Rishi handed new deadline to fix migrant crisis as Tory MPs pile pressure on PM to act now  Express

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Rishi handed new deadline to fix migrant crisis as Tory MPs pile pressure on PM to act now - Express

The migrant crisis has been ongoing since 2018. The current wave of migrants coming to El Paso began in April 2022 and the sudden surge we are seeing now started in late August. The number of people released to the City of El Paso and local non-government organizations (NGOs; i.e., humanitarian agencies) has grown from approximately 250 per day in early August to as high as over 1,000 per day during the month of September 2022. The number fluctuates daily and is currently averaging 900 per day.The City of El Paso places our priority on the individual migrant, providingfood and water, connectivity, transportationassistance, and temporary shelter if needed.

The people crossing come from all parts of the world to escape economic devastation and extreme crime. The situation is dynamic. However, the main countries migrants are coming from today are Venezuela, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Though the numbers have been as high as 90% and as low as 50% from Venezuela, the number is currently holding at approximately 70%. The remainder of the migrants is from other countries including Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cuba.

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Migrant Crisis

On March 14, 2019, Tropical Cyclone Idai struck the southeast coast of Mozambique. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported that 1.85 million people needed assistance. 146,000 people were internally displaced, and Mozambique scrambled to house them in 155 temporary sites.1 The cyclone and subsequent flooding damaged 100,000 homes, destroyed 1 million acres of crops, and demolished $1 billion worth of infrastructure.2

One historic storm in one place over the course of one day. While Cyclone Idai was the worst storm in Mozambiques history, the world is looking towards a future where these unprecedented storms are commonplace. This global challenge has and will continue to create a multitude of critical issues that the international community must confront, including:

All of these challenges are serious, but the scope and scale of human migration due to climate change will test the limits of national and global governance as well as international cooperation.

In 2018, the World Bank estimated that three regions (Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia) will generate 143 million more climate migrants by 2050.3 In 2017, 68.5 million people were forcibly displaced, more than at any point in human history. While it is difficult to estimate, approximately one-third of these (22.5 million4 to 24 million5 people) were forced to move by sudden onset weather eventsflooding, forest fires after droughts, and intensified storms. While the remaining two-thirds of displacements are the results of other humanitarian crises, it is becoming obvious that climate change is contributing to so-called slow onset events such as desertification, sea-level rise, ocean acidification, air pollution, rain pattern shifts and loss of biodiversity.6 This deterioration will exacerbate many humanitarian crises and may lead to more people being on the move.

Multilateral institutions, development agencies, and international law must do far more to thoroughly examine the challenges of climate change (early efforts, like the World Banks 2010 World Development Report on climate change,7 had little uptake at a time when few thought a climate crisis was around the corner). Moreover, neither a multilateral strategy nor a legal framework exist to account for climate change as a driver of migration. Whether in terms of limited access to clean water, food scarcity, agricultural degradation, or violent conflict,8 climate change will intensify these challenges and be a significant push factor in human migration patterns.

To date, there are only a few cases where climate change is the sole factor prompting migration. The clearest examples are in the Pacific Islands. The sea level is rising at a rate of 12 millimeters per year in the western Pacific and has already submerged eight islands. Two more are on the brink of disappearing, prompting a wave of migration to larger countries.910 By 2100, it is estimated that 48 islands overall will be lost to the rising ocean.11 In 2015, the Teitota family applied for refugee status in New Zealand, fleeing the disappearing island nation of Kiribati.12 Their case, the first request for refuge explicitly attributed climate change, made it to the High Court of New Zealand but was ultimately dismissed. Islands in the Federated States of Micronesia have drastically reduced in size, washed down to an uninhabitable state, had their fresh water contaminated by the inflow of seawater, and disappeared in the past decade.13 Despite their extreme vulnerability, the relatively small population (2.3 million people spread across 11 countries14) and remote location of the Pacific Islands means that they garner little international action, for all the attention they receive in the media.

Although there are few instances of climate change as the sole factor in migration, climate change is widely recognized as a contributing and exacerbating factor in migration and in conflict.

In South Asia, increasing temperatures, sea level rise, more frequent cyclones, flooding of river systems fed by melting glaciers, and other extreme weather events are exacerbating current internal and international migration patterns. Additionally, rapid economic growth and urbanization are accelerating and magnifying the impact and drivers of climate changethe demand for energy is expected to grow 66 percent by 2040.15 Compounding this, many of the expanding urban areas are located in low-lying coastal areas, already threatened by sea level rise.16 The confluence of these factors leads the World Bank to predict that the collective South Asian economy (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) will lose 1.8 percent of its annual GDP due to climate change by 2050.17 The New York Times reports that the living conditions of 800 million people could seriously diminish.18 Diminishing living conditions on this scale and intensity will prompt mass migrationpossibly at an unprecedented level.

Northwest Africa is facing rising sea levels, drought, and desertification. These conditions will only add to the already substantial number of seasonal migrants and put added strain on the country of origin, as well as on destination countries and the routes migrants travel. The destabilizing effects of climate change should be of great concern to all those who seek security and stability in the region. Climate and security experts often cite the impacts of the extreme drought in Syria that preceded the 2011 civil war.19 The security community also highlights the connection between climate change and terrorismfor instance, the decline of agricultural and pastoral livelihoods has been linked to the effectiveness of financial recruiting strategies by al-Qaida.20

The intersection of climate change and migration requires new, nimble, and comprehensive solutions to the multidimensional challenges it creates. Accordingly, the signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change requested that the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage Associated with Climate Change (WIM) develop recommendations for addressing people displaced by climate change.21 Similarly, The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (adopted by 164 countriesnot including the U.S.in Marrakech in December 2018) called on countries to make plans to prevent the need for climate-caused relocation and support those forced to relocate.22 However, these agreements are neither legally binding nor sufficiently developed to support climate migrantsparticularly migrants from South Asia, Central America, Northwest Africa, and the Horn of Africa.

As gradually worsening climate patterns and, even more so, severe weather events, prompt an increase in human mobility, people who choose to move will do so with little legal protection. The current system of international law is not equipped to protect climate migrants, as there are no legally binding agreements obliging countries to support climate migrants.

While climate migrants who flee unbearable conditions resemble refugees, the legal protections afforded to refugees do not extend to them. In the aftermath of World War II, the United Nations established a system to protect civilians who had been forced from their home countries by political violence. Today, there are almost 20.4 million officially designated refugees under the protection of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)however, there is an additional group of 21.5 million people23 who flee their homes as a result of sudden onset weather hazards every year.24

The UNHCR has thus far refused to grant these people refugee status, instead designating them as environmental migrants, in large part because it lacks the resources to address their needs. But with no organized effort to supervise the migrant population, these desperate individuals go where they can, not necessarily where they should. As their numbers grow, it will become increasingly difficult for the international community to ignore this challenge. As severe climate change displaces more people, the international community may be forced to either redefine refugees to include climate migrants or create a new legal category and accompanying institutional framework to protect climate migrants. However, opening that debate in the current political context would be fraught with difficulty. Currently, the nationalist, anti-immigrant, and xenophobic atmosphere in Europe and the U.S. would most likely lead to limiting refugee protections rather than expanding them.

While there are no legally binding international regimes that protect climate migrants, there are voluntary compacts that could be used to support them. Most notably, 193 countries adopted the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which address both migration and climate change.

Several of the 169 targets established by the SDGs lay out general goals that could be used to protect climate migrants. SDG 13 on climate action outlines several targets that address the climate crisis:

To meet these goals, extensive bilateral and multilateral development assistance will be needed. The U.S. must create a strategic approach to focus development assistance and multilateral organizations on those targetsparticularly to create resilient societies that can keep people in their communities.

Although the SDGs do not explicitly link climate change and migration, SDG target 10.7 calls for signatories to facilitate orderly, safe, and responsible migration of people, including through implementation of planned and well-managed policies. Again, the United States should channel multilateral development assistance to support the implementation of this target.

The scale and scope of climate change demand dynamic and comprehensive solutions. The U.S. must address climate stress on vulnerable populations specifically, rather than funneling more money into existing programs that operate on the periphery of the growing crisis.

U.S. development agencies and international development financial institutions need to redirect their development assistance to incorporate todays unfolding climate crisis. Significantly more resources will need to be channeled to the new U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (USDFC), USAID, the Green Climate Fund, UNHCR, as well as to other critical international bodies, in particular those that make up the International Red Cross and Red Crescent organizations.

The Obama administration undertook myriad efforts to update the institutions that can address climate. Several of President Obamas executive orders, particularly Executive Order 13677, which required incorporating climate resilience into decisionmaking on development assistance, took on the climate crisis. For the first time in the Department of Defenses history, the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) recognized climate change as a threat multiplier, with the potential to exacerbate current challenges.25

While the current administration has deemphasized or opposed climate-friendly approaches, the current security implications of the migration crisis might prompt a re-examination of those policies. There should be bipartisan support, particularly in the security community, for reducing the conditions that accelerate international migration.

A variety of medium-term investments (five to 10 years) could create more resilience to the effects of climate change. For example, the climate change factors that push migration in Northwest Africa couldat least in partbe addressed by supporting irrigation infrastructure, providing food supplies, fostering regional water cooperation, and supporting livelihood security.26

Dedicating greater resources to mitigate climate migration is also part of an effective solution. Research is needed to determine the best way to improve the migratory process itselfbe it increasing migration monitors, providing safer modes of transport, and consolidating and expanding destination country integration resources.

This discussion is not new: In 2010, Center for American Progress staff were part of a task force that suggested a Unified Security Budget for the United States, to address complex crisis scenarios that transcend the traditional division of labor among defense, diplomacy, and development.27 The need for longer-term, more calculated assessment strategies and investments has only increased over the past decade. The Pentagon already supports a variety of operational missions that respond to sudden onset climate disasters. The Navy, in particular, serves at the emergency hotline for international extreme weather events and mobilized to support the Haitian people after the 2010 earthquake, the Filipino people after the 2013 typhoon, and the Nepalis after the 2015 earthquake.

Alternatively, creating a single dedicated fund (by drawing funds from Operations and Maintenance, Research and Development, and the Refugee Assistance Fund) would allow the United States to streamline and refine its support strategies, address the effects of climate change directly, and rebuild its reputation abroad. Such a dedicated fund should try to emulate and partner with the United Kingdoms Department for International Development (DFID), Germanys Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), and Japans International Cooperation Agency (JICA). American seed funding in this area could lead to major investments of allies and partnersand in cooperation with the development agencies of these countries can mobilize massive resources at the scale required to confront the global climate crisis.

The strategies to address climate migrants presented here are far reaching, but this crisis will only intensify, and our response to it will define international relations in the 21st century.

