SUMMARY:Amid growing unrest in Greece, the government there is temporarily halting construction of permanent detention centers for asylum seekers. Tens of thousands of migrants have been stranded in the country for more than four years, since its border with Macedonia was sealed and the European Union failed to find enough alternative destinations. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.
SUMMARY:Five years into Europe's migration crisis, the conditions in the notorious Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos are hellish. Refugee children are especially vulnerable, facing hunger, bad sanitation and the threat of violence. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports that angry local residents are demanding a solution.
Separating children from their parents at the southwest border ignited a broad emotional outcry not often seen in the country’s long-running immigration debate. After weeks of defending the policy both as a deterrent and necessary to make the border legally meaningful, President Donald Trump and his administration reversed course.
The policy switch was itself a rarity for Trump, and it prompted the host of NBC’s Meet the Press Chuck Todd to ask the guests on his June 24 show, "Is this more of a refugee crisis than an immigration crisis?"
There is no definitive answer, but to frame the issue in terms of refugees instead of immigration redefines the problem.
"It becomes more of a humanitarian problem, than a jobs or economic one," said Sarah Pierce, an immigration analyst with the Migration Policy Institute.
We looked at what the data have to say.
It’s all about the Northern Triangle
For decades, the bulk of people crossing the southwest border without permission were Mexican. They worked on American farms, built American homes, processed American pigs, beef and chickens, and did other manual work.
The people showing up at the border today are more likely to come from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, a cluster known as the Northern Triangle. In 2017, non-Mexicans stopped at the southwest border outnumbered Mexicans by 50,000.
Not only are those nations poor, they are also particularly violent. The highest murder rates in the world are found in El Salvador and Honduras.
As the places people came from changed, so did the demographics of who was caught at the border.
Between 2013 and 2017, the number of families apprehended by Customs and Border Patrol agents rose five-fold, from 14,855 to 75,622.
Minors (anyone under 18) went from 7 percent of all people stopped at the border in 2011 to 27 percent in 2017 – nearly a four-fold increase. In the same period, the fraction of females, both children and adults, doubled from 13 percent of all apprehensions to 26 percent.
"The recent crisis brings very different immigrants from those who were undocumented and came in the 1990s," said economist Giovanni Peri at University of California, Davis. "They are younger, more vulnerable and more similar to refugees."
Peri, along with most researchers, emphasizes that migrants have a blend of motivations. In the case of the Northern Triangle countries, escaping poverty and fleeing violence go hand in hand.
Teasing out the relative weight of each is tricky.
Fortunately for us, one economist took a stab at it.
The violence-migration connection
Around 2012, a surge of teenagers without their parents began arriving at the southwest border. By 2013, for the first time, the unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras outnumbered those from Mexico. In 2014, they accounted for 75 percent of arrivals at the border.
U.S. authorities ended up collecting detailed information on 178,825 minors. Critically, that data included the towns and cities they had left behind.
Economist Michael Clemens at the Center for Global Development took that location data and ran it against the homicide data specific to those places. Violence, Clemens noted, isn’t spread evenly. It concentrates in hot spots.
He also folded in figures for local unemployment, income, poverty and school enrollment.
Clemens found that murders drive migration, but it wasn’t as simple as people fleeing the areas with the highest murder rates. What mattered most was a rise in homicides.
Clemens determined that on average, an increase of 1.08 homicides per year over four years in a community led to one additional minor from that community at the American border each year. To further complicate the picture, a jump in murders had a snowball effect, driving migration numbers up for several years going forward, even if the violence leveled off.
Clemens also found that poverty alone didn’t drive migration. Teenagers – and it was mainly 16-and-17-year-olds – tended not to come from the poorest places, but from places where there was enough money to pay smugglers to shepard minors through Mexico and across the U.S. border.
At the same time, there was a strong connection between sustained poverty and migration.
At the end of the day, Clemens gave about equal weight to violence and economic drivers.
The impact of "short-term increases in violence is roughly equal to the explanatory power of long-term economic characteristics like average income and poverty," Clemens wrote.
Put another way, the surge of minors at the U.S.-Mexico border is both an immigration and refugee issue.
A key caveat to Clemens’ work is that it looked only at unaccompanied minors, and it’s possible that the picture would change if adults and families were included. But based on studies of family migrants, Clemens said it likely would look the same.
"The decision for movement by unaccompanied children is one of safety and opportunity for children, and that is also heavily in the minds of family units," Clemens said. "The two kinds don’t self-report substantially different motives."
Clemens also noted that in the 2011-16 period, changes in U.S. policy had little impact on migration trends from the Northern Triangle.
The end of a rule of thumb
For decades, a simple correlation tied illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States.
"When the U.S. unemployment rate went down, migration went up," said Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at Pew Research. "If the unemployment rate went up, migration went down."
