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Trent Reedy, a former combat engineer in the Iowa Army National Guard, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan, urges balance regarding Afghans in the U.S. in his op-ed for The Washington Examiner. 

"I hope Trump’s administration carefully evaluates Biden-era Afghan immigration cases," Reedy writes. "I also hope it will resume advancing the cases of deserving Afghans, to whom our military owes so much. I have written about the proposed Afghan Adjustment Act, which would both increase security scrutiny and help deserving Afghans finally find safety in America." 

Amid an aging workforce in Brattleboro, Vermont, resettled Afghans have provided a much-needed boost, Paul Heintz of The Boston Globe reports. 

"As you go around town, go to the bank, go to the grocery stores and the schools, you see how the community has changed in a positive way," said Joe Wiah, Vermont director of the Ethiopian Community Development Council. 

The need continues. "For the purposes of having a robust, dynamic economy that creates opportunities for people here and elsewhere — whether you’re coming from New Jersey or New York or Afghanistan — right now we just need more players on Team Vermont," said Kevin Chu, founder of Vermont Futures. 

Now, members of the Afghan community are fearing for their future in the United States. But they continue to receive support from neighbors such as Judy Davidson, who wrote to the editor of the Brattleboro Reformer. 

Welcome to Friday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s VP of Strategic Communications, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Jillian Clark, Nicci Mattey and Clara Villatoro. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

VISA PAUSED — The administration will pause the diversity visa lottery program on which the suspect in two tragic shootings in the past week entered the country, reports Joe Walsh of CBS News. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced the administration’s plan in an X post last night. The program, which Congress created, offers people from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States a chance to enter a lottery for 50,000 visas per year. Applicants are vetted and interviewed, Walsh notes. 

LEGAL IMMIGRANTS BLOCKED — David J. Bier of the Cato Institute analyzes the administration’s expanded immigration bans and finds that it will affect 1 in 5 legal immigrants, including U.S. citizens’ spouses and children. In raw numbers, it will block "400,000 legal immigrants and nearly 1 million tourists, business travelers, international students, foreign workers, and other temporary visitors," writes Bier, who goes on to pick apart some of the rationale behind the bans. 

REOPENING FACILITIES — The administration is reopening empty prisons around the country as detention centers to accommodate the more than 65,000 people currently in immigration detention, reports Meg Anderson of NPR. Experts note that most facilities closed over alleged poor conditions. "[T]hey shut down only to reopen and detain a different population. It's just this continual cycle and conditions never get better," said Setareh Ghandehari of the Detention Watch Network. 

SCRIPTURE — In his op-ed for The Columbus Dispatch, the Rev. Carl Ruby of Springfield, Ohio, connects Scripture to modern rhetoric and encourages readers to remember who we celebrate at Christmas. "Scripture tells us that Mary and Joseph fled with their infant son to Egypt to escape Herod’s violence," Ruby writes. "The Savior of the world began life as a refugee. That story should shape how we see Haitian families in Springfield and across Ohio today." 

Thanks for reading,  

Dan 

P.S. The Green Bay Packers Foundation will fund New Beginnings for Refugees’ Empowerment Program to help refugees in Wausau, Wisconsin, gain job skills, reports Justin Betti of WAOW.