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Anders Knape warned that the Swedish municipalities may not be able to handle the costs of so many new migrants taking residency in Sweden as part of the family reunification programme, and, according to areportin the newspaper Aftonbladet, said, [Sweden is] facing the second wave of refugee reception, the family migration.As we dont know how big it gets.It can be extremely powerful and mean that we are approaching the figures we experienced in 2015 and 2016.

Much of the family migration will end up, at least initially, in places that already have a strained situation, Knape explained. Several municipalities in Sweden are already feeling the effects of mass migration, with some leaders, such asUrban Hansson Brusewitz, head of theNational Institute of Economic Research (KI), saying that the local governments could be forced to raise taxes as a result.

Fredrik Sderberg Bruce, Head of Press at the Migration Board, resisted Knapes claims, however, saying: In 2019, we estimate that approximately 27,000 people will be received in the countrys municipalities, then reduce to about 20,000 people in 2020 and 2021. This can be compared with 2016 and 2017 when approximately 68,000 people were received in the countrys municipalities annually.

Knape responded that, while he did not want to mislead people, the Migration Board had also been wrong in the past: The regulations facilitate family migration.This may mean that over time, a large group will come and we must be prepared for it in our operations, he explained.

Sweden, with a population of only around 10 million, is expected to receive far more family reunification migrants this year, withSwedish Minister of Migration Morgan Johansson arguing that the increase would be good for integration efforts.

I think it is a very good humanitarian measure, it is about 90 percentwomen and children who have long lived in refugee camps who can now be reunited with their father or husband in Sweden, Johansson claimed.

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Swedish Municipalities Head: Chain Migration Causing New Migrant Crisis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday opened the door to President Donald Trumps proposal for emergency funds to address a migrant surge at the southern U.S. border, saying some money to alleviate the humanitarian crisis could be included in pending disaster relief legislation.

FILE PHOTO - U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks at her weekly news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., May 2, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

Pelosi was not talking about money for the border wall Trump wants, which Democrats oppose. Republican Trump on May 1 requested $4.5 billion for programs that house, feed, transport and oversee record numbers of Central American families seeking asylum and straining capacity at migrant shelters in border cities.

Democrats initially questioned whether the administration was seeking more funding to expand the detention of migrants entering the United States illegally. But now they are willing to spend several billion dollars on humanitarian needs at the border, according to a House Democratic aide.

Pelosi told reporters on Thursday she hoped some assistance for the humanitarian crisis at the border could be inserted in a bill congressional leaders are working on to help Americans rebound from a string of natural disasters, from wildfires to floods and hurricanes.

What is happening at the border is tragic and we hope to address some of that in the supplemental, the disaster supplemental, to provide some of the resources that are needed there, Pelosi said. She provided no details.

Democrats made a thoughtful offer to Republicans on Thursday evening of several billion dollars for humanitarian needs at the border, the House Democratic aide said. He did not reveal the specific amount.

Some parts of the administrations request - like increasing ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detention beds - are nonstarters, which is why we have excluded them from our offer, said the aide. He said Democrats also sought oversight provisions to protect the dignity and rights of migrants.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said this week that the number of people apprehended at the border since Oct. 1 was nearly 520,000, the highest level in a decade. In the past week, there was an average of 4,500 arrests a day.

Trump earlier this year declared the immigration influx a national emergency, which allowed him to circumvent Congress to redirect more than $6 billion in funding to start building the border wall that he campaigned on. His move has been challenged in courts.

Republicans welcomed Pelosis comments and said they hoped this would speed things along in the lengthy negotiations over disaster aid. Previously the sticking point was Republican resistance to Democratic requests for additional money for Puerto Rico, devastated by a hurricane in 2017. Those arguments have been largely resolved, Democrats said.

Reporting by Susan Cornwell, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien

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U.S. Speaker Pelosi opens door to more funds for border migrant crisis ...

Refugee families camped in central Budapest, Hungary, in 2015. The same location was nearly empty this month. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times; Akos Stiller for The New York Times

LAMPEDUSA, Italy On the beaches of Greece, thousands of migrants landed every day. In the ports of Italy, thousands landed every week. Across the borders of Germany, Austria and Hungary, hundreds of thousands passed every month.

Three years after the peak of Europes migration crisis, Greek beaches are comparatively calm. Since last August, the ports of Sicily have been fairly empty. And here on the remote island of Lampedusa the southernmost point of Italy and once the front line of the crisis the migrant detention center has been silent for long stretches. Visitors to the camp on Monday could hear only the sound of bird song.

