NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

After news broke in The New York Times
 Friday that
President Biden would not raise the refugee admissions ceiling
for fiscal year 2021 - instead maintaining the historic low cap
of  15,000 - backlash ensued and the administration later
backtracked, Laura Barrón-López reports for POLITICO
.  

"He's basically broken his promise, and he's abandoned his commitment,"
said Jenny Yang, senior vice president of advocacy and policy
at World Relief
,
in an interview earlier on Friday. After
the reversal, she added: "Who knows if they'll follow through
on it which means 15K may remain in place."  

"Given the decimated refugee admissions program we inherited, and
burdens on the Office of Refugee Resettlement, [Biden's] initial goal
of 62,500 seems unlikely," said White House press
secretary Jen Psaki in a release
. "[W]e expect the
President to set a final, increased refugee cap for the remainder of
this fiscal year by May 15." 

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]
.    

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**FOR THE CALENDAR** - We're proud to join the George W. Bush
Institute
 and the Ethics
& Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention
 (ERLC) to bring you a conversation with President
George W. Bush on his upcoming book, Out of Many, One: Portraits of
America's Immigrants
, a
powerful collection of 43 portraits painted by President Bush and
accompanying stories that exemplify the promise of America and our proud
history as a nation of immigrants.  President Bush will be joined by
Dr. Russell Moore, President of ERLC and Yuval Levin, Director of
Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise
Institute. Register here  for
the event on May 6 at 11:30 CT. In a recent interview for CBS
,
President Bush said he wants to "help set a tone that is more
respectful about the immigrant, which may lead to reform of the
system." He also penned an op-ed for The Washington Post
 on
how to restore confidence in our immigration system.  

**SIV** - Local allies were critical to the
U.S. military's fight against global terrorism in Afghanistan and
Iraq "to help build bases, support our forces, and perhaps most
vitally, interpret," write The Association of Wartime Allies
 co-founders Kim Staffieri
and Matt Zeller in an op-ed for TIME
. While
the U.S. created the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program more than
a decade ago to offer a path to citizenship for those Afghans and
Iraqis who worked with the U.S. in their home countries, "more than
18,000 applicants in Afghanistan alone are awaiting decisions on their
applications, with an average family size of four. Most of them have
been waiting for at least four years, despite Congress directing the
government to process their visa applications in nine months or
less." As I wrote in an op-ed for The Hill
, when
it comes to U.S. forces leaving Afghanistan, the Biden administration
should take lessons from the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and welcome
Afghan refugees. 

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**WRISTBANDS **- Sandra Sanchez at Border Report
 explains the
elaborate colored wristband system that Mexican cartels have created
to "identify migrants who have paid them for passage across the Rio
Grande, how many times they have tried to cross, and who is eligible to
cross again if they've been sent back." The system underscores
how the lack of a humane, modernized approach to legal immigration
pathways only benefits smugglers. In a new special episode of "Only
in America
," we
get an on-the-ground look at the U.S.-Mexico border from Joanna
Williams, executive director of the Kino Border Initiative,
 former Reagan White House
official and Forum Senior Fellow Linda Chavez
 and Danilo Zak, senior policy
& advocacy associate at the Forum. 

**VARTAN** - An absolutely remarkable human being passed away on
Friday. I met him three times, perhaps four. Spoke in front of his
board a couple times. Saw firsthand how his Armenian community so
revered his leadership and vision at a conference in Yerevan. Vartan
Gregorian
 was,
as Geri Mannion from the Carnegie Corporation - which Vartan
led - "a force of nature." In one person, he was everything the
United States could hope for from a new American. Brilliant,
compassionate, passionate - a person that people of all stripes
believed in. And, most importantly, he believed in them as well. I wish
I was fortunate enough to know him better. I feel so incredibly lucky to
have crossed paths with him a few times.  

Thanks for reading, 

Ali 

 

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