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Biden administrationBiden administration seeks to lift US refugee cap to 125,000 beginning 1 OctoberPlan comes as tens of thousands of Afghan refugees are on military bases awaiting resettlement R More
DemocratsInterview‘The intensity has not changed’: Jason Kander on the fall of Afghanistan – and trying to get friends outMartin Pengelly The Missouri Democrat has been described as a possible president – but for now he’s focused on healing wounds of a 20-year war@ More
Joe Biden has formally raised the US cap on refugee admissions to 62,500 this year, weeks after facing bipartisan blowback for his delay in replacing the record-low ceiling set by Donald Trump.Refugee resettlement agencies have waited for Biden to quadruple the number of refugees allowed into the United States this year since 12 February, when a presidential proposal was submitted to Congress saying he planned to do so.But the presidential determination went unsigned until Monday. Biden said he first needed to expand the narrow eligibility criteria put in place by Trump that had kept out most refugees. He did that last month in an emergency determination, which also stated that Trump’s cap of up to 15,000 refugees this year “remains justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest”.That brought sharp pushback for not at least taking the symbolic step of authorizing more refugees to enter the US this year, and within hours the White House made a quick course correction. The administration vowed to increase the historically low cap by 15 May – but probably not all the way to the 62,500 Biden had previously outlined.In the end, Biden returned to that figure.“It is important to take this action today to remove any lingering doubt in the minds of refugees around the world who have suffered so much, and who are anxiously waiting for their new lives to begin,” Biden stated before signing the emergency presidential determination.Biden said Trump’s cap “did not reflect America’s values as a nation that welcomes and supports refugees”.But he acknowledged the “sad truth” that the US would not meet the 62,500 cap by the end of the fiscal year in September, given the pandemic and limitations on the country’s resettlement capabilities – some of which his administration has attributed to the Trump administration’s policies to restrict immigration.Biden said it was important to lift the number to show “America’s commitment to protect the most vulnerable, and to stand as a beacon of liberty and refuge to the world”.The move also paves the way for Biden to boost the cap to 125,000 for the 2022 fiscal year, which starts in October.Since the fiscal year began last 1 October, just over 2,000 refugees have been resettled in the US.Refugee resettlement agencies applauded Biden’s action.“We are absolutely thrilled and relieved for so many refugee families all across the world who look to the US for protection,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the head of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, one of nine resettlement agencies in the country. “It has a felt like a rollercoaster ride, but this is one critical step toward rebuilding the program and returning the US to our global humanitarian leadership role.”Biden has also added more slots for refugees from Africa, the Middle East and Central America and ended Trump’s restrictions on resettlements from Somalia, Syria and Yemen.“We are dealing with a refugee resettlement process that has been eviscerated by the previous administration and we are still in a pandemic,” said Mark Hetfield, president of Hias, a Maryland-based Jewish non-profit that resettles refugees. “It is a challenge, but it’s important he sends a message to the world that the US is back and prepared to welcome refugees again.” More
Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterJoe Biden was condemned on Friday for reversing a campaign pledge by leaving in place the historically low cap on refugee admissions set by his predecessor, Donald Trump.The number of refugees allowed to resettle in the US per year fell from 85,000 to 15,000 under Trump, whose hardline “America first” agenda frequently portrayed migrants as a security threat.Biden had considered raising the cap to 62,500 but instead opted for a policy that officials say will speed up the admissions process while keeping the 15,000 ceiling.The U-turn left Biden facing potentially his first major rebellion from the left of the Democratic party. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive congresswoman from New York, tweeted: “Completely and utterly unacceptable. Biden promised to welcome immigrants, and people voted for him based on that promise.