NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

By the time President-elect Joe Biden takes office, President Donald
Trump will have reduced legal immigration by up to 49%, Stuart Anderson
writes in Forbes
.
Biden will inherit a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
backlog, a gutted visa system for skilled workers, travel bans affecting
millions of Americans and their families, a university system bereft of
international students, and the responsibility for the fates of hundreds
of thousands of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and
Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients. "Analysts believe if the
Biden administration is smart, it will make a clean break from the Trump
era by undoing all executive orders and proclamations on immigration
that are not directly tied to health concerns related to Covid-19,"
Anderson writes.

Matt Viser, Seung Min Kim and Annie Linskey at The Washington Post

report that the Biden-Harris team is planning to do just that. "He will
repeal the ban on almost all travel from some Muslim-majority countries,
and he will reinstate the program allowing 'dreamers,' who were
brought to the United States illegally as children, to remain in the
country, according to people familiar with his plans."

Politico's

Rebecca Rainey and Bryan Bender write that "[i]mmigration policy would
be the most dramatic and immediate reversal of Trump policies when Biden
takes office."

As we noted

following the news of Biden's victory, Americans across the political
spectrum want an immigration approach that re-establishes our values of
compassion, dignity and opportunity. Republicans and Democrats in
Congress should find common ground to create immigration policies that
benefit all of us. For my part, I couldn't help but think about
the
millions of immigrants - supported by conservatives, moderates and
liberals - who can finally breathe deeply.

Welcome to Monday'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]
.

**Category:** "The Future of Immigration Policy"

**The Answer:** "Leading the Way , Week of
Nov. 16." (Registration is free
)

**The Question:** "Where are 35 speakers gathering over 13 panels to
discuss the future of American immigration?"

(Thank you, Alex
 -
Canadian immigrant, naturalized U.S. citizen - for the decades of
joy.)

[link removed]

**NEW AMERICAN VICTORIES**- I love this story: Numerous first- and
second-generation Americans were elected to office this week in historic
races across the country, Rupa Shenoy reports for The World
.
"Samba Baldeh, an immigrant from The Gambia, will represent a mostly
white area in the Wisconsin Legislature as its first Muslim member.
Naquetta Ricks, a refugee from Liberia, is joining the Colorado House.
Kesha Ram, the daughter of an Indian immigrant father and Jewish
American mother, is now the first woman of color in the Vermont Senate.
Iman Jodeh, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants and refugees, is now
Colorado's first Muslim lawmaker." Beyond their immigrant status, the
newly elected officials also share the same goals: "to defend democracy,
diversity and inclusiveness."

**SOUTH TEXAS VOTE**- Around 25-30% of Latino voters nationwide have
supported Republican candidates for decades, "but many Democrats said
they were particularly alarmed by the loss of support in the Rio Grande
Valley, where Mr. Biden won some border counties by significantly
smaller margins than Hillary Clinton did in 2016," reports Jennifer
Medina for The New York Times
.
Gilberto Hinojosa, Texas Democratic Party chairman and Rio Grande Valley
resident, attributes Biden's lackluster performance in South Texas to
a missed opportunity to "counter Republican messaging on three issues
important to Latino voters: pandemic shutdowns, oil jobs and abortion,"
Elizabeth Findell writes in The Wall Street Journal
.
President Trump's messaging around abortion, unauthorized immigrants
and border security may have also broken through to South Texas Latino
voters, according to a deep dive by the Dallas Morning News
.
"There is a divide between an RGV Latino voter and a Dallas County or
Harris County Latino voter," said Antonion Arellano, interim executive
director of the progressive Latino group Jolt Action. "We need to
recognize that Texas is the size of three Georgias - it's a massive
state. Latinos in the North, in the East, in the West and in the South
of Texas all have different motivators that are driving them out to
vote."

[link removed]

**TPS TORN APART** - There's a vast array of immigration challenges
facing the president-elect, Monica Rhor writes in the Houston Chronicle
.
"But it is the TPS recipient, along with the DACA 'dreamer,' who
could have lives already rooted in this country torn apart." As it
stands now, "TPS holders from Sudan, Nicaragua and Haiti may have to
leave as soon as March. About 200,000 from El Salvador, the largest
group of TPS holders, would have until November 2021." Asked Bernardo
Castaneda, a Salvadoran TPS recipient who fled to the U.S. with his
family decades ago: "How do you prepare yourself in 11 months to take
with you 20 years of your life?"

**OTHER BARRIERS** - President Trump has only built about 597
kilometers of physical wall between the U.S. and Mexico, but built a
more effective barrier through "an intricate web of executive actions,
administrative orders and agreements with other countries obtained
through threats," write Lorena Arroyo, Hector Guerrero and Teresa de
Miguel for El País
.
Even with a Biden win, they write, immigration and asylum law experts
feel that some of the Trump administration's changes could take a long
time to revert and will have long-term effects on the U.S. immigration
system. "The US government is placing all the obstacles it can and
making people suffer inhumanly with the goal of getting them to stop
coming. It's a way of closing the border," said Jodi Goodwill, a
veteran immigration lawyer from Texas.

Thanks for reading,

Ali

 

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