That held true through 2010. Then, the pattern stopped.
"After 2010, the unemployment rate dropped dramatically," Passel said. "If this model had held, Mexican migration would have gone up. Instead, Mexican migration went down."
Passel said the rise in numbers from other Central American countries, mainly the Northern Triangle group, is not a simple swap of one group for another. The demographic mix is entirely different.
"There’s something else going on that’s causing the Central American increase," Passel said. "The economy plays a role but it’s not solely determinative."
Passel and other researchers point to several reasons for the breakdown in the traditional pattern of illegal migration. Studies show a drop in the number of young men in Mexico, a group that was always the main source of border crossers. In some areas of Mexico, jobs are more available. And importantly, American border security has gone steadily up since about 2005.
"Just about everybody gets caught now," said Passel. "That seemed to work as a deterrent of Mexican migration, but those same factors don’t seem to be affecting Central American migration."
Peri, the UC Davis economist, suggested that the hardening of the border itself changed the mix of people caught trying to enter illegally.
"The very strict enforcement keeps away people who are motivated mainly by jobs, and selects only very desperate Central Americans, including many kids."
To the extent that dynamic is at work, then the primary solution to an immigration problem fueled a humanitarian one.
Not your typical refugee
Legally, American laws and regulations count someone as a refugee by granting them asylum on the grounds that their personal safety is at risk if they stayed in their home country. As we’ve reported, the number of asylum requests has skyrocketed, but the fraction granted has held steady at about 20 percent.
"If they do not qualify for asylum either then they are not ‘refugees’ in the border sense of someone fleeing for their life and in need of resettlement," said the director of the Center for Immigration Studies Steven Camarota. The center promotes lower and more selective immigration.
"If someone has gone 1,500 miles through Mexico, and did not apply for asylum there, then it implies that they are not so much fleeing for their life, which is suppose to be the case for an asylee, but rather they are looking for a better life in the United States," Camarota said.
Passel at Pew Research noted that ties to family and friends play a large role when migrants pick a destination. Many people stopped at the border have an immediate or extended family member already in the United States. Migrants aim for places where community connections will help them once they arrive.
"Safety is one thing, but you have to live, too," Passel said.
COMMENT: Camarota is wrongly assuming that asylum seakers know U.S. immigration policy. They usually don't speak nor read English, so how would they know?
SUMMARY: With more than a million newcomers to Germany since 2015, there's been a resulting rise in anti-Semitism. Now there are growing calls to mandate that refugees and Muslim migrants visit concentration camps to help improve their understanding of the country's terrible past and the echoes today. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.
SUMMARY: The Rohingya people, an ethnic Muslim minority group, have fled murder and persecution by the army of Myanmar to seek refuge in camps in
Southern Bangladesh, but their arrival has been less than welcome. Special correspondent Tania Rashid reports.
SUMMARY:After decades of decline, the city of Utica, New York, is growing again, thanks in part to its reputation as "the town that loves refugees." And their basic reason for loving refugees is simple: An influx of new residents and workers have helped keep its economy afloat. But are there also downsides to an refugee-driven recovery? Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.
SUMMARY: What does the word "refugee" mean to the author of a short story collection called "The Refugees?" They “are the unwanted," says Viet Thanh Nguyen, who claims his own identity among them. Nguyen joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss his stories about living between worlds and being haunted by the past.
SUMMARY: As a Syrian-American journalist who has covered Syria's refugee crisis, Alia Malek understands where they are coming from and where they're going. The circumstances today are so different from when her parents left Damascus, yet it could have been her family caught in the horrors of war. Malek offers her humble opinion about how to practice empathy for the victims of the Syrian conflict.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times Columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including President Trump's pick of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, and the tough choice for Democrats on how to respond in light of GOP obstruction on Merrick Garland, plus the controversial refugee and travel ban and more.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That is syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Welcome to both of you. So much to talk about.
David, week two of the Trump administration.
Let's start with his pick for the Supreme Court, federal Judge Neil Gorsuch.
What do you make of him?
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times:Clearly qualified, first-rate legal scholar, first-rate judge, first-rate mind, apparently a first-rate person. He's what any — the best any Republican President would have done. So, I thought a very good pick for Donald Trump.
The Democrats have a challenge. They can either behave the way the Republicans did to Merrick Garland, which would be disgraceful, but that would blow up the system. They have a loyalty either — I think a primary loyalty to the Constitution and basically to the norms of how we have done justice constitutional — or justice confirmations for the past many decades.
And that is, if the President picks someone who is basically qualified, basically a good person, then you confirm that person even if you don't agree, because your side lost the election.
Now, I understand the Democratic thinking. The Republicans didn't behave this way. But I guess my belief is that two terrible behaviors don't make a good behavior.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What's your take on Judge Gorsuch?