“Upholding the xenophobic and racist policies of the Trump admin, including the historically low and plummeted refugee cap, is flat out wrong. Keep your promise.”Her Washington state colleague Pramila Jayapal said: “It is simply unacceptable and unconscionable that the Biden administration is not immediately repealing Donald Trump’s harmful, xenophobic and racist refugee cap that cruelly restricts refugee admissions to a historically low level … President Biden has broken his promise to restore our humanity.”Biden’s order could allow for a wider group of refugees to be considered for resettlement. It adjusts allocation limits set by Trump, providing more spaces for refugees from Africa, the Middle East and Central America, and lifts restrictions on resettlements from Somalia, Syria and Yemen.Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, posted on Twitter: “America needs to rebuild our refugee resettlement program. We will use all 15,000 slots under the new Determination and work with Congress on increasing admissions and building back to the numbers to which we’ve committed.”But refugee advocacy groups expressed deep disappointment, noting that Biden’s campaign website promised he would “prioritize setting the annual global refugee admissions cap to 125,000”.Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, described the move as both “bad policy and bad politics”.“There is no valid policy reason to maintain the shockingly low refugee cap,” he said. “As a political matter, President Biden will alienate a lot of his supporters by failing to turn the page on President Trump’s racism, xenophobia and scapegoating of immigrants and refugees.”The International Rescue Committee called the order “a disturbing and unjustified retreat” and suggested that at the current rate of admissions, Biden’s administration is on track to resettle the lowest number of refugees of any president in US history.David Miliband, the IRC president and chief executive, said: “This is a time of unprecedented global need and the US is still far from returning to its historic role of safe haven for the world’s persecuted and most vulnerable.”Biden previously signed an executive order pledging to increase the number of refugees admitted in the 2022 fiscal year, which begins on 1 October, to 125,000. In the current fiscal year, just over 2,000 refugees have been resettled.The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters the delay was because “it took us some time to see and evaluate how ineffective, or how trashed in some ways the refugee processing system had become, and so we had to rebuild some of those muscles and put it back in place”.Another concern has been the record pace of unaccompanied migrants crossing the US-Mexico border, which has drawn in resources that would go to vetting, processing and resettling refugees.“It is a factor,” said Psaki, noting that the Office of Refugee Resettlement “has personnel working on both issues and so we have to ensure that there is capacity and ability to manage both”.Eleanor Acer, refugee protection director at Human Rights First, rejected this argument.“As the administration certainly knows, the United States has the ability to both increase resettlement and uphold its asylum commitments at the border; not doing so means that America’s beacon of safety for refugees and asylum seekers remains dark,” she said.“It’s also disingenuous for this administration to say it is pursuing ‘other legal pathways’ for Central American refugees to come to the United States while maintaining its shutdown of asylum at the border and leaving the limit for refugee admissions at the lowest level in history.”Apparently stung by the outcry, Psaki later released a statement that claimed there had been “some confusion” over the cap. The statement acknowledged that Biden’s initial goal of 62,500 “seems unlikely” but added: “We expect the President to set a final, increased refugee cap for the remainder of this fiscal year by 15 May”. More
In 2015, the European refugee crisis awoke Germans from a long and comforting slumber that Angela Merkel had lulled them into with her political style. The term “asymmetric demobilization” came to be known as a way of describing the German chancellor’s shrewd strategy of sitting on the fence and thereby winning elections. Merkel weakened her political competitors by avoiding controversial issues and, in doing so, choking off debate. Simultaneously, she adopted popular policy stances of her opponents and demobilized their potential voters.
Angela Merkel: A Retrospective
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This opportunistic strategy, with the retention of power as the main objective, was devoid of a vision and an ideological foundation. The German magazine Der Freitag put it succinctly back in 2012: “She is pragmatic and non-ideological — like many Germans. Only what the Chancellor stands for, no one knows.”
Merkel’s reserved and pragmatic governing style hardly left room for symbolism. One of the few symbols associated with her was the famous diamond hand gesture, known as the “Merkel rhombus.” During the refugee crisis, Merkel abruptly left her trodden path of asymmetric demobilization. The symbolism and emotional outbursts caused by her course of action and its consequences astounded not only the German public, but it might have surprised the chancellor herself.
