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      In Rome, Adams Sees a Model for Helping Migrants Assimilate

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      The mayor praised the work of a migrant welcome center, which he visited at the end of a three-day trip, during which he also met with Pope Francis.It didn’t take long for Mayor Eric Adams of New York to articulate what he liked about a welcome center for migrants and asylum seekers that he visited on Sunday in Rocca di Papa, a town about 15 miles outside Rome.“In two months they’re going from migrant to participating in society,” Mr. Adams said after a 30-minute tour of the center, where migrants from countries including Syria and Sudan are processed, take Italian lessons and receive health care before being sent out for job opportunities.The mayor, who has called on the federal government to expedite work permits and relocation assistance for migrants, repeated that appeal after visiting the center, which is run by the Red Cross and receives funding from the Italian government. He said he wanted help from the Biden administration to develop something similar in New York, where more than 190,000 migrants have arrived over the last two years.Mr. Adams’s visit came on the last day of a three-day trip to Rome, where he met Pope Francis at the Vatican and spoke at an international conference on peace. The trip was a brief respite from varied troubles at home — protests over the Israel-Hamas war, a federal investigation into his campaign’s fund-raising, lagging poll numbers and possible challengers in next year’s primary — and Mr. Adams said it had inspired him and given him ideas that he would use in New York.“The big takeaway for me is the similarities of these cities,” he said.Mr. Adams met with Victor Fadlun, president of the Jewish Community of Rome, a nonprofit organization, in the city’s Jewish Quarter.Alessandro Penso for The New York TimesThe mayor was received warmly in Rome: On Saturday, his often-used line comparing New York to other cities — in this case, “New York is the Rome of America” — drew applause. On Sunday, a child asked for his autograph.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rishi Sunak’s Dismal Task: Leading U.K. Conservatives to Likely Defeat

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      After 14 years of Conservative government, Britain’s voters appear hungry for change. And Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seems unable to persuade them otherwise.A few days before Britain’s Conservative Party suffered a stinging setback in local elections on Thursday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recorded a short video to promote some good news from his government. In the eight-second clip, Mr. Sunak poured milk from a pint bottle into a tall glass, filled with a steaming dark beverage and bearing the scribbled figure of 900 pounds on the side.“Pay day is coming,” Mr. Sunak posted, referring to the savings that an average wage earner would supposedly reap from a cut in mandatory contributions to Britain’s national insurance system.The mockery soon started. He’d added too much milk, some said. His numbers didn’t add up, said others. And why, asked one critic, would Mr. Sunak choose a pint bottle as a prop days after the opposition Labour Party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, had skewered him in Parliament as a “pint-size loser?”However partisan her jab, loser is a label that Mr. Sunak is finding increasingly hard to shake, even among his members of his own party. In the 18 months since he replaced his failed predecessor, Liz Truss, Mr. Sunak, 43, has lost seven special parliamentary elections and back-to-back local elections.This past week’s local elections, in which the Conservatives lost about 40 percent of the 985 seats they were defending, were merely the latest signpost on what analysts say is a road to thumping defeat in a general election. National polls show the Labour Party leading the Conservatives by more than 20 percentage points, a stubborn gap that the prime minister has been unable to close.The drumbeat of bad news is casting fresh scrutiny on Mr. Sunak’s leadership and the future of his party, which has been in power for 14 years but faces what could be a long stretch in the political wilderness.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Could Ecuador’s Diplomatic Spat With Mexico Be a Boon for Noboa?

