NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

NEW in POLITICO's Playbook
: "EVEN
REPUBLICANS GIVE BIDEN GRIEF OVER REFUGEE CAP."  

"...Democrats aren't the only ones complaining," per Anita Kumar.
"Even some conservatives want Biden to make good on his pledge to admit
a larger number of refugees." 

Playbook notes that the Council on National Security and Immigration
, which includes a number of former Trump and
George W. Bush administration officials, sent a letter to President
Biden urging him to raise the refugee cap to 62,500 for the
remainder of fiscal year 2021 and to be "more transparent and
forthcoming" with information about the program. "While we appreciate
that your administration is struggling with addressing the current
situation at the southern border, we urge you to move swiftly to admit
pre-approved refugees because they are not a security threat," the
letter reads. 

Welcome to Thursday'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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**SIV** - Ahead of the withdrawal of American troops from
Afghanistan, bipartisan lawmakers are "preparing legislation that would
allocate more visas for Afghan allies who worked with the U.S. military
in the country," reports Austin Landis of Spectrum News
. A letter
 sent
to President Biden Wednesday, signed by both Republicans and Democrats
in Congress, calls on the administration "to honor the U.S. commitment
to Afghan and Iraqi allies who are still waiting for a pathway to
safety," including the prioritization of Special Immigrant Visas
(SIVs). "These Afghans served with courage and with the understanding
that the U.S. would stand by them and provide safe haven when and if
necessary," the letter reads. "That time has now arrived."  

**UTAH NOTES** - In an op-ed for The Salt Lake Tribune
, Salt
Lake Chamber President and CEO Derek Miller points to The Utah
Compact  on immigration, five guiding
principles "to ensure we act deliberately and humanely to those seeking
the promise of America," as a model for national leaders looking to
reform our immigration system. "Immigrants in Utah are essential to our
social fabric and contribute to our shared prosperity. They deserve a
compassionate solution and we must continue to demand Congress stop
using them as political chips on the legislative table," Miller
writes. Speaking of Utah, we just released the first episode
 of our
new series for "Only in America." To kick off "Field Notes:
Utah," we brought back one of my favorite guests from OIA's early
days in 2017: Utah entrepreneur and Dreamer Bernardo
Castro. We discussed the fate of DACA, growing up undocumented in
The Beehive State and, of course, what The Utah Compact can teach the
rest of America.  

**PREPARATION** - Ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris' expected
visit to Guatemala, the Biden administration is considering a broad
range of migration plans, Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN
. According
to a source familiar with White House discussions, the administration
is weighing a list of priorities including "legislative reform designed
to improve conditions in the country, bolstering border security in the
region and increasing Immigration and Customs Enforcement removal
flights." Said Harris on Monday: "We are making progress, but let's
just be very clear, this is a complicated, complex issue that actually
has been an issue for a long time and the work that we are putting into
it now is work that is going to require a long-standing commitment
beyond administrations." The VP is due to lead a Northern Triangle
roundtable of foundation leaders this morning, per Playbook. 

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**BIPARTISAN IDEAS** - Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Axios
 that
a bipartisan group of senators met on Wednesday and
privately "agreed to have their staffs draft a document outlining
incremental immigration changes so they 'can build from there,'"
reports Alayna Treene. According to a source familiar with the
discussion, "the biggest areas of consensus" were protections for
Dreamers and preserving Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA). "We did not reach any conclusions," said Senate Judiciary
Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), who led the meeting. "We put
many ideas on the table. And we're going to invite the administration
to look at them and join us in this conversation."  

**CLIMATE MIGRATION** - "No nation offers asylum or other legal
protections to people displaced specifically because of climate
change," Julie Watson writes for the Associated Press
, but
the Biden administration "is studying the idea, and climate migration
is expected to be discussed at his first climate summit, held virtually
Thursday and Friday." According to a World Meteorological
Organization report
 released
Monday, since 2010 the world has seen an average of 23 million climate
refugees a year and nearly 10 million were recorded in the first
six months of last year alone, especially in Asia and East
Africa. Said Caroline Zickgraf, who studies climate migration
at Belgium's University of Liège: "[Climate change is] a threat
multiplier, and so creating a status or category would have to address
this complexity rather than to ignore it or to seek 'pure' climate
refugees."   

**DEPORTADO COFFEE** - Félix Mauricio Zuñiga, who served as an
informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, was deported
to Colombia in 2018 after being told his visa could not be renewed
because of a crime he served time for more than two decades earlier,
reports David C. Adams for Univision
. Since then Zuñiga,
along with his American citizen wife and three U.S.-born
daughters, have "create[d] their own Colombian coffee brand, with a
twist of political irony: 'Deportado Coffee
' ( 'Deportado' is Spanish for
'deported')." Said Julia Zuñiga, his oldest daughter: "We decided to
go with the name 'Deportado' because of the impact and the irony of
importing coffee [made] with deported hands. ... You know, love our
people as much as you love our coffee." At the same time, the sisters
say they want their coffee brand to "bring awareness to the larger
immigration issues that we have in this country, not just affecting
Central and South Americans, but people all over the world." 

Thanks for reading, 

Ali 

 

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