Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is excited to share a new report, “Climate Disaster and Protection Pathways for Migration.”

The report reviews existing mechanisms for protections, prospective expansion of protections, and presents LIRS’s formal recommendations to the administration regarding providing U.S. protections for persons displaced by climate change-related disaster. Specifically, LIRS proposes a framework for how the U.S. might create legal migration pathways for those displaced by sudden- or slow-onset climate disasters, including:

• Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations for countries that experience climate disaster
• Use of Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) to provide immediate protection for nationals of a country coping with a sudden-onset disasters
• Broadened humanitarian parole programs 
• Creation of a pathway through a new resettlement program for those permanently displaced by climate disaster
• Expansion of legal relief for TPS and DED recipients to include a pathway to permanent residency and citizenship
• Development of bilateral agreements to provide relief to those displaced by climate disaster

Link to the full report is here.

A one-page summary is here.

Our press release is here and below.

We would greatly appreciate if you would, please, help us to share this report widely.  You can find us on Twitter @LIRSorg and our related thread is here.

If you have any questions about the report, please reach out to Susannah Cunningham, at scunningham@lirs.org, or Jill Marie Bussey, jbussey@lirs.org.