WORDS MATTER — The Biden administration is urging government officials to use more inclusive terms for immigrants, Stef W. Kight reports for Axios. Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Tracy Renaud has issued a memo instructing the agency to make changes that include to replacing the word "alien" with "noncitizen," reports Hamed Aleaziz of BuzzFeed News. "When we call people aliens we are depriving them of their sense of humanity. Whenever someone uses the word alien it conjures up images of beings that are out of this world," said Raymond Partolan, a green card holder and paralegal from Atlanta. 

‘WE ARE DYING’ — Black lawmakers are urging the Biden administration to stop the deportation of hundreds of immigrants to countries like Haiti and Cameroon that are "engulfed in political turmoil," report Maria Sacchetti and Arelis R. Hernández of The Washington Post. Said one asylum seeker from Cameroon: "Please, I’m on my knees. Please stop the deportations. We are dying." Meanwhile, Daniel Gonzalez at the Arizona Republic reports that Black immigrant advocates are praising the Biden administration for reinstating Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) for Liberians who fled the country's civil war. "This is going to mean the world to people," said Lester Myers, president of the Liberian Association of Arizona. "It's brought a lot of hope. It means that people's dreams are going to be established." (For background, see our DED fact sheet.) 

VACCINATIONS — Hardline immigration policies and rhetoric have complicated vaccinate rollout in the South, Sarah Varney reports for Kaiser Health News, noting that the "confluence of aggressive [anti-immigrant] attitudes and a highly contagious virus has prompted concerns in some states that lackluster vaccination of people in the country without legal permission will short-circuit efforts to achieve herd immunity for the broader community." The bottom line: Stoking fears of government and law enforcement among undocumented communities doesn’t make any of us safer. "If they have to risk their immigration status to have the covid vaccine, they will not have it. I don’t blame them," said Helena Lobo, Hispanic outreach coordinator at Cherokee Health. "They go by risk: ‘What is my biggest risk? Being deported or to have covid?’" 

REFUGEES AND RECOVERY — In an op-ed for Business Insider, Gideon Maltz of the Tent Partnership for Refugees explains why Biden’s plan to raise the refugee admissions ceiling to 125,000 is good news for our recovering economy. Maltz points out that refugees "earned more than $77 billion in household income and paid almost $21 billion in taxes in 2015, according to NAE. And it will be good for businesses that will add employees with resilience, dedication and loyalty." And ICYMI, refugee resettlement and national security experts (including Forum senior advisor Elizabeth Neumann) testified via a virtual hearing before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom last week, reports Ken Camp of The Baptist Standard.  

BLANK SPACES — The Biden administration has ended a Trump-era policy that allowed immigration officials to reject visa applications with blank spaces "even if that space didn’t apply to the person — a policy that led to thousands of rejections for otherwise qualified migrants," reports Austin Landis of Spectrum News. An attorney with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project told Spectrum that at least 12,000 U visas were rejected under the policy as of last spring, and he estimates that thousands of asylum applications faced a similar challenge. As Landis notes, the policy is "just one of hundreds of little-noticed changes to immigration policy made under Trump that will take time for the Biden administration to review." 

AMERICAN DREAM — The Winter 2021 issue of The Catalyst, the journal from the George W. Bush Institute, centers on a multi-part feature titled State of The American Dream. The series takes readers through immigrants’ stories — and lays a groundwork for future opportunities. "It’s not an easy conversation but an important and often inspiring one," writes editor Brittney Bain. "The essays are realistic about the challenges we face, but there is also optimism about the future of our country."