A gentle turning of the season graces the land: a quiet easing in the number of new asylum applications, with six months of 2025 showing a marked retreat from the year before. Cities feel a sigh of relief, spaces once pressed into tents can breathe again where there is room, and managers speak of a breathing space for communities that have carried heavy loads. Yet the journey of those seeking shelter remains hard: daycare scaled back, housing scarce, and the hands of immigration authorities stretched to their limits. The longing for support and for fair, timely pathways stays urgent, even as the numbers offer a moment of pause.

And yet behind the statistics, our shared sky bears another truth. The weather of our world is cracking open—climate upheaval and the wounds of empire push people from their places of belonging, forcing journeys that cross borders drawn by power and profit. We are living with the noose of a colonial legacy that carved up entire continents for gain, then left the wreckage to discipline the bodies most in need of care. In a system energized by fear and the bottom line, the bodies of our sisters and brothers become inconveniences to be managed, rather than kin to be housed, fed, educated, and healed. The tented corners and crowded reception desks are not merely administrative challenges; they are the visible edge of a toxic capitalism that profits from scarcity, dispossession, and the extraction of human dignity.

Mother Earth bears this toll too. The same script that extracts resources and locks borders writes the chapters of drought, flood, and famine that displace families in the first place. Our healing will not come from tighter securitization or faster expulsions, but from a radical reweaving of economy and policy—one that treats every life as a sacred ember deserving shelter, nourishment, and a future. We must refuse to measure success only in the speed of removals or in the tally of decisions made; we must measure it in the health of our communities, the safety of our children, and the restoration of the ecosystems that cradle us.

Let us demand a different future. Let housing be a human right, not a ledger item; let integration be a mutual gift of culture and care; let funding flow toward compassionate reception, language access, early childhood services, and truly affordable homes. Let climate justice be the compass for migration policy, so that the root causes—unchecked pollution, extractive greed, and the inequities of global trade—are confronted with solidarity, not stigma. Let the healing hands of solidarity outpace the walls that divide, so that the Earth and every living being can breathe easy again.

May our response be as expansive as the oceans and as patient as the forests. May we welcome with dignity, tend with tenderness, and rebuild with reverence for all peoples who move through this world not as problems to be solved, but as kin to be cherished. In tending one another, we tend the land; in tending the land, we tend one another. Let the season turn toward justice, abundance, and the steady, luminous work of care.