UnLocal Blog Post for Make Our Voices Heard
Watching Europe open its arms to millions of Ukrainian refugees is nothing short of inspiring, despite the continent’s disparate treatment of those fleeing countries in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. It is exactly how we as individual human beings and as nation-states should respond when our neighbors are violently displaced from their homes. Yet, we members of the immigrant rights movement in the United States see how our own nation closes its borders to those seeking refuge, often in violation of our international human rights obligations. We have repeatedly failed to respond with the urgency and compassion required when our global neighbors escape humanitarian crises. If the past is prologue, Ukrainians would have found our borders closed if they lived in the global south.
But it does not have to be this way.
This week, 72 organizations based in New York, New Jersey, and beyond called on the Biden Administration to expand its offer of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), delivered swiftly to Ukrainians, to other countries long ignored. Specifically, the organizations, many of which are I-ARC members, drew attention to the inexcusable lag in granting TPS designations and redesignations to Cameroon, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Nepal, Afghanistan, Central America, and others. Further, the letter further demanded an end to Title 42 expulsions and ICE detention, and advocated for a path to citizenship for all current and future TPS holders.
Crises like the one unfolding in Ukraine are devastating and unavoidable. They force us to confront the harshest realities of internal displacement, the real costs to human lives, and the senselessness of rigid and arbitrary border policies. As those who study the impacts of violence and unrest on immigrants and refugees, this is our moment as immigration advocates to step up and call attention to the ways in which our own policies must be overhauled. We chant “immigrants are welcome here,” and this is our chance to hold others, whose hearts and eyes are now open, accountable to this nation’s ideals.
