The biotech company Moderna has a COVID-19 vaccine in late-stage clinical trials, and on Tuesday the president announced that the U.S. government will buy 100 million doses if the vaccine is approved. The company was founded and is led by immigrants, Stuart Anderson of the National Foundation for American Policy writes in Forbes. “What keeps you from innovating is being comfortable,” said co-founder and chairman Noubar Afeyan, who immigrated to the U.S. from Lebanon by way of Canada and advocates for boosting the number of immigrant entrepreneurs in America. “If you’re an immigrant, then you’re used to being out of your comfort zone.”
Good morning and welcome to Wednesday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email your guest host at [email protected].
AT RISK – In Marion County, Indiana, home to Indianapolis, immigrants are at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19, reports Natalia E. Contreras for the Indianapolis Star. The reasons, according to a report from New American Economy and Indianapolis’ Immigrant Welcome Center, include immigrants’ disproportionate representation in front-line and essential roles, limits to federal relief, and language barriers. “The 14,000 frontline workers [in Marion County] do not have the option to stay home. At the same time, 34% of the immigrant community is without health coverage,” Jackie Rodriguez of the Immigrant Welcome Center said. “This combination heightens health risks for everyone and has a negative impact on our city’s capacity to work through and recover from COVID-19.”
FAMILY SEPARATION – Since President Trump announced a ban on most overseas immigrant visas in April, family members of U.S. citizens and green card holders have been unable to reunite with their loved ones. Mathew Soerens, U.S. Director for Church Mobilization at World Relief, calls on fellow evangelicals to speak out against this latest family separation in an op-ed for the Christian Post: “For evangelical Christians who have long championed family values, the reasons to insist on an immigration system that prioritizes ensuring intact families are obvious,” Soerens writes. The change “ultimately impacts a much larger number of families than the infamous 2018 policy” and “also leads to children crying themselves to sleep, half a world away from their mother or father in the U.S. — even if we’re less likely to capture those tears on video.”
THE BORDER – To oversee construction of COVID-19 field hospitals in McAllen and Harlingen, the state of Texas has selected two former Trump administration contractors at the southern border, Border Report’s Sandra Sanchez writes. One is a nonprofit organization that has run migrant youth detention centers along the border and the other is a for-profit company that has won federal contracts with the Trump administration to build the border wall. “While most residents agree that extraordinary measures are needed to battle the pandemic in this hard-hit border region right now, some told Border Report that they questioned the state hiring companies that have contributed to anti-immigrant sentiment,” Sanchez writes. “Others question the use of CARES Act funds for companies that already receive lucrative federal contracts in the border regions.”
WORTH A LISTEN – The Trump administration continues to enforce various policies that make it more difficult for immigrants to claim asylum in the United States, explain immigration lawyer Bridget Cambria and law professor Tobias Barrington Wolff on Chris Hayes’ Why Is This Happening? podcast. It’s a disturbing but illuminating look at the administration’s attacks on the asylum process: “They want to make it so painful, so difficult and so awful for people with asylum claims that they rescind their asylum claims so they could be deported under the law and never have to be dealt with again,” Hayes says during the interview. For more context, check out our own fact sheet on the asylum process here.
IMMIGRANT ROOTS – Newly announced vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris has spoken proudly of her immigrant heritage in the past. Harris, the child of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, “has been fully comfortable with her identify from an early age,” Kevin Sullivan wrote in a profile for The Washington Post in 2019. “She credits that largely to a Hindu immigrant single mom who adopted Black culture and immersed her daughters in it. Harris grew up embracing her Indian culture, but living a proudly African American life.”
Thanks for reading,
Dan