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TEXAS POLICE — Police chiefs in Texas border towns say that although the situation at the border has affected them, their towns are still safe, report Julia Ainsley, Kenzi Abou-Sabe and Didi Martinez of NBC News. "[Outsiders are] thinking the sky is falling here," said Victor Rodriguez, chief of police in McAllen. "The reality has been that we’ve been decreasing crime that same period of time, as opposed to increases in crime." The chiefs say the mere perception of a "lawless border" could be having a negative impact on local economies. Likely to reinforce that erroneous perception: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced plans Thursday for the state to build its own border barrier and arrest single-adult migrants on private property, among other initiatives, report Rosa Flores and Rosalina Nieves of CNN. CANADA — Canadian Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino says Canada is willing to take in some Central American migrants to help the U.S., reports Anna Mehler Paperny of Reuters. Central American migration was among the issues Mendicino and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas discussed last week. "By having a plan as ambitious as we do around this, what we’re signaling not only to the Americas but the world, is, Canada will continue to play a leadership role when it comes to resettling refugees," Mendicino said. Overall, Canada aims to resettle 36,000 refugees this year; last year the country took in about 40% of the total number of resettled refugees globally. MIGRANT PARISHIONERS — In a previously reported meeting earlier this month, Cardinal Michael Czerny asked bishops to think of migrants as "parishioners" and expand their ministry to them, reports Rhina Guidos of Catholic News Service. As undersecretary of the Section for Migrants of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, Czerny addressed the emergency virtual meeting of bishops from the U.S., Central America and Mexico, including heads of major U.S. Catholic organizations that aid migrants. "I hope that, after this meeting, you can call your priests together and consider the pastoral task incumbent on us all: to welcome, to protect, to promote and to integrate," Czerny said. "Migration is not first a problem to be managed, or a phenomenon to be feared, but a sign of relationships to be established, reconciled, healed, and a possibility for mutual transformation …"
NEW STUDIES — According to a new study from New American Economy, the U.S. is facing a shortage of high-skilled workers for computer-related jobs due to COVID-19 — and employers are seeking immigrant talent to fill the gap, Hannah Miao reports for CNBC. The study found that in 2020, the ratio of job openings to unemployed workers in the field was more than 7:1. "More nuanced and responsive policy around employment-based immigration could be one way to help the U.S. more quickly and more robustly bounce back from the Covid-19 [pandemic] and future economic disruptions and crises," it concludes. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also highlighted this shortage last week. Meanwhile, a National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) study released Thursday suggests that highly educated immigrants do not threaten the wages of native-born workers in information technology, NFAP Executive Director Stuart Anderson writes in Forbes. LATINO VISIBILITY — I’m looking forward to getting back to a movie theater — perhaps for the much anticipated "In the Heights" movie adaption by Lin-Manuel Miranda and playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, which debuts today. As Nicole Acevedo of NBC News reports, the movie "tells the stories of generations of residents and business owners in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of New York City's Washington Heights," who are fighting to stay together amid displacement and gentrification. "Even though everyone has a different path in this movie, they are connected by similar questions — especially as immigrants, as migrants," Hudes said. "Is over there home? Is here home? Is there only one home or can we carry many homes within us? What about when we love this home, but we have dreams to go beyond it?" Thanks for reading, Dan |
