By JAMEY KEAT­EN-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

GENE­VA (AP) — The U.N. mi­gra­tion agency says the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic ap­pears to have ac­cel­er­at­ed “hos­tile rhetoric” against mi­grants in the world and “rad­i­cal­ly al­tered” mo­bil­i­ty, pro­ject­ing in a new re­port that trav­el and oth­er COVID-19-fight­ing re­stric­tions could damp­en mi­gra­tion world­wide as long as they re­main.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion re­leased Wednes­day its World Mi­gra­tion Re­port 2022, a vast com­pendi­um of the lat­est trends in hu­man move­ment of all types — from peo­ple flee­ing war to work­ers seek­ing jobs abroad — and a re­cap of the last two years of mo­bil­i­ty. It cit­ed the im­pact, for ex­am­ple, of a plunge in air trav­el last year as the pan­dem­ic was rag­ing.

IOM point­ed to a “dra­mat­ic in­crease” in in­ter­nal dis­place­ment — move­ment with­in coun­tries — caused by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, con­flict and vi­o­lence just as COVID-19 re­stric­tions have spo­rad­i­cal­ly shut bor­ders across the globe since the pan­dem­ic emerged and spread over the last two years.

“The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has trig­gered im­mo­bil­i­ty world­wide to an ex­tent un­seen in re­cent his­to­ry, slow­ing the pace of hu­man mo­bil­i­ty and mi­gra­tion,” said Ugochi Daniels, IOM’s deputy di­rec­tor-gen­er­al for op­er­a­tions, at a meet­ing of its mem­ber states. “The pan­dem­ic is es­ti­mat­ed to have neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed the to­tal growth of in­ter­na­tion­al mi­grants by 2 mil­lion.”

IOM Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Vi­tori­no said “the pan­dem­ic al­so seems to have ac­cel­er­at­ed the hos­tile rhetoric to­ward mi­grants that has been grow­ing in the last decade.”

“So we have de­vot­ed, in this re­port, a chap­ter on dis­in­for­ma­tion about mi­gra­tion,” he said. “Our re­search shows that de­bunk­ing myth, as well as pre-bunk­ing strate­gies, can help to mit­i­gate or pre­vent harm caused by ne­far­i­ous ac­tors, who seek to un­der­mine bal­anced dis­cus­sions on mi­gra­tion.”

The re­port tal­lied about 281 mil­lion in­ter­na­tion­al mi­grants — not 283 mil­lion as ini­tial­ly ex­pect­ed — around the world by its lat­est com­plete count in 2020, amount­ing to just 3.6% of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion. That was up from 272 mil­lion in 2019. About 60% of those mi­grants last year were mi­grant work­ers, it said.

IOM not­ed that mi­gra­tion is in­creas­ing­ly tak­ing place be­tween high­ly de­vel­oped coun­tries, not just from poor­er coun­tries to rich ones.

In­ter­na­tion­al re­mit­tances — peo­ple send­ing mon­ey back home — dropped to $702 bil­lion in 2020, com­pared to $719 bil­lion a year ear­li­er, but marked a small­er de­cline than ex­pect­ed.

“The re­silience of mi­grants’ in­ter­na­tion­al re­mit­tances has de­fied pre­dic­tions, re­main­ing high in 2020, with just a 2.4% de­cline glob­al­ly — and much less dire than the 20 % drop ini­tial­ly pro­ject­ed,” Daniels said.

About 3,900 peo­ple died while on the move last year, down from 5,400 in 2019, IOM said.

The re­port high­light­ed “ma­jor mi­gra­tion and dis­place­ment events,” in­clud­ing con­flicts in places like Syr­ia, Yemen, Con­go, Cen­tral African Re­pub­lic and South Su­dan, as well as po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty like Venezuela and Afghanistan in the pe­ri­od. It al­so cit­ed cli­mate and weath­er re­lat­ed dis­place­ment in places like Chi­na, the Philip­pines, Bangladesh, In­dia, Haiti and the Unit­ed States over the last two years.