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The climate crisis, migration, and refugees - Brookings

2010s migrant crisis in the European Union

The 2015 European migrant crisis, also known internationally as the Syrian refugee crisis,[2][3] was a period of significantly increased movement of refugees and migrants into Europe in 2015, when 1.3 million people came to the continent to request asylum,[4] the most in a single year since World War II.[5] Those requesting asylum in Europe in 2015 were mostly Syrians,[6] but also included significant numbers of Afghans, Nigerians, Pakistanis, Iraqis and Eritreans,[7] as well as economic migrants from the Balkans.[8]

Europe had already begun registering increased numbers of refugee arrivals in 2010 due to a confluence of conflicts in parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa, particularly the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, but also terrorist insurgencies in Nigeria and Pakistan, and long-running human rights abuses in Eritrea, all contributing to refugee flows.[9] Many millions initially sought refuge in comparatively stable countries near their origin, but while these countries were largely free of war, living conditions for refugees were often very poor. In Turkey, many were not permitted to work; in Jordan and Lebanon which hosted millions of Syrian refugees,[10] large numbers were confined to squalid refugee camps.[9][11] As it became clear that the wars in their home countries would not end in the foreseeable future, many increasingly wished to settle permanently elsewhere. In addition, starting in 2014, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt stopped accepting Syrian asylum seekers. Together these events caused a surge in people fleeing to Europe in 2015.[9]

The vast majority of refugees coming to Europe did so by crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece[12] and subsequently making their way by land through the Balkans towards the European Union.[13] This was a significant change to previous years: before 2015, most refugees had reached Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Italy, largely due to the collapse of border controls during the Second Libyan Civil War;[14] these were mainly migrants originating in Sub-Saharan Africa.[15][16] The Aegean Sea route was used by refugees originating in the Middle East, mostly from Syria, or destinations further into Asia, mostly from Afghanistan.[17] The southeastern and central European countries through which refugees traveled to reach Western Europe were unaccustomed to and unprepared for the sudden movement of tens of thousands of refugees through them. Many reacted by closing their borders to neighboring countries. While intended to regain some measure of control, these measures often contributed to chaos as huge numbers of people repeatedly became trapped in one country or were shunted back and forth to another. Most countries refused to take in the arriving refugees; Germany ultimately accepted most of them after the government decided to temporarily suspend its enforcement of an EU rule requiring asylum seekers to remain in the first EU country they set foot in. Refugee arrivals began decreasing rapidly in autumn 2015 as winter set in and the cold made the journey more dangerous. In March 2016, Turkey agreed to strengthen border security measures in order to "take any measures necessary to stop people travelling irregularly from Turkey to the Greek islands".[18][19] In exchange, Turkey received 6 billion to improve the humanitarian situation faced by refugees in the country.[19]

The crisis had considerable short-term and long-term effects on the politics of both the affected EU countries and the EU as a whole. Right-wing populist parties in the affected countries capitalized on anti-immigrant sentiment, in many cases making it the centerpiece of their platform. Although they generally did not win enough votes to enter government, their presence often influenced politics by complicating the formation of governing coalitions and making opposition to immigration part of the political mainstream. A strong push for reforms to EU asylum law was made during and immediately after the crisis, but largely fizzled out after refugee arrival numbers receded.

News organisations and academic sources use both migrant crisis and refugee crisis to refer to the 2015 events, sometimes interchangeably. Some argued that the word migrant was pejorative or inaccurate in the context of people fleeing war and persecution because it implies most are emigrating voluntarily rather than being forced to leave their homes.[20][21] The BBC[22] and The Washington Post[23] argued against the stigmatization of the word, contending that it simply refers to anyone moving from one country to another. The Guardian said while it would not advise against using the word outright, "'refugees', 'displaced people' and 'asylum seekers' ... are more useful and accurate terms than a catch-all label like 'migrants', and we should use them wherever possible."[24] Al Jazeera, on the other hand, expressly avoided the term migrant, arguing it was inaccurate and risked "giving weight to those who want only to see economic migrants".[21]

The most significant root causes of the wave of refugees entering Europe in 2015 were several interrelated wars, most notably the Libyan civil war, Syrian civil war and the 20142017 War in Iraq.

In 2014, the year before the 2015 refugee crisis, the European Union counted around 252,000 "irregular arrivals", especially refugees from Syria, Eritrea and Somalia. Most crossed the Mediterranean Sea from Libya.[25]

According to Eurostat, EU member states received 626,065 asylum applications in 2014, the highest number since the 672,000 applications received in the wake of the Yugoslav Wars in 1992. The main countries of origin of asylum seekers, accounting for almost half of the total, were Syria (20%), Afghanistan (7%), Kosovo (6%), Eritrea (6%) and Albania.[26] The overall rate of recognition of asylum applicants was 45 percent at the first instance and 18 percent on appeal, although there were huge differences between EU states, ranging from Hungary (accepted 9% of applicants) to Sweden (accepted 74%).[27]

Four countries Germany, Sweden, Italy and France received around two-thirds of the EU's asylum applications and granted almost two-thirds of the applicants protection status in 2014. Sweden, Hungary and Austria were among the top recipients of EU asylum applications per capita, when adjusted for their own populations, with 8.4 asylum seekers per 1,000 inhabitants in Sweden, 4.3 in Hungary, and 3.2 in Austria.[28][29] The EU countries that hosted the largest numbers of refugees at the end of 2014 were France (252,000), Germany (217,000), Sweden (142,000) and the United Kingdom (117,000).[30]

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, most of the people who arrived in Europe in 2015 were refugees fleeing war and persecution[31] in countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea: 84 percent of Mediterranean Sea arrivals in 2015 came from the world's top ten refugee-producing countries.[32] Wars fueling the migrant crisis are the Syrian Civil War, the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the War in Somalia and the War in Darfur. Refugees from Eritrea, one of the most repressive states in the world, fled from indefinite military conscription and forced labour.[33][34]

Below are the major regions of conflict that have resulted in the increase of asylum seekers in the European region.

Migration from Kosovo occurred in phases beginning from the second half of the 20th century. The Kosovo War (February 1998-June 1999) created a wave. On 19 May 2011, Kosovo established the Ministry of Diaspora. Kosovo also established the Kosovo Diaspora Agency (KDA) to support migrants. Migrants from Kosovo newly arriving in the EU, detected but not over an official border-crossing point, was around 21,000 in 2014 and 10,000 in 2015.[36] At the same period detected illegal border crossings to the EU from Kosovo was 22,069 in 2014 and 23,793 in 2015.[37] In 2015 there was sudden surge, which Kosovo became helpless to stem.[38]

The Syrian Civil War began in response to the Arab Spring protests of March 2011, which quickly escalated into a civil uprising. By May 2011, thousands of people had fled the country and the first refugee camps opened in Turkey. In March 2012, the UNHCR appointed a Regional Coordinator for Syrian Refugees, recognising the growing concerns surrounding the crisis. As the conflict descended into full civil war, outside powers, notably Iran, Turkey, the United States and Russia funded and armed different sides of the conflict and sometimes intervened directly.[39] By March 2013, the total number of Syrian refugees reached 1,000,000,[40] the vast majority of whom were internally displaced within Syria or had fled to Turkey or Lebanon; smaller numbers had sought refuge in Iraq and Egypt.[41]

Afghan refugees constitute the second-largest refugee population in the world.[42] According to the UNHCR, there are almost 2.5 million registered refugees from Afghanistan. Most of these refugees fled the region due to war and persecution. The majority have resettled in Pakistan and Iran, though it became increasingly common to migrate further west to the European Union. Afghanistan faced over 40 years of conflict dating back to the Soviet invasion in 1979. Since then, the nation faced fluctuating levels of civil war amidst unending unrest. The increase in refugee numbers was primarily attributed to the Taliban presence within Afghanistan. Their retreat in 2001 led to nearly 6 million Afghan refugees returning to their homeland. However, after the Taliban insurgency against NATO-led forces and subsequent Fall of Kabul, nearly 2.5 million refugees fled Afghanistan.[43]

The Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria has resulted in the deaths of 20,000 people and displaced at least 2 million since 2009.[44] Around 75,000 Nigerians requested asylum in the EU in 2015 and 2016, around 3 percent of the total.[35]

In all, over 1 million refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean (mostly the Aegean Sea) in 2015, three to four times more than the previous year.[45] 80% were fleeing from wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.[46] About 85% of sea arrivals were in Greece (via Turkey) and 15% in Italy (via northern Africa). The European Union's external land borders (e.g., in Greece, Bulgaria or Finland) played only a minor role.[47]

Crossing the Central Mediterranean Sea to Italy is a much longer and considerably more dangerous journey than the relatively short trip across the Aegean. As a result, this route was responsible for a large majority of migrant deaths in 2015, even though it was far less used. An estimated 2,889 died in the Central Mediterranean; 731 died in the Aegean sea.[47]

The EU Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) uses the terms "illegal" and "irregular" border crossings for crossings of an EU external border but not at an official border-crossing point.[48] These include people rescued at sea.[49] Because many migrants cross more than one external EU border (for instance when traveling through the Balkans from Greece to Hungary), the total number of irregular EU external border crossings is often higher than the number of irregular migrants arriving in the EU in a year. News media sometimes misrepresent these figures as given by Frontex.[25]

Because the refugees entering Europe in 2015 were predominantly from the Middle East, the vast majority first entered the EU by crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece by boat; Turkey's land border has been inaccessible to migrants since a border fence was constructed there in 2012.[50] A number of Greek islands are less than 6km (4mi) from the Turkish coast, such as Chios, Kos, Lesbos, Leros, Kastellorizo, Agathonisi, Farmakonisi, Rhodes, Samos and Symi. At one point, incoming refugees on some of these islands outnumbered locals.[51] A small number of people (34,000 or 3% of the total) used Turkey's land borders with Greece or Bulgaria.[47] From Greece, most tried to make their way toward through the Balkans to Central and Northern Europe.[13] This represented a stark change to the previous year, when most refugees and migrants landed in Italy from northern Africa. In fact, in the first half of 2015, Italy was, as in previous years, the most common landing point for refugees entering the EU, especially the southern Sicilian island of Lampedusa. By June, however, Greece overtook Italy in the number of arrivals and became the starting point of a flow of refugees and migrants moving through Balkan countries to Northern European countries, particularly Germany and Sweden. By the end of 2015, about 80% of migrants had landed in Greece, compared to only 15% in Italy.[32]

Greece appealed to the European Union for assistance; the UNCHR European Director Vincent Cochetel said facilities for migrants on the Greek islands were "totally inadequate" and the islands were in "total chaos".[52] Frontex's Operation Poseidon, aimed at patrolling the Aegean Sea, was underfunded and undermanned, with only 11 coastal patrol vessels, one ship, two helicopters, two aircraft, and a budget of 18 million.[53]

A section of northeastern Croatia is believed to contain up to 60,000 unexploded land mines from the Croatian War of Independence in the 1990s. Refugees were feared to be at risk of unknowingly detonating some of these minefields as they crossed the area. However, there were no reported cases of this happening in 2015 or 2016.[54]

The number of people making the considerably more dangerous sea journey from northern Africa to Italy was comparatively low at around 150,000.[47] Most of the refugees and migrants taking this route came from African countries, especially Eritrea, Nigeria, and Somalia.[55] At least 2,889 people died during the journey.[47]

A few other routes were also used by some refugees, although they were comparatively low in number. One such route was entering Finland or Norway via Russia; on a few days Arctic border stations in these countries saw several hundred "irregular" border crossings per day.[56] Norway recorded around 6,000 refugees crossing its northern border in 2015.[57] Because it is illegal to drive from Russia to Norway without a permit, and crossing on foot is prohibited, some used a legal loophole and made the crossing by bicycle.[58][59] A year later in 2016, Norway built a short 200 m fence at the Storskog border crossing,[60] although it was viewed as a mostly symbolic measure.[61]

Some observers argued that the Russian government facilitated the influx in an attempt to warn European leaders against maintaining sanctions imposed after Russia's annexation of Crimea.[56][62] In January 2016, a Russian border guard admitted that the Russian Federal Security Service was enabling migrants to enter Finland.[63]

