to overcome its divisions on humanitarian issues.

    “Because what I saw in Somalia last week was a condemnation of us all,” Grandi said.

    He pointed to “a world of inequality where extraordinary levels of suffering are getting scandalously low levels of attention and resources,” adding that those who contribute the least to global challenges such as climate change “are suffering most from their consequences.”

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  • Turkey calls Greek claims on migrant mistreatment fake news

    Turkey calls Greek claims on migrant mistreatment fake news

    ISTANBUL — Turkish officials on Sunday shot back at Greek allegations that Turkey forced 92 naked migrants into Greece, calling it “fake news” and accusing Greece of the mistreatment.

    Greek migration minister Notis Mitarachi was “sharing false information” after the official tweeted a photo of the naked migrants on Saturday and blamed Turkey, said Fahrettin Altun, the communications director of Turkey’s president.

    Altun tweeted in Turkish, Greek and English that this was to “cast suspicion on our country,” while calling on Athens to abandon its “harsh treatment of refugees.”

    “Greece has shown once again to the entire world that it does not respect the dignity of refugees by posting these oppressed people’s pictures it has deported after extorting their personal possessions,” he said.

    Deputy Interior Minister Ismail Catakli tweeted that the photo showed Greece’s cruelty. “Spend your time to obey human rights, not for manipulations & dishonesty!”

    Greek police said Saturday that police officers found the migrants stark naked on Friday, “some with bodily injuries” who had entered the country using plastic boats to cross the Evros River, which forms a border between the two countries.

    Relations between the two neighboring countries have been tense over a variety of issues, including migration.

    Turkey regularly accuses Greece of violently pushing back migrants entering the country by land and sea. Turkey’s coast guard frequently shares videos of such pushbacks.

    Greece accuses Turkey, which hosts the largest number of refugees in the world, of “pushing forward” migrants to put pressure on the EU.

    The U.N. refugee agency said it was “deeply distressed by the shocking reports,” condemning the “degrading treatment” and calling for an investigation.

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

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  • ‘Don’t Look Back’: Refugee, plant worker writes of survival

    ‘Don’t Look Back’: Refugee, plant worker writes of survival

    SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — As Achut Deng lay in her apartment bedroom in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, sickened alongside hundreds of her co-workers at a South Dakota meatpacking plant, she worried she was going to die.

    It wasn’t the first time she felt the imminent threat of death.

    Her childhood, shattered by war in South Sudan, had been filled with it. But as she focused on building a new life for her family — filled with long hours at the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant — she kept those traumatic memories to herself.

    In the spring of 2020, however, she spoke out to tell of the fear gripping the Sioux Falls workforce, adding to pressure that prodded the plant to implement new safety protocols that helped protect Deng and her colleagues.

    Now, Deng is telling her whole story — from fleeing massacres to the trauma she experienced as a refugee in the United States — through a memoir that she hopes will bring awareness of both the hardships, as well as the healing, for refugees.

    Deng’s book for young adults, co-authored with Keely Hutton, draws its name from the words Deng’s grandmother uttered as they fled when their village came under attack: “Don’t Look Back.”

    For decades, she followed that advice to survive. The book details her grandmother’s sacrifice to literally shield Deng from bullets during a 1991 massacre, to a refugee journey where a deadly river, a snake bite and malaria all nearly killed her. And even after arriving in the U.S., Deng writes, she suffered sexual abuse from a male guardian as well as accompanying suicidal thoughts.

    “I’m tired of being strong. I’m done being embarrassed. I’m done being ashamed of what I’ve been through,” Deng, now 37, told The Associated Press in an interview at her home in Sioux Falls.

    For years, she quietly kept her story buried beneath her work at the plant, a side hustle of catering sambusa and caring for her three sons.

    “There’s a reason why I created this busy schedule — because I don’t want to have time to myself so that I can think of the past,” she said.

    The hard work allowed Deng to achieve the life she dreamed of when she came to the U.S. as a teenager. She saved for a down payment on a home, paid for family vacations and even sponsored her parents’ immigration to America.

    When COVID-19 infections spread among Deng’s colleagues, however, her dreams came under attack once again. Sickened by the virus, she worried her sons would find her body and be left with only the stories others told about her. Deng was still haunted by finding that her own grandmother had been struck and killed by the bullets that might have hit Deng during that 1991 massacre.

    “I found myself at the very lowest point again,” Deng recounted.

    In the past, she had quietly focused on survival. This time, she spoke out. Deng appeared twice on the New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast.

    She described in compelling detail the suffering and fear among her colleagues — many of them immigrants — as the pork processing plant became one of the country’s worst hotspots for infections in the spring of 2020. Four of her colleagues died after being infected.

    Many workers at the time worried about the consequences of speaking with reporters, but Deng says she was only describing her own experience and that she does not blame Smithfield for the coronavirus. She says the plant requires hard work, but Smithfield also provides the wages, benefits and a schedule that allow a single mother to provide for her family.

    When a publicist at Macmillan Publishing heard Deng on the podcast, it sparked talks that led to the memoir. Deng wrote the book with Hutton, her co-author, in between working 12-hour shifts at Smithfield and ferrying her sons to school. She often slept just four hours between her overnight job as a supervisor and video calls with Hutton.

    Delving into the trauma of her past was difficult, Deng said, and required therapy sessions.

    Then, every Sunday, when Deng had a day off, she would sit with her sons around their dining table and read the draft of the latest chapter.

    “We cry together; we talk about it; then we put it behind; then we start the new week,” Deng said.

    She hopes that readers will come to understand refugees have their lives upended and are traumatized by forces beyond their control, but show incredible resilience by choosing to come to the U.S. She described the book’s cover, illustrated with the face of a girl overlaid by a night sky, as capturing her feelings at publication.

    “She’s wounded but fearless,” Deng said. “You can see the pain in her eye. But she’s not afraid.”

    ———

    Follow Stephen Groves on Twitter at https://twitter.com/stephengroves

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  • Books on empire, migrant crisis up for Baillie Gifford prize

    Books on empire, migrant crisis up for Baillie Gifford prize

    LONDON — Books about Britain’s imperial past and the human face of the present-day refugee crisis are among the finalists for Britain’s leading nonfiction book award, the Baillie Gifford Prize.

    The shortlist announced Monday includes Harvard professor Caroline Elkins’ hard-hitting “Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire” and Irish journalist Sally Hayden’s “My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route.”

    Four books by British writers are also among the finalists for the 50,000 pound ($55,000) prize.

    They are Jonathan Freedland’s true Holocaust story “The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World;” Anna Keay’s “The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown,” which charts Britain’s brief period as a republic in the 17th century; Polly Morland’s “A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story;” and Katherine Rundell’s poetic biography “Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne.”

    Journalist Caroline Sanderson, who is chairing the judging panel, said the six books “are marvelously wide-ranging, in terms of setting, era, and the creative approaches on display. But however different the canvas, all have enthralling human stories at their heart.”

    The Baillie Gifford Prize recognizes English-language books from any country in current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.

    Last year’s winner was Patrick Radden Keefe’s “Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty,” an expose of the family that helped unleash the United States’ opioid epidemic.

    The winner of the 2022 prize will be announced on Nov. 17 at a ceremony in London.

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