Driven by Deep Conviction
At the height of the crisis, her deliberative rhetoric yielded to impassioned pleas for a liberal, open-minded Germany. Merkel’s most famous but polarizing catchphrase, “We can do this,” rallied Germans behind the “decision of her lifetime” to grant entry to hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants. Wearing her heart on her sleeve, Merkel responded to critics in September 2015, saying, “If we now have to apologize for showing a friendly face in emergency situations, then this is not my country.”
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Sigmar Gabriel, a former leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the federal minister for economic affairs and energy at the time of the crisis, recalls Merkel’s conviction-driven view on the refugee influx. While debating the potential closure of German borders, Merkel replied, “But promise me one thing, Mr. Gabriel, we won’t build fences.” Looking back, Gabriel reflects, “I can still see her shaking her head … I remember thinking, this is not a superficial position, it was deep inside her.” Merkel had grown up during the Cold War in East Germany and had considered fleeing a dictatorial regime and repression herself.
For that rare occasion, Merkel granted a glimpse into her convictions and let emotion visibly influence her actions. Unsurprisingly, this led to a reciprocation in emotional reactions. Not only did it expose her to hate from the (far) right that blossomed due to her decision, but it also resulted in symbolic affection — the likes she had rarely received before. Refugees in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, with their sights set on their final destination, chanted, “Germany! Germany!” Others posted love letters on social media after the news broke that Germany would temporarily suspend the European Union’s Dublin Regulation, which “states that asylum seekers must have their applications processed in the EU country in which they first arrive.” A selfie between Syrian refugee Anas Modamani and Merkel went viral.
Mother Merkel and the Asylum Row
More than five years later, Merkel’s tenure as chancellor is drawing to a close this fall as German voters head to the polls. In October 2018, most refugees in Germany met the news of her resignation as party leader and decision not to stand in the next election with disappointment and gratitude.
Aras Bacho arrived in Germany from Syria in August 2015 and expressed his thoughts on her retirement from politics in passionate and sentimental — hence not typically German — terms. In an article on Vice, he wrote: “I am very sad about Merkel’s decision. The woman who gave me hope and future wants to leave? This is unimaginable, and I think other candidates for the chancellorship are unqualified. I hope that I will get up tomorrow and that it was all just a dream. For me, Germany without Merkel is like bread without butter.” He added that for refugees, “she is like a mother who looks after her children. Many refugees, including myself, have found a great love in Merkel.”
Bacho also touched upon concerns about a future in Germany without Merkel, who, according to him, acted “like a shield” in an increasingly polarized society. “Another chancellor would never have sacrificed herself for people who fled the war. She sacrificed her future for us, for which Merkel is hated … by a minority that is against us,” he said.
If Merkel was a shield for refugees, that shield started to crack during her time in office. Soon after her controversial decision to open Germany’s borders, public support for her migration policies dwindled. As a result, the government sped up deportations of migrants who had little chance of being recognized as refugees in Germany. Yet this wasn’t enough for the Christian Social Union (CSU), the sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
During the infamous “asylum row” in 2018, the CSU’s party leader, Horst Seehofer, demanded an even tougher stance on migration by turning back asylum seekers at the German border. A rebellion was on hand with the government and chancellor’s future on the line. A bruised Angela Merkel survived the onslaught but had to surrender large parts of her liberal approach to migration in an attempt to cling to power. As intra-party and public opinion turned against her, Merkel also refrained from her buoyant catchphrase, “We can do it!” Instead, she appeased skeptical supporters during the general election campaign in 2017 by saying, “A year like that cannot and should not ever happen again.”
Refugees Now Live in a Split German Society
Merkel changed the societal face of Germany by allowing an influx of 890,000 refugees and migrants in 2015 alone. By setting aside her usual cautious style of the politics of consensus and power retention, she exposed herself to two opposing sentiments.