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: Well, Judy, first of all, I agree with David on the assessment of him.
He went to Georgetown Prep, which is a rather exclusive local prep school, then on to Columbia College, and then to Harvard Law School, then to Oxford.
But the Vice President made a point when he was interviewed by you in this show, emphasizing he's a fourth-generation Coloradan, because his resume sounds very much like all the other justices on the Supreme Court.
And as somebody who said that we ought to have somebody on the court who went to night school or went to public school — but, nevertheless, he does seem by temperament — and I will say this. In an administration that has been marked by total chaos and is unsettling in the way it's behaved and the impulses it's shown by its President, this was the exception.
It was incredibly normal. They did it well. The announcement was done well. He's being — the Sherpa he has on Capitol Hill is former Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who is well-respected with moderates and Democrats, and Ron Bonjean, who was Trent Lott's adviser and spokesman.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I do want to get, David, to the executive orders. They have been coming at us fast and furious just about every day. But the big one I want to ask you about is the immigration order. It’s created a firestorm. We just — we announced — we just reported a few minutes ago a couple of federal judges have ruled on it because of legal challenges.
There have been protests. You have got State Department employees who have signed a letter of dissent.
Is the administration getting off on the right foot or not with this statement?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, you know, I have been inundated by 18 inches of orders, like we all have over the last couple of weeks, and some of them are good.
I think some of them are completely toothless and symbolic. But this one on the refuges is the one that’s truly abominable and reprehensible. We can’t remind people enough that it responds to a problem that does not exist, that refugees in from these countries have killed no one in a terrorist attack. That’s not where the threat has lain.
It’s from homegrown people. It’s maybe from other countries. The 9/11 people were from Saudi Arabia and some other places. And so it’s a response to nothing.
And so you have to think that it’s just an outgrowth of nativism. And there has been a whiff of nativism, to put it politely, in a lot of the measures that this administration has done. And it has offended our career people in the State Department. It has offended our allies. It has offended a lot of people around the world, for no good effect.
Usually, when there’s some policy, there are pros and cons. There are literally no pros to this one.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Any good effect?
MARK SHIELDS: No good effect.
And both the President and his Vice President made the mistake of referring to it as a ban, then tried to — Muslim ban — then tried to walk it back. No.
And, Judy, the irony is, in a week where the President says he wants to unleash churches politically from being hobbled, and goes to the National Prayer Breakfast, I mean, forgotten is the message of Christ, that — how you treat the stranger among you. Whatever you do for the least of these, that of Moses, that you shall not oppress an alien, because you yourselves have been aliens.
This has been the hallmark, this has been the defining value of the United States. We had six Nobel Prize winners American last year. All six were immigrants. Immigrants have been the sustenance and the survival and the treasure of this country.
And Donald Trump is appealing, as he did during the campaign, to the basest, the most selfish and the most literally un-American of instincts.
SUMMARY: President Donald Trump's executive order concerning refugees and visa-holders has sparked protests and backlash across the nation and overseas. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright joins Judy Woodruff to share her rebuke of the White House ban, as well as controversial changes adding Stephen Bannon to the National Security Council.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now, for more on the executive order on refugees and visa holders and changes the President to the makeup of the National Security Council, we turn first to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She served as the United States' top diplomat during the Clinton administration.
When we spoke a short time ago, I began by asking her reaction to the Trump White House ban on immigrants from seven countries.
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, Former U.S. Secretary of State:Judy, I'm appalled, because it's done everything except keep America safer.
And let me just say, I kind of have looked at things thinking that they made this executive action without really understanding what it's all about. So, it was unprepared, I would say, because they didn't really see how the government works. They didn't really contact the various departments that are part of this homeland security, trying to figure out what would happen once you do something like this from the Oval Office.
So, unprepared. And then I think, also, part of the problem was, they didn't understand what I say the unintended consequences of this, because the truth is that the countries that have been designated are now reacting, creating more problems for us, and then banning people — our people from going there.
For instance, in Iraq, how do we protect our troops? What about the people that are interpreting? And then I think all of it is based on untrue facts. And so I think it is a very serious problem in terms of how the whole system works.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let me take a couple of those, one at a time.
What they're saying is if — they're saying, if they had let the rest of the government know what they were doing, that it would have leaked, and they said there would have been a flood of people trying to get in. And they also say that they're basically only following what the Obama administration had done a few years ago in listing countries that were the most for the United States to fear in terms of terrorism.
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Well, the latter is true.
What was happened was, there was an incident where something was coming out of Iraq. They were concerned about what the facts really were. They wanted to re-vet some people. They didn't have enough manpower to do that, so things slowed down.
So there is nothing like that happened in the Obama administration. I think the excuse about not letting others know, first of all, they need to understand that the government, in fact, when people trust each other, doesn't leak out when it's an important issue.
But how can you not let the departments that have something to do with executing the order not know? Because I think that they were genuinely surprised by, you know how slow it was, what happened when they detained people, what happened then when there were demonstrations against it.
So I'm willing to say they were surprised at the reaction to it, but that's a sign of the fact they didn't understand what they were doing.
SUMMARY: President Donald Trump had promised a crackdown on immigration on the campaign trail. Now he's done it, following through with a ban on refugees that was popular with his supporters. Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and Tamara Keith of NPR, join Judy Woodruff to discuss the political effects of the President's executive order restricting immigration and more.
SUMMARY:After seven years of working alongside the U.S. military, Abdul Hamid Abdul Ghani was set to move to live in the United States with his family next week. Now President Donald Trump's executive order has left their future uncertain. Special correspondent Jane Ferguson reports from Northern Iraq.
SUMMARY: Lawsuits have challenged President Donald Trump's executive order that temporarily prohibits immigrants and visitors from seven countries. Jonathan Turley a law professor at George Washington University, and Neal Katyal former Acting Solicitor General under President Obama, join Miles O'Brien to discuss whether Trump's policy violates the law or [U.S.] Constitution.
SUMMARY: President Trump acted on one of his most polarizing promises, signing an executive action to curb the admission of refugees, including an indefinite ban on accepting refugees from war-torn Syria. Lisa Desjardins offers a roundup of news from the White House, including a press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa Day and a phone call with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.
SUMMARY: An executive order to limit refugees, immigrants and visitors to the United States, especially from Muslim countries, is meant to reduce the chance of terrorist attacks on home soil. But is the move by President Trump an effective form of deterrence? Antonio Mora talks with Reuel Marc Gerecht from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and former State Department official Daniel Benjamin.
SUMMARY: The U.S. admitted 12,500 Syrian refugees in 2016, but President Donald Trump's executive order Friday indefinitely bans any more from entering the U.S. NewsHour Weekend Correspondent Megan Thompson reports on how the Trump administration's policy has left some refugees already in the country very concerned.
SUMMARY: Protests erupted across the country following President Trump's executive order banning immigrants from seven countries. The administration cited national security concerns as the reason for the order, even as a federal judge blocked part of it on Saturday night. USA Today Immigration Reporter Alan Gomez joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss.
SUMMARY: A federal judge on Saturday issued a stay to halt portions of President Trump's executive order banning entry to the U.S. for people from seven countries. The order prevents the government from deporting people that are detained at U.S. airports. ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, whose organization filed the complaint, joins Hari Sreenivasan to help us understand what happened.
SUMMARY: Berlin's normally bustling Christmas market was quiet Tuesday, as investigators searched for clues into a truck attack that killed a dozen people and injured 50. A suspect who was detained after the attack was released due to insufficient evidence, and the Islamic State later claimed responsibility. From Berlin, special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility tonight for the Berlin truck attack that killed a dozen people and injured 50.
That word came hours after German police let their main suspect go.
Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports from Berlin.
MALCOLM BRABANT, Special correspondent: This normally bustling Christmas market was eerily quiet today, as investigators searched for clues.
Swathed in fog, and with armed guards sealing off the area, Berlin was coming to terms with its new status as a victim of terrorism, after Paris, Brussels, and Nice.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke at a morning news conference.
ANGELA MERKEL, Chancellor, Germany (through translator): There is still a lot that we don't know about this act with sufficient certainty, but we must, as things stand, assume it was a terrorist attack.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Police detained a Pakistani asylum-seeker shortly after the truck rammed into a crowd of people on Monday. But, today, he was released, due to insufficient evidence. Prosecutors said he matched a description of the suspected attacker, but he denied any involvement.
The truck, which had been carrying steel beams, was towed away earlier this morning. The body of a Polish truck driver was found inside the cabin. He had been stabbed and shot after being hijacked. The gun used to kill him has yet to be found.
PROF. PETER NEUMANN, King's College, London: It was waiting to happen, no? I'm not, like, totally surprised.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Berlin is the hometown of terrorism expert Peter Neumann. He believes German authorities were too complacent about the possibility of an attack and didn't offer sufficient protection to the Christmas markets.
PROF. PETER NEUMANN:I think, in Germany, people have been very blessed with the idea that they would be spared this kind of attack. And so I don't think that German authorities were thinking as systematically about the threat from terrorism as authorities in Britain have or authorities in other countries.
This will have to change. And there will be a very uncomfortable discussion in Germany about anti-terrorism measures, but also, of course, about the relationship with Muslim communities and with refugees.
SUMMARY: The manhunt stemming from Monday's Christmas market massacre in Berlin has spread across Europe, and there's a new suspect. His name is Anis Amri, and he is a 24-year-old asylum seeker from Tunisia. Judy Woodruff speaks with special correspondent Malcolm Brabant, who is in Berlin, about the suspect's criminal history, the reward for information about him and increased surveillance in Germany.