Because asylum seekers are usually required to be physically present in the EU country where they wish to request asylum, and there are few formal ways to allow them to reach Europe to do so,[64] many paid smugglers for advice, logistical help and transportation through Europe, especially for sea crossings.[65] Human traffickers charged $1,000 to $1,500 (901 1352) for the 25-minute boat ride from Bodrum, Turkey to Kos.[66] An onward journey, not necessarily relying on smugglers, to Germany was estimated to cost 3,000 4,000 and 10,000 12,000 to Britain.[66] Airplane tickets directly from Turkey to Germany or Britain would have been far cheaper and safer, but the EU requires airlines flying into the Schengen Area to check that passengers have a visa or are exempted from carrying one ("carriers' responsibility").[67] This prevented would-be migrants without a visa from being allowed on aircraft, boats, or trains entering the Schengen Area, and caused them to resort to smugglers.[68] Humanitarian visas are generally not given to refugees who want to apply for asylum.[69]

In September 2015, Europol estimated there were 30,000 suspected migrant smugglers operating in and around Europe. By the end of 2016, this number had increased to 55,000. 63 percent of the smugglers were from Europe, 14 percent from the Middle East, 13 percent from Africa, nine percent from Asia (excluding the Middle East) and one percent from the Americas.[70]

On several occasions, unscrupulous smugglers caused the deaths of the people they were transporting, particularly by using poorly-maintained and overfilled boats and refusing to provide life jackets.[66][71] At least 3771 refugees and migrants drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in 2015. A single shipwreck near Lampedusa in April accounted for around 800 deaths.[72] Apart from drownings, the deadliest incident occurred on 27 August 2015, when 71 people were found dead in an unventilated food truck near Vienna.[73][74] Eleven of the smugglers responsible were later arrested and charged with murder and homicide in Hungary. The charges and trial took place in Hungary as authorities determined that the deaths had occurred there.[74]

The Mafia Capitale investigation revealed that the Italian Mafia profited from the migrant crisis and exploited refugees.[75][76]

The first half of 2015 saw around 230,000 people enter the EU. The most common points of entry were Italy and Greece.[79] From there, arrivals either applied for asylum directly or attempted to travel to other countries, especially Northern and Western European ones. For many, this involved traveling through the Balkans and re-entering the EU in Hungary or Croatia. As required by EU law, Hungary registered most of them as asylum seekers and attempted to prevent them from traveling on to other EU countries. At the same time, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbn began using fear of immigration as a domestic political campaign issue[80][81] and stated his hard opposition to accepting any refugees long-term.[82]

By August 2015, Hungary housed about 150,000 refugees[83] in makeshift camps.[84] Due in part to the Hungarian government's unwelcoming stance towards refugees, squalid conditions in the camps, and their poor prospects of being allowed to stay, most had little desire to remain in Hungary.[85]

On August 21, 2015, the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, overwhelmed with the number of incoming asylum applications and the complexity of determining whether each applicant had previously made an application in another EU country, and faced with the reality that almost all asylum applications by Syrians were being granted anyway, began to permit asylum applications even from people who had previously applied for refugee status in another EU country. Sweden made a similar decision. Up to that point, Germany had been deporting such refugees 'back' to the first country where they had claimed asylum.[b][87] Interpreting this to mean that Germany would begin accepting larger numbers of refugees, tens of thousands in Hungary and southeastern Europe began attempting to make their way towards the country.[88] Viral video footage of refugees being warmly received by German crowds also burnished the country's reputation as a welcoming one for immigrants.[89]

On September 1, Hungarian government closed outbound rail traffic from Budapest's Keleti station, which many refugees were using to travel to Austria and Germany.[90] Within days, a massive buildup of people had formed at the station. On September 4, several thousand set off to make the 150km journey towards Austria on foot, at which point the Hungarian government relented and no longer tried to stop them. In an effort to force the Austrian and German governments' hands, Hungary chartered buses to the Austrian border for both those walking and those who had stayed behind at the station.[91] Unwilling to resort to violence to keep them out, and faced with a potential humanitarian crisis if the huge numbers languished in Hungary indefinitely,[88][92] Germany and Austria jointly announced on September 4 that they would allow the migrants into their borders and apply for asylum.[93][94] Across Germany, crowds formed at train stations to applaud and welcome the arrivals.[95]

In the following three months, an estimated 550,000 people entered Germany to apply for asylum, around half the total for the entire year.[96] Though under pressure from conservative politicians, the German government refused to set an upper limit to the number of asylum applications it would accept, with Angela Merkel arguing that the "fundamental right to seek refuge...from the hell of war knows no limit."[97] She famously declared her confidence that Germany could cope with the situation with "wir schaffen das" (roughly, "we can manage this"). This phrase quickly became a symbol of her government's refugee policy.[98]

Within ten days of Germany's decision to accept the refugees in Hungary, the sudden influx had overwhelmed many of the major refugee processing and accommodation centres in Germany and the country began enacting border controls[99] and allowing people to file asylum applications directly at the Austrian border.[100] Although Austria also accepted some asylum seekers, for a time the country effectively became a distribution centre to Germany, slowing and regulating their transit into Germany and providing temporary housing, food and health care.[101] On some days, Austria took in up to 10,000 Germany-bound migrants arriving from Slovenia and Hungary.[102]

Germany's imposition of border controls had a domino effect on countries to Germany's southeast, as Austria and Slovakia successively enacted their own border controls.[103][104] Hungary closed its border with Serbia entirely with a fence that had been under construction for several months, forcing migrants to pass through Croatia and Slovenia instead.[105] Croatia tried to force them back into Hungary, which responded with military force.[106] Croatian and Hungarian leaders each blamed each other for the situation and engaged in a bitter back-and-forth about what to do about the tens of thousands of stranded people.[106] Three days later, Croatia likewise closed its border with Serbia to avoid becoming a transit country.[107] Slovenia kept its borders open, although it did limit the flow of people, resulting in occasionally violent clashes with police.[108]

In October, Hungary also closed its border with Croatia, making Slovenia the only remaining way to reach Austria and Germany. Croatia reopened its own border to Serbia[109] and together with Slovenia began permitting migrants to pass through, providing buses and temporary accommodation en route.[110] Slovenia did impose a limit of 2,500 people per day, which initially stranded thousands of migrants in Croatia, Serbia and North Macedonia.[111][112] In November, Slovenia began erecting temporary fences along the border to direct the flow of people to formal border crossings.[113] Several countries, such as Hungary,[114] Slovenia[115] and Austria,[116] authorized their armies to secure their borders or repel migrants; some passed legislation specifically to give armed forces more powers.[117]

EU officials generally reacted with dismay at the border closures, warning that they undermined the mutual trust and freedom of movement that the bloc was founded on and risked returning to a pre-1990s arrangement of costly border controls and mistrust. The European Commission warned EU members against steps that contravene EU treaties and urged members like Hungary to find other ways to cope with an influx of refugees and migrants.[118]

As winter set in, refugee numbers decreased, although they were still many times higher than in the previous year. In January and February 2016, over 123,000 migrants landed in Greece, compared to about 4,600 in the same period of 2015.[119]

Sweden took in over 160,000 refugees in 2015, more per capita than any other country in Europe (other than Turkey). Well over half of these came to Sweden in October and November.[120] Most entered Sweden by traveling through Germany and then Denmark; few wanted to apply for asylum in Denmark because of its comparatively harsh conditions for asylum seekers.[121] There were occasionally scuffles as Danish police tried to register some of the arrivals, as they were technically required to do according to EU rules.[122][123] In early September, Denmark temporarily closed rail and road border crossings with Germany.[124] After initial uncertainty surrounding the rules, Denmark allowed most of the people wishing to travel on to Sweden to do so.[125] In the five weeks following 6 September, approximately 28,800 refugees and migrants crossed the Danish borders, 3,500 of whom applied for asylum in Denmark; the rest continued to other Nordic countries.[126]

In November 2015, Sweden reintroduced border controls at the Danish border, although this did not reduce the number of arrivals as they still had the right to apply for asylum.[127] Within hours of Swedish border control becoming effective, Denmark instituted border controls at the German border.[128] Some bypassed the border controls by taking a ferry to Trelleborg instead of the train to Hyllie,[129][128] The border controls were never fully lifted before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which saw renewed border closures throughout Europe.

In October 2015, the Slovenian government accused Croatian police of helping migrants bypass Slovene border controls and released a night time thermovision video allegedly documenting the event.[130][131]

Because the vast majority of refugees arriving in Europe in 2015 passed through Turkey, the country's cooperation was seen as central to efforts to stem the flow of people and prevent refugees from attempting to make dangerous sea crossings. There was also a recognition that it would be unfair to expect Turkey to shoulder the financial and logistical burden of hosting and integrating millions of refugees on its own. In 2015, the European Commission began negotiating an agreement with Turkey to close its borders to Greece in exchange for money and diplomatic favours. In March 2016, after months of tense negotiations[132] during which Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoan repeatedly threatened to open Turkey's borders and "flood" Europe with migrants to extract concessions,[133] a deal was announced. Turkey agreed to significantly increase border security at its shores and take back all future irregular entrants into Greece (and thereby the EU) from Turkey. In return, the EU would pay Turkey 6 billion euros (around US$5 billion).[134] In addition, for every Syrian sent back from Greece, the EU would accept one registered Syrian refugee living in Turkey who had never tried to enter the EU illegally, up to a total of 72,000. If the process succeeded in dramatically reducing irregular immigration to a maximum of 6,000 people per month, the EU would set up a resettlement scheme by which it would regularly resettle Syrian refugees registered in Turkey and upon vetting and recommendation by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The EU also promised to institute visa-free travel to the Schengen area and to breathe new life into Turkey's EU accession talks.[135]

The deal came into force on March 20, 2016.[136] On April 4, the first group of 200 people had been deported from Greece to Turkey under the provisions of the deal. Turkey planned to deport most of them to their home countries.[137] The agreement resulted in a steep decline of migrant arrivals in Greece; in April, Greece recorded only 2,700 irregular border crossings, a 90 percent decrease compared to the previous month.[138] This was also the first time since June 2015 that more migrants arrived in Italy than in Greece.[138]

The plan to send migrants back to Turkey was criticized by human right organisations and the United Nations, which warned that it could be illegal to send the migrants back to Turkey in exchange for financial and political rewards.[139] The UNHCR said it was not a party to the EU-Turkey deal and would not be involved in returns or detentions.[140] Like the UNHCR, four aid agencies (Mdecins Sans Frontires, the International Rescue Committee, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Save the Children) said they would not help to implement the EU-Turkey deal because blanket expulsion of refugees contravened international law.[141] Amnesty International called the agreement "madness", and said 18 March 2016 was "a dark day for Refugee Convention, Europe and humanity". Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Turkey and EU had the same challenges, the same future, and the same destiny. Donald Tusk said that the migrants in Greece would not be sent back to dangerous areas.[142]

Turkey's EU accession talks began in July 2016 and the first $3.3 billion was transferred to Turkey.[136] The talks were suspended in November 2016 after the Turkey's antidemocratic response to the 2016 Turkish coup attempt.[143] Erdoan again threatened to flood Europe with migrants after the European Parliament voted to suspend EU membership talks in November 2016: "if you go any further, these border gates will be opened. Neither me nor my people will be affected by these dry threats."[144][145] Over the next few years, Turkish officials continued to threaten the EU with reneging on the deal and engineering a repeat of the 2015 refugee crisis in response to criticism of the Erdoan government.[146][147] In one notable incident in March 2020, the Turkish government bused large numbers of Syrians living in Turkey to the Greek border and encouraged them to cross. Greece repelled the arrivals with border guards.[148][149]

