NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

In an interview with Lester Holt of NBC News

yesterday, President-elect Joe Biden pledged he will "send an
immigration bill to the United States Senate with a pathway to
citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people in America" within
his first 100 days in office. Yet as Daniella Silva writes for NBC
,
fully undoing President Trump's legacy on immigration could prove to
take longer: "Three people involved in crafting Biden's immigration
platform have told NBC News

that the changes will be hard fought and that they may not happen all at
once." Among the changes a Biden administration may be able to
accomplish quickly? Reinstating and expanding protections for Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and returning to
Obama-era immigration enforcement priorities, according to Muzaffar
Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute.

But as Sabrina Rodriguez points out in Politico Pro

[paywall], advocates hope Biden will improve the Obama
administration's policies and learn from its mistakes while also
contending with a likely divided Congress. Kerri Talbot, director of
federal advocacy for the Immigration Hub, predicts that immigration
"will remain a big focus of a Biden administration. For starters,
he'll have to undo a lot of what Trump did. And lessons from the Obama
era will position Biden to pursue 'more humane and smarter
priorities.'"

Earlier this month, the Forum recommended a list of immigration
priorities

for the Biden administration's first 100 days, all of them with
bipartisan backing. "Sustainable immigration reform that doesn't
further divide our country can only occur if the effort is bipartisan,"
our policy team notes. "A working immigration system can help unite our
country through our common patriotism and American identity."

Welcome to Wednesday'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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**SAYING THANKS** - While Thanksgiving may look different this year,
at least one thing will remain unchanged: Migrant farmworkers continue
to ensure that food reaches our tables. They're doing essential work
in spite of the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on them and
continued hostility from the Trump administration, which earlier this
month moved to freeze the wages of H-2A workers for the next two years
at their current pay, per NPR
's
Dan Charles. The administration estimates that change will yield workers
$170 million less in wages annually. So, if you're digging into the
turkey and mash tomorrow, I hope you'll join me in saying thanks to
these essential workers who are helping feed us at a great personal
cost. Hopefully we can soon give our thanks in a more concrete way:
prioritizing farmworkers

for a COVID-19 vaccine.

**PATTERN OF DISCRIMINATION** - Two Latina women who were detained and
questioned by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officer in Havre,
Montana, after being overheard speaking Spanish in a store have reached
a settlement in their racial discrimination lawsuit, Traci Rosenbaum
reports for the Great Falls Tribune
.
"The ACLU said Ana Suda and Martha 'Mimi' Hernandez, two American
citizens, were shopping in a Havre convenience store in May 2018 when
CBP Agent Paul O'Neill approached them. O'Neill commented on Hernandez's
accent and asked where both women were born. When they responded with
their American places of birth, O'Neill requested identification and
they presented their valid Montana driver's licenses. ... Although
O'Neill had no indication that they broke the law, he detained Suda and
Hernandez for 40 minutes in the parking lot." The lawsuit revealed that
"local CBP agents have long engaged in a pattern of similar behavior
toward Latinx individuals," including "routinely profiling non-white
individuals." 

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**'ABSOLUTELY STUNNING'**-  A new study

from Anne Roder and Mark Elliott at the Economic Mobility Corp
shows that employment-focused
English language instruction netted significant earnings gains for
immigrants, Katie Johnston reports for The Boston Globe
.
"Unemployed residents with prior U.S. work experience who enrolled in an
employment-focused English course boosted their earnings by an average
of more than $7,100 annually two years after starting the program,
compared with unemployed non-English speakers who weren't in the
program. Among all participants, including those who started out with
jobs, the average annual increase during the second year was more than
$2,600." The study's findings, which Elliott called "absolutely
stunning," track with the Forum's English at Work
effort through
the New American Workforce, offering industry-contextualized English
language training at worksites. 

**'MAKE AMENDS'**- When Leticia and her son Yovany fled Guatemala
for the U.S. amid gang threats and violence in November 2017, they were
optimistic: "We were a little happy because we thought that the fear we
felt had been left behind and that once we were in this country, they
could no longer harm us," Leticia said. But as Catherine Rampbell writes
for The Washington Post
,
the pair were promptly separated as part of the pilot for the Trump
administration's "zero-tolerance" policy at the border in El Paso,
Texas. Leticia relinquished her asylum claim after seven months and was
deported to Guatemala in hopes she could position her son for release
from the shelter for unaccompanied children that the government placed
him in. Nearly two years later, "a judge found that Leticia had been
coerced into giving up her asylum claim and ordered that she be allowed
back into the United States." Leticia is one of only about 20 parents
who have been allowed back in the U.S. among the thousands separated
from their children. Now, she's fighting for other parents, hoping
that an incoming Biden administration will "make amends for [past]
mistakes."

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and stay safe,

Ali

 

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