NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

A couple of things to celebrate as we head into the weekend. First, we
co-hosted a great conversation yesterday with former President George W.
Bush and Yuval Levin, Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional
Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, led by Dr. Russell Moore,
President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern
Baptist Convention (ERLC).  

If you attended, you heard some real - and entertaining - talk about
the conversation we should be having about immigrants and immigration
in America, including why Bush painted and told the stories of Levin and
42 other immigrants in his new book, Out of Many, One: Portraits of
America's Immigrants
.  If
you missed it, we have you covered: watch it here
.
Huge thanks to our co-hosts, the George W. Bush Institute
 and the ERLC
. The book makes for a great Mother's Day gift
! 
 

Speaking of, here's the second item on the celebration list: An early
Happy Mother's Day to all moms, but especially to mine. (Hope you
decided to read the Notes today, Mom.) For those of you who want to meet
Mom Noorani's Notes, here's my conversation with her from last
year .  

Welcome to Friday'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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**MEXICO** - Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to meet with
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador today. Ahead of the
meeting, the U.S. has considered asking Mexico to take additional
measures to stem migration, Hamed Aleaziz reports in BuzzFeed News
. Aleaziz obtained
a draft memo that outlines the U.S. policy agenda going into the
meeting, which includes wanting Mexico "to implement a policy to help
relieve pressure on border resources as they continue to use a Trump-era
border policy, Title 42." Christopher Wilson, a global fellow at the
Wilson Center's Mexico Institute, notes that today's meeting will
cover more than migration - Mexico's secretary of economy is among
the participants. "The White House is smart to embed the migration
issue in a broader framework of bilateral cooperation," Wilson says. 

**EMERGENCY SHELTERS **- The Biden administration has successfully
reduced the number of migrant children in Border Patrol custody by
opening more than a dozen emergency shelters "using convention centers,
concert venues, army bases and camps built for oil-field
workers," report Michelle Hackman and Alicia A. Caldwell of The Wall
Street Journal
. But
the rapid ramp-up of these emergency shelters, which are run by the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has advocates concerned
about the conditions inside. "When we are spending hundreds of millions
of dollars, the government has to ensure that the services are being
provided and that we are meeting the needs of the children," Scott H.
Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight
, told Adriana Gomez Licon of the Associated
Press
.
In an opinion column for The Washington Post
,
Greg Sargent lays out how the situation at the border is being managed
by the Biden administration and why, politically, some Republicans may
not want to be constructive.  

**DEMOGRAPHIC NEEDS** - The pandemic has exacerbated the slowdown in
U.S. population growth, but immigration can help, reports Philip Bump
of The Washington Post
.
He notes that between 2010 and 2019, immigration was solely responsible
for preventing or stemming population declines in nine states. To his
concluding question of "whether immigration can offset an eventual
population loss," we'd say it depends on the level of legal
immigration (our suggestion here
).
As Nicole Narea of Vox
 points
out: "The average age
 of
newly arriving immigrants is 31, which is more than seven years
 younger
than the median American, meaning that they could help replace an aging
workforce. They are also more entrepreneurial
,
which encourages economic dynamism, and more likely to work in
essential industries
,
such as health care, transportation, construction, agriculture, and food
processing."  

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**PASTOR PAULUS** - In an op-ed for The Wichita Eagle
,
Kansas evangelical Pastor Nathan Paulus points to immigration as a
biblical issue as he urges his state's congressional delegation to
forge bipartisan solutions. In addition to addressing the situation
Dreamers face, he writes, "[t]hose who came unlawfully to the U.S. as
adults could be given the chance to make restitution for their violation
of law by paying a fine (which is very different than amnesty) and then
have the chance to earn permanent legal status and eventually
citizenship. These are the principles that thousands of evangelical
Christians have called for in an Evangelical Call for Restitution-Based
Immigration Reform
."  

**BALANCING** - Along these lines, NPR's
 Franco
Ordoñez dug into the various legislative pathways for immigration
reform for Morning Edition. Yes, the overall system is in dire need of
reform - but, as I told Ordoñez, "[t]he balancing act here is
between the art of what is necessary and the art of what is possible."
It doesn't hurt to remember that on Day One of the new administration,
more than 180 businesses, law enforcement and faith leaders, and
others joined a call for leadership and bipartisanship in Washington
 to
build a "modern, humane, and effective immigration system that upholds
the best of America's promise."   

**BORDER REALITIES** - Offering a vivid on-the-ground picture,
Stephania Taladrid of The New Yorker
 highlights
the complexities at the border. "The reality along the border is far
more complicated than many would allow," she writes. Among those we
hear from are a pastor leading migrants in prayer, local law
enforcement officers who assist U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and
migrants themselves. "A lot of us here will never come to fully
understand what it means to uproot yourself, to tear apart the inner
sense of who you are," said Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director
of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley
. "One of the questions
that I always ask myself is, 'What does it take for a mother to have
to hand over her child to a smuggler?'" 

Thanks for reading, 

Ali 

 

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