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On the one hand, the adulation that refugees had for Merkel seems unrelenting. They have settled in Germany, leaving behind political turmoil in their home countries after often arduous journeys. Statistics show steady progress regarding their integration into German society. About 50% of refugees who fled to Germany since 2015 have found a job. Now, most live in their own apartments. In schools, children and young people from refugee families usually integrate well. According to a study by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, conducted annually since 2016, refugees are almost as happy with life as Germans themselves.
On the other hand, Merkel left behind a split society in which the once predominant “climate of welcome” has subsided. A majority of Germans now reject her refugee policies. Refugees and migrants often have to bear the wrath directed against Merkel and her policies. The crisis and its consequences have led to increased radical-right violence against refugees and the radicalization of right-wing extremist groups. As a result, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) established itself as a far-right party, serving as a mouthpiece for the radical right.
The refugee crisis has thrown German society out of balance, bringing to the surface hidden feelings of injustice and loss of trust in democratic institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these feelings. Reminiscent of the Capitol Hill insurrection in Washington on January 6, a group of right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists attempted to storm the German parliament in August 2020. Similar to the US, German democracy has edged closer to a tipping point.
That poses a particular danger to the vulnerable group of refugees. Their fears of having to endure the same instability they had fled are rising. Angela Merkel’s unprecedented handling of the refugee crisis might be justifiably disputable, but protecting refugees by taking a firm stand against extremism should not.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
If Donald Trump’s presidency was a lesson in how symbolic acts of cruelty can be used to consolidate power, then his successors are trying to demonstrate that the same is true for benevolence. In just over a month, the Biden-Harris administration has issued a flurry of new directives aimed at reversing some of the worst aspects of the former president’s immigration policy.Biden has declared an end to the travel restrictions imposed on numerous Muslim-majority countries, and committed to both reviving and expanding the US refugee resettlement scheme. The administration has presented sweeping new immigration reforms to Congress, which if passed would offer a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people, promised a moratorium on deportations in most instances, and announced a plan to reunite children and parents torn apart by the grotesque family separation policy. On Friday, the US began allowing asylum seekers to cross its southern border for the first time since Trump’s “remain in Mexico” initiative was launched in January 2019.Will the reforms go further than merely reversing those of the previous president? Some of the measures, such as a request last week that officials use the term “noncitizen” in place of “alien” when referring to immigrants, indicate that this is as much about a shift in tone as about substantial changes in policy. But others could have wide-reaching global effects. On 4 February, Biden ordered a report on the impact of climate migration, including a study of “options for protection and resettlement of individuals displaced directly or indirectly from climate change”.This official acknowledgement that climate change forces people to leave their homes is unprecedented – at least for the US, which is the world’s largest historical polluter. “I never thought that this would be a part of any American president’s priorities, especially within the first 30 days of their administration,” said Kayly Ober of the US-based NGO Refugees International, expressing the surprise shared by many climate policy experts.Calculating the number of people displaced by climate change is tricky, since people can move for a variety of reasons, and the subject is prone to alarmist predictions. Of the estimated 24 million people forced to leave their homes by extreme weather in 2019, most stayed within their country of residence. But there is currently no coherent international framework for protecting those who cross borders due to climate change: refugee law only deals with people fleeing persecution or war.Trump has already shown how the US can drag the rest of the world downwards in terms of humanitarian standards: his choking-off of refugee resettlement, for instance, was part of a wider decline. Last year, according to the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR), was the worst on record for resettlement. The situation was made worse by the pandemic, but the UN was already warning in 2019 about low resettlement rates. If the US revives such schemes, and expands them to address the realities of the 21st century, then other countries may be encouraged or persuaded to follow suit.Yet the fact that a liberal president currently occupies the White House is no reason to abandon our critical faculties. As the climate migration expert