“It’s time to recognize climate refugees in our immigration policies,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) announced Monday.
Ocasio-Cortez tweeted a call to change U.S. immigration policies to open U.S. borders to those who want to come in because they don’t like the weather in their home countries:
“Remember when we said climate change would cause mass migration, & the right called us crazy?
“Well, it’s happening. And walling ourselves off from the world isn’t a plan for our future.
“It’s time to recognize climate refugees in our immigration policies.”
As proof, Ocasio-Cortez linked to an article on Mic.com claiming that seven million people have left their homes this year due to “extreme weather events”:
“According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), in the first six months of 2019, more than seven million people were forced to leave their homes by floods, landslides, tornadoes and other natural disasters.”
The IDMC, which has been tracking weather displacement since 2003, says this year’s six month total is the highest “on record” – and projects 22 million people may be weather-displaced by year’s end:
“The seven million people who have faced at least temporary displacement because of weather events is the highest mid-year mark on record — and that’s before taking into account any of the movement that will result from the damage caused by Hurricane Dorian.
“The organization projects that there could be as many as 22 million people who have been displaced by the end of the year.”