Its the quietest its been since 2011, said the islands mayor, Salvatore Martello. The number of arrivals has dramatically reduced.

Arrivals to Italy, Greece and Spain by Sea

Arrivals to Italy, Greece and Spain by Sea

Arrivals to Italy, Greece and Spain by Sea

By Sarah Almukhtar | Source: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

It is the paradox of Europes migration crisis: The actual number of arriving migrants is back to its pre-2015 level, even as the politics of migration continue to shake the Continent.

On Thursday, leaders of the European Union are gathering in Brussels for a fraught meeting on migration that could hasten the political demise of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and unravel the blocs efforts to form a coherent migration policy.

Unauthorized Crossings Into Europe

Width of arrows represents the number of crossings.

Unauthorized Crossings Into Europe

Width of arrows represents

the number of crossings.

Unauthorized Crossings Into Europe

Width of arrows represents the number of crossings. For example, there were almost 160,000 unauthorized crossings on the eastern Mediterranean route in 2016 compared with about 15,500 crossings on the same route in 2018.

Unauthorized Crossings Into Europe

Width of arrows represents the number of crossings. For example, there were almost 160,000 unauthorized crossings on the eastern Mediterranean route in 2016 compared with about 15,500 crossings on the same route in 2018.

Unauthorized Crossings Into Europe

Width of arrows represents the number of crossings. For example, there were almost 160,000 unauthorized crossings on the eastern Mediterranean route in 2016 compared with about 15,500 crossings on the same route in 2018.

Unauthorized Crossings Into Europe

Width of arrows represents the number of crossings.

By Sarah Almukhtar | Source: Frontex. Note: Unauthorized crossings show totals for each route from January to April of each year.

The precipitous drop in migrant arrivals doesnt mean that Europe is without real challenges. Countries are still struggling to absorb the roughly 1.8 million sea arrivals since 2014. Public anxiety has risen in countries like Germany after high-profile assaults involving migrants, including the killing of a 19-year-old German student and the terrorist attack on a Christmas market that killed 12 people.

And leaders still have sharp disagreements about who should take responsibility for the newcomers border states like Greece and Italy, where most migrants enter Europe; or wealthier countries like Germany, which many migrants subsequently attempt to reach.

But what is striking is how many leaders, particularly in far-right parties, continue to successfully create the impression that Europe is a continent under siege from migrants, even as the numbers paint a very different picture.

We have failed to defend ourselves against the migrant invasion, Viktor Orban, the far-right prime minister of Hungary, said in a recent speech. He has made it a jailable offense for Hungarians to assist undocumented migrants.

Nor is Mr. Orban alone in taking a hard line. Since the start of the month, Matteo Salvini, the Italian interior minister, has closed Italys ports to charity-run rescue boats. Horst Seehofer, the German interior minister, has threatened to turn back refugees at his countrys southern border. And across the Atlantic, President Trump has claimed, wrongly, that migration led to a crime epidemic in Germany.

The tactics seem to have worked. Data released this month by the European Union showed that Europeans are more concerned about immigration than about any other social challenge. Mr. Salvinis party is now leading in Italian polls, up 10 percentage points since an election in March. Mr. Orban won re-election in April with an increased majority, after a campaign in which he focused almost exclusively on migration.

Even on Lampedusa, Mr. Martello won the mayoralty last year by promising to focus more on local issues than on burnishing the islands international reputation as a place of sanctuary for migrants.

But the reality on the ground is that, despite the rhetoric, migration is back to pre-crisis levels and has been for some time.

Lampedusa, Italy, in May 2017 and in 2018. Chris McGrath/Getty Images; Kyodo, via Associated Press

More than 850,000 asylum seekers arrived in Greece in 2015, with most of them eventually making their way to northern European countries like Germany. So far this year, little more than 13,000 have made the same journey. More than 150,000 people arrived in Italy in 2015; the number so far this year is less than 17,000. In 2016, when applications were at their highest, more than 62,000 people sought asylum in Germany, on average, every month. This year, that average has fallen to little more than 15,000 the lowest since 2013.

On Lampedusa, more than 21,000 migrants landed in 2015. So far this year, the figure is less than 1,100. Only in Spain have arrival numbers risen, from more than 16,000 in all of 2015 to just over 17,000 so far in 2018. But the increase is still comparatively small more people would arrive in a single week on the Greek island of Lesbos at the height of the crisis than are likely to arrive in Spain this year.

