NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

President-elect Joe Biden will likely take office with a Republican
Senate, which could make comprehensive immigration reform challenging.
A new report from the Migration Policy Institute
 offers
a blueprint for exactly where Biden could start: Deprioritize the
removal of undocumented immigrants who are not public safety threats,
reopen DACA applications, raise the annual refugee cap and treat asylum
seekers more humanely. 

"[T]he incoming administration faces opportunities to work with Congress
to build a 21st century immigration system, one with an immigrant
selection system that can flexibly respond to changing economic and
labor market conditions, that creates a pathway to legal status for
unauthorized immigrants who are contributing members of U.S. society,
and that rethinks its visa categories to attract and retain desired
global talent," report authors Doris Meissner and Michelle Mittelstadt
write. 

"[B]ecause immigration is an area where presidents exercise a vast
amount of discretion, it's also one where incoming President Joe Biden
can do a lot executively to reverse some of the most heinous excesses of
the Trump years," Greg Sargent writes in a column for The Washington
Post
. 

These changes, Sargent writes, would signal that far from a force to be
feared, "immigration can and should be managed humanely with an eye
toward what's truly in the public interest."

As Meissner and Mittelstadt conclude, the timing couldn't be more
urgent to begin taking steps toward reform: "The reopening of countries
after the forced immobility imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, labor
force realignments as automation and offshoring leave their mark, the
growing global hunt for talent, and the aging of U.S. society are among
the urgent reminders that the United States needs active, intelligent
management of its immigration system-and the flexibility to adapt and
adjust as conditions change."

Don't forget: Next week, we're bringing together influential
speakers from a variety of backgrounds for our annual Leading the Way
convening. Join us
from 3-5 p.m. ET from Nov. 16-19 for conversations on the post-election
path forward, American identity amid polarization, the new economics of
immigration and more. Registration is free

- see you there!

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]
.

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**'BALM FOR THE SOUL'** - Yesterday's news that a COVID-19
vaccine candidate from Pfizer and BioNTech achieved 90% effectiveness in
a phase 3 trial was both a triumph of human ingenuity as well as an
incredible immigrant success story. BioNTech founders Özlem Türeci and
Ugur Sahin's backgrounds as children of Turkish guest workers who came
to Germany in the late 1960s is significant, Philip Oltermann writes for
The Guardian
.
"In a country where a debate about the willingness of German citizens
with Turkish roots to integrate into public life has never been far from
the headlines for the last decade, the story of BioNTech's founders is
also salient." In April, Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel "wrote that their
success was 'balm for the soul' of Germans with Turkish roots after
decades of being stereotyped as lowly educated greengrocers." Now, they
may quite literally save the world.

**666 CHILDREN** - Lawyers working to reunite separated migrant
children with their parents now say 666 children are stranded as a
result of the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy, Jacob
Soboroff and Julia Ainsley report for NBC News
.
"Nearly 20 percent, or 129, of those children were under 5 at the time
of the separation, according to a source familiar with the data." Steven
Herzog, the attorney leading efforts to reunite the families, explained
that the number is higher than the initially reported 545 separated
children because the new group includes those "for whom the government
did not provide any phone number." Said Herzog in an email to Justice
Department attorneys: "[W]e would appreciate the government providing
any available updated contact information, or other information that may
be helpful in establishing contact for all 666 of these parents
."

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**"THERE'S NO GOING BACK"** - Despite President Trump's hostile
rhetoric and harsh policies, immigrants and their children are still on
track to reshape U.S. demographics in the coming years, Miriam Jordan
writes for The New York Times
.
Regardless of the incoming administration's immigration policies,
shifts are already underway: "Even if immigration were to come to a
standstill ... The children of immigrants who are already here will
continue to make the United States more diverse: The 2020 census is
expected to show that more than half of people under 18 are people of
color." For the American workforce, the impact is clear: "When you start
having cohorts of college graduates that are so diverse, it's going to
change the workforce, which means more people from diverse backgrounds
moving into positions of authority and high remuneration," said Richard
Alba, a sociology professor at the City University of New York Graduate
Center. "There's no going back."

**PROMISES KEPT** - Two newly elected Georgia sheriffs, Cobb
County's Craig Owens and Gwinnett County's Keybo Taylor, plan to
follow through on their campaign promises to end the 287(g) program
 in
their respective counties. The program, which "deputizes state and local
officials to help enforce federal immigration laws in local jails and
state prison systems," has eroded trust and made immigrants fearful of
reporting crime, writes Jeremy Redmon for the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
.

Thanks for reading,

Ali

 

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