SUMMARY: The man suspected of carrying out an attack on a Christmas market was well known to German authorities. Anis Amri was under surveillance for six months and slated for deportation, but his home country refused to accept him. Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Peter Neumann of King's College about how German authorities could have missed the signals.
SUMMARY: In a world struggling with anti-immigrant sentiment, Uganda provides a rare hospitable welcome for those seeking asylum. Refugees live in settlements where they are able to run small businesses, attend mosques and children attend school. The country's support system is possible mainly because of its unilateral political structure. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from Uganda.
Editor's Note: A version of this story aired on the PBS program “Religion and Ethics Weekly.”
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):In a world struggling to accommodate a record number of refugees, one country has been notably welcoming.
Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro has a report from Uganda. It's part of his Agents for Change series.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO (NewsHour): Nakivale in Southern Uganda looks like any other dusty rural African town. What's remarkable is that almost none of its 113,000 residents are Ugandan.
Ethiopia?
All of these schoolchildren and their parents are refugees.
Burundi? Rwanda? Congo?
All told, 13 nations are represented in this crowded school, their families fleeing conflicts across a wide swathe of East Africa and finding haven in what must rank as one of the world's most hospitable countries to refugees.
In Uganda, refugees are placed in settlements and not camps, and the government says there's an important difference. Camps tend to confine people, whereas, in Uganda, when refugees arrive, they are issued legal I.D.s that entitle them to move freely anywhere in the country, to find a job, start a business, put their children in school.
Refugees in rural areas are given a small plot of land to farm. Others migrate to the urban areas. Somalis are among the earlier arrivals in recent years. Their enclaves in the capital, Kampala, are well-established with small businesses and mosques, a predominantly Muslim community in a mostly Christian nation.
Mohammed Abdi runs this grocery story with his partner, Zahara Hassan.
MOHAMMED ABDI, Somali Immigrant (through translator): We have very many Ugandan customers and we are friends. I am one of the Somali elders in the community. We interact with the elders of the Ugandan community, whether leaders in this distract or region. And we are friends, and they welcome us. We're very happy. We're like one people.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: And one scholar who's studied refugees in Uganda says there's reason to be happy.
ALEXANDER BETTS, Oxford University:We showed in the capital city of Uganda, Kampala, 20 percent of refugees own businesses that employ someone else. And of those they employ, 40 percent are citizens of the host country. So refugees can contribute to the host societies that they're part of.
SUMMARY: In an article that consumes the entirety of this week's New York Times Magazine, Scott Anderson aims to tell a story of great breadth and timeliness, how the current conflicts in the Middle East arose, and how they might evolve from here. Hari Sreenivasan discusses with Anderson how the writer leveraged six individual voices to illustrate the narrative of these immensely complex hostilities.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): The last five years of tumult in the Middle East defy easy explanations. Revolutions that began with much hope in early 2011 have evolved into disaster in places like Syria and Libya and led to political upheaval and repression in Egypt.
In Iraq, the American-led war that began in 2003 has morphed into a many-sided conflict that has once again brought America back into the fight there and in Syria.
Caught in the middle, millions of people whose lives have been upended.
An attempt to capture in part the story of this cataclysmic time comes now from journalist Scott Anderson and photographer Paolo Pellegrin, whose work “Fractured Lands” comprises the entirety issue of this Sunday's “New York Times Magazine.”
And Scott Anderson joins me now.
You're telling one bigger story, and you're using six different voices to get at it.
SCOTT ANDERSON, Contributing Writer, The New York Times Magazine: Right.
HARI SREENIVASAN: But the big thesis in a nutshell.
SCOTT ANDERSON:I wanted to tell this kind of broad story of how we got here, and to a degree where we might be headed next. And to tell this story, I really needed to focus in on people.
HARI SREENIVASAN: One of the characters that you focus on in Iraq is so compelling. It's a young woman who ends up — she was working for the CPA for a little while, the Provisional Authority. Tell us about her arc now.
SCOTT ANDERSON: Right.
Yes. Khulood al-Zaidi, she was — she's from a provincial town in Southern Iraq from a Shia family. When the Americans invaded in 2003, she heard the talk of democracy and human rights and women's empowerment that the CPA was talking about. She became an instant convert. She worked for the CPA.
And then, when the Americans left, she was stranded on the beach, so to speak. And she tried to continue doing work. She received many death threats from the militias, finally ended up having to go into exile in Jordan. And just in the last — about six months, she joined the migrant exodus to Europe.
So, now she and one of her sisters are living in a little town in Austria, and they have been given asylum and they're going to start a university in September.
