The UN 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, AP reports.

The International Organisation for Migration has released 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.