NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

Texas Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn will lead a delegation
of their Republican Senate colleagues on
a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border today, Jacob Jarvis reports
for Newsweek
. The
purpose of the trip, Cruz said, is to "see firsthand the crisis that is
unfolding." 

The way we talk about - and consider solutions to - this "crisis"
is important. In a New York Times
 op-ed this
week, fellow Texas lawmaker Rep. Veronica Escobar (D), who represents El
Paso, called on the U.S. to acknowledge "that the real crisis is not at
the border but outside it, and that until we address that crisis, this
flow of vulnerable people seeking help at our doorstep will not end
anytime soon." 

The current humanitarian challenges at the border are further
exacerbated by COVID-19: Texas Health and Human Services data shows
that more than 250 migrant children and teens have tested positive
for the virus in Texas shelters since March 5, reports Elizabeth
Trovall of Houston Public Media.
Stef
W. Kight at Axios
 breaks
down the numbers and their significance. 

ICYMI: Border experts discussed the need for "solutions, not
slogans" in a media roundtable
 Tuesday,
emphasizing the need for border policies that take into account why
people migrate in the first place. You can read selected quotes and
access an audio recording from the event, which was sponsored by the
Council on National Security and Immigration
 (CNSI), the Forum and other leading voices, via
the CNSI's press release
.  

Looking for more context following President Biden's first press
conference
 since
taking office? Forum senior policy and advocacy associate Danilo
Zak recently published an explainer
 on
what's happening at the border and a fact sheet
 on
the Central American Minors (CAM) program.  

Ending today's intro with some good news: The bipartisan Adoptee
Citizenship Act
 was
reintroduced in the Senate Thursday. Big thank-you to the bill's
co-sponsors
.  

I'm Joanna Taylor, Forum communications manager and host of the next
few NN editions. If you have a story to share from your own community,
please send it to me at [email protected]
.   

[link removed]

**LOOKING FOR WORK** - The majority of migrants trying to enter
the U.S. via the southern border this year have been individual
adults - mostly "Mexicans, often men in search of work with the
pandemic easing and the U.S. economy set to boom," per Alicia A.
Caldwell and Juan Montes at The Wall Street Journal
. "The
U.S. is hiring after a long and brutal pandemic, while Mexico lost some
2.4 million jobs last year," they note. Sara Abdala, who manages a
migrant shelter in Altar, Arizona, told the Journal that Altar "has
come back to life in recent months after it was almost empty during the
pandemic. The business of migration has become hot again." This
is exactly why we need bipartisan immigration reform that addresses
our workforce needs. (Sidenote: Be mindful
 of terms
like "surge" and "flood" when talking about those seeking safety or
opportunity at our borders.)  

**TWO BIG FACTORS** - Increased poverty levels amid
COVID-19 coupled with the devastating effects of climate change have
driven Central Americans north and "made logistics at the border more
difficult," Catherine E. Shoichet writes for CNN
. Following
back-to-back storms last year, "[f]looding wiped entire communities off
the map in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. Homes were destroyed.
Millions of people were affected, and hundreds of thousands were
displaced." According to the United Nations Economic Commission for
Latin America and the Caribbean
,
the pandemic prompted an "unprecedented" rise in poverty in the region,
with 22 million more people experiencing poverty in Latin America at
the end of 2020 compared to the previous year. The combined impact of
hurricanes, the pandemic and cuts to regional aid "create[d] this
pressure cooker where there's no escape valve," said the International
Rescue Committee's Meghan López. "And the only escape valve is to
try to flee the terrible situation people are living in. ... People are
making desperate decisions." 

**'LIFE SUPPORT' **- If President
Biden is to welcome a record 125,000 refugees into the U.S. by
2022, he'll have to depend on city-level infrastructure and
leadership - and resettlement agencies "whose clout and resources
shrank drastically under Trump's tenure," Tanvi Misra writes for
Bloomberg CityLab
. Tom
Gjelten reporting for NPR News
 echoes
this message, pointing out that U.S. refugee programs face several
setbacks after decades-worth of knowledge, resources and
infrastructure were lost amid Trump-era staff cuts and
downsizing. Krish O'Mara Vignarajah of Lutheran Immigration and
Refugee Service , one of the nine organizations
tasked by the government to resettle and assist refugees, told NPR that
their "resettlement efforts [have] been on life support for the past
few years." For a reminder of the diverse and meaningful ways refugees
make the U.S. a better place, check out the newly launched Refugee
Storytellers Collective
 from Refugee
Congress.   

[link removed]

**SELF-DEFENSE** - Asian American entrepreneurs are taking matters
into their own hands to "[combat] a sharp rise in racist threats and
attacks on their businesses that many feel authorities are not taking
seriously," Tracy Jan reports for The Washington Post
. Small
business owners are "buying guns and cutting their hours of operation as
well as advertising, among other costly safety measures that limit their
profits - and profile - at a time when businesses are already
struggling," Jan reports, pointing out that many immigrant business
owners are reluctant to engage with law enforcement and are instead
seeking help from culturally aligned organizations to secure funding
for additional safety measures and connect with self-defense
training. "To me, we don't have much freedom at all," said Kevin
Chan, 51, owner of Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory in San
Francisco's Chinatown. "We have to watch our backs. That's how I
feel right now as an old immigrant, as an American." (It never hurts to
review how to be an active bystander
.) 

**BLACK IMMIGRANTS** - The day after Minneapolis police officer
killed George Floyd last May, U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement forced 30 Haitians - almost all of them Black -
to board a deportation flight. The series of events highlights how
race and immigration status intersect in the U.S. to create a system in
which "every arm of the U.S. incarceration and deportation machine
brings down a hefty amount of its weight onto the backs of Black
people," Jack Herrera writes in a piece for The Nation
.
Herrera spoke to Guerline M. Jozef, co-founder
of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, who mobilized a national response to
stop flights like the May 26 one, about how advocacy for Black
immigrants is connected to the violence and aggression Black Americans
face at the hands of the criminal justice system. According
to the Black Alliance for Just Immigration
 (BAJI), Black immigrants make up less than
5.4% of the undocumented population in the U.S. - but accounted
for 10.6% of all deportation proceedings from 2003 to 2015. With many
advocates cautiously hopeful that things may improve under the Biden
administration, Herrera writes that "organizations like
the UndocuBlack Network and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration
(BAJI), alongside smaller groups like Jozef's, are working to amplify
their long-term central organizing thesis: that in immigration, as in
policing, Black lives matter." 

Have a safe and restful weekend,  

Joanna 

 

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