SUMMARY: They may not be winning gold, but their stories are certainly medal worthy. The first-ever Refugee Olympic Team is competing in Rio, stacked with athletes like 18-year-old Yusra Mardini, who saved herself and other Syrians stranded during a dangerous Aegean crossing. Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, says that the team aims to counteract negative global sentiment toward refugees.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): And we turn to another big story of these Games, away from the medal podiums.
Across the globe today, there are some 65 million people who've been forced from their homes, an unprecedented number. Ten refugees are now on the world stage in Rio.
He didn't win the 100 meter butterfly yesterday, not even close, but 25-year-old Rami Anis, a Syrian refugee now living in Belgium, did get a standing ovation; 18-year-old Yusra Mardini, also from Syria, won a preliminary heat in her race before failing to advance further. Still, by the very special terms she'd set for herself, this was a victory.
YUSRA MARDINI, Swimmer, Refugee Olympic Team: For the refugees in Brazil, and all the refugees around the world, we are going to represent you guys in a really good picture. And I hope you are going to learn from our story that you have to move on, because life will never stop with your problems or anything. And I hope that everyone will continue to achieve their dreams.
JEFFREY BROWN: Just last year, both Yusra Mardini and Rami Anis made the dangerous voyage across the Aegean Sea that's become a symbol of an international refugee crisis.
On Mardini's trip, the motor failed and she and her sister, also a swimmer, were the only ones strong enough to swim the crowded boat to safety. One week ago, to a resounding welcome, the two young Syrians and eight other athletes made history as the first ever Refugee Olympic Team.
Filippo Grandi, U.N. high commissioner for refugees, was there, and spoke with us yesterday from his Geneva headquarters.
FILIPPO GRANDI, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees: I was so nervous, like if I was going to give an exam, I can tell you. And we had to wait for the whole ceremony, because they were the last but one team to enter before the hosts, Brazil. And when they entered, the emotion was unlimited.
Need I say, Trump's solution would be to send them to the 'work camps' (aka gas chambers). He just knows (NOT!) that ALL refugees are terrorists.
Excerpt
SUMMARY: Refugees arriving in upstate New York in recent years have increasingly come from active conflict zones, including Syria and Iraq -- many fleeing with injuries of war and deep emotional scars. As the refugee populations in places like Buffalo change, the health care systems and cultures of these cities have been changing, too. Special correspondent Sarah Varney reports.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): President Obama has pledged to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees by October, despite resistance playing out in many communities.
Refugees, many of them rootless for years, often arrive with significant medical problems and psychological trauma.
Special correspondent Sarah Varney brings us this report about how one city — Buffalo, New York — is adapting. Her story was produced in collaboration with our partner Kaiser Health News.
SARAH VARNEY, Kaiser Health News: Since Murhaf, Ghenwa, and their children moved here from Syria, even mundane tasks like cooking and homework have become more complicated.
MAN: They have 10 airplanes.
SARAH VARNEY: Unaccustomed to this new life, the family relies on help from Hassan Alishaqi, from a local resettlement agency called Journey's End.
Refugee agencies help families like this one find housing and jobs, get medical care and health insurance and enroll in English classes and schools.
They fled Syria after civil war erupted there in 2011, unleashing an exodus of more than four million refugees. The destruction and violence came close to Murhaf's family during one of their last nights in the city of Homs.
MURHAF, Syrian Refugee (through translator): Some bullets came to my house through the window. And I was afraid for the safety of my kids. They never sleep because of — it's just very hard for them to sleep.
SARAH VARNEY: After a year in Cairo and exhaustive security checks, the family arrived in Buffalo, a quiet city on the edge of Lake Erie. And like many new arrivals here, they're struggling with the aftermath of their horrific journey as they attempt to build healthier lives in their new home.
More than 90 percent of the refugees who resettle to New York live in upstate New York. The city of Buffalo has become a welcoming haven for many of them. But over the last 15 years, the countries and conflicts they come from have changed. And the health care needs of refugees are changing, too.
Jericho Road is a community health center in Buffalo that has long treated refugees from some of the world's poorest countries, including Myanmar, Bhutan, Sudan and Somalia. The clinic is a crossroads of languages and customs.
New refugees receive free medical assistance from the federal government for eight months. Then they can buy private insurance or enroll in Medicaid.
REMINDER from the plaque on our Statue of Liberty:
"New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
SUMMARY: Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, says the tens of millions of refugees around the world should be embraced, not feared. But she also said it's important for screening systems to be in place. She notes that more than 800,000 refugees have been taken in by the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks and none has been involved in domestic terrorism. Judy Woodruff sits down with Power.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now to my interview with the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power.
She was here in Washington yesterday to speak on the plight of refugees, now a record 65 million worldwide. I spoke with her yesterday afternoon at the State Department.
Ambassador Susan Power, thank you very much for talking with us.
