Published daily by the Lowy Institute

Migration and border policy links: Executive orders, the battle for Mosul, ‘wet-foot, dry-foot’, and more

This week's round-up of migration and border policy news.

Migration and border policy links: Executive orders, the battle for Mosul, ‘wet-foot, dry-foot’, and more
Published 27 Jan 2017 

By Daniel Thambar, an intern with the Lowy Institute’s Migration and Border Policy Project.

  • US President Donald Trump is expected to sign executive orders to restrict immigration from several Middle Eastern and African countries.
  • The battle for western Mosul is expected to start in the coming weeks. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) voices its deep concerns about the plight of the estimated 750,000 civilians living there.
  • Human Rights Watch reports that asylum seekers inside Croatia are being forced back to Serbia by Croatian police.
  • The UNHCR reports that around 45,000 people in The Gambia have crossed the border into Senegal, following the outgoing president’s refusal to step down after his election defeat.
  • A senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute analyses why the Obama Administration terminated the ‘wet-foot, dry-foot’ policy, which gave special immigration privileges to Cubans. 
  • Nando Sigona and Rachel Humphris highlight the gaps and limitations of datasets concerning child migration into Europe.
  • The World Economic Forum publishes its 2017 Global Risks Report which ranks ‘large-scale involuntary migration’ as the second biggest global risk, in terms of its likelihood to occur.  
  • IOM’s Missing Migrants Project reports an estimated 230 deaths in the Mediterranean Sea this month. The report compares the data to previous periods and to other regions. 

Photo by Flickr user Elisa Finocchiaro.


Related Content



You may also be interested in