"...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].
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.
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."
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