The Intersection of Climate Change, Immigration and Hope

In this riveting episode, Laura Danielson, a seasoned immigration lawyer, confronts the global crisis of climate refugees.  She reveals how climate change is forcibly displacing millions, exposing critical weaknesses in current immigration policies. 

From Haiti to Central America’s Dry Corridor and South Asia’s sinking coasts, Laura highlights the human stories behind the climate crisis. She unpacks the challenges of U.S. immigration policy, the rise of nationalist movements, and potential solutions like expanding work programs to meet labor shortages.

This episode offers an eye-opening examination of resilience, global displacement, and the human face of climate change.

Today's episode is brought to you by the Joan of Arc Scroll Medal, a beautiful brass alloy medal, designed by award-winning artist, Pat Benincasa. This uniquely shaped medal is ideal for holiday or as a special occasion gift!    Visit www.patbenincasa-art.com
For international listeners the medal is available on Etsy.

Joan of Arc Scroll Medal
This brass alloy medal can be worn on a necklace, a keychain, dogtags, on a bag, or in your car.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Please Note: The views expressed by our guests do not necessarily reflect the views of the podcaster.

Follow me on Instagram!

Chapters

• 0:06 The Intersection of Climate Refugees
• 14:22 Global Impact of Climate Refugees
• 26:31 Preparing for Climate Migration and Immigration

Transcript

PAT 
Fill To Capacity where heart grit and irreverent humor collide. A podcast for people too stubborn to quit and too creative not to make a difference.

PAT 
Hi, I'm Pat Benincasa, and welcome back to Fill To Capacity. 
Before we start today's episode, I just wanna say how much I love doing Fill To Capacity. It's all about sharing the stories of everyday people and organizations doing truly amazing, innovative work to make the world a better place. Now, today's episode takes on a big complex topic- climate refugees, and the global impact of climate change. Yes, it's a sobering issue, but the goal here is to inspire, inform, educate, and spark little wildfires of hope, because even tough conversations can lead to brighter possibilities. And as always, on FTC, every conversation is rooted in respect for our guests and for you listener, and for the power of finding hope, even in the face of big challenges. 

Oh, yeah, let's get started today, Episode number 87, "The Intersection of Climate Change, Immigration and Hope." You know the question of climate refugees is as old as humanity itself.

PAT 
Throughout history, people have been forced to flee their homes due to natural disasters and environmental catastrophes. Think of the ice Age, no one, the great flood, the eruption of Vesuvius, famines, droughts, earthquakes, and plagues. These forces have always shaped migration and survival. But today, something is different. While the causes driving climate refugees aren't new, the scale is unprecedented, and much of it is preventable. You know, this isn't just a story of survival, it's a challenge for humanity to confront. Our discussion today is about the climate refugees of our time and what their journeys reveal about the world we are shaping, and specifically, climate refugees and US immigration. Joining us today is Laura Danielson, who practiced immigration law for 35 years, including 20 years as chair of the Immigration Department at Frederickson. And Byron Law firm, Laura, as adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota, has taught immigration law for many years. She's the co-author of multiple editions of immigration and nationality law in a nutshell, and the beautiful coffee table book, green Card Stories, which highlights the journeys of immigrants. And by the way, I read that book and it is beautiful and powerful. Laura, it's such a pleasure to have you here.

LAURA 
Hey, thank you so much. We've got, I'm delighted to be here.

PAT 
Well, we've got lots to talk about. So, Laura, can you give us a brief overview of what are the three main ways people immigrate?

LAURA 
Sure. And this, by the way, has not changed for decades. The three main ways are through work, through employment-based immigration, which is a smaller portion of immigrants who come to the US on a regular basis, but it's also a significant way that people come. The second way is through family, and that is not extended family, but close family members like spouse, children, and siblings can come, but there's a long wait. So, there's a quota for family and also a quota for work-based immigrants. And then the third way is refugees. The concept of refugees came in the aftermath of World War II to ensure protection from persecution. And there's five grounds for refugee-based immigration. And they are political opinion, ethnicity, religion, race, or membership in a particular social group. This does not include seeking refuge based on unsustainable climate conditions. And so that really was never on the radar back in the 1940s when the international human rights protocols were developed. Today, lawyers get creative, and they try to fit refugees into one of those five grounds.

