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].
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."
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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