NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

Krish Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee
Service, said Afghan allies are feeling "fear and hope" as the U.S.
prepares to complete its withdrawal of troops, Sinclair's Elissa
Salamy reports for ABC13 Lynchburg
. 

"That fear is growing with the Taliban's territorial gains," said
Vignarajah. "For many of these Afghan allies and family members, they've
been forced to go into hiding, because they are on the Taliban's
target list. And so there is a palpable sense of desperation." 

"We've done military evacuations of allies before so I'm not worried
about our military capabilities, but with a limited timeframe, we need
to at least know that this is going to be spearheaded by a senior
operational commander because it is going to be a large-scale
interagency effort." 

Welcome to Tuesday'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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**UNDER REVIEW** - The Biden administration will
begin reviewing thousands of cases of people who say they were
unjustly deported in recent years, especially during the Trump
era, The Marshall Project's Julia Preston reports
for Politico Magazine
. Those
being considered include military families and veterans, young
immigrants excluded from Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA),
and those like Cecilia González Carmona who have "close relatives who
are American citizens and can show their families were severely harmed
by the deportation of a parent or breadwinner who has strong ties to
the U.S." Cecilia's husband, Jason Rochester, said his wife's
deportation has felt like punishment for himself and their
son: "We're citizens, and we have to choose between our wife and
mother or our country." For now, Preston notes, "only a very small
fraction - perhaps thousands - of more than 900,000 formal
deportations under Trump could be reversed." But if the new system
proves effective, many more people could become eligible to apply.  

**UPROOTED** - Venezuelan professionals - bankers, doctors,
engineers -  are arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in record
numbers as they flee turmoil at home, Joshua Goodman reports
for the Associated Press
. Compared
with other migrants, Goodman notes, Venezuelans garner certain
privileges, a reflection of "their firmer financial standing, higher
education levels and U.S. policies that have failed to remove Maduro but
nonetheless made deportation all but impossible." Many Venezuelans
coming to the U.S. have already migrated once before, settling in other
Latin American countries until the pandemic spurred economic devastation
across the region.  Last month alone, Border Patrol
agents encountered 7,484 Venezuelans along the border - more than
all 14 years for which records exist. The record increase is "a
harbinger of a new type of migration that has caught the Biden
administration off guard: pandemic refugees." 

**TEXAS VS BIDEN** - Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and the
Biden administration are battling over the state's plan to close
federal shelters that house some 4,500 unaccompanied migrant
children, reports Adam Cancryn of Politico
. Abbott plans
to revoke the licenses of any shelter that continues to serve migrant
kids beginning August 31 - a total of around 52 shelters
statewide, notes Cancryn. Regarding Abbott's plans, "[i]t's very
hard to see what's accomplished," said Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow
at the Migration Policy Institute who led HHS' Administration for
Children and Families (the agency responsible for housing unaccompanied
minors) under Obama. "There's been broad agreement that it's a good
thing for children to be in licensed facilities - which are regulated
and monitored - and this effort just makes that harder." 

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**FLIP THE SCRIPT **- As Democrats and moderate Republicans struggle
to combat the weaponization of immigration by the right, how can
President Biden flip the script on immigration? As I wrote for The
xxxxxx
, Democrats
and Republicans first need to approach immigration as a way to build
consensus - in other words, "not as a base-turnout wedge, but as an
issue that allows those who were turned off by Trump's immigration
approach to find another in-group." Lawmakers need to make clear that a
secure border, and a secure nation, depend on three things: a
functioning immigration system, a sophisticated security approach, and
solutions that address the root causes of migration through
collaboration with government and civil society organizations in Mexico
and Central America. For more on communicating solutions, Wendy Feliz
and Suzette Brooks Masters of the Center for Inclusion and Belonging at
the American Immigration Council offer five ways to have better
conversations about immigration for Greater Good Magazine
. It's a must-read. 

**IN OHIO** - Uma Acharya was born in a refugee camp in Nepal after
her family fled government persecution in Bhutan, and for fifteen years
experienced the trauma of poor living conditions and a lack of
resources. Now, she's using her experiences to help treat Columbus,
Ohio's Bhutanese-Nepali residents and refugees as a mental health
counselor, Yilun Cheng reports for The Columbus Dispatch
. She's part
of small team at the Center for New Americans
, which recruits Nepali-speaking
counselors, often refugees
themselves, to provide culturally sensitive
care. "[W]ith refugees, there are so many underlying traumas, so we
have to keep approaching them until they say, 'OK, let's give this a
try,'" said Acharya. Separately, a new Ohio State University law
clinic starting in the fall will teach students
how to represent immigrants in legal proceedings,  The Dispatch
's
Danae King reports. "[A] clinic like ours is really only beginning to
scratch the surface of that unmet need in helping immigrants to
stabilize their status, make more permanent plans regarding them and
their families, and make things right with the law and existing
structures," said Steven Huefner, a law professor and director of
clinical programs at the Moritz College of Law. 

Thanks for reading, 

Ali

 

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