The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to review two signature Trump administration policies on immigration — one that has forced 60,000 asylum seekers to remain in Mexico pending hearings and another that has diverted $2.5 billion from the Pentagon to build a border wall — after lower courts previously ruled against both, Adam Liptak reports in The New York Times. The former, known as “Remain in Mexico,” was deemed to cause “extreme and irreversible harm” by an appeals court in February.

The news comes just a week after the court “handed Mr. Trump at least interim victories by allowing his administration to cut short fieldwork for the 2020 census and by fast-tracking a case on whether it may exclude undocumented immigrants from the population figures used to allocate congressional seats.”

On the border wall case, the Associated Press notes that “[t]he high court has previously allowed construction to continue, even after a federal appeals court ruled in June that the administration had illegally sidestepped Congress in transferring the Defense Department funds.” 

Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected].

‘BEHOLDEN’ – Lipman Family Farms on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, which employs at least a thousand Mexican tomato pickers each year through the H-2A agricultural visa program, has largely avoided the outbreaks of COVID-19 that have plagued other U.S. farms by imposing a rigid lockdown. But Miriam Jordan reports in The New York Times that during the pandemic, workers have been confined to the camps where they live and the fields on which they work — limitations the workers are forced to accept, given that “they are beholden to the company for their visa, housing and wages.” Said Martinez, a worker in his third year on East Coast tomato fields: “You put up with a lot already. I never expected to lose my freedom.” As long as there is no true federal response to COVID-19, there are no easy solutions for employers or employees.

‘THEY WILL DEVASTATE COMPANIES’ – President Trump’s new H-1B visa restrictions are being challenged in a lawsuit filed by groups ranging from higher education and health care to IT services and logistics companies, Alex Gangitano reports for The Hill. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers are among the groups filing the complaint, as well as Cornell University and the University of Southern California. The restrictions “undermine high-skilled immigration in the U.S. and a company’s ability to retain and recruit the very best talent. If these rules are allowed to stand, they will devastate companies across various industries,” said Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue. The restrictions, which went into effect earlier this month, are meant to force companies to hire locally during the pandemic — though as we’ve noted before, the tightening of H-1B rules actually suppresses economic growth. National Foundation for American Policy Executive Director Stuart Anderson has a comprehensive breakdown of the lawsuit, as well as an additional one filed by several other universities and organizations, over at Forbes.

‘VICTIMS OF SOCIALISM’ – The conservative Hispanic Leadership Fund (HLF) yesterday launched a bilingual radio ad campaign in South Florida reaching out to 750,000 Floridians,  pointing out the ironies in President Trump’s simultaneous lambasting of socialism while refusing to help those who have been hurt by it. “Specifically, ads contrast tough rhetoric ‘supporting’ the Cuban and Venezuelan people living under socialist regimes with denying temporary protected status to refugees,” Jacob Ogles writes for Florida Politics, noting that “about 180 Venezuelans were deported by the administration just this weekend.” Said HLF president Mario Lopez: “[If] you are going to talk about [the evils of socialism], shouldn’t you also look at victims of socialism? Especially when they have so much to contribute and offer, and with all the evidence immigrants and refugees are a benefit to our country?”

KID WITH A CURE – Fourteen-year-old Indian American student Anika Chebrolu from Frisco, Texas, won the 2020 3M Young Scientist Challenge for her invention of a method that could potentially provide COVID-19 therapy, Alaa Elassar reports for CNN. The teen had an interest in curing viruses even before the pandemic, and hopes to take her invention to the next level and work with experts to develop an actual cure for COVID-19. Chebrolu told Sanya Jain of NDTV: “My grandpa, when I was younger, he always used to push me toward science. He was actually a chemistry professor, and he used to always tell me learn the periodic table of the elements and learn all these things about science and over time I just grew to love it.”

Thanks for reading,

Ali