Immigrants with H-1B and other “skilled-worker” visas who were laid off or furloughed during the coronavirus pandemic will be forced to leave the country if they aren’t rehired quickly, reports Miriam Jordan for The New York Times. Furthermore, within the next few weeks, the Trump administration is expected to “halt the issuance of new work visas such as the H-1B, for high skilled foreigners, and the H-2B, for seasonal employment.” The change could upend the lives of tens of thousands of workers, including foreign graduates of American universities and many others who have built lives in the U.S. while waiting to obtain legal residency — and who instead could now face deportation.

This type of restriction, along with the administration’s executive order halting some types of immigration for at least 60 days, could “choke off” the supply of workers the country needs to recover from the pandemic’s economic fallout, writes Jason L. Riley in a column for The Wall Street Journal. It is immigrants, he reminds us, “who don’t just increase the supply of labor, but also the demand for goods and services, which in turn requires businesses to hire more people to meet the higher demand.”

Welcome to the Tuesday edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

UNACCOMPANIED SISTERS – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is seeking to deport 8- and 10-year-old sisters back to El Salvador — where they have no close family members — rather than allowing them to reunite with their mother in the U.S. while they await a court hearing, reports Adolfo Flores for BuzzFeed News. Attorneys for the sisters, who previously lost an asylum case with their father while waiting in Mexico, argue they should now be treated like other unaccompanied minors, allowed new immigration proceedings to have their cases “reviewed by a judge independently of their father’s previous asylum claim.” The girls’ mother had been in the process of sponsoring her daughters’ claims until learning they would instead be deported.

HAITIAN WORKERS – Haitian immigrants, who make up the majority of the workforce for Delaware and Maryland’s poultry industry, stand to be heavily impacted by the Trump administration’s demand that workers return to meat packing plants amid COVID-19, the Haitian Times reports. “Coronavirus cases have recently spiked in the poultry farms and plants like Perdue’s, which employs many Haitians who can’t afford to miss work without fear of losing their jobs and a paycheck. … Haitian-born nurse practitioner Emanie Dorival told AFP that back in April, a Haitian immigrant, who works in a chicken processing plant and lives in the Seaford [Delaware] area – had tested positive for the coronavirus, adding to the almost two dozen patients of those she has confirmed with the virus. She added that all of her COVID-19 positive patients work at a chicken processing plant.”

SUPPORT – Volunteers and nonprofits around the country are doubling down on efforts to raise money to support undocumented immigrants, who have been left out of Congress’ COVID-19 relief efforts despite paying taxes and contributing in jobs deemed “essential” to America’s pandemic response. In Minnesota, the nonprofit Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio (CLUES) has so far raised $700,000 for 1,300 Latino families who didn’t qualify for government aid, reports Maya Rao for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The organization has also helped many families file for rental assistance as they fear evictions. And in the D.C. metro area, Rebecca Burnett reports for WDVM that a coalition of six nonprofit organizations has raised more than $600,000 through a GoFundMe to provide financial assistance to undocumented people.

RELIEF – House Democrats included a number of provisions to support immigrants in the latest COVID-19 relief package introduced yesterday, Tanvi Misra reports for Roll Call. The bill calls for a number of reforms advocates have pressed for amid the pandemic, including allowing physicians who are fighting COVID-19 to bypass green card wait times, expediting visa processing for health care workers, extending filing deadlines for immigrants in the U.S. whose status may expire during the pandemic, and temporarily protecting undocumented immigrants working in “essential” industries from deportation.

ESSENTIAL – Undocumented immigrants are continuing to work essential jobs in America even as they’ve left out of pandemic relief efforts, writes León Krauze, the lead anchor for Univision’s Los Angeles affiliate, in his latest column for The Washington Post. “While the government has declared many within the undocumented community as essential — among them at least 1 million farmworkers — it has not only refused to help them directly in any significant way, but also persisted in their relentless persecution. … In the meantime, Stephen Miller, President Trump’s de facto nativist czar, has continued to restrict immigration, making it harder to obtain legal residency in the country.”

Stay safe, stay healthy,

Ali