Undocumented essential workers are getting lost in the conversation as politicians focus heavily on the border, Karen Tumulty writes in a Washington Post column.
Census Bureau data indicate that two-thirds of undocumented workers in the U.S. have jobs that were deemed essential during the pandemic. That translates to more than 5.2 million people, including about a million Dreamers.
"People who cleaned hospitals during the pandemic, who provided home health care and child care, who kept food coming to our tables, who built temporary clinics — do not have permanent legal authorization to live in this country," Tumulty notes.
That’s just one reason former President Donald Trump’s campaign promise of large-scale deportations is alarming immigration advocates, Tumulty notes.
"What he’s talking about is rounding up millions of essential workers. Let’s be clear about that," said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, which extrapolated from the Census Bureau data.
Separately, 19 senators sent a letter to President Biden yesterday, urging him to quicken the process of legal status for undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens and those with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), reports Alexander Bolton of The Hill.
In the letter, the senators underscored the importance of this population to the greater American community and their impact in the economy.
Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s strategic communications VP, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Jillian Clark, Darika Verdugo and Clara Villatoro. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected].
FAMILY SEPARATION — The U.S. immigration and child welfare systems sometimes effect the separation of migrant families, reports Deborah Sontag for The New York Times. Sontag follows the journey of a woman named Olga as she tries to get her son back after being separated, first by her abusive husband and then by the U.S. government. "[P]eople don’t realize how much [family separation] occurs every day in the interior of the country," said Lori Nessel, director of an
immigrant rights clinic at Seton Hall University.
LOST GDP — Yesterday we noted the prospect of trillions in future GDP growth with contributions from more immigrant workers. A new study from the National Foundation for American Policy offers more evidence of this relationship, albeit in the negative: Slower expansion of the working-age immigrant population has hurt the economy, Stuart Anderson writes in Forbes. Researcher Madeline Zavodny found that "the foregone GDP due to the slower growth in the working-age foreign-born population after 2015 was equivalent to approximately $335 billion in 2022," Anderson writes. Yet more evidence that we still have room to grow.
DISAPPOINTMENT — Prince William County Police Chief Peter Newsham expressed disappointment after Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) vetoed a bill that would have allowed DACA recipients to serve as police officers, reports Cher Muzyk of the Prince William Times. Newsham, a Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force member, spoke of would-be officer Jemny Marquinez, who came to the U.S. at age 3: "We are very disappointed that a county resident and county employee who considers the United States her home will not be able to pursue her lifelong dream of serving her community."
MILITARIZED — As the hold on Texas’ SB 4 law continues, Patrick J. McDonnell of the Los Angeles Times takes a closer look at the spot along the U.S.-Mexico border where Gov. Greg Abbott (R) first deployed state forces and the National Guard. McDonnell describes the area near Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, as "a militarized zone, fortified by rifle-toting soldiers, a fleet of Humvees and a forest of razor wire
glistening in the desert sun."
