Some breaking news this morning: The Department of Homeland Security stated that it is complying with preliminary injunction orders and is automatically extending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for beneficiaries from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Honduras, and Nepal to October 4, 2021, from its current expiration date of January 4, 2021 — which is just weeks away.

As we’ve previously noted, many TPS recipients have been living in fear of being sent home to countries in which the Trump administration alleges conditions have improved. Some of them have been in the U.S. for decades. Meanwhile, an estimated 131,00 TPS holders from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti have been supporting our nation as essential workers during the pandemic.   

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]. 

PRIORITY – While the Trump administration’s compliance with last week’s court order to fully restore Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is an important step forward, Dreamers still need certainty in the form of a permanent congressional solution that stops the "rinse-and-repeat" cycle of lawsuits, as I wrote in my latest op-ed for Fox News: "Will the incoming Biden administration be able to work with Republicans and Democrats in Congress to make a permanent legislative solution for Dreamers a top priority?" Now more than ever, America needs Dreamers: Nearly 300,000 people protected by DACA are frontline health care workers, notes Jay Timmons, the CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers. Dreamers are also expected to contribute an estimated $433 billion to the gross domestic product and pay $12.3 billion in taxes to Social Security and Medicare over the next 10 years. 

DEDICATED – Dr. Carlos Araujo-Preza, a Houston pulmonologist and immigrant from El Salvador, died of COVID-19 on Nov. 30 after becoming infected in October by the same virus as the patients he cared for everyday at HCA Houston Healthcare, reports Harmeet Kaur for CNN. In the months leading up to his illness, Araujo dedicated himself to his patients, working long hours and even sleeping in the hospital for most of April. Even as his family worried about him, his daughter says he considered being a doctor his calling: "He was so brave. He loved medicine and he loved helping patients. He was so excited to wake up every day and go help people." A reminder that immigrants have been critical to the nation’s COVID response: they constitute 17% of all health care workers nationwide. 

CANARY ISLANDS – A refugee crisis is building off the coast of Spain as refugees, including thousands of unaccompanied children, are fleeing northern and west Africa by sea to reach the Canary Islands. Al Jazeera reports that approximately 20,000 refugees and migrants have reached the Canary Islands in 2020 so far, up from 2,557 in 2019. Save the Children’s Catalina Perazzo spoke to the trauma faced by children making the voyage: "For example, they have seen people dying on board and being thrown into the sea, they have suffered from a lack of food and some may have experienced violence and, of course, separation from their parents — all these factors can scar the children for life."

DEMOGRAPHIC DECLINE – America must boost immigration in order to offset continuing demographic decline, which will likely be accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, writes senior research fellow Daniel Griswold in a paper for George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. "Behind the sharp decline in the U.S. population growth rate in the past two decades has been a steady rise in deaths per year, a falling number of births owing to an even steeper decline in the birth rate, and declining levels of net international migration, a trend even more pronounced recently in large part because of executive actions by the Trump administration," Griswold writes. "A more open policy toward immigration would be the single most effective step the U.S. government could take to avoid the problems outlined earlier of a declining population and workforce."

COMMUNITY POLICING – Drawing on 10 years of research on immigration and policing, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), in collaboration with the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force, has put together a list of "outreach, training, and educational programs" across the country for improving policing with respect to immigrant and refugee communities. This document is a great resource for police departments and agencies across the country looking for ways to improve community policing and their relationship with immigrant communities in their jurisdictions. I hope you’ll take the time to look and learn more.

Thanks for reading,

Ali