Its an invented crisis, said Matteo Villa, a migration specialist at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies. The high flows of the last years have bolstered nationalist parties, who are now creating a crisis of their own in order to score cheap political points.

Mr. Salvini and Mr. Orban have cultivated popular support by creating the impression that they are the only leaders willing to make the tough decisions needed to reduce migration. Yet the European establishment, under pressure from the likes of Mr. Orban and Mr. Salvini, has been quietly working for some time with the main gatekeepers along the migration trails to Europe, including with authoritarian regimes, to bring the numbers down.

In Italy, arrival numbers plummeted after Mr. Salvinis predecessor controversially persuaded several militias to halt the smuggling industry in northern Libya, and to keep thousands of would-be migrants in dangerous conditions in makeshift Libyan detention centers.

The measures implemented by the previous government, which Salvini was so critical of, have actually been effective, said Andrew Geddes, director of the Migration Policy Center at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

At the same time, several European governments have made deportation agreements with Sudan, whose leader, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has been charged with war crimes charges. A deal with Niger has helped a crackdown on smuggling in the Western Sahara. And most controversially, the German and Dutch governments brokered a European Union deal in 2016 with the authoritarian government of Turkey that led to an immediate and drastic drop in migration to Greece.

Lesbos, Greece, in 2015, and in March 2018. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times; Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

The paradox is that, in this narrative that Merkel opened the E.U.s borders, it was in fact Merkel, with the Dutch, who negotiated the most effective agreement on the borders of the E.U., said Gerald Knaus, director of the European Stability Initiative, a Berlin-based research group that first proposed the deal, and that drafted early versions of it.

Now Europes challenge is largely about process: How to house asylum seekers waiting for decisions on their cases; how to integrate them into the economy and into society if their applications are approved; and how to deport them if not. These challenges remain as officials also have yet to fully address the squalid migrant camps of Greece, which house roughly half of the countrys 60,000 asylum seekers, or the underground economy of Italy, where many of the countrys 500,000 undocumented migrants are exploited.

The European Union summit meeting that opens on Thursday is a reminder of how much the political landscape has shifted. Ms. Merkel, the German chancellor who was once the Continents unassailable leader, now needs to secure an agreement with other European leaders to stave off a political crisis at home.

Her rebellious Bavarian interior minister, Mr. Seehofer, has threatened to close Germanys border with Austria to asylum seekers who have already registered elsewhere in Europe, usually in Greece or Italy. Ms. Merkel wants to avoid this, as it would most likely set off a domino effect of stricter border controls across the Continent. That would obstruct the movement not just of refugees but also of European Union citizens, endangering one of the blocs core values: free movement between member states.

Mr. Seehofer has agreed to wait while Ms. Merkel tries to negotiate at the summit meeting an improved asylum system for the European Union, but this seems a distant prospect, as no one can agree what that system should look like. Some leaders, like Mr. Orban in Hungary, say that Europe should simply protect its borders without worrying about the complexities of its asylum system.

The Keleti train station in central Budapest, Hungary, in 2015 and this month. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times; Akos Stiller for The New York Times

If we defend our borders, the debate on the distribution of migrants becomes meaningless, as they wont be able to enter, he said in a speech this month.

Others, like Ms. Merkel, want to reduce migration but acknowledge it cannot be ended entirely unless Europe abandons the right to asylum that was enshrined in the international conventions that emerged in the aftermath of World War II.

To uphold this right while also curbing migration, officials in Brussels want to set up offshore hubs to process asylum applications in Africa, while some analysts argue it would be easier and cheaper to invest in more efficient asylum systems in Greece and Italy and to secure more deportation agreements with the countries migrants are originally from.

Meanwhile, anti-immigrant leaders, if capitalizing on the migration issue, are hardly unified. Italy wants to scrap the Dublin regulations, which stipulate that asylum seekers must stay in the European Union country in which they first register, and distribute migrants throughout the bloc. But hard-liners like Mr. Orban, Mr. Seehofer and Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of Austria refuse to share Italy and Greeces burden.

Their proposals are fundamentally contradictory, Mr. Knaus said. Salvini and the Italians want to get rid of Dublin and share everyone throughout Europe. The Bavarians want to push everyone back to Austria. And Kurz says thats fine well then send them to Italy and Hungary.