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      Analysts believe that President Daniel Noboa’s re-election hopes are what motivated the arrest of an Ecuadorean politician taking refuge at the Mexican Embassy.Ecuador’s decision to send police officers into the Mexican Embassy to arrest a politician who had taken refuge there inflamed tensions between two countries that were already at odds, but it may prove a political boon for the Ecuadorean president.President Daniel Noboa has been faced with flagging approval ratings amid rising violence weeks before a referendum that could affect his prospects for re-election next year. The spat with Mexico, which suspended diplomatic relations, may be just what he needed.The politician who was arrested, Jorge Glas, a former vice president of Ecuador, had been sentenced to prison for corruption and living at the Mexican Embassy in Quito since December. Then on Friday, Mexico granted him asylum, and the Ecuadorean police moved in.Mr. Noboa’s office said that the arrest had gone forward because Mexico had abused the immunities and privileges granted to the diplomatic mission, but the message it sent was also in keeping line with Mr. Noboa’s hardhanded approach to tackling violence and graft in Ecuador.The 36-year-old center-right leader came to power in November after President Guillermo Lasso, facing impeachment proceedings over accusations of embezzlement, called for early elections. Mr. Noboa is in office until May 2025, the remainder of Mr. Lasso’s term.Mr. Noboa’s ability to show that he can restore law and order to the nation of nearly 18 million may prove critical to his re-election, and that means tackling the country’s gangs, as well as corruption within the government that has enabled criminal groups, analysts say.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The U.S. Is Rebuilding a Legal Pathway for Refugees. The Election Could Change That.

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      President Biden is restoring resources and staffing for the refugee program, which was gutted during the Trump administration.With national attention focused on the chaos at the southern border, President Biden has been steadily rebuilding a legal pathway for immigration that was gutted during the Trump administration.The United States has allowed more than 40,000 refugees into the country in the first five months of the fiscal year after they passed a rigorous, often yearslong, screening process that includes security and medical vetting and interviews with American officers overseas.The figure represents a significant expansion of the refugee program, which is at the heart of U.S. laws that provide desperate people from around the world with a legal way to find safe haven in the United States.The United States has not granted refugee status to so many people in such a short period of time in more than seven years. The Biden administration is now on target to allow in 125,000 refugees this year, the most in three decades, said Angelo Fernández Hernández, a White House spokesman.By comparison, roughly 64,000 refugees were admitted during the last three years of the Trump administration.“The Biden administration has been talking a big talk about resettling more refugees since Biden took office,” said Julia Gelatt, an associate director at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. “Finally we are seeing the payoff in higher numbers.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mexico Condemns Texas Law, and Says It Will Not Accept Deportations From the State

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      Mexico will not accept deportations made by Texas “under any circumstances,” the country’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow Texas to arrest migrants who cross into the state without authorization.The ministry condemned the state law, known as Senate Bill 4, saying it would separate families, violate the human rights of migrants and generate “hostile environments” for the more than 10 million people of Mexican origin living in Texas.Mexico’s top diplomat for North America, Roberto Velasco Álvarez, rejected the ruling on the social media on Tuesday, saying that immigration policy was something to be negotiated between federal governments.The Mexican government has severely criticized the measure since last year, and rejected the idea of local or state agencies, rather than federal authorities, detaining and returning migrants and asylum seekers to Mexican territory.“Texas has taken a very combative stance,” said Rafael Fernández de Castro, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican studies at the University of California, San Diego. “It’s only aggravating the problem because you violently close one part of the border, but others are still open.”A senior Mexican foreign ministry official who was not allowed to speak publicly said that the Supreme Court ruling would not affect existing migration agreements between the two countries.While Mexico has served as the United States’ immigration enforcer, often discouraging migrants from massing at the border, the country has also publicly pushed for two key policies to address the root causes that force people out of their home countries — such as poverty, violence, inequality and climate change — and expand regular pathways for migration.Last week, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico said his administration was proposing that the Biden administration give legal status to at least five million undocumented Mexicans living and working in the United States.He has also called on the United States to suspend sanctions against Venezuela and lift the blockade against Cuba, saying that such measures would reduce migration flows from those countries. And he has called proposals to build walls or close the border as “electoral propaganda.”“Do you think the Americans and Mexicans will approve of this?” Mr. López Obrador said last month. “Companies cannot stand it. Maybe for a day, but not for a week.” More

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      Economic Dividend of Immigration Faces Legal and Logistical Hurdles