PAT 
I wanna stop you there because, well, folks, I gotta tell you, Laura and I have been emailing back and forth and her emails. I felt like I was getting this personal class on immigration, climate, refugees, and geopolitics. I couldn't believe it. And so you, our listeners are gonna hear some of the questions I have today coming out of that exchange. So Laura, in your email, you mentioned that when you started practicing law in the late eighties, many people were crossing the US -Mexican border. They came for temporary work hoping to support their families and then go back home. But as border restrictions tightened and work visas became scarce, many were forced to stay in the United States to avoid being shut out permanently. Now today, while economic and political reasons remain, you noted that the why behind migration has shifted dramatically. Can you explain what's driving that change?

LAURA 
Well, yes. Many of the people coming today are not Mexicans. They're not coming for temporary reasons. They're coming because their conditions in their own home countries are unsustainable. And so we refer to those as climate refugees. There are also people fleeing gang violence and war and unrest in various parts of the world. We're seeing refugees coming up across the border from places like Sri Lanka and African countries and so forth. A lot of times it's climate change at the bottom of it. So, when people have had to flee the countryside, because those conditions are unsustainable, it drives them into the cities. And when there's things like famine and earthquakes and other problems happening as a result of the climate conditions, it's just fascinating to me as we see people crossing the border like where they're coming from.

PAT 
Yes. And I thought that was an integral part of our discussion, 'cause people say, oh, Mexicans are crossing the border. But the reality is that there are people from many different countries wanting to come in from Mexico.

LAURA 
I feel really good about this conference that I attended because...

PAT 
The conference Laura is talking about was at Cornell University called "The (Im)possibility of Immigration Reform, a symposium honoring Stephen Yale-Loehr's Legacy and Immigration Law."  Okay, back to Laura,

LAURA 
At least there was the hopefulness about the economic benefits of immigration and our needs for them.

PAT 
We had to pause for a moment because of a very insistent leaf blower. Okay. So, I had asked you about climate change being a major driving factor and the um, economic and political reasons while people are migrating. And I asked you what was driving that change?

LAURA 
Yeah, I would say it, there's a variety of reasons, but at the bottom of it's often climate change.

PAT 
But just give our listeners, if you can, a brief explanation or description. Who are climate refugees?

LAURA 
Sure. It's people from all over the world actually. And so, we're seeing as people come up through the Mexican border, that it's not just Mexicans any longer, it's people from many parts of the world, from African nations, from many parts of South America, from Honduras, from Venezuela, from Haiti. So people will spend a lot of resources making their way to Mexico or even further south, and then hire a coyote to try to take them over the border.

PAT 
A coyote is someone who smuggles people across the US-Mexico border for a high fee, promising safe passage, but often exploiting migrants, desperation, migrants put their trusting coyotes out of necessity, but the relationship can often be one-sided and very unsafe for them.

LAURA 
While they may be fleeing political strife, often at the bottom of that is climate change. Countries unravel when they're experiencing these extreme conditions, and their political systems fall apart often. We've seen that in many cases.

PAT 
That leads me to the next part of my question. I want listeners to imagine for a moment, losing everything, your home, your livelihood, even your safety because of forces completely outta your control. And this might help bring it home. The November 2023 New York Times article by Miriam Jordan, "They fled Climate Chaos. Asylum Law Made Decades Ago Might Not Help." And the article shares the story of Cosmi and his family. A father from indigenous Miskito community in Honduras after two catastrophic hurricanes in 2020, destroyed their homes, crops, food shortages became unbearable. Then came the drug cartels who exploited the chaos, bringing violence and forcing Cosby's family to flee 2,500 miles to the US Mexico border in search of asylum. 

