France Plans ‘Hot Spots’ for Asylum Seekers in Libya
The French president announced plans to create “hot spots” in Libya this summer to process asylum claims in the North African country.
Emmanuel Macron’s plan aims to cut the numbers of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean into Europe.
“The idea is to create hot spots to avoid people taking crazy risks when they are not all eligible for asylum. We’ll go to them,” he said.
But Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticized the French hot spots move, along with Italy’s recently revealed plans to deploy navy ships in Libyan waters.
“An Italian Navy blockade in Libyan waters combined with French processing centers on Libyan land could expose migrants and asylum seekers to even greater abuse,” said Judith Sunderland, HRW’s associate director for Europe and Asia.
Dominican Residency Extension to Haitian Migrants
Some 230,000 Haitian migrants will be given a one-year extension to apply for residency permits by the Dominican Republic, reported the Associated Press.
The Dominican government grants provisional permits to children born in the country to non-Dominican parents, the vast majority of whom are Haitian migrants. In 2013 a court ruling denied automatic citizenship to these children on the basis that the parents’ migrant status qualified them as “in transit.”
Some 220,000 Haitian migrants were under threat of deportation before the one-year extension. Many factors, including a lack of work contracts and other legal documents such as a birth certificate or passport, have hampered their attempts to finalize their residency.
White House Advisers Gain Power Over Refugee Resettlement
The White House’s Domestic Policy Council (DPC) will determine the number of refugees resettled in the United States next year, U.S. administration officials told Reuters.
This role previously fell to the National Security Council and State Department.
The maneuver will likely give authority to officials who want to slash resettlement figures. The DPC works under Donald Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller, a principal designer of the first executive order that barred entrance to citizens of six Muslim-majority countries and suspended the refugee resettlement program.
President Trump is required by law to reveal his resettlement figure to Congress before the beginning of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.
Recommended Reads
- Center for Global Development: Violence, Development, and Migration Waves: Evidence from Central American Child Migrant Apprehensions
- Literary Hub: We Want Our Refugees and Exiles to be Victims
- DevPolicy Blog: Human-centered Solutions to the Refugee Education Crisis
- Bosphorus Migration Studies: On Muslim Anxiety: Behzad Yaghmaian