Amendment Would Give Legal Status To People Displaced By Climate Change

Senator Brian Schatz’s (D-HI) filed an amendment for the immigration bill Wednesday that would allow stateless people in the U.S. to seek conditional lawful status if their nations have been made uninhabitable by climate change.

The Senate’s immigration bill currently recognizes that people who come to the U.S. may have no country to return to for a variety of reasons and allows them to come forward to apply for legal status as a stateless person. But one cause for displacement that is overlooked in current law is how climate change has caused people to lose their homes and their nationality.

Noting that climate change is not some “abstract challenge,” but is already displacing people across the world, Schatz explained:

READ MORE:  http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/06/20/2187831/climate-refugee-immigration-bill/?mobile=nc