SAMANTHA POWER, U.S. Ambassador to the UN: Great to be here.
JUDY WOODRUFF:You are calling this situation right now the greatest refugee crisis the world has known since World War II. And yet you see this rising, enormous backlash in Europe, in the United States. It says that a lot of people, maybe most people, don't share your view about what to do. How do you deal with that?
SAMANTHA POWER: Well, I think there's a lot of latent public opinion that also doesn't necessarily get airtime during presidential elections, for instance.
But there are fears. I think those fears are stoked. We have seen those in history at different times, whether it's on whether we let in Jewish refugees during the Second World War or Vietnamese refugees after the Vietnam War.
So there's nothing new in that set of fears. I think some of the fears are warranted. People are wondering, could ISIL potentially sneak through? And we have to answer those fears. And I think we have by putting in place these incredibly strenuous vetting processes that have the FBI and the Center for Counterterrorism and the Department of Homeland Security at the table vetting the time it takes.
But we also need to do a better job lifting up, I think, the voices of those people who, again, aren't necessarily running for office, but who have welcomed refugees into their homes, into their communities, or giving small amounts of money, donating toys. And I see that all over the place in going to meet with refugees around the country, is just how much generosity there is at the same time.
SUMMARY: According to a new study, some 50 percent of all Muslim students in the U.S. have been bullied by their peers. In mostly-white St. Cloud, Minnesota — where thousands of east African refugees have relocated — the problem got so bad that Muslim students walked out of the city's high school en massè. John Tulenko of Education Week takes a look at the intersection of education and Islamophobia.
JOHN TULENKO, Education Week: Hafsa Abdi, who's 18-years-old, remembers well the day four years ago when she was first bullied for being Muslim.
HAFSA ABDI, Student, St. Cloud Technical High School:The last day of by eighth grade year, I was just going home, and then this boy — I think he was a year younger than me — he pulled off my hijab. And at the time, I was wearing a longer one, so it was more easy to kind of like pull off from the back.
And then I also had like a pin underneath to hold it in place. And then that kind of came loose. So, like, at the time I was just trying to think of like five different things at one time, like trying to get the pin to not stab me in the neck, and then turn around to see who this kid is.
JOHN TULENKO: In high school, the bullying continued, especially when she and other Muslim students would gather to pray.
HAFSA ABDI:Mostly, the upperclassmen, they would come into the bathroom sometimes and start fighting with the Somali girls that were trying to wash for prayer, and then when it gets reported, nothing would happen.
JOHN TULENKO: What would they say?
HAFSA ABDI: So they'd be like, oh, well, why are you making the bathroom dirty, you stinky Somalian or you terrorist or stuff like that, or go back to where you came from.
JOHN TULENKO:Where Hafsa comes from is Minnesota. She was born here, after her parents fled Somalia to escape civil war. Thousands of other East African refugees have also come to St. Cloud, changing the face of this mostly white, mostly Catholic small city.
WILLIE JETT, Superintendent, St. Cloud Area School District 742: My job is to make sure that all children, whether it's their children, whether it's somebody brand-new to the country, that they have the best tools available to be successful here in America, here within our community.
JOHN TULENKO: For superintendent Willie Jett, educating the new arrivals required changes across the board.
WILLIE JETT: What we have had to do is start from ground zero. You're trying to make sure that, (A) All the different languages within school are welcomed.
You're trying to make sure that you have interpreters. You're making sure that you're revamping teaching staff and support staff and the way that you hold conferences, the way that you send messages home. It's not what it was 20, 30, 40 years ago, even 10 years ago.
SUMMARY: The island of Lesbos is one of the Aegean's most idyllic locales, and long a destination for tourism in Greece. But local residents and businesses are bracing for potential economic catastrophe, as tens of thousands of vacationers are staying away because of the island's new role as a landing zone for refugees. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports on efforts to reinvigorate tourism.
HELEN STEDMAN, British Bird Watcher: I have seen a cormorant. I have seen a Ruppell's warbler. I have seen a sub-alpine warbler.
MALCOLM BRABANT (NewsHour): Every year, spring in Lesbos lures millions of migrating birds and British pensioner Helen Stedman. Unlike other tourists, troubled by images of suffering and misery, she and her keen bird-watching partner, Jeff Bailey, have remained faithful to an island they believe typifies unadulterated Greece.
HELEN STEDMAN: I feel sad for the islanders. The economy is suffering. And we have noticed that restaurants that we have favored before have closed. They're not there anymore. They have gone bankrupt.
The people can't — the locals can't afford to pay wages. And they're just not opening. Tourism is their biggest income in this island. And if we don't come and support them, then they're not going to survive,
MALCOLM BRABANT: Seasonal worker Nikos Paspalatelis is helping his former boss prepare the hotel for the summer. Married with two small children, Paspalatelis has worked here for almost 20 years, but he's been laid off this summer, which means his state insurance won't be paid, which means he won't be entitled to unemployment benefit in the winter, when there's no seasonal work.
