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.
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].
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.
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,
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