One effect of the closure of the "Balkan route" was to drive refugees to other routes, especially across the central and eastern Mediterranean. As a result, migrant deaths due to shipwrecks began increasing again. On 16 April, a large boat sank between Libya and Italy, with as many as 500 deaths.[150] In addition, countries that had seen comparatively few refugee arrivals began recording significant numbers. In 2017, for instance, there was a 60% significant jump in the number of migrants reaching Spain.[151] Similarly, Cyprus recorded an approximately 8-fold increase in the number of arrivals between 2016 and 2017.[152][153]

In response to the increased numbers of people reaching Italian shores, Italy signed an agreement in early 2017 with the UN-recognized government of Libya, from where most migrants started their boat journeys to Italy. In return for Libya making more efforts to prevent migrants from reaching Europe, Italy provided money and training for the Libyan coast guard and for migrant detention centres in northern Libya. In August of that year, the Libyan Coast Guard began requiring NGO rescue vessels to stay at least 360km (225mi) from the Libyan coast unless they were given express permission to enter.[154] As a result, NGOs MSF, Save the Children and Sea Eye suspended their operations after clashes with the Libyan Coast Guard after the latter asserted its sovereignty of its waters by firing warning shots.[65] Soon afterwards, refugee arrivals in Italy dropped significantly. At the same time, the lack of rescue vessels made the crossing much more dangerous; by September 2018, one in five migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Libya either drowned or disappeared.[155] In 2019, the deal was renewed for a further three years.[156]

After inspecting a refugee camp in Traiskirchen, Austria, in August 2015, Amnesty International noted inhabitants were receiving insufficient medical care and claimed Austria was "violating human rights".[157]

In late November, Finnish reception centers were running out of space, which forced authorities to resort to refurbished shipping containers and tents to house new asylum seekers.[158] Deputy prime minister Petteri Orpo announced that special repatriation centers would be established to house denied asylum seekers. While he stressed that these camps would not be prisons, he described the inhabitants would be under strict surveillance.[159]

Many migrants tried to enter the United Kingdom, resulting in camps of migrants around Calais where one of the Eurotunnel entrances is located. In the summer of 2015, at least nine people died in attempts to reach Britain, including falling from trains, being hit by trains, or drowning in a canal at the Eurotunnel entrance.[160] In response, a UK-financed fence was built along the A-216 highway in Calais.[161][162] At the camp near Calais, known as the Jungle, riots broke out when authorities began demolishing the illegally constructed campsite on 29 January 2015.[163] Amid the protests, which included hunger strikes, thousands of refugees living in the camp were relocated to France's "first international-standard refugee camp" at the La Liniere refugee camp in Grande-Synthe which replaced the previous Basroch refugee camp.[164]

Germany has a quota system to distribute asylum seekers among all German states, but in September 2015 the federal states, responsible for accommodation, criticised the government in Berlin for not providing enough help to them.

In Germany, which took in by far the highest number of refugees, the federal government distributes refugees among the 16 states proportionally to their tax revenue and population;[165] the states themselves are required to come up with housing solutions. In 2015, this arrangement came under strain as many states ran out of dedicated accommodation for incoming refugees.[166] Many resorted to temporarily housing refugees in tents or repurposed empty buildings. The small village of Sumte (population 102), which contained a large unused warehouse, famously took in 750 refugees.[167] Although media and some locals feared racial strife and a far-right political surge, the town remained peaceful and locals largely accepting. By 2020, most of the arrivals had moved on to bigger German cities for work or study; a small number have settled in Sumte permanently.[168]

Source: Eurostat[169]^note 2:although the majority of refugees arrived in Europe in 2015,[170] many did not file asylum claims until 2016 or 2017.

Europe needs to fulfil its humanitarian duty, helping those fleeing for their lives, and as a Christian Democrat, I want to reiterate that is not Christian rights, but human rights that Europe invented. But we also need to better secure our external borders and make sure that asylum rules are used properly and not abused.

Manfred Weber, leader of the European People's Party in the European Parliament.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, used uncharacteristically strong language addressing the refugee crisis and warned that freedom of travel and open borders among the 28 member states of the EU could be jeopardised if they did not agree on a shared response to this crisis.[171]

Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the Republicans and former French president, compared the EU migrant plan to "mending a burst pipe by spreading water round the house while leaving the leak untouched".[172] Sarkozy criticised Merkel's decision to allow tens of thousands of people to enter Germany, saying that it would attract even greater numbers of people to Europe, of which a significant part would "inevitably" end up in France due to the EU's free movement policies and the French welfare state. He also argued that the Schengen agreement on borderless travel should be replaced with a new agreement providing border checks for non-EU citizens.[173]

British Home Secretary Theresa May said that it was important to help people living in war zone regions and refugee camps, "not the ones who are strong and rich enough to come to Europe".[174]

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said the EU should forge a single European policy on asylum.[175] French Prime Minister Manuel Valls stated, "There must be close cooperation between the European Commission and member states as well as candidate members."[176] Sergei Stanishev, President of the Party of European Socialists, stated:

At this moment, more people in the world are displaced by conflict than at any time since the Second World War. ... Many die on the approach to Europe in the Mediterranean yet others perish on European soil. ... As social democrats the principle of solidarity is the glue that keeps our family together. ... We need a permanent European mechanism for fairly distributing asylum-seekers in European member states. ... War, poverty and the stark rise in inequality are global, not local problems. As long as we do not address these causes globally, we cannot deny people the right to look for a more hopeful future in a safer environment.[177]

In the years preceding the refugee crisis, EU officials had made numerous attempts to coordinate refugee and immigration policies, all of which failed due to stark differences in members' openness to immigration.[178] In April 2015, several months before the massive surge in refugee arrivals, Angela Merkel had called for redistributing asylum seekers across the EU member states.[179]

In May 2015, the European Commission proposed distributing a portion of newly arrived refugees from Syria, Eritrea and Iraq (chosen because applicants from these countries had high rates of success in obtaining asylum) across EU states based on their GDP and population. Countries also had the option of not to accepting any asylum seekers and instead contributing money to support their resettlement in another country.[180] Due to objections from several countries, the idea was never implemented, as decisions by the European Commission generally require unanimity.[181] However, by September that year, the large numbers of refugees arriving in the EU put renewed pressure on leaders to pass meaningful reforms. This time the Commission proposed redistributing 120,000 refugees and forced the plan through on a highly unusual qualified majority vote rather than unanimity.

The plan proved extremely divisive; the countries that had voted against it Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic declared their intention to defy the decision and refuse to accept any refugees at all.[182][183] As a result, even countries voting for it questioned its feasibility.[184] Viktor Orbn, the prime minister of Hungary, began using the issue in political campaigns, claiming the EU was planning to flood Hungary with immigrants.[185] The Czech Secretary for European Affairs Tom Prouza commented that "if two or three thousand people who do not want to be here are forced into the Czech Republic, it is fair to assume that they will leave anyway... we can't just move them here and there like a cattle." Meanwhile, western European politicians, particularly from countries with historically high refugee intakes, criticized what they saw as these member states' intransigence.[186] Some called for the EU to reduce funding for member countries that blocked burden-sharing initiatives.[187] French President Hollande declared, "those who don't share our values, those who don't even want to respect those principles, need to start asking themselves questions about their place in the European Union."[188]

In September 2017, the European Court of Justice dismissed legal actions brought by Slovakia and Hungary against the redistribution system.[189] Nevertheless, the commission, in the face of continuing opposition by dissenting countries and in acknowledgment of their success in instrumentalizing the issue with domestic voters, abandoned the idea in 2020,[190] although several thousand refugees did ultimately end up being resettled to willing countries.[191]

In 2016 the European Commission began reforming the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) which was initially designed to create a unified asylum system for the EU. In an attempt to create measures for safe and managed paths for legal migration to Europe, the European Commission created five components that sought to satisfy the minimum standards for asylum.[192]

On 13 July 2016, the European Commission introduced the proposals to finalise the CEAS' reform. The reform sought to create a just policy for asylum seekers while providing a new system that was simple and shortened. Ultimately, the reform proposal attempted to create a system that could handle normal and impacted times of migratory pressure.[193]

The Dublin Regulation was criticised for placing too much responsibility for asylum seekers on member states on the EU's external borders (especially Italy, Greece, Croatia and Hungary), instead of sharing responsibility among EU states.[194] In June 2016, the European Commission proposed reforms to the Dublin Regulation.[195]

One component of the European Commission's 10-point plan in April 2015, drawn up in response to a deadly shipwreck on April 19, called for the European Asylum Support Office to deploy teams in Italy and Greece to asylum applications to eliminate the need for dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossings.[196]

On 25 October 2015, the leaders of Greece and other states along Western Balkan routes to wealthier nations of Europe, including Germany, agreed to set up holding camps for 100,000 asylum seekers.[197] On 12 November 2015, it was reported that Frontex had been maintaining combined asylum seeker and deportation hotspots in Lesbos, Greece, since October.[198]

In 2014, Italy had ended Operation Mare Nostrum, a large-scale naval search-and-rescue operation to save stranded migrants in the Mediterranean, saying the costs were too large for one country alone to manage. The Italian government had requested additional funds from the EU to continue the operation but did not receive sufficient support.[199] The UK government cited fears that the operation was "an unintended 'pull factor', encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and contributing to drownings.[200] The European Border and Coast Guard Agency took over search and rescue operations throughout the Mediterranean under the name Operation Triton,[201] although its budget, equipment and mandate were far more limited than Mare Nostrum.[202][203] On 18 May 2015, the European Union launched a new operation based in Rome, named EU Navfor Med, under the command of the Italian Admiral Enrico Credendino,[204] to identify, capture and dispose of vessels used by migrant smugglers.[205] By April 2016, the operation rescued more than 13,000 migrants at sea and arrested 68 suspected smugglers.[206]

Non-governmental organizations often filled the vacuum when Italian or EU operations were insufficient to rescue migrant boats in the Mediterranean. Some Italian authorities feared that rather than saving lives, the NGO operations encouraged more people to use the dangerous passage facilitated by human traffickers.[207] In July 2017, Italy drew up a code of conduct for NGO rescue vessels delivering migrants to Italian ports. These rules prohibited coordinating with human traffickers via flares or radio and required vessels to permit police presence on board. More controversially, they also forbade entering the territorial waters of Libya and transferring rescued people onto other vessels, which severely limited the number of people NGOs could save.[208] The Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International criticised the code of conduct and some NGOs, including Doctors Without Borders, eventually suspended rescue operations.[207] In the years following its implementation, Mediterranean Sea crossings dropped considerably, although the degree to which this was caused by the NGO code is disputed. A study conducted from 2014 to 2019 concluded that external factors like weather and the political stability of Libya contributed more to the ebbs and flows of migrants crossing the Mediterranean.[209]

In September 2016, Greek volunteers of the "Hellenic Rescue Team" and human rights activist Efi Latsoudi were awarded the Nansen Refugee Award by the UNHCR "for their tireless volunteer work" in helping refugees arrive in Greece during the 2015 refugee crisis.[210]

After 700 migrants drowned following a shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea on April 19,[211] EU leaders called for an emergency meeting of European interior ministers.[212][213] The prime minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat, called the 19 April shipwreck the "biggest human tragedy in recent years". Aydan zouz, the German minister for immigration, refugees, and integration, said that emergency rescue missions in the Mediterranean should recommence as more migrants were likely to arrive as the weather turned warmer. "It was an illusion to think that cutting off Mare Nostrum would prevent people from attempting this dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean", she said.[214]

A previously scheduled routine meeting of EU foreign ministers the day after the shipwreck was dominated by refugee policy and preventing migrant deaths.[215] The same day, the European Commission published a ten-point plan to address deaths in the Mediterranean Sea, which doubled the size and budget of Operation Triton and called for capturing or destroying smuggler boats.[216] On April 23, EU leaders held an emergency summit, where they agreed to triple the budget of Operation Triton to 120million for the year.[217] Ireland and the United Kingdom both committed patrol boats and helicopters to the rescue effort.[217][218] Amnesty International criticised the EU's response as "a face-saving not a life-saving operation" and said that "failure to extend Triton's operational area will fatally undermine today's commitment".[219] The EU sought to increase the scope of EU Navfor Med include patrols inside Libyan waters in order to capture and dispose of vessels used by smugglers there.[220][221] Land operations on Libya to destroy vessels used by smugglers had been proposed, but such an operation would have needed UN or Libyan permission.

