Let’s start with something inspirational.
In the Vickery Meadow neighborhood of Dallas, “a working-class global village of immigrant and refugee families who speak about two dozen languages,” the free St. Vincent de Paul Pharmacy has been a lifeline for working-class families, documented or not, who have been especially vulnerable to the impacts of the pandemic. Martha Stowe, who runs the Vickery Meadow Youth Development Foundation, tells Dianne Solis at the Dallas Morning News: “Too many times, someone can go to the doctor and get care reasonably. But if you get a prescription that is so big, they don’t fill it. … The pharmacy is really a lifeline for a lot of people.”
I read this article five times because I liked it so much.
Welcome to Thursday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].
MASK MAKING – A group of Iranian refugees in Germany is making face masks for residents of a local retirement home during the country’s outbreak of COVID-19, Madeline Chambers reports for Reuters. “Iranian refugee Babak Barz, who ran a sewing workshop for six years in Tehran, said he wanted to put his experience to good use. ‘I thought, I have some experience with this kind of work, so I can also help,’ said Barz… In the last 10 days his team has sewn 735 protective face masks from cloth.”
400 CHILDREN – In the wake of new restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border implemented on March 21, nearly 400 children have been rapidly deported, ending long-standing policies “meant to protect children from human trafficking and offer them a chance to seek asylum,” Ted Hesson and Mica Rosenberg report for Reuters. “Around 120 of the minors, who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or legal guardian, were quickly sent on planes back to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to data from March 27 to April 2. It was not clear whether the remainder of the children intercepted at the border were pushed back to Mexico or returned to their home countries during the preceding week.”
IMMIGRANT CONTRIBUTIONS – Following our press call yesterday afternoon, Stephen Dinan at The Washington Times reports on the critical contributions of undocumented immigrants in these unprecedented times. Edison Suasnavas, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient and molecular oncology specialist, told reporters: “Immigrants of all statuses are helping to stop the spread of this virus … Instead of ripping our families apart, the Trump administration and Congress must act immediately to provide us, and our families, with a path to citizenship and the long-term stability we deserve.” As noted by Emerson Collective founder and president Laurene Powell Jobs in an opinion piece yesterday for the Washington Post, “New and roughly 29,000 other DACA recipients who are health-care practitioners face the risk of termination and deportation just as a shortage of medical personnel is stretching hospital systems already overburdened by coronavirus. … The role of these health-care workers — and more than 200,000 other dreamers in occupations deemed essential — underscores the stakes of the Supreme Court’s imminent decision on DACA.”
NO HOSPITALS – As COVID-19 continues to spread in poorly equipped immigrant detention centers, Reuters’ Kristina Cooke, Mica Rosenberg and Ryan McNeill report on the weak health care infrastructure surrounding many of these facilities: “About a third of the 43,000 immigrants in detention as of March 2 were housed at facilities that have only one hospital — or none — with intensive-care beds within 25 miles, according to a Reuters analysis of data from the American Hospital Directory and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The seven sites with no such hospitals nearby held a total of about 5,000 detainees.”
TRAUMA – For the Los Angeles Times, Esmeralda Bermudez explores how immigrant families from across the world are revisiting old traumas during the coronavirus pandemic. “Yoshio Nakamura was in 11th grade when his family received notice that they had two weeks to abandon everything they knew. … Sheltered at home in Whittier, he sometimes feels as powerless today as he did the day the government forced his Japanese immigrant father to surrender his small El Monte farm and board a train with his children to a incarceration center up north.”
ONLY IN AMERICA – The coronavirus pandemic has underscored how essential farm workers are to our nation — and the irony of immigration policies that leave many of them unable to gain legal status. For this week’s episode of “Only in America,” we continue our series on the agriculture industry with United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero. Teresa and I discussed bridging the gap between consumers and fieldworkers, how COVID-19 is impacting workers, and finding solutions for growers and fieldworkers alike.
Thanks for reading and stay healthy,
Ali
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