The number of people trying to cross the border irregularly between Belarus and Poland is rising again. Polish officials say they are taking a new route from the Middle East through Russia to reach the EU.
More than 28,500 people arrived in Britain by crossing the English Channel from France in small boats in 2021. These irregular journeys to the UK across one of the world's busiest shipping lanes have been sharply on the rise in recent years.
On the day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, many foreigners living in Ukraine contacted InfoMigrants. Like the Ukrainian population, they now fear for their lives. One of them is Zhiar, a medical student from Iraqi Kurdistan, who was injured in a bombardment in Kharkiv and is now trying to flee westward.
Asylum applications in Europe rose in 2021 to pre-pandemic levels, partly due to the crisis in Afghanistan. Claims from Bangladesh nationals were higher than ever before.
A German court handed jail terms to a Polish couple accused of smuggling a group of 16 Kurdish migrants from Belarus, across Poland to Germany.
Sangar and his wife Kanar left Iraqi Kurdistan in hopes of getting better medical care for their children. For months, the family was stuck at the Polish-Belarusian border desperate to reach the EU. This week, they finally arrived in Italy.
The Lithuanian interior minister says migrant arrivals from Belarus have stopped, while the foreign minister visited Iraqi officials to discuss the repatriation of Iraqi nationals stranded at the Belarus-Lithuania border.
European Union and UNHCR officials have announced that Latvia, Lithuania and Poland still use "pushbacks and other violations of human rights" at the borders to keep migrants out. They added that they are also denying access to aid groups trying to help people in the border region with Belarus.
Germany remains the number one destination country for migrants in Europe, according to the Migration Report 2020, published by the German government on Wednesday. Overall immigration to Germany, however, fell by 23.9% compared to numbers in 2019.
Last year, more than 28,000 migrants crossed the Channel from France to the UK in small boats. At least 44 people died or went missing during the attempt.
In 2021, more than 11,000 migrants have entered Germany using irregular means from Belarus, traveling through Poland. The number of arrivals reached a peak of almost 5,300 people in October.
Germany's Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration Reem Alabali-Radovan said that she does not want to treated as a token example of successful integration efforts in Germany. Instead, she wants to keep a dialogue open between the government and migrant communities.