After visiting the southern border this week, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), a critical Democratic vote for reforms, said "[i]t is beyond time, past time, to do immigration reform. Immigration reform should be a pathway to citizenship,"  The Hill’s Jordain Carney reports.   

Meanwhile, the Biden administration announced Thursday that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) "will not automatically reject certain applications for asylum or immigration benefits when a blank space is left on the forms, a reversal from a Trump-era policy that critics said was a blatant attempt to further crack down on legal immigration," report Geneva Sands and Priscilla Alvarez of CNN. (Good news for applicants — and immigration lawyers who stan Taylor Swift.)  

The policy increased the likelihood of rejections — sometimes for blank spaces on fields that did not apply to the applicant, such as a "Middle name" or "Other names used," according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association. 

According to government documents obtained by BuzzFeed News, USCIS officials also plan to remove references to immigrants as "aliens" in the agency’s policy manual to "create a less adversarial tone." 

Welcome to Friday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Hope you have a good Easter weekend and don’t become so bored and irrelevant that you pore through years of old tweets like this guy did. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

ENDING CORRUPTION — Vice President Kamala Harris will address the root causes of Central American migration by pinpointing "crooked governments that can’t be relied upon to implement reforms that would improve the conditions that cause people to depart," writes The Washington Post's Editorial Board. Unlike former President Donald Trump, the Biden administration will not "mak[e] the problem worse by ignoring corrupt and anti-democratic behavior by Central American leaders in exchange for crackdowns on migrants." Instead, "Ms. Harris must ensure that stopgap measures do not again divert the administration from pressing for deeper reforms. Those can start with some simple principles — such as no more tolerance for drug traffickers in a president’s office."  

GLORIETA CAMPS — A new private Christian camp in New Mexico "is looking for volunteers and donations as it prepares for the potential arrival of immigrant children from the U.S.-Mexico border as federal holding facilities become more crowded," reports Susan Montoya Bryan of the Associated Press. According to a page on the Glorieta Camps website, "the organization was asked by the White House and U.S. Health and Human Services Department to house and feed potentially 2,400 unaccompanied children at its property near Santa Fe."  The camp "is prepared to take children as soon as Thursday but that it could only do so for 60 days to avoid having to cancel its own summer programs." New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office said it was aware only that the Biden administration was seeking temporary sites for unaccompanied children, but didn’t have any details on which facilities were being considered. Aaron Morales, a spokesman for New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, "said it was the office’s understanding that the Health and Human Services Department doesn’t have plans to open a shelter in New Mexico at this time." 

COMMUNITY AMBASSADORS — Refugee resettlement organizations and the communities they serve were hit especially hard under the Trump administration — and few moreso than those working in smaller cities and towns, like World Relief’s offices in eastern Washington and southern Idaho, writes Daniel Walters for The Pacific Northwest Inlander. Faced with a shrinking budget and growing need as the only refugee resettlement agency remaining open in Spokane, the city’s World Relief office put together a "community ambassadors" program, "a team of ‘trusted messengers who are already leaders within several ethnic communities’ to help local refugees and immigrants with tasks like finding rental assistance." The program has been particularly effective in helping refugees access COVID-19 information.