Immigration and Migration

Health and infectious diseases have shaped the history of urbanization, but it is cities that will define the future of global health.

There is extensive media attention given to migration from North Africa to Europe across the Mediterranean. These stories are accompanied by regular reports on the rescue of migrants from sinking boats, issues concerning their reception in Europe, and their impact on European politics. The BBC usefully has called attention to the likely larger and more deadly flow of migrants across the Sahara. The report is primarily based on anecdotes obtained from on-the-ground reporting. Statistics are thin, but the BBC’s conclusions are credible. The BBC cites data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which are probably the best available. According to IOM, in 2015 there were 6,000 traffickers in the Agadez region of Niger who transported some 340,000 migrants across the Sahara to Libya. The migrants were eventually bound for Europe. They came from all over West Africa to Agadez, long a center of the cross Sahara trade. In one of the poorest parts of the world, the profits from trafficking were huge; the BBC quotes one trafficker as saying that he earned as much as $6,000 per week. In 2015, according to the BBC, the Nigerien government, banned trafficking of people across the Sahara under pressure from European countries. The BBC ascribes some of the drop in migration to the law. Perhaps. But it is not clear what capacity the Nigerien government actually has to enforce such a law. The BBC provides anecdotes from wily traffickers who find new and different ways across the Sahara, though such routes are often far from water sources and presumably result in higher mortality rates. The BBC also notes that stories about the dangers of migration and the harsh conditions in holding centers in Libya and even in Europe are trickling back to villages all over West Africa, convincing would-be migrants to stay put. Niger is a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which permits the free movement of people across borders; the trafficking was therefore probably legal, at least until the Nigerien border with Libya, which is not a member of ECOWAS and could therefore presumably have blocked the trafficking.  That country, however, is wracked by civil war. Migration across the Sahara is also far more dangerous than across the Mediterranean. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in Niger, Alessandra Morelli, estimates that for every migrant death in the Mediterranean, there are at least two in the Sahara.  Trade across the Sahara is an old song. Estimates are that the slave trade across the Sahara lasted longer than the Atlantic slave trade and involved nearly as many victims. But, trafficking from West Africa to Europe is still poorly understood, and it is not clear the exact numbers of migrants and traffickers involved, nor what is primarily driving such migration. For whatever reasons, the numbers appear to have indeed dropped.   

The president's push to "build the wall" fails to grasp the role of modern technology in policing U.S. borders.

The European Commission announced that that migrant and refugee arrivals in Europe via the Mediterranean Sea number 134,004 as of December 5, 2018, down from 179,536 during the same period in 2017. The year that saw the highest number of arrivals, 1,015,078, was 2015. While Italy experienced the biggest drop, arrivals actually increased in Spain and Greece. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan have remained the largest countries of origin since 2014; since then, almost one million Syrians have sought asylum in the Europe Sub-Saharan Africans make up an large portion of those living outside their country of origin globally, and remain a significant and growing part of the migrant and refugee flow, especially those arriving in Italy and Spain. In Italy, in numerical order, the largest countries of origin were Tunisia, Eritrea, Sudan, Nigeria, and Pakistan. In Spain, it was Guinea, Morocco, Mali, and Ivory Coast. Spain retains two enclaves on the North African coast, Ceuta and Melilla, and many Africans go there to seek refugee asylum, sometimes storming border walls. The prominence of Nigeria as an origin for migrants and refugees probably owes much to the fact that the country is by far most populous in Africa, comprising roughly one-sixth of the continent’s people. The other African countries of migrant and refugee origin—Eritrea, Sudan, Mali, Ivory Coast—are involved in internal conflict or are just emerging from it. Even though by Western standards migrants and refugees are desperately poor, they still need some money to afford to make it to Europe. The poorest of the poor, such as the internally displaced in northeast Nigeria, lack the resources to even try.

Once attracted to the many freedoms that American society offers, Chinese students and scholars are now struggling to find reasons to stay due to the Trump administration's new policies.

Political and economic unrest in Nicaragua could stoke the flames in a region where insecurity has forced tens of thousands to flee in recent years.

Senior Fellow Catherine Powell hosted a roundtable discussion with Muneer Ahmad, a leading voice and scholar on immigrant rights, on strategies for litigating the Trump administration’s family separation policy.

U.S. programs can make the Northern Triangle a better place to live than to leave.