Throughout the crisis, many countries experienced public debates on whether to limit the number of asylum applications they would accept. Proponents argued that such measures were necessary because no country had the capacity to absorb unlimited numbers of refugees, and that limiting refugee inflows would give countries space to deal with the influx properly.[222][223] Opponents, most notably German chancellor Angela Merkel, argued that limiting the numbers of refugees would undermine the principle of asylum, contravene national or international laws[224] and be physically unworkable.[225] Others noted that the numbers of people arriving was small relative to most EU countries' populations. Some drew parallels to previous refugee waves, such as during World War II when many countries set limits to refugee admissions from Europe, abandoning many victims of Nazism.[226][227][228]

Nevertheless, several countries began setting upper limits to the number of asylum applications it would process per year. In January 2016, Austria announced a limit of 37,500 in each of the next four years[229] later temporarily reduced to 80 per day.[230] In 2018, Germany set a "goal" of not exceeding a net intake of 220,000 annually.[231] Germany also suspended family reunifications for beneficiaries of "subsidiary protection" from 2016 to 2018.[232] Sweden did so for all refugees from 2016 to 2019.[233]

In 2015 and following years, many governments also began formally designating certain countries "safe" in order to make it easier to deny asylum applications from and deport people from them. "Safe country lists" usually included the Balkan countries (Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia), Georgia, Morocco and Tunisia.[234] Some also controversially listed certain parts of war-torn countries like Iraq or Afghanistan.[235]

A report by EU inspectors in November 2015 found that Greece failed to identify and register arrivals properly.[236] In February 2016, the EU gave Greece a three-month deadline to fix its border controls, or other member states would be authorized to extend border controls to Greece for up to two years instead of the standard six months.[237]

In July 2016, the European parliament and Commission approved a proposal to permanently increase the funding and scope of Frontex, which until then only coordinated the coast guards and border patrols of individual EU countries, and turn it into a true EU-wide border agency and coast guard. Such a step had long been controversial because of sovereignty concerns, as it allows Frontex intervention in border countries even if they did not request it.[238]

February 2016, NATO announced that it would deploy ships in the Aegean Sea to deter smugglers taking migrants from Turkey to Greece. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said the mission would not be about "stopping or pushing back refugee boats", but about intelligence gathering and sharing information with Turkey and Greece, which are both NATO members.[239]

In late December 2015, Slovenia erected a razor-wire fence along the Istria and Gorski Kotar sections of its border with Croatia, to block migrants and refugees heading for more northern parts of Europe. The WWF and locals warned that the fence would threaten endangered species that roam across the area, such as lynx and brown bears, which are protected by law in Croatia.[240][241]

On 9 March 2016, the Hungarian government declared a state of emergency for the entire country and deployed 1500 soldiers to its borders.[242][243] Some observers considered the supposed risk of increased immigration a pretext for centralising executive power, since migrant numbers had already receded significantly by this point.[244] In August 2017 the state of emergency was extended to March 2018.[245]

In total, ten permanent or semi-permanent border barriers were constructed as a direct response to the refugee crisis:

The Valletta Summit on Migration between European and African leaders, on 11 and 12 November 2015, resulted in the EU creating an Emergency Trust Fund to create jobs in African countries, admit more Africans to Erasmus Plus study programmes, and set up regional development programmes in Africa, in return for African countries to counteract migrant smuggling and migrant trafficking and readmit migrants not receiving asylum in Europe.[257]

For example, Germany in 2016 announced new development aid for and security partnerships with Niger, which serves as a transit country for many migrants and refugees from sub-Saharan Africa, and Ethiopia, which hosts 750,000 refugees from other countries.[258]

The table above summarizes the 1.7 million asylum applicants in 2015 cost 18 billion in maintenance costs in 2016, with the total 2015 and 2016 asylum caseload costing 27.3 billion (27.296 in Mil.) in 2016. Sweden is observed to bear the heaviest cost.[259]

Yes

Abstention

No

Non-EU state

On 15 December 2015 the EU proposed taking over the border and coastal security operations at major migrant entry pressure points via its Frontex operation.[260]

In the time during and immediately after the refugee crisis, crimes committed by immigrants were often widely publicised and seized upon by opponents of immigration.[261]

During 2015, foreign fighters who had joined the Islamic state travelled with the migration flow back to Europe. In the January 2016-April 2017 period, four asylum seekers were involved in terrorist incidents, but none who had been granted refugee status. Most of the terrorist attacks in Europe in the period were carried out by citizens of European countries.[262] In 2015, Swedish authorities reported 500 cases of suspected terrorism links or war criminals to the Swedish Security Service.[263] Twenty individuals were denied asylum in Sweden in 2015 due to suspected involvement in war crimes.[263]

On November 13, 2015, a group of men consisting of both EU citizens and non-citizens detonated suicide bombs at a football stadium, fired on crowded cafes and took hostage a concert hall of 1500 people. 130 people died in the attacks.[264] Although very few of the perpetrators came to Europe as asylum seekers,[265] the event sparked a public debate on asylum policy and the need for counterterrorism measures.[266] German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel defended Germany's and the EU's refugee policy and pointed out that most migrants are fleeing terrorism.[267]

In 2016, 18 of 31 men suspected of violent assaults on women in Cologne on New Year's Eve were identified as asylum seekers, prompting calls by German officials to deport convicted criminals who may be seeking asylum;[268] these sexual attacks brought about a new wave of anti-immigrant protests across Europe.[269]

On January 11, 2016, there were reports that multiple sexual harassment incidents occurred at the We Are Sthlm festival over the course of several years.[270]

In 2016, the Italian daily newspaper La Stampa reported that officials from Europol conducted an investigation into the trafficking of fake documents for ISIL. They identified fake Syrian passports in the refugee camps in Greece meant for supposed members of ISIL to avoid Greek security and make their way to other parts of Europe. The chief of Europol also said that a new task force of 200 counter-terrorism officers would be deployed to the Greek islands alongside Greek border guards in order to help Greece stop a "strategic" level campaign by ISIL to infiltrate terrorists into Europe.[271]

In October 2016, Danish immigration minister Inger Stjberg reported 50 cases of suspected radicalised asylum seekers at asylum centres. These reports ranged from adult Islamic State sympathisers celebrating terror attacks to violent children dressing up as IS fighters to decapitate teddy bears. Stjberg expressed her frustration at asylum seekers ostensibly fleeing war yet simultaneously supporting violence. Asylum centres that detected radicalisation routinely reported their findings to police. The 50 incidents were reported between 17 November 2015 and 14 September 2016.[272][273]

In February 2017, British newspaper The Guardian reported that ISIL was paying smugglers fees of up to $2,000 USD to recruit people from refugee camps in Jordan in a desperate attempt to radicalize children for the group. The reports by counter-extremism think tank Quilliam indicated that an estimated 88,300 unaccompanied childrenwho are reported as missingwere at risk of radicalization by ISIL.[274]

More here:

2015 European migrant crisis - Wikipedia

Under the FDR Drive in midtown Manhattan, dozens of asylum seekers gathered under the parkway last Thursday, waiting for a mobile soup kitchen to arrive.

Most of them have recently arrived in the city and are living in the citys homeless shelter system. But they say shelter food is largely inedible so they have been gathering at this spot, not far from the citys largest mens shelter, every night to eat.

At the shelter, the meat patties on the hamburgers are frozen, and they just put them between the bread and it's really, really horrible, said Tony Palomares, a Venezuelan native whos been living at the 30th Street Mens Intake Shelter since arriving in New York from Colombia this summer.

Long before thousands of migrants began arriving in New York City this year, shelter residents have raised alarms about the food and safety issues inside the facilities. And the recent surge of asylum seekers is amplifying long-standing concerns about the shelter system, immigration and housing advocates say.

A common concern that we've heard for years among shelter residents is that the food in shelters is of poor quality and insufficient portions, and that's also something that we have heard from the recent arrivals, said Jacquelyn Simone, director of policy for the advocacy group Coalition for the Homeless.

Since some shelters dont have places for residents to cook, the shelters provide them with frozen meals that need to be heated in microwaves, Simone added.

Alexander, a 37-year-old migrant from Venezuela whos also been living at the 30th Street Mens Intake Shelter, said through a translator that hes been throwing out most of the food he gets at the shelter.

A lot of the food that they're getting is two, three, four days old, said Alexander, who declined to provide his last name for fear of being kicked out of the facility. They have no place to warm it.

Instead, Alexander and Palomares have been coming each night to this spot for a warm meal, that on a chilly October night consisted of a meatball stew, a bagel, an orange, and milk.

For breakfast, the men go to another spot on 32nd Street, between First and Second avenues. Although free lunches are also offered at this location, the two usually go hungry and skip lunch so they can look for work instead.

A spokesperson for Department of Social Services said in a statement that all city shelter sites provide meals that comply with city food standards and that the agency is "conducting comprehensive surveys across shelter sites to make doubly sure that sites know how to access additional food if needed to meet demand."

"The health and safety of our clients are our top priorities, and as we have always done, we work to ensure that all clients across sites are receiving the same standard of services, security, and supports to help stabilize their lives," spokesperson Neha Sharma said in an email.

In recent weeks, the number of people waiting for the mobile soup kitchen under the FDR has exploded, said Juan De La Cruz, director of emergency relief services for the Coalition for the Homeless, which runs the soup kitchen.

We've had as high as 140 people here, he said. That extra hundred-plus has been the migrants that have been coming.

As of mid-October, more than 15,000 asylum seekers, including 4,400 children, have been living in city shelters, according to city stats presented to members of the City Council in closed meetings that were shared with Gothamist.

The sudden influx of migrants, many of whom are being bused to New York City from southern border states with hardline immigration practices in protest of President Joe Bidens immigration policies, prompted Mayor Eric Adams to declare a state of emergency last month.

The migrant crisis, Adams said, could cost the city as much as $1 billion and heavily strain resources.

As of Tuesday, 63,437 people were residing in city shelters, according to the daily census report from the Department of Homeless Services. The figure has routinely reached new highs in recent weeks.

The city spent close to $138 a day to house a single adult in a homeless shelter last fiscal year and $198 a day to house a family with children, according to the Mayors Management Report released in September. In 2021, the city spent roughly $3 billion on homeless services.

But even drinking water is hard to come by at the 30th Street Mens Intake Shelter, Palomares and Alexander said.

The men said the only water fountain in the building that works well is on the third floor outside the cafeteria. One day in October, Palomares said he went to fill his water bottle, but a security guard stopped him.