Alex Randall notes, Biden’s report, which is due in six months’ time, is being produced by his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. Will this security-focused framing dispel or encourage the xenophobic responses to climate change that are emerging in various parts of the world?According to the Center for American Progress, there is already a renewed effort among US conservatives to link environmental damage to immigration, while some prominent far-right parties elsewhere are attempting to give their nationalism a green hue. In 2019, Marine Le Pen launched an election campaign in France by promising that a “Europe of nations” could become the world’s first “ecological civilisation”. Borders, claimed her party’s chief spokesperson, “are the environment’s greatest ally”.This points to a more fundamental question, which is whether to address a migration “crisis” by making a humanitarian exception to the existing system of border control, or by rethinking the principles on which the system exists. Formal refugee resettlement programmes, for instance, make a huge difference to the lives of people who benefit from them, yet less than 1% of those registered by the UNHCR are resettled each year.Many refugees who cross borders do so via informal routes, at risk of death and injury, and often to the displeasure of the governments that receive them. Look, for instance, at the way the British government is creating increasingly harsh conditions for asylum seekers who arrive in the UK under their own initiative. Biden’s proposals contain admirable rhetoric about the need to address “root causes” of migration – but Europe’s recent history shows us how, under xenophobic pressure, this noble-minded language can be used to adorn schemes whose ultimate effect is to keep people out, at considerable human cost.Indeed, so does the recent history of the US, where the new moratorium on deportations has already met judicial resistance. In a new book, Border & Rule, the scholar and activist Harsha Walia reminds us that Trump’s cruelty sat atop foundations laid by previous presidents. From the 1990s onwards, there was an increasing effort to criminalise unwanted migration and accelerate border security measures. In 2014, writes Walia, under Obama’s presidency – in which Biden, of course, served as vice president – about half of all federal arrests were immigration-related. A similar process has been under way in most advanced economies: Walia makes a persuasive argument that we should see this not as a domestic policy issue, but as part of a global system in which border control, alongside military and economic policy, is a way for wealthy countries to maintain their power.There is a risk that this wider context induces a kind of paralysis: what’s the point of changing anything if you can’t change everything? But the reason Biden is able to take these bold-sounding steps now is because of the space created by ordinary people who resisted Trump’s crackdowns and brought their political demands to bear on the Democrats in the run-up to last year’s election. They didn’t wait for a president’s permission to demand better – and, despite the change of leadership, there’s no reason to stop now. More
What adjective should describe “the American” active in foreign policy? Graham Greene chose “quiet”, as his character harmed a country he did not understand. Eugene Burdick and William Lederer used “ugly”.
Robert D Kaplan, one of America’s most thoughtful chroniclers of foreign affairs, proposes “good” to describe Bob Gersony, who in “a frugal monastic existence that has been both obscure and extraordinary” has devoted his life to using the power and treasure of the US to serve others through humanitarian action.
A son of Holocaust refugees, he never held a formal government position. He was instead a contractor for the state department, USAid or the United Nations. Yet his work improved the lives of millions, saving many, and corrected policies that might otherwise have been implemented by “ugly” or “quiet” figures who did not understand the countries in which they operated.
Gersony’s method was simple: to conduct interviews through a trusted translator with individuals fleeing conflict, to stay “in continuous, tactile contact with the evidence”. It was exhausting work in extraordinarily difficult circumstances but his information, transmitted to senior policymakers in highly detailed “Gersony reports”, was both essential and frequently (as in Mozambique and Bosnia) the opposite of what the policy community believed or wished to believe.
The truth about a place “emerges from the bottom up”, he said, and thus “you must always believe refugees”.
Accountability, absolute integrity, objectivity and boldness in speaking to authority were his watchwords. His independence meant personal insecurity. He often shared a simple shack with a translator and slept with his notes under his pillow. Personal danger and hardship were part of the job, yet in no other way could the truth emerge and successful policy be formulated.
“When you listen to ordinary people,” Gersony believed, “there is so much wisdom.”
Kaplan calls Gersony “a business-oriented math brain with a non-ideological conservative streak … think of him as an emotionally tortured character straight out of a Saul Bellow novel, engrossed throughout his life in the brooding and dangerous tropical settings defined by Joseph Conrad.”