Now, their story underscores a critical issue. US asylum laws written after World War II don't recognize climate driven displacement. Now, lawyers are trying to figure out with cases like Cosmi, how to argue this within existing legal frameworks. But the system is already overwhelmed with over a million asylum cases pending. Now, meanwhile, climate experts predict up to 143 million people could be displaced by 2050. And by the way, folks that's 25 years from now, underscoring the urgent need for solutions to this growing crisis.

PAT 
Laura, what does their journey reveal about the intersection of climate disasters?

LAURA 
I think their story is a great example of what people are facing. And in their case, they actually spent, I think it was four months in Mexico waiting until they were able to pass what we call a credible fear determination that allowed them to enter the US and make an asylum claim. So, they're now in the US living here, waiting for their asylum application to reach a point where they can have a hearing. 

There is a backlog of asylum cases of up to, I think it is a million people waiting to hear results. And so, we're looking at something like a seven-year backlog before their case will even be heard. This is extremely problematic. 

And so I think a lot of Americans don't have a big appetite for the expanse of our asylum system asylum in their particular case, because they are indigenous people, they are eligible to at least make a claim that they fit into one of the five crowns ethnicity membership in a particular social group. But many people who are fleeing climate change don't fit into one of those five grounds. And so those people will not even be allowed in to the US to make their asylum claim.

PAT 
Okay. So Laura, do you have other examples of situations like Cosmi's?

LAURA 
Haiti is the number one most vulnerable nation to climate change in the world according to the Global Climate Risk Index? I would like to explain to people, 'cause most of the articles about Haitians don't ever get into climate change because talk about all these Haitians and it's easy to just see them as throngs of people who want a better life for some reason. Not people who are leaving the absolutely most dire of circumstances.

PAT 
You're right, it's not in the news as to why Haitians are fleeing their environment because it has become unlivable. So let's go to the global hot-spots, and we can't talk about global hot-spots without talking about the rise of nationalist movements tied to immigration.

LAURA 
Absolutely.

PAT 
So, climate change is driving people from global hot-spots. Countries where extreme weather and failing crops are driving mass migration, central America's drought stricken dry corridor, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. And then we have the sinking coastal communities of South Asia, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and then we have the storm ravaged Caribbean. Laura, what are the African nations you would add to this list?

LAURA 
Now, Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the major hot-spots. I attended a climate migration conference recently at Cornell, and we could see these maps of what is expected to happen in African countries and South America. 

So, we are going to see in the next 30 to 50 years, a third of the global populations living in places that are uninhabitable. So as African nations become stricken with drought and rising temperatures, temperatures that are to a point where it makes it completely uninhabitable impossible, not only to grow crop, but to exist, those people will be moving somewhere because they can't live. And rising seas, as you mentioned, sinking coastal communities, destructive storms and so forth.

PAT 
You've said in your emails, this isn't just a US issue, it's a global crisis. Now let's shift gears. Immigration is now and has been a flashpoint in the European Union, and it was a key factor in Brexit with the UK splitting off. In part because of this issue, nationalist movements are gaining traction in Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and France, driven by growing unrest over rising immigration. Now it's clear that climate refugees are becoming a global concern, reshaping borders, politics, and public attitudes worldwide. So, Laura, with climate refugees reshaping borders and politics, what kind of international cooperation or policy changes are needed to address this crisis?

LAURA 
That's a very big question. I know and a huge legal challenge. I would say that we are seeing evidence that people in the northern climates that are still not as adversely impacted, don't have a huge appetite for allowing the borders to just be opened up to climate refugees. However, we do have international obligations, treaty obligations that were developed back in the 1940s to protect refugees, at least on  account of the five grounds. 

 I don't believe that we're going to be able to have a sixth ground entered into our legal lexicon. That's just not going to be something that people will agree to do. Also, I think a really important point is that even with the international human rights norms, we carefully choose who is qualified to enter the border based on political opinion or ethnicity or whatever. Refugees always need to prove an individual claim of a, well-founded fear of persecution on a ground on account of one of those five grounds.