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      Immigrants aided the pandemic recovery and may be crucial to future needs. The challenge is processing newcomers and getting them where the jobs are.The U.S. economic recovery from the pandemic has been stronger and more durable than many experts had expected, and a rebound in immigration is a big reason.A resumption in visa processing in 2021 and 2022 jump-started employment, allowing foreign-born workers to fill some holes in the labor force that persisted across industries and locations after the pandemic shutdowns. Immigrants also address a longer-term need: replenishing the work force, a key to meeting labor demands as birthrates decline and older people retire.Net migration in the year that ended July 1, 2023, reached the highest level since 2017. The foreign-born now make up 18.6 percent of the labor force, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that over the next 10 years, immigration will keep the number of working Americans from sinking. Balancing job seekers and opportunities is also critical to moderating wage inflation and keeping prices in check.International instability, economic crises, war and natural disasters have brought a new surge of arrivals who could help close the still-elevated gap between labor demand and job candidates. But that potential economic dividend must contend with the incendiary politics, logistical hurdles and administrative backlogs that the surge has created.Visits to Texas on Thursday by President Biden and his likely election opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, highlight the political tensions. Mr. Biden is seeking to address a border situation that he recently called “chaos,” and Mr. Trump has vowed to shut the door after record numbers crossed the border under the Biden administration.Since the start of the 2022 fiscal year, about 116,000 have arrived as refugees, a status that comes with a federally funded resettlement network and immediate work eligibility. A few hundred thousand others who have arrived from Ukraine and Afghanistan are entitled to similar benefits.The foreign-born labor force has rebounded stronglyThe number of workers in the United States as a share of how many there were in February 2020, by worker origin

      Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesImmigrants are more likely to be workingThe labor force participation rate for foreign-born U.S. residents rebounded faster than it did for those born in the United States

      Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesWork permits are finally flowing for humanitarian migrantsThe number of employment authorization documents granted to immigrants seeking protection in the United States

      Note: Data includes permits granted to refugees, public interest parolees, as well as those with a pending asylum application, Temporary Protected Status and people who have been granted asylum.Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration ServicesBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Considering Executive Order That Could Restrict Asylum at the Border

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      The action under consideration could prevent people from making asylum claims during border crossing surges. The White House says it is far from a decision on the matter.President Biden is considering executive action that could prevent people who cross illegally into the United States from claiming asylum, several people with knowledge of the proposal said Wednesday. The move would suspend longtime guarantees that give anyone who steps onto U.S. soil the right to ask for safe haven.The order would put into effect a key policy in a bipartisan bill that Republicans thwarted earlier this month, even though it had some of the most significant border security restrictions Congress has contemplated in years.The bill would have essentially shut down the border to new entrants if more than an average of 5,000 migrants per day tried to cross unlawfully in the course of a week, or more than 8,500 tried to cross in a given day.The action under consideration by the White House would have a similar trigger for blocking asylum to new entrants, the people with knowledge of the proposal say. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.The move, if enacted, would echo a 2018 effort by President Donald J. Trump to block migration, which was assailed by Democrats and blocked by federal courts.Although such an action would undoubtedly face legal challenges, the fact that Mr. Biden is considering it shows just how far he has shifted on immigration since he came into office, promising a more humane system after the Trump years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Couldn’t Shut Down the Border. Can Biden?

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      President Biden could take some steps without Congress, but the idea that he has unfettered power to seal off the country is far too simplistic.President Biden is pleading with Congress for new authority to shut down the nation’s overwhelmed southern border, declaring that he has done “all I can do” and urging lawmakers to “give me the power” to fix it.“We don’t have enough agents. We don’t have enough folks. We don’t have enough judges,” Mr. Biden said on Monday. “Why won’t they give me the help?”A Senate bill introduced over the weekend tries to do just that. But it is fiercely opposed by House Republicans, who insist the president has simply failed to wield the power over immigration that he already has.Who’s right?While it is true that there are some steps Mr. Biden could take without Congress, the idea that he has unfettered power to seal the country off is far too simplistic. The United States also has laws that require the government to consider asylum claims from people fleeing persecution. Any attempts to circumvent that would almost certainly face legal challenges.The proposed legislation would clear away legal, practical and financial roadblocks to stiffer enforcement at the border that both parties say they want.Veterans of decades of political and policy debates over immigration said the bill would give Mr. Biden explicit new authority to deny asylum claims, expel people from the country more quickly and keep track of migrants while they are in the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More