As I followed the efforts by Congress to reach a compromise on an economic stimulus package — one that would likely leave out large swaths of the immigrant community — I came to realize that we are debating who is American enough to warrant support. As I wrote on Medium:
“COVID-19 makes no distinction between citizens, permanent residents, visa holders and people who are undocumented. COVID-19 thinks we are all Americans. Which is why local, state and national leaders need to prioritize the health and safety of all community members — including immigrants and refugees.”
In case you missed it last week: Here is the National Immigration Forum’s statement, Unity and Compassion, on COVID-19. And here are the COVID-19 policy principles we believe Congress should move forward with.
Welcome to Monday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].
A COVID-19 WALL – Citing coronavirus, the Trump administration announced Friday it would shut down access to anyone trying to claim asylum at the southern border, report Azam Ahmed, Miriam Jordan and Kirk Semple in The New York Times. Mexico has agreed to accept Mexicans returned under the new policy and to “take back most Central Americans as well, potentially adding thousands more to the migrant populations already swelling along the border.” The new policy “will also put an end, at least for now, to the hopes of asylum seekers who want to legally enter the United States at official border crossings. That includes thousands who have been waiting, some for months, for the chance to present themselves.”
A COVID-19 SUIT – Lawyers filed suit in federal court Saturday on behalf of families held under the Trump administration’s family detention policy, arguing they “should be released immediately because they are at grave risk of contracting the coronavirus due to conditions in those facilities,” reports Josh Gerstein in Politico. According to advocates, the communal housing arrangement, minimal cleaning supplies, and steady flow of new families creates a potential COVID-19 hotspot. Per the suit: “It is almost certain to expect COVID-19 to infect and spread rapidly in family residential centers, especially when people cannot engage in proper hygiene or isolate themselves from infected or asymptomatic residents or staff.” Meanwhile, David Noriega, Belle Cushing, and Jika Gonzalez at Vice News report that“[h]unger strikes have broken out in three [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)] detention centers in New Jersey as detainees protest what they describe as deteriorating conditions and a failure to adequately address the potential spread of COVID-19.”
70 MILLION WHO CAN’T SOCIAL DISTANCE – Social distancing is almost impossible to practice if you are a refugee, so it falls on the United Nations and aid organizations to try to protect 70 million refugees around the world, reports Rebecca Collard in Foreign Policy. In the Middle East alone, “millions of people forced to flee due to the war in Syria, the fight against the Islamic State, and other conflicts remain displaced in camps, informal settlements, and overcrowded or unfinished buildings.” Refugee camps — and tents — lack many of the necessary conditions to prevent the spread of COVID-19. “Often, it’s not that camps have weak health systems — which experts warn will be overrun by the coronavirus — but that they have no health system at all.”
SENDING A MESSAGE – Last night, in an effort to pressure Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker to release immigrants in ICE detention, activists from an immigration group projected a 12 by 15-foot visage of Anne Frank, the German-born Holocaust victim who died of typhus in a Nazi concentration camp, Abigail Feldman reports for the Boston Globe. The Jewish-led immigration group, Never Again Action, “wants Baker to use his emergency powers to free immigrants being held in detention centers at county jails to protect them from the COVID-19 virus.” Anne Frank “died of a communicable disease in a crowded detention facility,” said Elizabeth Weinbloom, a spokeswoman for the group. “It’s very clear that that’s going to happen to immigrants being held in Massachusetts.”
USCIS – Critics say that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) policies are making immigration both difficult and dangerous in the age of coronavirus, Stuart Anderson writes in Forbes. “In general, USCIS policies are years behind and have not adapted to the modern work environment, which has become more evident in the face of worldwide concerns about coronavirus. A glaring example, attorneys say, is USCIS still does not permit electronic filing for the most commonly used employment-based forms.” Meanwhile, there has been minimal accommodation on the agency’s part to make sensible changes: “Many foreign nationals are facing crucial deadlines and, unlike in a number of other countries, USCIS has not relaxed immigration deadlines.”
Stay safe, stay healthy,
Ali
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