NIKOS PASPALATELIS, Newly Unemployed: I'm not going to say that we're angry, because angry is something you do if somebody make you very big damage to you. But this is — I hope this will be only for one year, this damage. Maybe if you ask me maybe in two or three years, if this situation continue, I would say, yes, I'm going to be hungry — angry — sorry.
MALCOLM BRABANT:This hotel was on the front line. The owners estimate more than 1,000 boats landed on the beach next to their taverna, most during the peak season. German water sports instructor Wolfgang Punke has come to say farewell and remove his gear.
SUMMARY: In the midst of a campaign season filled with anti-migrant rhetoric, the once-downtrodden town of Utica in upstate New York has been more welcoming; one out of every four citizens there is a refugee. But Utica's commitment to resettlement isn’t purely humanitarian -- its open door policy is also a pioneering economic tool for revitalizing the Rust Belt. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour):Post-industrial Utica, New York; Upstate, downtrodden, and, in the heart of downtown, where the United Methodist Church used to be, a thriving mosque.
In the world beyond Utica, the tide of refugees rises, the fear of foreigners swells. Muslim terrorists, real and imagined, haunt us. Ted Cruz calls for increased policing of Muslim neighborhoods.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), Republican Presidential Candidate: Focus on communities where radicalization is a risk.
PAUL SOLMAN: Donald Trump’s first campaign ad went further.
NARRATOR: The politicians can pretend it’s something else, but Donald Trump calls it radical Islamic terrorism. That’s why he’s calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until we can figure out what’s going on.
PAUL SOLMAN:But when we asked Utica Mayor Robert Palmieri if the city would be willing to resettle Syrian refugees?
MAYOR ROBERT PALMIERI, Utica, New York:I would say, absolutely, we would be, because Utica starts with you. It’s as simple as that.
PAUL SOLMAN: There’s the humanitarian aspect, of course, America’s historic promise to extend a hand to huddled masses yearning to breathe free. But Utica likes the economics.
MAYOR ROBERT PALMIERI:They’re willing to work and they work extremely hard. It’s the rebound for our great city.
PAUL SOLMAN: Refugee resettlement as an economic development tool, a Rust Belt revival strategy Utica has pioneered. After decades of decline — the city lost a third of its population when its factories closed — Utica is growing again, back up to 62,000 people, thanks in part to its reputation as — quote — “the town that loves refugees,” who now make up one out of every four residents.
Thousands are Muslims from Bosnia, refugees of the war there in the 1990s.
SAKIB DURACAK, Bosnian War Refugee: We left everything what we have at that time and start from zero again.
PAUL SOLMAN: Sakib Duracak, who trained in Bosnia as a construction engineer, started a small business in Utica rehabbing cheap, often crumbling, houses for refugees looking to build a new life.
SAKIB DURACAK: A huge opportunity, because, at the time when we came in Utica, it’s a relatively, very dead and poor city.
SUMMARY: Established by the U.N. in 1991 to house Somalis fleeing their civil war, the Dadaab Refugee Camp complex in eastern Kenya has grown into the largest in the world. Some call it a humanitarian disaster, but to its half-million residents, it is both their last resort and their home. Judy Woodruff talks to Ben Rawlence, author of “City of Thorns,” an inside look at stories of survival in Dadaab.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Ben Rawlence, welcome.
BEN RAWLENCE, Author, “City of Thorns”: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, we’re hearing a lot about refugees these days, but you are writing about a group of refugees we hear almost nothing about.
What drew you to Kenya? What drew to you this camp?
BEN RAWLENCE: Well, for nearly 10 years, I worked for Human Rights Watch.
And I first came to Dadaab, this refugee camp, in 2010. And the place just blew my mind. It was a complete shock to me that I hadn’t heard about it before, and, in fact, that this place should still exist. At that time, it was 20 years old. And now it’s 25 years old.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It started out as something much smaller, refugees — one group of refugees. It’s grown into something much bigger and, frankly, much worse.
BEN RAWLENCE: Yes.
I mean, Dadaab is the world’s biggest. The Somali refugees came in 1991. Since then, Somalia has descended into different phases of a civil war, and there have been waves of refugees, more and more coming, until it peaked in 2011, with around half-a-million refugees living in this one place.
It’s a bit like New Orleans. It’s that many people, but spread over 30 square miles. The tents are made of — or the houses are made of tents or sticks and mud. And it’s — there’s no permanent structures. So, there’s no plumbing. There’s no concrete. There’s no running water.
It’s a humanitarian disaster still, even after 25 years. It’s constructed on temporary lines, and yet it’s become permanent.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
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