So he ended up having to come over here to the hospital just to fill his cup his water bottle, said De La Cruz.

Access to food is not the only long-standing issue in shelters that migrants are encountering.

Violence is another concern that has been raised by some residents over the years, advocates said.

Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said hes aware of at least two dozen asylum seekers living in city shelters who have been assaulted or threatened with violence.

Some were threatened with violence, others with other threats and just feeling the sense of wanting to go somewhere where they were going to be safe,Awawdeh said.

Many of the migrants who feared for their safety were transferred to other shelters, Awawdeh said.

Sharma, the DSS spokesperson, said there is no tolerance against any misconduct.

"Any such cases are immediately investigated and addressed," she said.

Niurka Melendez and her husband, Hector Arguinzones, founders of Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid, said she and her husband heard from a number of people about fights breaking out inside shelters causing a sense of unease among the new arrivals.

The couples organization has been holding events inside and outside shelters to assist the newly arrived migrants.

Some have shared with us that they don't feel safe, Melendez said. There are spaces in which they feel quite insecure because of the behavior of other residents in that place.

Continue reading here:

NYC migrant crisis highlights long standing homeless shelter issues ...

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. Some things seem so complex.

But theyre actually quite simple.

Take the migrant crisis thats engulfing New York City right now, including Staten Island.

Some are worried about how the migrants, many of them from politically unstable Venezuela, will be taken care of. Where will they live? Where will they work? Where will the kids go to school?

This is a problem created by President Joe Bidens border policy and changes in asylum procedures. Biden invited people over, only to leave them stranded.

Either the president should help provide for the people hes allowing to come here or he should stop them from coming. He could take either route today.

Its simple.

Cities like New York are already being overwhelmed by the influx of migrants and are preparing to continue to be overwhelmed into the future. Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency here, while Gov. Kathy Hochul called on the feds to take ownership of the crisis.

So lets stop the flow of people coming while we figure out what to do about the folks already here. Thats fair to everyone, including the migrants and the communities like Travis where theyre being housed.

But that might look mean-spirited. And we want to have nice people in charge of the country, not someone like that evil Donald Trump.

So New York City and Travis, like communities across the country, are left to figure out Bidens migrant crisis for themselves. Its amazing what voters will endure as long as the good-hearted people are in office.

With the president feeling some heat from fellow Democrats like Hochul and Adams, the Biden administration this week said that some 24,000 additional Venezuelans who have sponsors in the U.S. will be allowed into the country while those without sponsors will be turned back to Mexico. The more than 100,000 Venezuelans already here will be allowed to stay.

So while Biden has at least turned the spigot down somewhat, it remains to be seen how the feds provide for those asylum-seekers already here. And dont forget: Its not just asylum seekers from Venezuela who are flooding across the border. Biden has left the gate open for many others.

Crime is another easy fix. Bail reform and other criminal-justice measures aimed at ginning up votes for Democrats in big blue cities have led to increased violent crime. Thats what happens when you tell criminals that they wont go to jail if they commit an offense.

Killings in the New York City subway system since 2020 have hit their highest levels in 25 years, according to the New York Post. And thats with lower ridership thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

There have been 21 murders in the subway system since 2020, more than the transit system saw between 2008 and 2019 combined, the Post reported.

Thats all in addition to the random attacks we see on city streets and the smash-and-grabs and broad-daylight thefts from stores.

Its time to roll back the reforms. Its time to reinstate a judicious form of stop-and-frisk. Its time to once again attack the small crimes before they become big ones. Its time for violent repeat offenders to do the time if they do the crime.

And gas prices? Theyve come down lately but are still higher now than when Trump was president.

Weve been energy independent in the past. We can be again. We dont have to worry about OPEC production cuts. We can drill responsibly in our own country. We can use nuclear power responsibly. We can make money by being an energy exporter. Energy security is national security.

These problems arent hurricanes or blizzards or other natural phenomenon that are beyond our control. Theyre cause-and-effect policy decisions. They can be reversed.

All it takes is political will.

See the article here:

Migrant crisis, violent crime, high gas prices all easy to solve ...

Sunak braced for third Tory revolt in just 48 hours as MPs slam 'urgent' migration crisis  Express

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Sunak braced for third Tory revolt in just 48 hours as MPs slam 'urgent' migration crisis - Express

A Florida state lawmaker is suing Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials for orchestrating the transportation of migrants from Texas to Marthas Vineyard in Massachusetts.

State Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Democrat who represents the Miami-Dade area, claims in a new lawsuit that relocating migrants from another state using Florida funds is an illegitimate use of those funds and violates Florida laws. The lawsuit also requests a judge to stop such relocations.

"This is very clear and straightforward," Pizzo said during an interview, the Miami Herald reported. "The governor had legislators carry and pass bills that were designed to suit his agenda and that he subsequently signed into law. And even with that completely privileged position, he still cant comply with the law. He set the rules for the game and then he cant follow them."

Immigrants gather with their belongings outside St. Andrews Episcopal Church, Wednesday Sept. 14, 2022, in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard. (Ray Ewing/Vineyard Gazette via AP))

The Florida legislature previously approved $12 million in the states transportation budget to relocating migrants who had entered Florida illegally. However, in the lawsuit, Pizzo, an attorney, argues DeSantis is not using those funds in the manner they were appropriated because he moved migrants who are not "unauthorized aliens" and who were not originally in Florida.

RON DESANTIS SENDS TWO PLANES OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TO MARTHA'S VINEYARD

The two planes of 48 Venezuelan migrants were flown from San Antonio to the ritzy Massachusetts island and only briefly landed in Florida.

Taryn Fenske, DeSantis communications director, dismissed the new 15-page lawsuit and said Pizzo was simply seeking his "15 minutes of fame."

"Senator Pizzo never misses an opportunity for his 15 minutes of fame and is challenging an action on an appropriation he voted for," Fenske told the outlet.

The lawsuit also names Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, the Florida Department of Transportation and Jared Perdue, the departments secretary.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded Tuesday to critics of him flying migrants to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. (WTVT)

In a statement to the paper, Patronis noted Pizzo voted to pass the initial $12 million appropriation bill and said DeSantis office was operating in compliance with it.

Devin Galletta, communications director for the Florida Department of Financial Services, echoed this statement and also said his office was exploring options for a countersuit.

RON DESANTIS, OTHER FLORIDA OFFICIALS HIT WITH CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT BY MIGRANTS FLOWN TO MASSACHUSETTS

"Senator Pizzo, along with Minority Leader Lauren Book, voted for the $12 million appropriation to relocate migrants," Galletta wrote. "Now that the law that they voted for is being implemented, and shedding light on the border crisis, Pizzo and Book have gone to their same old handbook, and hired a Democratic operative attorney to go after the executive branch for following the law. We are in receipt of the filing and we are currently exploring options for sanction and/or countersuit measures."

Senator Jason Pizzo at a campaign event. (Senator Jason Pizzo/Facebook)

The lawsuit comes after Lawyers for Civil Rights filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of the illegal immigrants flown to Marthas Vineyard.

The lawsuit alleges that DeSantis "designed and executed a premeditated, fraudulent, and illegal scheme centered on exploiting this vulnerability for the sole purpose of advancing their own personal, financial and political interests."

Gov. DeSantis spokesperson Taryn Fenske described the class action lawsuit as "political theater."

"If these activists spent even a fraction of this time and effort at the border, perhaps some accountability would be brought to the Biden Administrations reckless border policies that entice illegal immigrants to make dangerous and often lethal journeys through Central America and put their lives in the hands of cartels and Coyotes," Fenske said.

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She added: "The immigrants were homeless, hungry, and abandoned and these activists didnt care about them then. Floridas program gave them a fresh start in a sanctuary state and these individuals opted to take advantage of chartered flights to Massachusetts."

Some Democratic officials have also urged the federal government to investigate the transportation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Florida Democrat sues DeSantis for flying migrants to Marthas Vineyard ...

Effecting Change

The disgraced former head of the crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, built his formidable public persona on the idea that he was a new type of ethical crypto exec. In particular, he was a vocal proponent of "effective altruism" — the vague-but-noble concept of using data to make philanthropic giving as targeted and helpful as possible.

But in a direct message, Vox's Kelsey Piper asked Bankman-Fried if the "ethics stuff" had been "mostly a front."

Bankman-Fried's reply: "Yeah."

"I mean that's not *all* of it," he wrote. "But it's a lot."

Truth Be Told

If the concept of becoming rich to save the world strikes you as iffy, you're not alone — and it appears that even Bankman-Fried himself knows it.

When Piper observed that Bankman-Fried had been "really good at talking about ethics" while actually playing a game, he responded that he "had to be" because he'd been engaged in "this dumb game we woke Westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and everyone likes us."

Next time you're thinking of investing in crypto, maybe it's worth taking a moment to wonder whether the person running the next exchange might secretly be thinking the same thing.

More on effective altruism: Elon Musk Hired A Professional Gambler to Manage His Philanthropic Donations

The post Sam Bankman-Fried Admits the "Ethics Stuff" Was "Mostly a Front" appeared first on Futurism.

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Sam Bankman-Fried Admits the "Ethics Stuff" Was "Mostly a Front"

No Photos, Please

NASA barred the press from photographing the launch site of its Space Launch System after it boosted the agency's Artemis I Moon mission into space earlier this week.

Multiple space reporters said on Twitter that the agency had sent them a message telling them they were prohibited from photographing the Artemis 1 launch tower after the liftoff.

"NASA did not provide a reason," Eric Berger, Ars Technica's senior space editor, tweeted. The reporter added that according to his sources, the ban was apparently an attempt to save face after the launch damaged the tower.

"So now sources are saying that yes, Launch Complex-39B tower was damaged during the Artemis I launch on Wednesday morning," Berger tweeted. "Basically, there were leaks and damage where there weren't supposed to be leaks and damage."

Damaging Reports

Later, Washington Post space reporter Christian Davenport posted a statement from NASA that seemed to corroborate Berger's sources, though he emphasized that there was "no word on damage" to the launch pad.

"Because of the current state of the configuration, there are [International Traffic in Arms Regulations license] restrictions and photos are not permitted at this time," the statement given to Davenport read. "There also is a launch debris around the pad as anticipated, and the team is currently assessing."

Whatever NASA's reasoning, it's pretty clear that the agency doesn't want unapproved photos of its expensive and overdue Space Launch System rocket going out to the public. NASA loves positive publicity, it seems — but not negative.

More on the Artemis 1 launch: NASA Says It's Fine That Some Pieces May Have Fallen Off Its Moon Rocket During Launch

The post NASA Orders Press Not to Photograph Launch Site After Moon Mission Takes Off appeared first on Futurism.

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NASA Orders Press Not to Photograph Launch Site After Moon Mission Takes Off

Italian Import

Carbon dioxide has a bad rep for its role in driving climate change, but in an unexpected twist, it could also play a key role in storing renewable energy.

The world's first CO2 battery, built by Italian startup Energy Dome, promises to store renewables on an industrial scale, which could help green energy rival fossil fuels in terms of cost and practicality.

After successfully testing the battery at a small scale plant in Sardinia, the company is now bringing its technology to the United States.

"The US market is a primary market for Energy Dome and we are working to become a market leader in the US," an Energy Dome spokesperson told Electrek. "The huge demand of [long duration energy storage] and incentive mechanisms like the Inflation Reduction Act will be key drivers for the industry in the short term."

Storage Solution

As renewables like wind and solar grow, one of the biggest infrastructural obstacles is the storage of the power they produce. Since wind and solar sources aren't always going to be available, engineers need a way to save excess power for days when it's less sunny and windy out, or when there's simply more demand.

