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September 1, 2021

Have You Read?

Seeking Safety, Jobs, and More: Afghanistan’s Mixed Flows Test Migration Policies

Borders and Walls: Do Barriers Deter Unauthorized Migration?

Immigrants from Asia in the United States

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Biden Administration Asylum Processing Revamp at the U.S. Border Could Be a Game Changer
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The International Community Must Develop a Well-Coordinated Protection Strategy for Afghan Refugees
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Media Corner

In After the Tampa: From Afghanistan to New Zealand, Abbas Nazari describes his family’s flight from Taliban rule and rescue by the cargo ship the Tampa, in an episode that became a political controversy in Australia.

Legal scholars and Christian theologians come together to examine global migration in Christianity and the Law of Migration, edited by Silas W. Allard, Kristin E. Heyer, and Raj Nadella.

Justin Akers Chacón makes an argument for solidarity between workers and migrants in The Border Crossed Us: The Case for Opening the US-Mexico Border.

Latin America and Refugee Protection: Regimes, Logics, and Challenges, edited by Liliana Lyra Jubilut, Marcia Vera Espinoza, and Gabriela Mezzanotti, analyzes the systems for protecting refugees across Latin America.

Ruth Milkman, Deepak Bhargava, and Penny Lewis outline a provocative new vision for U.S. immigration policy in Immigration Matters: Movements, Visions, and Strategies for a Progressive Future.

Spotlight
Central American Immigrants in the United States
The number of Central American immigrants in the United States has grown dramatically, amid political corruption, violence, and natural disasters in their native countries. But recent images of Central Americans arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border do not tell the whole story, with more than half the population arriving in 2000 or earlier. This article offers key data on the 3.8 million Central American immigrants in the United States.

Country Profile
United Kingdom’s Decades-Long Immigration Shift Interrupted by Brexit and the Pandemic
The United Kingdom was once a country primarily of emigration, but in recent decades many more migrants have arrived at its borders than have left. This decades-long transition was interrupted by Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, and this article describes the inflection point at which the country finds itself.

Editor's Note

It’s a boom time for border walls.

While a controversial approach to migration management with mixed results in halting unwanted migration, tall barriers topped with razor wire have increasingly become the default response for countries confronted with the prospect of large numbers of migrants and asylum seekers at their doorstep. Recent weeks have shown this clearly, in part amid expectations about a possible exodus from Afghanistan.

Pakistan, for instance, has recently been installing the final stretches of double fence and concertina wire along its 1,622-mile (2,611-kilometer) border with Afghanistan, known as the Durand Line. Construction on the fence started in 2017, in response to cross-border attacks on Pakistani forces, but the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan has led to new precautions. Officials have recently subjected Afghans to heightened vetting processes, and reports on the ground suggest that large numbers of migrants have gone to border crossings, despite restrictions on who can cross.

Pakistan is also about halfway finished with a fence along its 596-mile (959-kilometer) border with Iran, which it began in 2019 with an aim to stop human trafficking, smuggling, and insecurity.

Turkey, which is both a destination country and transit point for migrants heading to Europe, has in recent weeks raced to erect a three-meter high concrete barrier along its border with Iran, as well as ditches, barbed wire, and other measures to prevent asylum seekers and other migrants from passing through.

Farther along, Greece recently announced it has completed 25 miles (40 kilometers) of wall on its land border with Turkey. Athens, anxious not to repeat the events of the 2015-16 migration and refugee crisis, has also installed new surveillance systems along the border.

Elsewhere, fences have been deployed by some Baltic countries along the border with Belarus, in response to what has been described as weaponization of migrants. Lithuania’s 315-mile (508-kilometer) fence is expected to be completed by this time next year, and Latvia has reportedly considered building a barrier of its own. Poland’s defense minister has announced that a new “solid fence” is forthcoming.

In all, the new construction underscores how quickly leaders are willing to turn to border barriers. The trend is by no means solely a recent one: the number of walls has grown dramatically since the end of World War II. And if recent history is any indication, things won’t be slowing down any time soon.

Best regards,
Julian Hattem
Editor, Migration Information Source
[email protected]

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The Migration Information Source is a project of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, DC dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide.