Russia's War in Ukraine Creates New Refugee Crisis, An Overview of Day One
Early this morning (Thursday, February 24, 2022) Russian military forces crossed into Ukraine in a war of aggression that seeks, according to Putin, to “de-Nazify” the country and return Ukraine to Russian control.1 Russia’s war in Ukraine is already leading to international concerns both about the security of Ukrainian people inside the country as well as the safety of Ukrainians who are fleeing the country in response to escalating violence.
On Tuesday I released the first in a series of reports on the growth of ICE’s Alternatives to Detention program (I hope you’ll check it out here), but I decided to postpone today’s issue and replace it with an overview of initial observations and questions about the international response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis.
The UNHCR released a statement this morning, which emphasized the human cost of war and expressed its commitment to work with European partners to provide support to Ukrainian refugees.
“The humanitarian consequences on civilian populations will be devastating. There are no winners in war, but countless lives will be torn apart.”
—Filippo Grandi
Even before the current war, the UNHCR observed that there were 1.5 million displaced Ukrainians2 during the previous conflict in 2014 when Russia overtook Crimea. It’s possible that the current conflict could displace 5 million people out of Ukraine’s 43 million residents according to estimates by the Rand Corporation and the U.S. government, although those estimates were made before we saw the current scale of Russia’s aggression.
Some countries have already responded by dropping visa requirements for Ukrainian nationals. Ireland, for instance, has decided to “waive visa requirements for all Ukrainian people who travel to Ireland following the Russian invasion of the country” (thejournal.ie). Germany has agreed to provide support to Poland and other countries that border Ukraine and are likely to get the brunt of the first wave of refugees. Under the E.U.’s asylum policy, refugees are required to file asylum claims with the first country they arrive in, but it’s hard to say how that will play out given the exigencies of the current situation.
Just today, Poland announced that it was ending travel restrictions for people entering the country without a COVID-19 test as thousands of Ukrainians cross the border into the country. Even as I was writing this, Forbes reported that many other countries surrounding Ukraine have also promised support for Ukrainian refugees.
President Maia Sandu of Moldova announced that they have already received 4,000 refugees today (probably more by the time you read this).
A big question on a lot of our minds is, what will the Biden administration do?
The United States has not been a supportive place for refugees in recent years. The Migrant Protection Protocols are back in place, which forces asylum seekers to remain in Mexico. Title 42, supported by both the Trump and Biden administrations, expels migrants at the border, including many Haitian and Venezuelan refugees. The Trump administration cut the number of refugees accepted each year to 15,000, a fraction of their previous totals, and Biden has increased that number to 62,500 last year.
If recent history is any indicator, the Biden administration may not do much to actually support Ukrainian refugees.
Even though the Biden administration bears some responsibility for contributing to the Afghan refugee crisis a few months ago, recent reports by immigration attorneys and government data find that USCIS has begun denying humanitarian parole to Afghan refugees.
Trump was an outspoken critic of the communist leadership in Venezuela, yet the Trump administration did little to actually protect Venezuelans from deportation back to that country. Venezuelans now say they also see little change under Biden.
That said, the U.S. military is already reportedly providing on-the-ground support to refugees arriving in Poland, the country immediately to the west of Ukraine.
The Biden administration could make sure that Ukrainians in the United States are able to stay in the country by granting what is called Temporary Protected Status (TPS for short).3 The American Immigration Lawyers Association made just such a plea today to the Biden administration:
“AILA calls on the Biden administration to immediately ensure that Ukrainian nationals who may be eligible to come to the United States may safely and expeditiously do so and to ensure that we do not send people back to danger.”
—AILA
The National Immigration Forum made a similar call for the Biden administration to step up the response for Ukrainian refugees, and has created a petition that aims to “Urge the Biden administration to act swiftly to protect Ukrainians in the U.S. and prepare for Ukrainian refugees.”
When asked directly, Biden administration officials have not provided particularly comforting responses, mostly by dodging the question and seeming to suggest that they view the crisis as mainly a “Europe problem” at the moment. I acknowledge it is still early and we have yet to see the administration’s final position.
I received a report online today from Ohio immigration attorney Nazly Mamedova, who reported that she had attempted to expedite processing for Ukrainian client and received a very quick denial from USCIS. It’s just one example, but again—not a good sign.
One issue that is certainly central to my mind, and I see reflected in my colleague Tazrreena Sajjad at American University, is that the EU’s approach to Ukrainian refugees will likely be contrasted—and rightly so—with the EU’s approach to African and Middle East refugees, which Europe has spent years and billions of dollars trying to limit and prohibit.
Alex Nowrasteh also contrasts what a real invasion looks like compared to the invasion rhetoric that anti-immigrant groups in the U.S. often use to characterize Latin American migrants.
None of this is said to divide refugees against one another, but simply to observe that the international community’s response to refugees often depends very much on who precisely the refugees are.
I hope that catches you up on the past 12 hours of refugee news and highlights issues that are already emerging as Europe responds to refugees that are being created right now as a result of this war.
If you have additional information to add, please share it in the comments below or email it to me. Also, please forgive any typos or other errors as I put this together rather quickly.
Do you want to know more about Ukraine? I don’t remember who said it, but someone once said that “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” It’s a dark and tortured statement, I know, but there is some truth to it. If you want to learn about Ukraine, I recommend you visit this reading list on LitHub.com from Henrikas Bliudzius, who generously put together a helpful list of books.
THANK YOU FOR READING! 🙏🏼
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The technical term for the geopolitical ideology that seeks to return historical lands to their allegedly rightful, sovereign owner is “irredentism.”
The term for this is “Internally Displaced Persons” or IDPs. IDPs are people who are forced to leave their home—i.e. displaced—but do not leave their country. The most meaningful difference between an IDP and a refugee is geographic: IDPs don’t leave their country, refugees/asylum-seekers do leave their country.
TPS is a form of legal protection that applies to people from a specific country due to conditions in that country that are systemic, rather than individualized.
I'm afraid the fleeing Ukrainians are going to find themselves in a similar situation to the Afghans. We'll say we'll help them out, but when push comes to shove... They'll be on their own. It's time to make all wars (no matter what you call them) illegal and have the military industrial complex pay for the crimes they've committed against humanity.