NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

Undoing Trump's anti-immigrant policies is all about the fine print,
Michael D. Shear and Miriam Jordan write for The New York Times
.  

From diplomatic visas to naturalization requirements to the detention
of pregnant women, "[h]undreds of little-noticed but consequential
revisions to the U.S. immigration system will remain in place unless
President Biden's team specifically looks for - and roots out -
the changes." 

Lucas Guttentag, a law professor at Yale and Stanford, put together a
team of 70 students who "spent the past four years building a database
of every change  that Mr. Trump
made to the immigration system, no matter how small." They
documented 1,064 separate immigration-related changes made by the Trump
administration from 2017 to 2021. 

Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us  (and last
week's Only in America
 guest) summed
it up best: "Ninety-nine point nine percent of those [changes] were
designed to make immigration harder and reduce the number of immigrants
coming to this country." 

Note: Keep an eye out for a virtual hearing
 from the U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom at 10:30 a.m. ET today.
My friends Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS; Elizabeth
Neumann, senior advisor at the Forum; and Jenny
Yang, senior vice president of policy and advocacy at World Relief
, are among the witnesses who will
discuss ways to protect and support refugees fleeing religious
persecution and seeking safety in the U.S.  Register to observe
the hearing here
.  (For
more from these experts, listen to our conversations with Mark
, Elizabeth
 and Jenny
 for
Only in America.)  

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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**URGENCY** - A Texas lawsuit could end Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protections for more than 640,000
undocumented young people - a looming threat that could force
Congress to move on immigration, Sabrina Rodriguez reports
for POLITICO
. While
the Supreme Court ruled last summer that the way the Trump
administration rescinded DACA was unlawful, it left "the door open
for other legal challenges," Rodriguez explains. Eight other states
are also asking the court to terminate DACA. In Texas, International
Bank of Commerce Senior Vice President (and Forum Board Chair) Eddie
Aldrete is co-chairing the bipartisan Texas Opportunity Council
 to push for legislative solutions for
DACA recipients, reports KSAT News
. 

**TPS** - Following last week's
introduction of the Dream Act of 2021
,
a newly proposed bill spotlights another population that needs a
permanent solution from Congress: Temporary Protected
Status (TPS) holders. The Hill
's
Rebecca Beitsch reports that Maryland's senators are pushing for
permanent status for more than 400,000 TPS holders with a bill that
could help them "gain residency in the U.S., ending a cycle by which
holders have to apply to renew their status every six to 18
months."  The proposed legislation would apply to TPS holders
from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan,
South Sudan, Syria and Yemen.  

**STATUS** - Colombia is granting temporary immigration
protection to Venezuelan migrants and refugees living in the country
without legal status - a move that could benefit more than
1.7 Venezuelans "in the broadest measure yet by a government to assist
those fleeing their troubled country's crisis," reports Antonio
Maria Delgado for The Miami Herald
. The
temporary permits would allow migrants to qualify for residency,
allowing them to work legally in Colombia. "By taking this
transcendental and historic step in Latin America, we hope that other
countries follow our lead," said Colombian President Iván
Duque. According to UNHCR
, there are more
than 5.4 million refugees and migrants from Venezuela worldwide. 

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**ICE THREATS **- Three Cameroonian asylum seekers detained at the
Pine Prairie U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center in Louisiana say ICE officials
threatened to expose them to COVID-19 if they didn't accept
deportation, John Washington reports for The Intercept
. "They
were forcing us out of the dorm, pushing and dragging us," said
Clovis Fozao, one of the detained men, explaining how guards attempted
to force detainees to submit to deportation. "They threatened to call
the SWAT team. They said they were going to put all of us into
Bravo-Alpha, which is for quarantine, where they keep everyone with
coronavirus." Their flight was canceled after advocacy groups
intervened, as The Guardian
 first
reported.  

**BIDEN REFORMS** - President Biden plans to raise the U.S. refugee
ceiling from Trump's historic low of 15,000 to 62,500 this
year, and Ted Hesson at Reuters
 breaks down some
of the details. In addition to establishing regional allotments,
reviewing the Special Immigrant Visa program, piloting a private
sponsorship program and rolling back restrictive Trump
policies, Biden is calling on the heads of several U.S. agencies to
develop a report by early August on the role climate change has
played in displacing people worldwide.  

**'ENCOUNTERS AT THE BORDER'** - In an alumni feature
for Harvard Magazine
, Lydialyle Gibson highlights the
work of photographer Morgan Smith, who has spent a decade
documenting life along the U.S.-Mexico border. Smith's work provides
a glimpse into the unique experience of life on the border,
from migrant families camped out awaiting asylum hearings to Mexican
soldiers guarding the border wall. "I think it's hard for Americans
to imagine what it's like ... to come from a very poor area in, say,
Honduras, which is one of the most dangerous countries in the world, and
travel thousands of miles to Juárez, another dangerous place, where you
know nobody, not really being sure what's going to happen to you,"
Smith said of the families he photographed. "It's pretty heroic." 

Thanks for reading,

Ali

 

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