And far away on Lampedusa, this makes the debate seem less about the specifics of migration management, and more about the widening chasm between liberal and illiberal forces in Europe.

It is an ideological war, said Mr. Martello, the mayor. Europe is divided into two main blocs: One is defending the borders, and the other is actually doing something about the situation.

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Migration to Europe Is Down Sharply. So Is It Still a Crisis?

They are ready to do the most menial jobs as long as they are paid in Euros when you change that into Nigerian Naira its big money. And they are unconcerned about racism and the rise of right-wing parties in Europe.

All Africans tend to be lumped together in the popular Moroccan imagination as diseased criminals, and women as sex workers, says Arroud of ASTICUDE.

The November 2012 cover of the weekly newspaper Maroc Hebdo was infamously headlined the black peril.

Although there seems to be a growing state-led attempt to promote integration, social interactions among migrants and Moroccans remain limited, notes Katherina Natter of Oxford Universitys International Migration Institute.

Earlier this month, one migrant died and another was seriously injured when police evicted non-nationals from the Boukhalef district of the port city of Tangier. Those rounded up were forced on to buses south to Rabat and Taroudant.

GADEM condemned the discriminatory evictions and hateful online articles that appeared a few weeks before the police operation, attacking migrants. Its statement said it was concerned by the increasingly intolerant climate in Morocco, as well as by the hatred directed towards black non-nationals.

Moroccan authorities seem to assume that all black residents of Boukhalef are squatting, while some are legal leaseholders or at least have informal agreements with their landlords, the statement added.

Last year, a Senegalese student was murdered in Tangier in tensions between local communities and migrants.

The Spanish human rights worker points to the illegality under international law of Spains hot return of migrants to Morocco; the absolutely disproportionate use of violence by the security forces on both sides of the border; and the bussing of those detained in Morocco to south-western cities regardless of whether they have refugee status or asylum claims.

Regularisation cant be used to hide the lack of human rights, he tells me. The constant pressure from Spain and Europe conditions the political response from Morocco towards migrants.

There is a contradiction in the liberalism of the reforms announced by the king and the raid on migrant camps in Mount Gourougou, the official language of cleaning the northern border, and the ever-tightening security protocols with Spain, notesNatter.

The government announced in February that all Carte de Sjour willautomatically be extended when they expire. But Arroud doesn'tbelieve thegovernment will allow anotherregularisation roundfornew applicants, orrevisit the cases rejected last year by the opaque vetting tribunals.

I think its done if the king makes a general amnesty, thats the only way forward, he tells me. This Islamic government introduced the criteria for regularisation. The government is racist, and it thinks all migrants are Christians and is afraid of them.

But migration is also a domestic political issue, and the reforms and new language of integration came out of the blue, in a country in which migrants had previously been portrayed as a threat.

Two important new laws, on migration - which should integratethepolicy approaches -and asylum, are yet to be tabled in parliament.

Natter argues the confusion on the way ahead reflects the characteristic ambiguity of Moroccan migration policies, which seek to simultaneously satisfy European, African and domestic policy interests.

The frustration of the almost endless waiting,the anxiety generated by poverty and circumstances, are common burdens for migrants to contend with, says Vaquero, the psychologist.

Im really surprised how [mentally] strong they are. When they leave their countries they believe they have to do what they have to do [to reach their destination]. They wont take a step back until they have no more strength left. And they are not fighting for an impossible dream

Its important to give them hope, she adds, because crashing here [with only limited mental health services] is completely different from crashing in Italy.

Beneath the bravado of the men on Selouane the no surrender, only the strong survive is a realisation of the wasted years. Those conversations usually begin with If I had known , and after a litany of tribulations, the conclusion is invariably, resignedly, that the journey was not worth the pain.

But also that there can be no turning back.

I wont say that I made a mistake, because this is school, says Arnold. We have a belief that we will get to Europe, and if we dont fulfill it, well never have rest.

There is solidarity among the migrants, eager for anyone among them to make it to Europe. Its good for the morale, says Lamine. If you spend one or two months and nobody crosses, you see everybody depressed. But if you hear that someone you were with yesterday is in Europe, it tells you that you can make it as well.

oa/ha

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Morocco: The forgotten frontline of the migrant crisis IRIN

On Aug. 3, 378, a battle was fought in Adrianople, in what wasthen Thraceand is now the province ofEdirne, in Turkey. It was a battle that Saint Ambrose referred to as the end of all humanity, the end of the world.