One obvious solution is to use conventional battery technology like lithium batteries, to store the energy. The problem is that building giant batteries from rare earth minerals — which can be prone to degradation over time — is expensive, not to mention wasteful.

Energy Dome's CO2 batteries, on the other hand, use mostly "readily available materials" like steel, water, and of course CO2.

In Charge

As its name suggests, the battery works by taking CO2, stored in a giant dome, and compressing it into a liquid by using the excess energy generated from a renewable source. That process generates heat, which is stored alongside the now liquefied CO2, "charging" the battery.

To discharge power, the stored heat is used to vaporize the liquid CO2 back into a gas, powering a turbine that feeds back into the power grid. Crucially, the whole process is self-contained, so no CO2 leaks back into the atmosphere.

The battery could be a game-changer for renewables. As of now, Energy Dome plans to build batteries that can store up to 200 MWh of energy. But we'll have to see how it performs as it gains traction.

More on batteries: Scientists Propose Turning Skyscrapers Into Massive Gravity Batteries

The post Startup Says It's Building a Giant CO2 Battery in the United States appeared first on Futurism.

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Startup Says It's Building a Giant CO2 Battery in the United States

Stayin' Alive

NASA's astronaut social media handbook just dropped — and they've got some staunch guidelines for space tweeting.

As part of a public records request, NASA released to Vox an almost entirely unredacted copy of its current social media handbook for astronauts, and it offers a fascinating look into the agency's policies for the online astronauts it sends to space.

Overall, it's a reasonable document. One particularly interesting detail? It advises astronauts to please lay off of posting when their lives are in jeopardy. Good advice for us all!

Socialing

In a 2018 memo from the Johnson Space Center included in the records provided to Vox, NASA notes that along with not posting for personal or financial gain or exposing state secrets, "social media efforts should always be considered secondary to the safety of the crew and vehicle."

In another section of the guidelines, a slide reminds astronauts that "social media is voluntary and should be considered secondary to safety of mission and crew cohesion."

Politicking

Beyond bodily safety, political discretion is also repeatedly advised in the guidelines — an important detail, given the past and current tensions between the ISS' main players, the United States and Russia.

While some have criticized NASA for doing a bit too much social networking — the agency operates a whopping 700 social media accounts, including on Reddit, Twitch, and LinkedIn — it clearly takes a backseat to onboard safety.

Given how much can go wrong on both a mortal and interpersonal level while floating above the Earth, that's definitely a good thing.

More on the ISS: Amazing Video Shows What the ISS Would Look Like If It Flew at the Height of a Jetplane

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NASA Tells Astronauts That Tweeting Isn't As Important as Staying Alive

Floored Apes

The value of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs have absolutely plummeted, leaving celebrities with six figure losses, in a perhaps predictable conclusion to a bewildering trend.

Earlier this year, for instance, pop star Justin Bieber bought an Ape for a whopping $1.3 million. Now that the NFT economy has essentially collapsed in on itself, as Decrypt points out, it's worth a measly $69,000.

Demand Media

NFTs, which represent exclusive ownership rights to digital assets — but usually, underwhelmingly, just JPGs and GIFs — have absolutely plummeted in value, spurred by the ongoing crypto crisis and a vanishing appetite.

Sales volume of the blockchain knickknacks has also bottomed out. NFT sales declined for six straight months this year, according to CryptoSlam.

According to NFT Price Floor, the value of the cheapest available Bored Ape dipped down to just 48 ETH, well below $60,000, this week. In November so far, the floor price fell 33 percent.

Meanwhile, the crypto crash is only accelerating the trend, with the collapse of major cryptocurrency exchange FTX leaving its own mark on NFT markets.

Still Kicking

Despite the looming pessimism, plenty of Bored Apes are still being sold. In fact, according to Decrypt, around $6.5 million worth of Apes were moved on Tuesday alone, an increase of 135 percent day over day.

Is the end of the NFT nigh? Bored Apes are clearly worth a tiny fraction of what they once were, indicating a massive drop off in interest.

Yet many other much smaller NFT marketplaces are still able to generate plenty of hype, and millions of dollars in sales.

In other words, NFTs aren't likely to die out any time soon, but they are adapting to drastically changing market conditions — and leaving celebrities with deep losses in their questionable investments.

READ MORE: Justin Bieber Paid $1.3 Million for a Bored Ape NFT. It’s Now Worth $69K [Decrypt]

More on NFTs: The Latest Idea to Make People Actually Buy NFTs: Throw in a House

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Celebrities' Bored Apes Are Hilariously Worthless Now

The notorious ticket peddling service Ticketmaster has never been a fan favorite, and anyone who's ever bought a concert ticket there can attest to why. Preposterous prices, slimy junk fees, and terrible customer service are just a few of its mundane evils. In spite of how universally reviled it is, Ticketmaster has persisted as the king of the box office. But now, it's facing its worst PR nightmare in years — and that's saying something. Why? It made the fatal error of pissing off Taylor Swift fans, or "Swifties."

Swift's "Eras Tour," which will have her perform at over 50 venues in the US alone, is set to be one of the biggest music events on the planet. Biding their time, her fiercely loyal fanbase — probably the largest of any single artist and easily the most vocal online — have been waiting since 2018 for her next headlining tour. So, looking to guarantee a spot, many of them signed up for Ticketmaster's Verified Fans program, a system which was supposed to only allow a select amount of around 1.5 million real fans — as opposed to scalper bots — to buy tickets ahead of time.

It didn't work. Ticketmaster CEO Michael Rapino told The Hollywood Reporter that around 14 million users, some of them bots, rushed to buy pre-sale tickets this week, and it pretty much broke the service. Parts of the website immediately crashed, leaving millions either waiting for hours or suffering through a miserable, glitchy experience — only for some to be told they couldn't buy a ticket anyway even though they were verified. In total, Ticketmaster was barraged with 3.5 billion system requests, which is nearly half the population of the Earth and four times its previous peak.

Even with all the difficulties, it did manage to sell around two million tickets — but it's unclear how many of those went to actual, verified Swifties and how many went to scalpers.

And we suspect that Ticketmaster has made way more than that in the form of enemies. Search its name on social media right now, and you'll be returned with swarms of complaints from ardent Swifties and Ticketmaster haters crawling out of the woodwork.

To make matters worse, the maligned seller abruptly informed fans via Twitter that it would be canceling the sale of tickets to the general public originally planned for Friday, "due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand."

With Ticketmaster shutting its doors, vulturous resellers who gobbled up tickets during the presale pandemonium remain the only alternative for fans, selling them at outrageous amounts as high as $28,000, Reuters reports.

Exceptionally crummy service isn't exactly a scandal in itself, but the magnitude of Ticketmaster's mishandling of the situation — and the blatant scalping it's enabled — has brought significant attention to the company's nefarious practices and its stranglehold on the market.

Now, politicians are jumping on the Swifties' grievances to call for Ticketmaster's head.

"Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, [its] merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be [reined] in," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), in a tweet. "Break them up."

"It's no secret that Live Nation-Ticketmaster is an unchecked monopoly," echoed Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-RI), the chair of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law.

"The merger of these companies should never have been allowed in the first place," Cicilline added, stating that he's joining others to call on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to "investigate LiveNation’s efforts to jack up prices and strangle competition."

Ticketmaster was already a behemoth in the 90s when Pearl Jam — then one of the biggest bands in the world — tried to take them on. Eddie Vedder and his bandmates certainly made the concert corporation sweat for a time, but since then, it's only grown. In 2010, it merged with LiveNation, once its largest competitor and now Ticketmaster's parent company. Critics, like AOC and Cicilline, argue that this merger was in blatant violation of antitrust laws.

Monopolistic behavior aside, as well as frequently bullying artists and venues to give into its tyrannical demands, consumers don't have to dig very far to realize Ticketmaster is ripping them off. Buy a ticket on there and it could charge you a significant portion of the ticket price in service and other junk fees.

Another culprit? Its dynamic pricing model, infamously used in other industries like airline tickets and hotels, in which prices are continuously adjusted in real time based on demand. As a result, ticket prices are not made public before a sale begins. In theory, dynamic pricing is meant to make predatory resellers obsolete by keeping prices competitive. But really, it's just a good excuse for Ticketmaster to match its prices with that of ludicrous resellers and pocket the extra cash.

Furthermore, at least one 2018 investigation by CBC found that Ticketmaster was quietly recruiting professional scalpers into its reseller program, and turned a blind eye to them using hundreds of fake accounts to sell tickets.

Bearing all that in mind, you'd think Swift would speak up about the most recent fiasco over her tour.

And for a while, she didn't, driving fans frantic over her silence — which she's finally broken.

On Friday, Swift spoke out in a carefully worded statement on her Instagram.

"Well, it goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans," she began. "It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse."

Swift is clearly alluding to Ticketmaster here, and euphemistically summed up the situation as there being "a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets" — though she never specifically names the corporation.

Diplomatic as the words may be, they've dropped at the perfect moment, because The New York Times reports that the DOJ has opened an antitrust investigation over LiveNation's ownership of Ticketmaster (though at press time, official confirmation is still pending.)

Could this be the beginning of the end of the company's unfettered dominance? Maybe. Ticketmaster and LiveNation only seem to get stronger with the more bad PR they get. So taking them down? It'll take more than online outrage. However, with Swift looking poised to join the fight alongside the DOJ, maybe this time around the concert conglomerate will get a run for its money.

More on Taylor Swift: Taylor Swift Reportedly Threatened Microsoft Over Racist Chatbot

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Ticketmaster May Have Finally Met Its Match: Furious Swifties

Worst Case Scenario

Elon Musk's Twitter-buying experiment is somehow going even worse than expected, amid reports that he's locked employees out of the company's office buildings.

As reported by Platformer's Zoë Schiffer, an email sent to Twitter staff yesterday evening informed them out of the blue that they wouldn't be able to get into their offices for the rest of the week.

"We're hearing this is because Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are going to sabotage the company," Schiffer wrote. "Also, they're still trying to figure out which Twitter workers they need to cut access for."

Then, the saga somehow got even stranger today when Musk emailed staff asking them to come to the 10th floor of Twitter's headquarters — which, remember, they'd just been told they were locked out of — for a meeting on the 10th floor.

Ultimatums

All told, the aura of chaos surrounding Twitter since Musk's acquisition late last month has deepened to a comical degree.

News of the office closure, you'll recall, comes not long after Musk issued an ultimatum to the staff who survived his first purge the company's employees, in which he said that if "tweeps" didn't come into the office, they would be effectively tendering their resignations.

Just before the office closure announcement, Musk gave his new employees another apparent threat: that if they are not prepared "to be extremely hardcore" and work long in-office hours, they can cut and run with three months severance.

Unsurprisingly, many Twitter employees have chosen the latter — a move that some described to CNN's Darcy as a "mass exodus."

And in the face of all this contradiction and whiplash, who could blame them?

More on Musk: Panicked Elon Musk Reportedly Begging Engineers Not to Leave

The post Elon Musk Locks Twitter Employees Out Office, Then Asks Them to Meet Him on the 10th Floor appeared first on Futurism.

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Elon Musk Locks Twitter Employees Out Office, Then Asks Them to Meet Him on the 10th Floor

In just about a year, Facebook-turned-Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse vision has cost his company upwards of $15 billion, cratering value and — at least in part — triggering mass company layoffs. That's a high price tag, especially when the Facebook creator has shockingly little to show for it, both in actual technology and public interest.

