NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

Though the British government has "spent the past decade
pushing anti-immigrant policies
,"
the U.K. has opened up a six-year pathway to British citizenship for
British National (Overseas) passport holders, reports Tara John of CNN
.  

The BN(O) is "a special visa category created for Hong Kong nationals
before the 1997 transfer of power." However, John writes, it "does not
account for the most vulnerable Hong Kongers: young pro-democracy
protesters.... who were born after 1997 and are therefore not
eligible." For these protestors, the path to political asylum is less
clear-cut: In the year-long period ending in September 2020, less than
half of asylum claims were granted protection.  

Still, "[w]elcoming Hong Kongers has become one of the few issues in
British politics that commands bipartisan support, uniting opposition
 Labour,
Green Party and Scottish National Party members with the hawkish,
anti-China wing of the Conservative party."  

A bipartisan bill in the Senate would help give the U.S. a leadership
role here. The Hong Kong Safe Harbor Act
 would
make it easier for protesters to obtain refugee status in the U.S.,
as Reuters
 reported. Twelve
senators, led by Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Bob Menendez (D-New
Jersey), reintroduced the bill earlier this month.  

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]
.

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**MPP** - On Friday the Biden administration began the important,
painstaking process of rolling back Trump's Migrant Protection
Protocols (MPP) a.k.a. "Remain in Mexico," allowing small numbers of
asylum applicants to pursue their cases on this side of the border. A
team at the Los Angeles Times
 reports
that "The Biden administration's action is a welcome start toward
ending this inhumanity," said Judy Rabinovitz, lead counsel in ACLU's
suit against MPP. "[B]ut it must move swiftly to remedy the
life-threatening situation facing everyone affected by this
policy." Another shift: After a limited border presence during the
Trump administration, UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, is
helping coordinate the new asylum process on the Mexican side of the
border.  

**RESTITUTION** - In an op-ed for The Orlando Sentinel
,
pastors Joel Hunter and Joel Tooley write that most evangelicals
"support immigration reforms that both welcome immigrants and protect
our borders." Their suggestion? Allowing undocumented immigrants "to
make restitution for violating the law by paying a fine (which is very
different from amnesty) and then have the chance to earn permanent
legal status and eventually citizenship," adding that those brought to
the U.S. as children should be exempt from any fines and offered
an expedited path to citizenship. These, they write, are
"[t]he sort of reforms that we believe are both consistent with
biblical principles and - importantly - could actually earn the
bipartisan support necessary to pass into law are reforms that avoid the
extremes of either amnesty or mass deportation."  

**INTERIM GUIDANCE **- Thursday marked another Biden administration
directive for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with
new interim guidance directing the agency to focus on "significant
threats." Molly O'Toole at the Los Angeles Times
 reports
that ICE offices will be directed to prioritize for removal
"immigrants without legal status in the United States such as suspected
terrorists and spies, illegal border crossers, felons and active gang
members, in contrast to those with family members or community ties,
medical issues or minor criminal records." Furthermore, O'Toole
notes, cases that don't fall under the priority categories "will need
prior approval from superiors for taking enforcement actions." Keep in
mind, as one official noted: The guidance "does not exempt any
individual who is unlawfully in the U.S. - they will still be subject
to enforcement action, and it does not exempt anyone from removal if
they are unlawfully in the U.S." 

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**INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS** - Monthslong processing
delays at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) "are
jeopardizing international students' job offers and legal
status," reports Hannah Miao of CNBC
. Ji
Hyun, a nursing school graduate, lost a job offer after USCIS delays
caused her to miss the deadline for receiving work authorization via
the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program. Experiences like Ji
Hyun's "constitute another challenge to the country's ability to
recruit and retain highly educated and skilled students and workers from
abroad, who have historically driven economic growth in the U.S.," Miao
writes. The American Council of Education's Sarah Spreitzer adds:
"We're asking this administration to send a very clear welcoming
message to our international students and to message that the OPT
program is going to be here to stay." 

**BROOKS COUNTY** - In a review of the documentary Missing in Brooks
County  for Foreign Policy
, Kelly
Kimball and Christina Lu question what President Biden will do to
address "the human cost of a decades long deterrence policy at the
southern U.S. border." The documentary "follows two American families
coming to Brooks County, Texas, in search of loved ones lost while
attempting to cross into the United States," suggesting that the border
county's problems "are indicative of a broken immigration system, and
its casualties haunt the entirety of the 1,954-mile southern U.S.
border." This reminds me that last year, in one of the few standalone
immigration bills to pass in recent history, Sens. John Cornyn
(R-Texas) and Kamala Harris (D-California) teamed up to pass
the Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Act
, which
helps
 border
jurisdictions "improve the recording and reporting of missing persons
and unidentified remains found along the U.S.-Mexico border." 

Thanks for reading,

Ali

 

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