Nicholas Keung The Star Wed., Dec. 14, 2022
Job losses amid a global economic downturn. Skyrocketing prices and food insecurity, due to war and conflicts. Border policies that restrict access to asylum.
The pandemic has created what some experts describe as a perfect storm that has pushed migrants to risk their lives at all costs through treacherous journeys for survival.
In the latest incident that appeared to speak to that desperation, four people died in freezing and choppy water after a migrant boat ran into trouble crossing the English Channel Tuesday. It followed another tragedy in September, when 70 people died after a boat carrying migrants setting off to Europe capsized off the coast of Syria.
“You have the rising costs for fuel, for food and for all the basic inputs into the economies. That’s leading to political crises around the world as well,” says Craig Damian Smith, a research affiliate with York University’s Centre for Refugee Studies.
“Again it’s the places where people were already kind of on the edge of poverty or on the edge of insecurity.
“It’s getting far worse.”
In the early days of the pandemic, migration restrictions led to a suspension and temporary reduction of smuggling activity, but that has not eliminated the demand, says the European University Institute’s Migration Policy Centre.
The closure of borders and other state-imposed rules have effectively redirected migrants into more perilous landscapes, where humanitarian support and rescue are often unavailable, it said in a policy brief about COVID-19’s effects on irregular migration.
The UN International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project has documented at least 5,684 deaths on migration routes to and within Europe since the beginning of 2021, with increasing numbers of deaths seen on routes across the Mediterranean, on land routes to Europe and within the continent.
Up to October of this year, the UN estimates, there were 131,000 arrivals via the Mediterranean and northwest African maritime routes.
“This has profound effects not only on those who lost their lives in the absence of safe, legal migration routes, but on the countless families who may never know the fate of their lost loved ones, and on the many communities that are tasked with the consequences of managing these thousands of human remains,” it concluded in a 2021 regional report.
But what’s happened on the sea routes in Europe is a small part of the picture. Migrants around the world take their chances on land and by boat, sometimes toiling in forced labour en route to pay for the journey.
“We’re really at a point now where we’re seeing this deadly cocktail of desperation, combined with a lack of support for refugees, which is forcing people to take these very dangerous journeys,” says Rema Jamous Imseis, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees representative to Canada.
“Unfortunately, the state of the world is really such that there are so many elements now which come together to create this perfect storm, where people feel like they have no choice but to take these desperate journeys.”
There are currently 100 million displaced people around the world and the UN has had 35 new emergencies in different regions this year alone. On top of that, there have been drastic funding cuts to humanitarian organizations, especially in low- and middle-income countries that are hosting the large majority of refugees.
Lebanon, for instance, relies on Ukraine for 80 per cent of its grain imports, and the disruption of the supply chain by the Russian war has created a very difficult situation for refugees within Lebanon and Lebanese citizens alike, said Jamous Imseis.
The purchasing power of the little cash support aid agencies provide for refugees has also shrunk significantly.
“Like what you’re seeing here in Canada, inflation and the impacts of these economic shocks are reducing people’s ability to cope,” said Jamous Imseis. “When you have no way to feed your children or to keep them safe, it’s no longer a choice. The only option to survive is to leave, to find a life and safety elsewhere.”
Irregular arrivals are on the rise in many parts of the world from Asia to Africa and the Americas.
Driven by former U.S. president Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policy, Canada has seen its share of irregular migrants through the land border reached almost 60,000 since 2017. Although the numbers dipped significantly in the pandemic’s first two years, so far in 2022, more than 12,800 have arrived through unguarded land borders.
Pushbacks and closed borders are not the answer, said Jamous Imseis.
What’s happened in the U.K. is part of a global trend where state policies essentially make it impossible for people to arrive legally to claim asylum in the country, said Smith, a co-founder of Parity, an end-to-end platform for refugee newcomer integration.
“It’s very much like a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said. “States make it more difficult to claim asylum. There are very few regularized migration routes. And then they blame criminal actors when it’s very obvious that the overarching cause of all this is the demand for migration, the demand for mobility and the narrowing channels.”
Government officials often argue that migrants should use legal channels to seek protection through the asylum system or resettlement programs, but those who arrive at the border are considered de facto illegal and denied entry, as in the case of the southern U.S. border.
“It’s far cheaper to invest in domestic asylum systems than it is to pay for things for border enforcement, all of that technology testing drones and satellites and biometrics and sensors and walls and fences and all the personnel,” Smith said. “It’s far more expensive than increasing the capacity of asylum systems.
“It’s also about politics. We’ve seen over and over again that getting tough on immigration, blaming criminals and blaming organized crime … plays well to domestic audiences.”
Both Jamous Imseis and Smith said irregular migration to Canada and around the world is not going to stop anytime soon.
“In the end, large-scale movements of people beg the question, why are they leaving? The international community needs to find a way to better look at the root causes and try and address some of those in a very coherent and co-operative way,” said Jamous Imseis.
“Unless you address the root causes of what is causing people to flee, you’re never going to get to a point where this stops.”