I recommend starting your week with a French taco, as reported by the New Yorker’s Lauren Collins: "A flour tortilla, slathered with condiments, piled with meat (usually halal) and other things (usually French fries), doused in cheese sauce, folded into a rectangular packet, and then toasted on a grill."
According to a new report by the International Rescue Committee, President Biden is on track to accept fewer refugees this year than any other modern president, reports Amy B Wang of the Washington Post.
Although he signed an executive order two months ago "to rebuild and enhance federal programs to resettle refugees" and reportedly proposed raising this fiscal year’s resettlement cap from 15,000 to 62,500, "Biden has yet to do one thing that would make all of those changes official: sign what is known as a presidential determination."
At the halfway point of the fiscal year, the number of admitted refugees stood at 2,050. UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency, reports that 1.4 million refugees urgently need resettlement this year. That’s out of more than 26 million refugees total.
Evangelical women are among those urging President Biden to raise the refugee admissions ceiling now: About 3,500 have signed a petition via We Welcome Refugees, "a grassroots community
of women committed to living out Christlike hospitality for all God’s children."
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].
MARIE AND BRIYANNE — For years, Marie Martine and Briyanne Jeanniton were on parallel journeys to the U.S. after fleeing Haiti. In March, they surrendered to Border Patrol agents in two different parts of Texas and "met remarkably different fates," reports Lauren Villagran of El Paso Times. While Jeanniton was given a "credible fear" screening that put her on a legal pathway to seek asylum, Martine, 49,
and her husband were told to return to Mexico. "They're being left with a risky decision on the off chance they will go the right (border) sector at the right time, and we have no explanation for who gets in and why," said Linda Rivas, executive director of the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.
BORDER DEVELOPMENTS — President Biden has officially ended all funding for the border wall from the discretionary funding request of fiscal 2022, report Rafael Bernal and Rebecca Beitsch of The Hill. The budget request asks for $4.3 billion in funding for the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) — "a substantial increase from the $2.5 billion former President Trump requested for ORR for the 2021 fiscal year, of which $2
billion was channeled to unaccompanied minors as Trump slashed the refugee program," they note. In related news, the Biden administration’s southern border coordinator, Roberta Jacobson, is set to retire at the end of April, at a time where the increase in migrants and unaccompanied minors "shows no sign of stopping," reports Stef W. Kight of Axios.
‘NO WONDER’ — Most migrants coming to the border are there out of desperation, explains Linda Chavez in a powerful piece for The xxxxxx. She recently visited the border and writes about the temporary safety migrants find through the Kino Border Initiative (KIBO). "Most [migrants] are fleeing gangs, cartels, and extreme poverty in their homeland, hopeful that they might build new lives in the United States," she writes. And when parents are often "[f]aced with a choice between leaving their children to face starvation in Guatemalan villages, or in southern Mexico where both drug cartels and anti-drug armed defense patrols are enlisting even 8-year-olds to join, many parents choose the unthinkable." No spoilers, but don’t miss the last few lines.
VACCINE ID – A lack of formal identification is beginning to stand in the way of some immigrants being able to access COVID-19 vaccines. Akilah Johnson reports in the Washington Post that many vaccination sites are asking for driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers or health insurance cards, "specific documentation not mandated by states or the federal government," leading many to seek vaccinations at community
organizations such as the Brazilian Worker Center in Boston. "If it was not for the center, we wouldn’t take the vaccine," says one immigrant whose family emigrated from Brazil a year and a half ago.
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