With the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule set to go into effect on October 15, health providers are preparing for a surge in uninsured immigrant patients too scared to seek government assistance. Nowhere is this concern more pronounced than in Texas, where the uninsured rate of 17.7% — nearly double the U.S. average — has stretched the health system thin and a quarter of children have at least one non-citizen parent, writes Renuka Rayasam at Politico Pro [paywall]. Hospitals that provide health services in communities with high numbers of immigrants could struggle to stay open: “When we weaken a hospital by taking away revenues, people will still come and get care as uninsured people … Those uncompensated care costs just don’t get absorbed by a hospital,” said Cindy Mann, a former top Medicaid official.
And a big announcement from Walmart: In honor of Citizenship Day, Ben-Saba Hasan, SVP and Chief Culture Diversity & Inclusion Officer at Walmart Inc., announced on LinkedIn the company’s efforts to provide “immigrant families within Walmart the support of English language instruction and help with the citizenship process” via the recently launched Corporate Roundtable for the New American Workforce. The Roundtable is a partnership between companies and the National Immigration Forum “to advance strategies that help immigrants integrate into the American workforce and apply their full talents to American society.”
Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes.
Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].
SYRIAN – After a bomb destroyed her home and killed her husband, Maysoun fled Syria for Lebanon, becoming one of 1.5 million Syrians who have fled to the country of just 6 million. But nearly a decade after the conflict began, with nations like the U.S. refusing to admit Syrian refugees, Lebanon has started dismantling shelters as part of a concerted effort to drive Syrians out, per Lisa Khoury at Washington Monthly. “The demolition of the residents’ structures is nothing more than harassment to make living difficult conditions of Syrians unbearable,” said Hilal Khashan, a professor at the American University of Beirut.
PRICED OUT – The Trump administration is considering making it harder for immigrants to appeal deportation cases by charging $975 to request an appeal and $895 to request a case be reopened. That would represent an increase of nearly 910% from the current cost of $110, reports Hamed Aleaziz at BuzzFeed News. “They are essentially depriving people of the right to appeal — that is big money,” said Rebecca Jamil, a former immigration judge in San Francisco.
TIKKUN OLAM – Alarmed by anti-immigrant policies and compelled by an inherited sense of the asylum seeker’s struggle, Jewish Americans have found a renewed spirit of activism in protecting immigrant rights, writes Sarah Parvini at the Los Angeles Times. “When I see the detention facilities and the arrest of asylum seekers, I feel that’s arresting my family … If you didn’t need to cross an ocean to get here from Europe, how many European Jews would have been running [to] the border?,” said Rachel Rubin Green, whose mother escaped Nazi Germany.
EASTERN DISTRICT, PA – Expecting his fourth child, Jaime Valencia, an undocumented immigrant living in Chester County, Pennsylvania, decided to apply for his green card. But when Valencia arrived for his appointment, he was seized by immigration authorities and charged with illegal reentry, one of 18,000 such sentences meted out last year and the highest level in seven years, Peter Hall and Riley Yates report in The Morning Call. In the Eastern District where Valencia lived, not only have reentry cases tripled since 2017, but prosecutors — taking their cue from the Trump administration — have begun targeting low-level offenders. “Not everybody that comes here is bad. … They are just looking for the same American dream that everybody else wants,” said Azalea Soto, Valencia’s wife and a U.S. citizen.
TO WAIT – Recalling her youth as an Iranian refugee in Rome during the 1980s, Dina Nayeri remembers a life of difficulty leavened with surprising instances of joy. But when visiting a Greek refugee camp in Katsikas as research for her new book, The Ungrateful Refugee, Nayeri found communities waiting for their future. In a powerful essay for TIME, Naveri writes, “To wait is to submit, to leak power, skill, and dignity.”
Thanks for reading,
Ali
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