The outgoing Trump administration is moving at breakneck speed to complete as much of the president’s border wall in his final weeks in office as possible, aiming to meet the 450-mile benchmark he pledged at the start of his term. While President-elect Biden is "promising open doors for immigrants and refugees – and says he'll stop building the border wall," Heather Sells writes for CBN News, the "pace at which construction is continuing all but assures that the wall, whatever Mr. Biden decides to do, is here to stay for the foreseeable future, establishing a contentious legacy for Mr. Trump in places that were crucial to his defeat," per Simon Romero and Zolan Kanno-Youngs at The New York Times.

"While the president-elect has said he will halt new wall construction, other immigration priorities like ending travel bans, accepting more refugees and easing asylum restrictions" — and finding a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants — may take precedence, Romero and Kanno-Youngs write. Meanwhile, Sells notes that the "Evangelical Immigration Table … is promoting one such plan – a restitution-based concept that would support a pathway to legal permanent residency for illegal immigrants."

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].

WHO COUNTS – Today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on President Trump’s efforts to exclude undocumented residents when counting state populations to determine congressional representation, Robert Barnes and Tara Bahrampour report for The Washington Post. If the Court rules in the government’s favor, meaning the president has the authority to decide whether or not to count undocumented immigrants in the census, it could change the congressional map dramatically — not just for "blue" states with historically high immigrant populations, but for "red" states too. Meanwhile, "opponents of [Trump’s] plan say it is foreclosed by more than 200 years of practice, the text of the Constitution and the authority granted the president by Congress. Three lower courts have ruled against Trump, and a fourth said the time was not ripe for a decision on the question’s merits."

FINAL PUSH – While President Trump makes a final push to restrict immigration before January, President-elect Biden’s transition team is realizing the extent of the complexities in the administration’s actions on immigration. "Even changes that are ultimately up to the president could face hurdles, including Biden's pledge to bring more refugees to the United States. … a change in actual arrivals would require policy changes and new refugee interviews, according to a source familiar with the process," Priscilla Alvarez and Geneva Sands report for CNN. Meanwhile, Anita Kumar at POLITICO writes that "Trump’s aides are showing signs of long-term planning. … And they’re launching some changes that can be enacted swiftly." Among the changes? More restrictions to the H-1B high-skilled worker visa program, lengthening the citizenship test, and allowing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services more power in determining the fate of immigration applications. As I told Anita, it’s clear that the Trump administration is using the transition to check off its list of items to minimize immigration to the U.S.

NATURALIZATION OBSTACLES – As we noted in the previous item, the Trump administration recently revised the citizenship exam to make it longer and more difficult. "More alarming, it injected politics into the questions and answers," the Boston Globe Editorial Board writes. Now, the pool of questions from which immigration officials can pick to test an applicant is 128 — up from 100 — and applicants must get 12 out of 20 correct to pass. "The shift to more questions and procedures … will slow down the naturalization process and lead to an increased backlog of applications," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council. With wait times already reaching nine months to process citizenship applications, I told the Globe that one Trump-era practice worth keeping is the virtual oath ceremony, which would allow us to clear the final hurdle more expediently. 

BORDER CHILDREN – According to a new federal court filing, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) "held more than five dozen children, some under the age of 1, in facilities along the US-Mexico border for over three days during the last two months,"  Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN. The findings reveal that CBP is violating the Flores settlement agreement, which requires children to be released from immigration detention within three days. Meanwhile, the "wide-ranging new controls on immigration put into place under the Trump administration have made it harder for migrants of all kinds to cross the Southern border, but they have been particularly difficult for pregnant women, who often arrive at the border after arduous journeys, in a state of exhaustion," Lynsey Addario reports in a photo essay for The New York Times.

Thanks for reading,

Ali