The Eastern Roman emperor Flavius Julius Valens Augustussimply known as Valens, and nicknamed Ultimus Romanorum(the last true Roman)led his troops against the Goths, a Germanic people that Romans considered barbarians,commanded byFritigern. Valens, who had not waited for the military help of his nephew, Western Roman emperor Gratian, got intothe battle with40,000 soldiers. Fritigerncould count on100,000.

It was a massacre: 30,000 Roman soldiers died and the empire was defeated. It was the first of manyto come, and its consideredasthe beginning of the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476. At the time of the battle, Rome ruled a territory of nearly 600 million hectares (2.3 million square miles, nearly two-thirds the areaof the present-day US), with a population of over 55 million.

The defeat of Adrianople didnt happen because ofValenss stubborn thirst for power or because he grossly underestimatedhis adversarys belligerence. What was arguably the most important defeat in the history of the Roman empire had roots in something else:a refugee crisis.

Two years earlierthe Goths had descended toward Roman territory looking for shelter. The mismanagement of Goth refugeesstarted a chain of events that led to the collapse of one of the biggest political and military powers humankind has ever known.

Its a story shockingly similar to whats happening in Europe right nowand it should serve as acautionarytale.

According to historian Ammianus Marcellinus, in 376, the Goths were forced to leave their territories,in whats now Eastern Europe,pushed south by the Huns,in Marcellinuss words, a race savage beyond all parallel. The Huns, Marcellinus writes, descended like a whirlwind from the lofty mountains, as if they had risen from some secret recess of the earth, and were ravaging and destroying everything which came in their way.

It resulted interrifying bloodshed, and many of the Gothslike many Syrians and others displaced by wardecided to flee.

They decided that settling in Thrace, right across the Danube river, was the best solution; the land was fertile, and the river would provide defense to keep the Huns at bay.

University of Texas at Austin. Historical Atlas by William Shepherd (1923-26)

That wasnt free landit was in the Roman empire,under the rule of Valensand so Fritigern, who was leading the Goths, askedto be received by him as his subjects, promising to live quietly, and to furnish a body of auxiliary troops if any necessity for such a force should arise. Rome had a lot to gain from this. Those lands needed cultivating, and more soldiers were always welcomed by the empire. By combining the strength of his own people with these foreign forces, Marcellinus writes of Valens, he would have an army absolutely invincible.

As a sign of gratitude to Valens, Fritigern converted to Christianity.

It all started rather peacefully. The Romans put in place a service not thatdifferentfrom a modern search-and-rescue program. Not one was left behind, Marcellinus writes, not even of those who were stricken with mortal disease. The Goths crossed the stream day and night, without ceasing, embarking in troops on board ships and rafts, and canoes made of the hollow trunks of trees. Marcellinus recounts that a great many were drowned, who, because they were too numerous for the vessels, tried to swim across, and in spite of all their exertions were swept away by the stream.

It was an unexpected, unprecedented flow (some estimates say up to 200,000 people). Officials in charge of managing the Goths tried to to calculate their numbers, but determined it was hopeless.

Traditionally, theRoman attitude toward barbarians, though autocratic, had been pretty longsighted. Populations were often sentwhere the empire needed them the most, with little regard to where they wished to stay; however,there was a strong push toward assimilation that eventually turned foreigners into citizens. Descendants of immigrants would routinely be seen in the high ranks of the military or the administration. The recipe that kept the empire safefrom attack from other populations was simple: allow them into the empire and make them Roman.

But things eventually changed. The military officials who were in charge of provisions for the Gothsan ancient version of the support offered to migrants arriving in Greece or Italywere corrupt and profited off of what was meant for the refugees. The starving Goths were forced to buy dog meat from the Romans.

Marcellinus has no doubt: their treacherous covetousness was the cause of all our [the Romans] disasters.

The trust between the abused Goths and the Romans was broken several times before Adrianople, and the Goths went from wanting to become Romanto wanting to destroy Rome.

Less than two years later, Marcellinus writes, with rage flashing in their eyes, the barbarians pursued our men. And they took down the empire.

The migrants trying to get to Europe right now are not about to riseup in arms, and Europe is notthankfullythe Roman empire. But this story shows well that migration hasalways and will always be a part of our world. There are two ways to deal with refugees: one is to promote dialogue, and inclusion; theother is to beunwelcoming and uncaring. The second has led to disaster beforeand in one way or another, is sure to do so again.

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1,700 years ago, the mismanagement of a migrant crisis ...