Tag Archives: asylum seekers

The US and Canada have announced an immigration plan that will change the way they take in asylum seekers. While Ottawa vowed to accept 15,000 additional migrants, the deal allows both countries to reject those who arrive at unofficial border crossings. US President Joe Biden unveiled the new agreement alongside …

Britain’s Conservative government has struck a deal with Rwanda to send some asylum-seekers thousands of miles away to the East African country, a move that opposition politicians and refugee groups condemned as inhumane, unworkable and a waste of public money. Home Secretary Priti Patel visited the Rwandan capital, Kigali, on …

US President Joe Biden’s administration is taking steps to restart by mid-November a program begun under his predecessor Donald Trump that forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for US court hearings after a federal court deemed the termination of the program unjustified, US officials said Thursday. The administration, however, …

The number of migrants landing on Italy’s shores has more than doubled in the last year as an economic crisis in Tunisia fuels migration in boats across the Mediterranean, Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese said on Saturday. More than 21,000 people reached Italy between August 2019 and the end of July, …

The death toll from a migrant boat disaster in Lake Van in eastern Turkey has risen to 50, the governor’s office said on Saturday, after three weeks of search operations. The boat, which sank on June 27, is believed to have been carrying 55 to 60 migrants, according to Interior …

Italy has authorised charity vessel Ocean Viking to disembark 180 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean in Sicily, ship operator SOS Mediterranee said on Sunday. “We have received instructions from the Italian maritime authorities to disembark those on board in Porto Empedocle,” a spokesman for the charity told AFP, which has …

A woman who gave birth at sea was among 93 migrants rescued off Libyan shores as they tried to reach Europe, but six others died along the way, the UN’s migration agency said. The survivors were brought back overnight to the port city of Khoms, 120km (75 miles) west of …

Libya’s coast guard intercepted 71 migrants hoping to make it to Europe, including four women and two children and returned them to the capital Tripoli, the U.N. migration organization said Thursday. The International Organization for Migration tweeted that the migrants, who were stopped late Wednesday, were given food and emergency …

Nearly 80 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to violence and persecution, marking a near-doubling of global displacement in a decade, the UN said Thursday. By the end of 2019, one out of every 97 people in the world was living uprooted and displaced, according to …

The death toll from the sinking of a boat carrying migrants off the Tunisian coast has risen to 54 as more bodies were recovered during the search operations. The boat, heading for Italy’s coast on Saturday, sank off the Tunisian city of Sfax. Tunisian search teams recovered the bodies of …

Greece has extended for another two weeks a coronavirus lockdown on its overcrowded migrant camps as the country gears up to revive its tourism-dependent economy. “For residents of the reception and identification centers across the country, measures against the propagation of the COVID-19 virus are extended” until June 21, the …

More than 400 migrants are living aboard pleasure cruise vessels bobbing in the sea off Malta, many of them for weeks now. But for them, it’s no pleasure, only uncertainty over their fate and they aren’t cruising anywhere. Rescued from human traffickers’ unseaworthy boats in several operations in the central …

The moving of thousands of refugees, some of them from Greek islands to the mainland, could leave many homeless and is deeply concerning, the UN Refugee Agency said Tuesday. The UNHCR said that the government-arranged exit of some 9,000 recognized refugees from Greece’s reception system, which began Monday, is a …

Hungary shut so-called migrant transit zones on its borders on Thursday, freeing some 300 refugees from prison-like conditions while at the same time hardening rules which will effectively bar future asylum applicants. During the peak of Europe’s 2015 migration crisis, Prime Minister Viktor Orban ordered Hungary’s southern border to be …

The European Union’s top court has ruled that Hungary circumvented EU law by holding Afghan and Iranian asylum seekers in prison-like conditions at a border transit zone. Hungary has come under EU criticism for its hard-line approach to migration and has been repeatedly challenged before the European Court of Justice …

Two asylum seekers have been hospitalized with light injuries after gunshots were fired into Greece’s largest migrant camp on the eastern Aegean Sea island of Lesbos, police said on Wednesday. The unknown assailant or assailants evaded arrest, while the two injured migrants were taken to the island’s hospital as a …

German police detained 12 men on Friday suspected of setting up a far-right organization with the goal of carrying out attacks against politicians, asylum seekers, and Muslims, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (GBA) said. Prosecutors said four of the suspects had set up a “terrorist organization” in September 2019 and regularly …

Greece said on Friday it was deploying more border guards to “shut the door” to migrants not entitled to stay, the latest sign of a hardening stance against asylum seekers since a new surge in the number of arrivals. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told parliament he had approved the hiring …

French police have cleared more than 800 migrants from a makeshift camp that sprung up outside a gymnasium near the northern port of Dunkirk last spring. The move on Tuesday followed a court ruling that the camp had become a health and security hazard, AFP said. The mayor of Grande-Synthe …

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday granted a request by President Donald Trump’s administration to fully enforce a new rule that would curtail asylum applications by immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, a key element of his hardline immigration policies. The court said the rule, which requires most immigrants who want …