Uncertainty over presidential election worries climate-impacted immigrants

Malado Barro, an immigrant from Mali who lives in New York, has experienced the impact of climate change first hand. As a child living in the city of Sikasso, she helped her father, a farmer, who needed water to take care of his land and livestock on a daily basis. For Barro, getting water for the family's agricultural needs was incredibly challenging particularly because of severe drought during those years. Barro remembers the family stress of worrying about water that was extremely scarce for years. 

“I saw how we had to struggle to get water for our animals to even have a drink. It was hard. Everybody was suffering,” Barro said. 

Barro’s childhood hardships because of water scarcity or extreme weather are becoming more common. Among newly-arrived migrants to New York state, particularly those from Africa, many have left their countries of origin because they could no longer find work or live safely in their homes and communities as the result of climate change, according to advocates. With the presidential election looming, both migrants and organizations assisting them, say they are worried that the results could worsen the plight of new arrivals seeking refuge in New York.

Ahmed Gaya, the National Partnership for New Americans’ director of the Climate Justice Collaborative, a nonprofit focused on climate change, said the organization does not endorse or express opinions on specific political candidates. However, he had concerns about the attitudes expressed by politicians towards migrants during this current political cycle.

“We are in a moment of rising global authoritarianism that is driven first and foremost by xenophobia and authoritarian political movements that have harnessed xenophobia as their primary weapon to build power,” he told City & State. “And those movements neither want to solve climate change, nor are they going to be supportive of supporting displaced people and providing them safe pathways.”

With the U.S. presidential election only 12 days away, former President Donald Trump’s No. 1 campaign promise is to “seal” the border and prevent the “invasion” of migrants from entering. While Trump has not not yet released any official climate change policy, a second stated campaign priority is to carry out a mass deportation of immigrants. During his first term of office, Trump’s previous immigration policies led to the separation of children from their families. Undocumented and valid visa holders' lives and livelihoods were also impacted by his policy decisions. 

By contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris, the child of two immigrants from India and Jamaica, is known as a pro-immigrant policymaker. However, in recent months, Harris has taken a harder stand toward immigration, emphasizing border security. 

Climate change and immigration advocates say the uncertainty of how the election will go has created stress for immigrants, especially those awaiting asylum hearings that would adjust their status in the U.S. and avoid deportation proceedings that would return them to their climate change-impacted nations.  

Over 214,600 undocumented migrants have arrived in New York since 2022, with many fleeing political instability or searching for better socio-economic opportunities, according to the New York City Comptroller’s Office. But, among individuals who have crossed the border, many climate change advocates believe there is not enough discussion of how many of these migrants have experienced everything from extreme heats to hurricanes to drought to agriculture or land-access issues. 

African immigrants, especially, are among the most overlooked and impacted by climate-change, said Melissa Johnson, the New York organizer of The Black Alliance for Just Immigration. “The stories about climate disaster, climate violence and the ways in which they impact black communities are not told enough,” she said in an interview with City & State. 

Patience, an asylum-seeker from Cameroon who has been in the U.S. for over two years, said she found a direct relationship between climate change and socio-political instability. City & State is only using her first name because she has a pending asylum petition.

“Because of the war, I was a victim of two attempts of kidnapping… my life was at risk, because after the kidnappings, they kept coming after us [my husband and I], and there were a lot of threats for our lives,” Patience recalled. “That’s the first reason why I came here to the United States. I cannot go back to my country.”

But climate change also contributed to what drove her out of Cameroon. The extreme heat and weather conditions and lack of water directly impacted her children’s health. Patience’s children experienced heat boils, heat rash and a host of other health conditions.

“Climate change is real, and it's affecting everyone,” she said. “So, I think that we need to look for pathways in which we can allow people to migrate freely because of climate change, because that's one of the main causes of migration.”

Patience, who is college educated and has worked in academia, recalled facing criticism in Cameroon for speaking up about the harsh living from climate change. She was viewed as complainer, when she said she was advocating for herself and other mothers like her.

“We need to help people to feel safe, to be able to migrate to other countries without fear of being stigmatized, without fear of being judged or being considered as illegal in those new countries,” said Patience.

Experts also said that climate change may potentially lead to social, economic and political instability, which can lead to displacement for migrants who end up coming to the U.S. 

“The reality is that migration is one of the necessary forms of climate adaptation that has to be undertaken, said Gaya of the National Partnership for New Americans. “Some people will not be able to remain in their homes, and we need to make sure as many people as possible can. For those that cannot, we need to be able to provide them a safe pathway.”

Gaya pointed out that the climate movement in the U.S. has remained “a blind spot” for politicians and policy makers. Immigrants in New York, include among the most climate-impacted immigrants, according to Johnson of The Black Alliance for Just Immigration. She noted that in both Africa and in predominantly Black Caribbean countries, nations with climate vulnerabilities, from Mauritania on Africa’s West Coast and Ethiopia’s East Coast to Haiti.In 2023, 58,000 migrants alone, or about 15%, were from African nations, according to The New York Times. 

Immigration advocacy experts said a sharp rise in the numbers of immigrant individuals and families fleeing natural disasters such as drought or flooding, both which have been exacerbated by climate change, has continued. Both legally-permitted and undocumented individuals need help with resettlement and immigration to the U.S., according to the advocates. The state needs federal policy changes and funding for any real change to be realized, they said. 

Johnson noted that previous federal immigration policies have not taken the long-term effects of climate change into consideration when deciding who can secure a pathway to legal permanent residence here in the U.S. 

Advocates warn that the need for a comprehensive policy change that allows climate change to be one of the factors for asylum and immigration will likely become more urgent as climate disasters intensify. 

“We must all continue to advocate to end immigrant detention, stop deportation and free folks from incarceration and return them back to their [local] communities and their families,” Johnson said. 

“Many of whom are fleeing climate violence [and] deporting them back to their home countries, only further puts them in harm's way,” she added, “whether  they are actively fleeing climate change, climate violence, war, conflict, political instability or disaster.”