LAURA 
There's many people who are denied, and that's always been the case. When you look at climate change, it's different because it affects everyone who's inhabiting a particular region. And of course, not everyone's gonna have the resources to flee, but many who try are gonna be turned away. 

And we're seeing a lot of evidence of this, of people bodies washing up on yeah. Shores of Turkey and Greece and people getting into boats for perilous journeys across sea. It's going to keep happening and it's probably going to increase. Yeah, and I, I haven't had a chance to really talk about something else that we do in the United States, which is we have a policy of temporary protected status 

PAT 
TPS

LAURA 
And so we have this concept of temporary protected status for individuals when there's a major catastrophe such as a hurricane, and it's truly meant to be temporary. So right now, we have this for 16 nations of the world whose people reside in the US who are protected. They are not granted permanent residents through this. It's not a permanent process. It's available six to 18 months at a time. And it's granted by the executive branch of the government, the president, for example, Haiti has temporary protected status. It doesn't lead to permanent residence. 

As I said, people must clear background checks so it's not a group of criminals because they would not have cleared the background check. And it can be taken away. It does lead to individuals having work authorization, however, so they can get jobs while they're here, but they live in fear that it's gonna be taken away.

PAT 
So that brings me to the next area I'd like to talk about looking at the growing US need for workers, especially in agriculture. Let's look at farming, especially for fruits, nuts, vegetables, and flowers. A huge chunk, about 38% of what these farms spend goes to labor. That's wages, contracts, and benefits for people who do the hard hands-on work to grow and harvest the food we eat. And these are statistics from the USDA Economic Research Service. 

Now, when we look at all US farms together, the numbers are just as striking. In 2023, farmers spent nearly 50 billion, five zero billion dollars on labor alone. That's 10% of everything they spend to keep our agriculture system running. And this isn't just about numbers, it's about people behind the food on our table. Now this is from the National Agricultural Statistics Service. So, Laura, could expanding work programs be a solution for addressing climate driven migration?

LAURA 
Absolutely. I think we need to look at this whole issue from a completely different angle instead of focusing on humanitarian relief. What about focusing on our increased need for workers? You mentioned farm workers, but there's also healthcare workers, construction workers, hospitality. We have many shortage areas. And if you talk to most employers in these fields, they'll point to how critical their immigration work-forces. A number of years ago, I went with some dairy farmers to Washington to lobby on a volunteer basis with them before Congress. And one of the statistics that stuck with me is that a third of all the cows milked in Minnesota, at least at that time, and probably since were mounted by immigrant farm workers. And that is something that if we took that away, we would have an existential crisis. Just in the dairy industry alone, many of those workers came on visas.

LAURA 
But unfortunately, the sad truth is a lot of them have become undocumented. They have papers they can show their employers, but those papers have probably expired or are not valid any longer. That's the sad truth that a lot of people don't really realize. And that's what leads to these undocumented workers. 

Studies are overwhelmingly in favor of immigration being good for the economy, and that people are the heart of a thriving economy. Think about our aging population and the need for social security wages to be paid into the system so that people like me who are retired can get social security. 

The message should be that we need to have immigration policies that favor employment-based immigration. There's a big mismatch here, and we need to figure this out. I mean, why not let farmers who can no longer farm land in their home countries come to the US and legally work on US farms?

LAURA 
It may sound like wild speculation or idealism on my part. Everybody's talking about blocking refugees and asylees from coming to the us, but there are so many economic facts we can take a look at. New immigrants have accounted for all labor force growth in the last 30 years. The free market is actually working if we let it work, immigrants are more than twice as likely to start a business, and that will create jobs for other Americans. Mass deportations, which we may see soon, will be hugely disruptive and not only have an existential impact on industries like theory, they're gonna have an adverse impact on the economy overall.

