True Left

For Syrians such Ahmad Alkhaled, the forthcoming Scottish election will be the first national vote where refugees will be able to take part.

For many, it will be the first time participating in a free and fair electoral process.

Ahmad, 24, arrived in Aberdeenshire last year as he and many relatives fled the conflict at home. He is now looking forward to going to a polling station.

There are about 20,000 refugees in Scotland, and work is ongoing to support those heading to the ballot box.

They are among an estimated 55,000 foreign nationals who will be entitled to vote in this election.
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"This country gave me a lot of things and a lot of chances to live. So I want to do my best for this country, and to return the favour."

President Joe Biden said he has resurrected a plan to raise refugee admissions this year to 62,500 after drawing a wave of criticism from supporters for initially keeping the refugee cap at a historically low level.
 
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As cities and states nationwide begin to ease up on COVID-19 restrictions, the southwest border remains closed to asylum-seekers. While families across the United States are reuniting with loved ones for the first time in more than a year, refugees fleeing violence and danger are being expelled at the border, with COVID-19 as a pretext. These illegal border expulsions endanger children and families, and fly in the face of scientific evidence. Both should be cause for serious concern.

While the Biden administration has made some key changes to rebuild our asylum system, decimated by four years of relentless attacks under former President Donald Trump, the most sweeping anti-asylum policy has yet to be rescinded. Known as Title 42 for where it falls in the Public Health Service Act, it was put into place in March 2020 under the auspices of protecting Americans from COVID-19. Simply put, noncitizens who arrive at the Southern border are expelled and sent to Mexico, regardless of their country of citizenship.

Cruelty doesn't improve public health

The expulsions are swift and uncompromising. Indeed, only through litigation has a small exception been carved out for unaccompanied minors, leaving vulnerable and desperate families with the terrifying choice of sending an 8-year-old alone to the border to live in refugee camps for children within the United States. Under Title 42, about 537,000 immigrants and refugees have been expelled from the United States in the past year.

From the beginning, public health experts have decried the policy, a brainchild of Trump senior White House official Stephen Miller, as unnecessary, cruel and counterproductive. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coerced into implementing the expulsions under the Trump administration, told advocates in April that it is still examining them under President Joe Biden’s Feb. 2 order to reassess immigration policy.

Last month, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, called on the United States to end the asylum restrictions.

However, despite advice from public health experts and condemnation by UNHCR, expulsions under Title 42 continue and the human cost has been devastating. Though refugees come from countries all over the world, the Department of Homeland Security expels them to Mexico, just on the other side of the border.
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Expulsions don’t just impact migrants from Mexico and Central America. Despite the recent designation of temporary protected status for Haitian migrants within the United States, the Biden administration has sent plane after plane of asylum-seeking families back to Haiti, with some Haitians being expelled to Mexico.
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Public health has often been used as a pretext for restrictionist immigration policies. Beginning as early as 1793, when Haitians were blamed for bringing yellow fever to Philadelphia, nativism and xenophobia have long merged with concerns about public health to exclude immigrants and refugees. These concerns were not justified by science then, and they certainly are not justified now.

The United States will relocate thousands of Afghan citizens who worked for the American government before U.S. troops exit the country in the next few months.

The plan is to relocate between 20,000 and 100,000 Afghan citizens, a senior White House official tells NPR. The White House is in the process of informing both the U.S. Congress and the Afghan government, the official said.

Most of the Afghan applicants for Special Immigrant Visas, or SIVs, are translators and interpreters. Their family members will also be relocated.

Those now in flight, as well as nearly 6 million forced to flee their homes since 2001, are part of what the US's 20-year war has brought Afghans. With lives hanging in the balance, the question now is what the United States owes the Afghan people. While some want to debate the US withdrawal, we must focus instead on making every effort to aid those whose lives have been so damaged and endangered by our war. One important place to start is for the Biden administration to welcome one million Afghan refugees to the United States.

Before turning to the solutions, consider what we would ask for if another country invaded ours and waged a war that killed, injured, and displaced millions. I've been tracking the damage that our war has inflicted on Afghanistan as part of Brown University's Costs of War Project. The project has spent more than a decade documenting the human and financial costs of US wars waged since 2001.

Last year we worked with a team from American University to calculate the number of people displaced by the war in Afghanistan, as well as the US wars in Iraq and six other countries. We found the Afghanistan war has displaced at least 2.1 million Afghans as refugees and 3.9 million internally. That's about 15% of Afghanistan's total population today and nearly 30% of its pre-war population.

Try to imagine just 15% of the United States forced from their homes. We're talking 50 million people - or everyone in Florida and Texas combined.

Our war has also killed around 150,000 Afghan civilians and combatants through combat alone; factoring in deaths from disease, hunger, and the destruction of health and other infrastructure, the death toll is likely at least 600,000-750,000. Millions have been injured and traumatized.

What would justice look like if another country invaded the United States and waged a war that displaced 50 million and killed and injured millions more?
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To start, the Biden administration and Congress must admit far more Afghans to the United States. Compared to the 5.9 million displaced, granting Special Immigrant Visas to only 71,000 translators and other former US government employees and their family members represents a tiny step. We must resettle no fewer than one million Afghan refugees over the next ten years. In the wake of our wars in Southeast Asia, we admitted more than 800,000 refugees fleeing Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. We owe a similar debt to Afghans.

And it is feasible: In one year, 1980, the United States admitted more than 350,000 refugees, including 125,000 Cubans. Given population and economic growth, we can absorb larger numbers today. In 2015­ and 2016, Germany admitted more than one million refugees, and their population is a quarter that of the US population.
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Unfortunately, President Biden set a cap of 62,500 total refugee admissions for 2021 and 125,000 for 2022. The latter number sounds good but is misleading given that Biden acknowledged his administration wouldn't reach either year's resettlement goals. More than 80,000 refugees and asylees entered the United States during former President Trump's first fiscal year in office. Given that our Costs of War team found that US wars since 2001 have displaced at least 38 million people, Biden should set a global target of admitting at least 300,000 refugees annually.

The costs of such efforts may seem overwhelming, but they pale compared to the $2.3 trillion spent on 20 years of war in Afghanistan and the obscenely bloated US military budget, which tops $700 billion annually and exceeds that of the next 11 countries combined. Congress should use money saved by withdrawing bases and troops from Afghanistan to resettle Afghans and provide additional aid.

More than anyone, the US government and citizens like you and me have an obligation to repair the damage we have inflicted. Our leaders chose to wage 20 years of war. Our taxes funded it. Given the dead and injured, the 5.9 million displaced, and the 30,000 now being displaced each week, welcoming one million Afghans to our country is just the start of making good on what we owe. If war forced us to flee, wouldn't we expect the same welcome?