Indeed, it seems that every time Zuckerberg excitedly explains what his currently-legless metaverse will one day hold, he's met with crickets — and a fair share of ridicule — at the town square. Most everyone finds themselves looking around and asking themselves the same question: who could this possibly be for, other than Zucko himself?

That question, however, doesn't really seem to matter to the swashzuckling CEO, who's either convinced that the public wants and needs his metaverse just as much as he does, or is simply just convicted to the belief that one day people will finally get it. After all, he's bet his company on this thing and needs the public to engage to stay financially viable long-term.

And sure, points for conviction. But conviction is easy if you're surrounded by a bunch of yes men — which, according to Vanity Fair, the founder unfortunately is. And with $15 billion down the line, that may not bode well for the Silicon Valley giant.

"The problem now is that Mark has surrounded himself with sycophants, and for some reason he's fallen for their vision of the future, which no one else is interested in," one former Facebook exec told Vanity Fair. "In a previous era, someone would have been able to reason with Mark about the company's direction, but that is no longer the case."

Given that previous reports have revealed that some Meta employees have taken to marking metaverse documents with the label "MMA" — "Make Mark Happy" — the revelation that he's limited his close circle to people who only agree with him isn't all that shocking. He wants the metaverse, he wants it bad, and he's put a mind-boggling amount of social and financial capital into his AR-driven dream.

While the majority of his many thousands of employees might disagree with him — Vanity Fair reports that current and former metamates have written things like "the metaverse will be our slow death" and "Mark Zuckerberg will single-handedly kill a company with the metaverse" on the Silicon Valley-loved Blind app — it's not exactly easy, or even that possible, to wrestle with the fact that you may have made a dire miscalculation this financially far down the road.

And if you just keep a close circle of people who just agree with you, you may not really have to confront that potential for failure. At least not for a while.

The truth is that Zuckerberg successfully created a thing that has impacted nearly every single person on this Earth. Few people can say that. And while it can be argued that the thing he built has, at its best, created some real avenues for connection, that same creation also seems to have led to his own isolation, in life and at work.

How ironic it is that he's marketed his metaverse on that same promise of connection, only to become more disconnected than ever.

READ MORE: "Mark Has Surrounded Himself with Sycophants": Zuckerberg's Big Bet on the Metaverse Is Backfiring [Vanity Fair]

More on the Meta value: Stock Analyst Cries on Tv Because He Recommended Facebook Stock

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Former Facebook Exec Says Zuckerberg Has Surrounded Himself With Sycophants

Meat and Greet

Behold, ethical omnivores: the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given a key go-ahead to what could be the first lab grown meat product bound for human consumption in the US.

The decision, a first for cultivated meat in the US, paves the way for Californian startup Upside Foods to start selling its lab-grown chicken product domestically — meaning that now, it only needs approval from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) before the ersatz chicken can hit restaurant menus.

"The world is experiencing a food revolution and the [FDA] is committed to supporting innovation in the food supply," FDA officials said in a statement. "The agency evaluated the information submitted by Upside Foods as part of a pre-market consultation for their food made from cultured chicken cells and has no further questions at this time about the firm’s safety conclusion."

Upside Foods' products were evaluated via a process in which manufacturers divulge the production process to the agency for review, along with a sample. If everything looks good after inspection, the FDA then sends back a "no further questions" letter to the company.

"We are thrilled at FDA's announcement," said Upside director of communications David Kay in an email to Reuters. "This historic step paves the way for our path to market."

Going Protein

Lab meat like Upside's aren't a plant-based imitation, unlike popular vegan alternatives such as Beyond Burgers. Instead, they're made from real animal cells grown in bioreactors, sparing the lives of actual livestock.

But while at a cellular level the meat may be the same, customers will definitely notice a difference in price. For now, cultivating meat remains an extremely expensive process, so pending USDA approval notwithstanding, it could still be a while before you see it hit the shelves of your local grocer.

To let eager, early customers try out the lab meat, Upside, which already announced its collaboration with Michelin star chef Dominique Crenn last year, will be debuting its chicken at specific upscale restaurants.

"We would want to bring this to people through chefs in the initial stage," CEO Uma Valeti told Wired. "Getting chefs excited about this is a really big deal for us. We want to work with the best partners who know how to cook well, and also give us feedback on what we could do better."

While the FDA's thumbs-up only applies to a specific product of Upside's, it's still a historic decision, signalling a way forward for an industry that's rapidly accruing investment.

Updated to clarify details regarding the FDA's evaluation of the product.

More on lab grown meat: Scientists Cook Comically Tiny Lab-Grown Hamburger

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FDA Gives First Go Ahead for Lab Grown Meat Product

Birth Canal

The James Webb Space Telescope's latest mind-bending image just dropped — and this one is, in a word, splendid.

As NASA notes in a blog post about the finding, the telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) was put to incredible use when capturing the "once-hidden features" of the beginnings of a star.

Known as "protostars," celestial objects like this one — found inside an uber-absorbant "dark nebula" cloud — are not yet stars, but will be soon. In short, the Webb telescope capture imagery of a star being born.

As NASA notes, the fledgling star itself is hidden within the tiny "neck" disk of the spectacular, fiery hourglass shape in the image — which is, as NASA notes, "about the size of our solar system" — and the colorful lights seen below and above this neck are emitted by the protostar's birth.

Countdown to a new star

Hidden in the neck of this “hourglass” of light are the very beginnings of a new star — a protostar. The clouds of dust and gas within this region are only visible in infrared light, the wavelengths that Webb specializes in: https://t.co/DtazblATMW pic.twitter.com/aGEEBO9BB8

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) November 16, 2022

Stellar Anatomy

While this incredible capture is not the first time space telescopes have observed star birth, Webb's latest does provide an incredible look at the phenomenon.

"The surrounding molecular cloud is made up of dense dust and gas being drawn to the center, where the protostar resides," the post reads. "As the material falls in, it spirals around the center. This creates a dense disk of material, known as an accretion disk, which feeds material to the protostar."

Some of that material, NASA notes, are "filaments of molecular hydrogen that have been shocked as the protostar ejects material away from it," most of which the stellar fetus takes for itself. It continues to feed on that material, growing more massive and compressing further until its core temperature rises to the point that it kickstarts nuclear fusion.

This gorgeous peek at that process is extraordinary to witness — and a yet another testament to the power of the mighty James Webb.

More on Webb: NASA Fixes Months-Long Issue With Webb Telescope

The post NASA Drops Stunning New James Webb Image of a Star Being Born appeared first on Futurism.

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NASA Drops Stunning New James Webb Image of a Star Being Born

Red Crew, Blue Crew

Had it not been for the heroics of three members of NASA's specialized "Red Crew," NASA's absolutely massive — and incredibly expensive — Space Launch System (SLS) likely wouldn't have made it off the ground this week.

During the launch, the painfully delayed Mega Moon Rocket sprang a hydrogen leak. The Red Crew ventured into the dangerous, half-loaded launch zone to fix it live. Incredible work indeed, although in spite of their heroics, keen-eyed observers did notice something strange about the so-called Red Crew: they, uh, don't wear red?

"How is it we spent $20B+ on this rocket," tweeted Chris Combs, a professor at the University of Texas San Antonio, "but we couldn't manage to get some RED SHIRTS for the Red Team."

Alas, the rumor is true. Red shirts seemed to be out of the budget this year — perhaps due to the ungodly amount of money spent on the rocket that these guys could have died while fixing — with the Red Crew-mates donning dark blue shirts instead. Per the NYT, they also drove white cars, which feels like an additional miss.

A leftover from last night that’s still bothering me:

how is it we spent $20B+ on this rocket but we couldn’t manage to get some RED SHIRTS for the Red Team pic.twitter.com/FO10Y6mg3H

— Chris Combs (@DrChrisCombs) November 16, 2022

Packing Nuts

For their part, the Red Crew didn't seem to care all that much, at least not in the moment. They were very much focused on needing to "torque" the "packing nuts," as they reportedly said during a post-launch interview on NASA TV. In other words, they were busy with your casual rocket science. And adrenaline, because, uh, risk of death.

"All I can say is we were very excited," Red Crew member Trent Annis told NASA TV, according to the NYT. "I was ready to get up there and go."

"We were very focused on what was happening up there," he added. "It's creaking, it's making venting noises, it's pretty scary."

In any case, shoutout to the Red Crew. The Artemis I liftoff is historic, and wouldn't have happened if they hadn't risked it all. They deserve a bonus, and at the very least? Some fresh new shirts.

READ MORE: When NASA'S moon rocket sprang a fuel leak, the launch team called in the 'red crew.' [The New York Times]

More on the Artemis I launch: Giant Nasa Rocket Blasts off Toward the Moon

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Experts Baffled by Why NASA’s “Red Crew” Wear Blue Shirts

Nice Rocket

Revenge porn is a horrible thing, and Twitter should definitely continue to ban anyone who attempts to post it on the app. That being said, a video of a rocket taking off — an actual rocket, you pervs — does not revenge porn make, and shouldn't be flagged as such.

It seems like a silly thing to have to say, but such is the exact situation that spaceflight photographer John Kraus found himself in earlier this week. Kraus, who was on site to photograph the historic Artemis I launch, took to Twitter to post a mesmerizing video of the liftoff — only to find himself kicked off of the app shortly thereafter, due to the fact that his post, for whatever inexplicable reason, had been marked as revenge porn.

"I’d like to acknowledge that our good friend and rocket photography extraordinaire, [John Kraus], has been completely locked out of twitter since yesterday, for an arbitrary and silly reason, the day of the biggest launch of his career," read an angry tweet from the Tim "Everyday Astronaut" Dodd. "Worst possible timing."

I’d like to acknowledge that our good friend and rocket photography extraordinaire @johnkrausphotos has been completely locked out of twitter since yesterday, for an arbitrary and silly reason, the day of the biggest launch of his career. Worst possible timing pic.twitter.com/USNUajwPJ4

— Everyday Astronaut (@Erdayastronaut) November 17, 2022

Let Freedom Ring

Twitter finally let Kraus back online today. But for a rocket photographer, getting kicked off of Twitter on the day of the Artemis I launch really is a nightmare scenario.

"Almost two days later, I'm back. Twitter just acknowledged that they falsely locked my account instantly after I posted a benign video/caption of the Artemis I launch," he tweeted upon his return. "This was an unfortunate error after one of the biggest launches of my career."

While there was some speculation that new Twitter owner Elon Musk — who fired waves of employees, then effectively forced a mass exodus of quitters, and has reportedly been begging employees to come back so the ship that is Twitter doesn't fully sink beneath the digital waves — was to blame for Kraus' unfortunately-timed ban, given the chaos that's ensued on the tech side since Musk's takeover. Kraus, however, denied that Musk had anything to do with it.

"Anyone speculating it had to do with [Elon Musk] / new Twitter policy / not wanting NASA content instead of SpaceX, or that it was an ITAR violation — you are WRONG," he clarified. "It was falsely auto-flagged by software/AI."

So, maybe not Musk's fault, but a screwup that now falls directly on his presumably still-full plate. Anyway. We're glad that Kraus is free. And, for the record, here's the video that led to the whole debacle:

For reference, this was the original, exact tweet that got my account falsely locked for almost two days. It is now visible. Enjoy! https://t.co/Rpnaqfw6yX

— John Kraus (@johnkrausphotos) November 18, 2022

More on Artemis I: Experts Baffled by Why Nasa's "Red Crew" Wear Blue Shirts

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