NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

Pressure continues to build for the Biden administration to
evacuate roughly 18,000 Afghans who've applied for Special Immigrant
Visas (SIVs), and others who assisted our military and government, as
safely and quickly as possible, Caroline Simon of Roll Call
 reports.  

"With only six to eight weeks left before potential full withdrawal,
it's really time for action," said Elizabeth Neumann, former assistant
secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention at the Department
of Homeland Security, during a Council on National Security and
Immigration press call
 yesterday on
protecting our Afghan allies.  

Rick "Ozzie" Nelson, retired Navy officer and Afghanistan veteran,
added: "All over the world, we rely on local populations to support our
military and diplomatic missions. Failure to support an ally who
supported us for 20 years could have a very severe effect on our ability
to carry out our national strategy." Nelson also served as director of
the National Security Council's Office of Combating Terrorism under
President George W. Bush. 

In a Defense One

story we noted yesterday, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said
that "[t]here are plans being developed very, very rapidly here, for not
just the interpreters but a lot of other people that have worked with
the United States." The administration will need to carry out those
plans quickly.

Welcome to Friday's edition of Noorani's Notes. We'll be
back Tuesday - enjoy your Memorial Day weekend. If you have a story
to share from your own community, please send it to me
at [email protected]
.      

[link removed]

**CORRUPTION** - Regional experts say the Biden administration "must
tackle corruption and social inequality in Mexico and Central America if
it wants to bring about an orderly migrant flow," reports Julian
Resendiz at Border Report
. "The
migration has not stopped despite militarization," said Jose Luis
Gonzalez, coordinator of Jesuit Migrant Services-Guatemala
. "Migration is more disperse,
in smaller groups. Every time they apply more controls, they say
(migrants) use secondary routes. But there's nothing new. The roads
and routes are there, the (smugglers) just use them more." He
also said buses or trailers carrying migrants often pass right through
some Mexico-Guatemala border checkpoints after paying a $100 per-head
fee: "Corruption at this scale continues to operate, and that is what
is leading to the high numbers in the United States."  

**SISTERS** - Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News
 tells
the story of 13-year-old Brenda and 15-year-old Rosa, sisters who
fled Honduras after back-to-back hurricanes destroyed their
family's coffee farms - and livelihood. They are just two of
more than 45,000 migrant children who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico
border as unaccompanied minors since February. In March,
the sisters were taken into U.S. custody, but remained separated
because of overcrowded facilities. "I needed to be with [my
sister]," Brenda told CBS News in Spanish. "I needed her to be with
me." Brenda and Rosa were later reunited at a shelter in south Texas
overseen by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and were
eventually released from government custody to be reunited with
their father, Manuel, in New Jersey. "I felt my heart was coming out of
my chest because of the happiness," Brenda said of hugging her father
for the first time in two years.  

**INVESTMENT** - Vice President Kamala Harris will collaborate
with 12 companies and organizations, including Microsoft
and Mastercard, to help ease the situation at the southern border,
reports Tarini Parti of The Wall Street Journal
.
"Microsoft Corp. has agreed to expand internet access to as many as
three million people in [Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador] by July
2022 and to establish community centers to provide digital skills to
women and youths," while Mastercard "will seek to bring five million
people in the region who currently lack banking services into the
financial system and to give one million micro and small businesses
access to electronic banking." Said Michael Froman, Mastercard's vice
chairman and president for strategic growth: "Our view is that we will
thrive as a company when countries thrive, and therefore it's in our
interest in terms of the long term." 

[link removed]

**VACCINES **- As COVID-19 swept across the nation over the last
year, those in immigration detention were among the hardest hit
. Orion Rummler reports
for Axios
 that
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has "urged Immigration and
Customs Enforcement
 to
vaccinate detained immigrants, saying the agency has failed to create a
coordinated response to rampant infections." According to U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as of May 5, only 2,707
detainees out of more than 22,000 had received one vaccine dose, while
1,229 people were fully vaccinated - and there are 1,485 positive
cases among people in ICE custody.  

**WSX** - Signing off with a great read for the long weekend:
For GQ
,
David Alm profiles a group of Ethiopian immigrants living in the
Bronx on P1 athlete visas as they pursue careers as elite marathon
runners. They're part of the West Side Runners club, or WSX, a
"loose collection of mostly immigrant athletes from Latin America and
Ethiopia" for whom running "represents a viable path to the U.S., but
who may not have access to managers or agent." It's a powerful story
of hard work and perseverance.  

Thanks for reading, 

Ali 

 

DONATE

 

**Follow Us**

 

[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]

 

 

 

The

**Only in America** podcast brings you to the people behind our
nation's immigration debate.

 

Listen now on:

 

**iTunes**
,
**Stitcher**
,
**Spotify** ,
and **more.**

 

 

National Immigration Forum

50 F Street NW, Suite 300

Washington, DC 20001

www.immigrationforum.org

 

Unsubscribe from Noorani's Notes
or opt-out from all Forum emails.

 

                                               
           
_________________

Sent to [email protected]

Unsubscribe:
[link removed]

National Immigration Forum, 50 F Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20001, United States