PAT 
That brings me to the recent election. Immigration brought it to the forefront with this strong rhetoric opposing more people coming into the United States. Starting to talk about it now, what do you envision from the Trump administration for the possibility of meaningful immigration reform, especially when it comes to addressing the growing and complex reality of climate refugees, but also what you just said about the economic realities of what our country needs. So, with what you've just said and the incoming administration, what do you see?

LAURA 
Well, the conference I attended on immigration recently wasn't full of optimism. However, everyone who spoke about, you know, know the economic benefits of immigration, they all were hopeful for a future down the road. 

What I am expecting to happen is that there will be a very chaotic situation if there's an attempt to have mass deportations in the United States. And I asked some top-level government policy people what they thought, and they felt like perhaps there will be certain industries that are cherry picked for protection like dairy so that it doesn't have such a profound impact immediately. But there will still be so many industries such as hospitality that are seriously impacted. And not to mention schools and healthcare and housing. And remember that a lot of the families that may have one undocumented person living within it are families, are blended families that have US citizens and lawful permanent residents in those families.

LAURA 
We're talking about family separation, children who are US citizens, spouses who are US citizens, and the breadwinner being sent out of the US and what kind of horrendous impact that will have on our, our systems. Yeah. We'll have to provide support to those people. They're US citizens. And it's going to have profound impacts on the United States.  

I guess what I'm a bit hopeful about is that the chaos that will ensue will lead to a backlash. I mean, we're already seeing some articles about people who voted for President Trump who didn't realize the impact of deportations might relate to their family members. It's possible, I think that the administration could back off this and focus more on deportation of those with criminal convictions. Yeah. So forth. Or at least first try to do that. But you know, sometimes it takes a real crisis to impact change.

PAT
Yes, it does. 

LAURA:
And growth. And so, my more hopeful take that I tell my despairing family members and friends and former clients is that we're gonna go through some hard times here for a while, but perhaps it'll get people to wake up a bit. Yeah. About what our needs are. 

You know, an important point is the United States has room to grow. Even if we suddenly took in 35 million immigrants tomorrow, we would have a lower immigration ratio than Canada or New Zealand and many other countries of the world. And also think about climate change here in Minnesota and the Midwest. I mean, we're actually living in a sweet spot.

PAT 
Well, I'm gonna stop you right there because I, that's exactly where I wanna go next. So, if I could jump in. Okay. We're talking about the global repercussions, but now the US regional impact of climate migration, which you're bringing up, climate change is already reshaping where people can live and work in the US with the Midwest likely to become a key destination. Longer growing seasons could boost agriculture, but migration from regions hit hardest by extreme heat. Hurricanes, rising sea levels like on the coast will also impact demographics, infrastructure, and economy.  

So Laura, how should the Midwest, that sweet spot that you were about to talk about, prepare for these changes?

LAURA 
We're going to be proactive. We should have some policies that enable us to handle the growth in farming. We're gonna have a growth in farming because we're gonna have a longer growing period and it's going to extend further up into Canada. 

So we're going to need to imagine the future and figure out policies for how we're going to have the workers that are necessary for that expansive farming that's also going to lead to housing needs. Housing. We're already experiencing a housing crisis, but we're going to need more housing than ever as migrants move up into Minnesota. And we're not just talking about migrants from foreign countries, we're talking about migrants from within the United States who will be coming up from Florida and California and other many parts of the US that are going to become less habitable in 20, 30 years. So, we're going to need more healthcare systems, housing, education, other infrastructure needs as you mentioned, and we're gonna need more workers.

LAURA 
And some might say, well just let those workers be the ones coming up from Florida. But that doesn't always, there's not always a perfect fit in terms of the people who will be moving up and the workers that we need. The sad reality is the people who will remain in those very difficult part are going to be the impoverished people. They're not gonna have the resources as easily to move up north as many of the others. So the others that are gonna be moving up here are going to be highly skilled and professional workers, and they're going to need that migrant workforce just as badly as we will here in the Midwest. We can have a win-win. And having immigrants fill our labor shortage areas is, is actually a good thing. I saw a quote that went along these lines. We don't have to choose between our humanity and our prosperity, we can have a match between the two things. We have to re-frame this discussion.

