NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

Ravaged by back-to-back hurricanes last year and no assistance from
the government, many Honduran families feel they have no choice
but to flee the devastation and make the journey north to the U.S.,
reports Natalie Kitroeff writes for The New York Times
. 

While people have long left Honduras for the U.S. fleeing gang
violence, poverty and corruption, the situation has become more
desperate in the months following Hurricanes Eta and Iota:
"[H]ouses remain underwater. Gaping holes have replaced bridges.
Thousands of people are still displaced, living in shelters or on the
street. Hunger is stalking them." Said Ana Hernández, who is heading
north with her 11-year-old son: "I never wanted to do this ... The
situation is forcing me to. You get to a point where you don't have
anything to give them to eat." 

Humanitarian aid from the U.S. would help, Kitroeff writes, but
it isn't the only solution. "We need to be aggressively addressing
the levels of despair that the folks hit by these storms are
facing," said former Obama adviser Dan Restrepo. "We need to go big
now and we need to be loud about it, because that starts actually
factoring into the calculus that people face today, which is, 'Can I
survive here or not?'" 

Welcome to Wednesday's edition of Noorani's Notes. I'm
Joanna Taylor, Communications Manager at the Forum and your NN host this
week, filling in for Ali. See a story you think we should include?
Send it to me at [email protected]
. 

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**LAREDO** - Residents in the South Texas town of Laredo "are
saying

** 'ya basta' **(enough) to recent portrayals by lawmakers and
others coming to tour the area who say it is a battleground and unsafe"
amid the increase in migrants at the border, Sandra Sanchez writes
for Border Report.
The latest available FBI
crime statistics
 show
a significant drop in violent crime in Laredo from 2009 to 2019, Sanchez
points out. "Life here is safe and peaceful," said educator, rancher
and No Border Wall Coalition
 member Mary Sue Galindo.
"Outsiders coming here to tell people who actually live here that Laredo
is dangerous is not only a lie, it's an offensive
stereotype." A statement from the coalition pointed to the real issue
at hand: "We need to start asking why we continue to call Black and
brown people crossing the border a 'crisis' year after year instead
of building a robust system that treats them with respect and
dignity. ... there is an urgency for real immigration reform and a
solution that focuses on the countries of origin of these migrants to
create safe living conditions and better educational and economic
opportunities for their people."  

**HAUNTED BY HISTORY** - The U.S. is "a multiethnic, multiracial
nation where millions of people have found safety, economic opportunity,
and freedoms they may not have otherwise had," Caitlin Dickerson writes
in The Atlantic
.
"Yet racial stereotypes, rooted in eugenics, that portray people with
dark skin and foreign passports as being inclined toward crime, poverty,
and disease have been part of our immigration policies for so long that
we mostly fail to see them." Taking an in-depth look at the history of
immigration, Dickerson illustrates how the U.S. was never intended to be
the diverse nation of immigrants it's often portrayed as. In fact,
she notes, the very first American immigration laws were written in
order to keep the country white, a goal that was explicit in their text
for more than 150 years
. The
whole piece is an illuminating read, documenting the nation's history
of racist immigration policies and centering on a key point: "In
moving toward the more inclusive system that some elected officials now
say they want, the country would be not returning to traditional
American values, but establishing new ones."  

**CARE CADRE** - Facing growing numbers of unaccompanied children
arriving at the border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection "is, for the
first time, fielding teams of social service workers to relieve some of
the agents from handing out mattresses and
Pampers" - an idea originally proposed under the Obama
administration in 2014, reports John Burnett of NPR News
. As
the first class of Border Patrol processing coordinators, 39 non-law
enforcement personnel will now "work inside stations to care for the
more than 5,000 individuals whom agents are apprehending every day,"
providing assistance to overwhelmed agents. For some advocates,
however, the change is "well-meaning but ill-directed:" The National
Center for Youth Law's Neha Desai told Burnett, "[f]rom my
perspective we should be investing in initiatives that prevent children
from being in CBP custody entirely." 

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**OREGON** - $110 million. That's the estimated sum raised by
the Oregon Worker Relief Fund  since it
launched last year to assist vulnerable workers who are barred
from state and federal aid due to immigration status, reports Malia
Spencer for the Portland Business Journal
. The
fund, coordinated by 100 culturally specific organizations around
Oregon, includes programs for workers who lose income while
quarantining, workers unemployed due to shutdowns and layoffs, and small
business owners who are ineligible for federal aid.  "2020 tested us:
pandemic, wildfires then ice storms. So many things happened and
impacted the community," said Estela Muñoz Villarreal, the
Fund's coalition manager at Causa
. "We're thinking ahead and trying to
create this hub for immigrants to get resources and build generational
wealth. Going from rapid response to empowering the community."  

**AMERICAN FARMWORKERS** - "The American agriculture industry relies
on undocumented workers to put food on our tables. They are stepping up
for us, but our immigration system isn't stepping up for them," the
Forum's senior policy and advocacy associate, Danilo Zak, writes in
an op-ed for The Hill
. Of the three
million farmworkers keeping the nation running throughout the
pandemic, an estimated 70% are undocumented, he notes. More meaningful
support for these essential workers is within reach: "On March 18, the
House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill

that includes the three platforms reform will need: legalization and a
pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers, H-2A reform, and, once
the system works again, a means of enforcement. After Easter, the Senate
has a new opportunity to take up the bill and pass meaningful
immigration reform in the agriculture sector." 

Thanks for reading, 

Joanna  

 

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