This is also the story of another era of US foreign policy, one in which realism and humanitarianism combined to include human rights in the national interest, against the backdrop of the cold war, so often hot in the developing world. Human rights and grand strategy complemented each other. Gersony had bosses who were “authentic, heartland Americans … the ultimate selfless public servants … deeply moral without being ideological, while operating at the top of the power structure”.
Gersony started in Guatemala, where he began a language school and after the 1976 earthquake worked with relief organizations. He took charge of hurricane relief in Dominica, standing up to the prime minister, asserting, “If you empower people, they won’t be corrupt.” Moving on to El Salvador in the civil war, he recommended massive employment programs for displaced persons, building sewage canals and cobblestone streets – practical improvements that also discouraged guerrillas from attacking the people.
His solutions were often elegantly simple because they provided the dignity of work and reflected what people actually wanted. And yet, as Kaplan writes, “He still had no credentials … in the ordinary careerist sense, he had risen as far as he ever would.” For Kaplan, as for Gersony, “a meaningful life is about truth, not success.”
The assignments kept coming: Vietnamese boat people in Thailand; Sudan and Chad; Honduras, where his counterintuitive but accurate recommendation showed once again that “ground-level fieldwork … triumphs over the discussion of big abstract ideas”. In Uganda’s Lowero Triangle, he uncovered genocide with the unexpected help of a British officer advising President Obote. The secretary of state, George Shultz, cut off aid.
As Kaplan writes, “History pivoted in southern Africa thanks to Bob Gersony.” After an unusual meeting with Shultz and Maureen Reagan, daughter of the president, the US did not aid Renamo guerrillas in Mozambique. Gersony tackled a highly complex situation in Somalia and in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide worked with UNHCR on the repatriation of Hutus. As one official said, his unwelcome truth-telling “stopped the killing machine”. He worked in northern Uganda with World Vision long before Joseph Kony became a hashtag. Knowing the dangers of travel in that region, “he treated the motor pool chief like a high official”.
Gersony worked tirelessly. “If we skipped lunch,” he said, “we could interview one more refugee, and each refugee was precious – you never knew which one would yield a breakthrough in understanding.”
By Kaplan’s own admission, his book is also something of his own story, a lament for a time when internationalist moderates dominated both parties and the foreign service enjoyed “the last golden age of American diplomacy … when the bureaucracy at all levels had sufficient money and rewarded talent” in furthering “that sturdy, moderate national security consensus that no longer exists”.
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Kaplan does not quite regret the end of the cold war but he does note the resulting separation between idealism and power.
Indeed, Gersony’s career ended in a very different world. Kaplan sees Plan Colombia, an early 2000s push against leftwing guerrillas and drug cartels, as “a precursor for the fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq”, where gigantic projects and a “dysfunctional interagency process” often failed for lack of perspective. Gersony’s later tasks included tracking food assistance for North Korea, examining the Maoist insurgency in Nepal (and wishing USAid had continued road-building there), and disaster planning in Micronesia, where “in this emerging naval century … Oceania was indeed at the heart of geopolitics” and control of shipping lanes.
Can realism and idealism combine again? Only through what the French academic Gérard Prunier wrote about Gersony’s “great respect for the factual truth. The world is not just an interpretation or a place for competing narratives.” In the end, Kaplan’s life of Gersony recalls the advice of another quintessential American, Mark Twain: “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
The Good American is published in the US by Random House More
This week Jonathan Freedland speaks to David Miliband. The former UK foreign secretary and current president of the International Rescue Committee explains why Joe Biden’s announcement on Thursday about resettling thousands of refugees in the US is important, following Donald Trump’s abandonment of the cause.
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President Joe Biden was quick to sign executive orders rescinding many of the anti-immigrant policies of his predecessor. On Thursday, in a speech outlining his foreign policy plans, Biden announced he intended to allow more refugees into the US this year, as part of a resettlement programme that Donald Trump all but stopped. David Miliband joins Jonathan Freedland to talk about the new president’s true bandwidth when it comes to rejecting Trump’s isolationist policies. Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More