PAT 
Well, it's actually in terms of a larger issue, we have to stop thinking in binary terms, bad good. Yes. No, we're living in a very complicated world. And when we reduce discussions with this kind of profundity to three-second sound bites, I think we all lose when that happens. So I do appreciate what you're saying. I'd like to shift gears for a moment and a while back I had our friend, Angelo Paparelli, lawyer, and immigration expert on Fill To Capacity. And he said: "...and one of the fun things about immigration laws, it's almost like three-dimensional chess, because there are all of these power centers within the federal bureaucracy that have pieces of authority to make things go well." Laura, what is your take about immigration laws and from your experience, how does this complex system impact the way we address new challenges like climate refugees?

LAURA 
Well, my take is that in fact we haven't really changed the laws in decades. We have had many shifts in policy and opinions by the government, temporary actions taken, and everything's been sort of pasted onto our old inadequate immigration laws. For example, our farm worker program is really, really old, and inadequate to address the needs of bringing temporary farm workers to the United States. Immediately when these numbers become available, it's a very small number of farm workers. The farms that utilize the system apply the same day. They wait in line. Sometimes our paralegals at my firm have stayed up till midnight in order to make these applications, and the numbers are gone the next day immediately. We need to just change that. We need to have a group of legislators because it's the legislators in Congress that make the laws who have the courage to address this.

LAURA 
You know, we did have a bill that was bipartisan that came pretty close to improving some of the employment-based immigration numbers and also it focused on more enforcement at the same time. We came pretty close, but that was killed. But it was a bipartisan bill at originally. 

 What we need is we need our legislators to have the courage to enact laws that are reasonable and reflect our current state of affairs. There are so many areas of immigration law that can be changed. And Angela's right, it's very complicated because then we also have the courts, uh, that are making laws. And so, we have to look to precedent to see what's happened, for example, with asylum law over the years. It's a complex puzzle that we put together in order to practice immigration law. But a whole lot could be fixed if Congress amended or It.

PAT 
Well, as we wind down towards the end of the hour, you know, we discussed that throughout history, migration has been driven by forces of nature, whether it's ice age, floods, famine, but today, climate refugees are really faced with unprecedented challenges. And much of what drives their displacement, as we had said, is preventable. Now, as we've discussed, this isn't just about survival, it's about humanity confronting a crisis that is reshaping borders, laws, and public attitudes worldwide. 

As we look ahead, what do you see as the most critical steps morally, economically, legally, that we need to take to address the realities of climate refugees and ensure the realities of climate refugees, and ensure we're prepared for what's to come?

LAURA 
Well, the number one thing we haven't even addressed is that we need to address climate change, not just immigration, but climate change. That, in my opinion, has to be the world's number one mission. It would be far better to have a healthy world without massive numbers of climate migrants. And so that is the number one policy thing that all nations should address. 

I often think it's really tragic that the people who are most adversely affected and impacted by climate change are the people in more impoverished nations, agrarian nations, that did not cause climate change or impact climate change as much as many of the first world nations did. And yet somehow, it's happening that the suffering is unevenly distributed. 

I think that's a huge moral imperative that we have as citizens of the world to address this and figure it out as quickly as we can. If we don't get a handle on climate change, climate migration is just going to continue to happen. And having immigration worker policies is not gonna help. It's going to help in the interim perhaps, but it's not gonna solve the problem.

PAT 
So that's a pretty sobering viewpoint. But as you've explained throughout the discussion, the realities, it just seems it's almost like a domino's effect in that if we don't stop climate change, that domino falls and people start migrating and that falls and countries start absorbing people that falls. So it really is a domino effect, and it all comes back to climate change and what we're gonna do about it. Laura, thank you for joining us.

LAURA 
Thank you so much for asking me to do this.

PAT 
So until next time, please take care. Bye.