NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

As we head into the holidays, millions of Americans will be without
adequate food amid the pandemic's ongoing economic crisis. Simran
Sethi reports in The Counter
 that
this reality is all too common for many immigrant families.  

"Perhaps the most tragic irony is that the very people engaged in the
work of feeding us are among the most impacted. A study
 of
migrant and seasonal farmworker households living on the U.S.-Mexico
border showed 82 percent were food insecure and 49 percent were impacted
by hunger. The statistics are no better on the other end of the food
chain. In 2014, more than 40 percent
 of restaurant
workers did not make enough money to feed themselves adequately. The
dramatic number of restaurant closures
 in
2020 means those statistics have gone from bad to worse."

"It's estimated
 that
about half of the nation's 2.4 million farmworkers and one-third of
those in food services are undocumented," Sethi adds. "They not only
grapple with systemic bias, vulnerabilities due to documentation status,
and appallingly low pay, but have limited access to food assistance."

Welcome to Thursday's edition of Noorani's Notes. We will be back
to you on January 4, 2021 (but will still be available to press this
week). We hope you have a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and a
wonderful holiday.

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**$2 BILLION** - In order to continue building the border wall, the
Trump administration has adopted a strategy of awarding contracts before
acquiring the rights to land in Texas, costing the government millions
of dollars in delays and suspended projects, report Perla Trevizo and
Jeremy Schwartz for The Texas Tribune and ProPublica
.
"Since 2017, the federal government has awarded at least a dozen
contracts in South Texas worth more than $2 billion prior to obtaining
all the land it needed for the projects." Said Austin Evers, executive
director of American Oversight and former State Department senior
counsel under the Obama administration: "The government is arguing that
it has to seize these lands right now because it is being penalized
under the contract it already signed. ... In plain English, what that
means is that American taxpayers are seeing their money thrown away for
no purpose because the government signed the contract before it could
execute the project."

**REBUILDING**- President-elect Biden's transition team is warning
that given the continued dismantling of the refugee admissions program
under the Trump administration, it will take time to make good on its
promise to reach a refugee admissions cap of 125,000. CNN
's
Priscilla Alvarez reports that "[t]he diversion of refugee officers to
work on asylum cases the past two years has left the pipeline largely
void of refugees who are advanced in the system, a source familiar with
the process said." Agencies like Catholic Charities of Dallas, which
facilitate the resettlement process, have also been hollowed out in
recent years; the organization reduced its staff by 80% and resettled
just three unaccompanied refugee children this year. In a new report

released earlier this month, Elizabeth Neumann, a former Homeland
Security assistant secretary under the Trump administration, laid out
the national security case for increased refugee resettlement.

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**DIVERGENT APPROACHES** - When the United Kingdom's transition
period out of the European Union officially ends on Dec. 31, the
country's immigration system will be "dramatically overhauled," Ashley
Cowburn writes for The Independent
.
With the end of the free movement of people to and from the EU, the UK
plans to adopt a new points-based immigration system designed to
encourage "skilled" migrants and discourage "low-skilled" ones - from
the EU and elsewhere - in what British Home Secretary Priti Patel
calls a "firmer but fairer" system. Meanwhile in France, COVID-19
frontline immigrant workers - from health professionals to store
clerks to cleaners - will be fast-tracked for citizenship, the BBC
reports. This
recognition of the immeasurable contributions of these workers is a step
that the incoming Biden administration and the next Congress could also
make to help the more than five million
undocumented
essential workers who have served on the frontlines of the pandemic here
in the U.S.

**'DANCED FOR FREEDOM'** - Some good news this holiday season: A
Philadelphia couple, Oneita and Clive Thompson, walked free on Monday
after hiding in two local churches for 843 days seeking sanctuary from
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which told the Jamaican
asylum seekers in August 2018 that they would be removed from the
country after 14 years of building a life in the U.S., reports CNN
's
Ganesh Setty. Last month, the Thompsons filed a motion to reopen their
asylum case, and after letters of support from lawmakers as well as
around 200 letters from church and community members, ICE joined the
Thompsons' motion to reopen the asylum case. The federal government
ultimately dropped its deportation order earlier this month. "We just
danced for freedom," Oneita said of walking free. "You just want to
spread your wings and fly away."

**FINALLY -**Just a big thank you to the Forum team and our friends at
SKDK for producing the Note every day. Y'all are the best.

Have a safe and restful holiday,

Ali

 

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