Today, Congress members, led by Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), introduced a resolution calling for comprehensive legislation to address U.S. policies that contribute to forced migration around the world. ActionAid USA applauds Rep. Casar and all the resolution’s cosponsors for recognizing the reality of the harm that many U.S. policies do around the world and the links between these policies and forced migration – including into our own country.
Harmful U.S. policies create or exacerbate conditions that force people to leave their homes. This includes political instability and conflict caused by U.S. foreign and military policy; the impossibility of having adequate livelihoods due to the global economic system forced on the world largely by U.S. corporate-driven economic policy, or in some cases by U.S. sanctions; and the ever-increasing reality of climate impacts, in no small part driven by U.S. climate inaction.
Our attention is focused, in particular, on the upcoming UN climate negotiations, where a new commitment is expected around the key issue of rich countries delivering money to support climate action in poorer countries – including helping communities build resilience to and recover from climate impacts. The more resources that are made available, the better communities will be able to cope with the climate crisis, and the less likely they will be forced to move. Today’s resolution addresses this very issue by calling for “robust investments in the Green Climate Fund [and] Loss and Damage Fund.”
The just and humane response to human mobility is not closing and militarizing borders, or shutting down asylum systems as the Biden administration has recently done. The just and humane response would be to not only treat people forced to move with dignity, compassion and respect, but also to fix the broken policies that forced them to move in the first place.
We look forward to working with members of Congress who recognize this reality and seek to make the United States a more compassionate and welcoming country, for all people within our borders, outside our borders, and those who cross those borders either by their own choice or otherwise.
