NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled
 that
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is unlawful and suspended
new applications, "throwing into question yet again the fate
of [thousands of] immigrants known as Dreamers," reports Miriam Jordan
of The New York Times
. 

While the Department of Homeland Security can accept new applications,
it is temporarily prohibited from approving them. Current DACA
recipients are not affected - at least not yet. The Biden
administration plans to appeal the ruling
. 

"I was banking on this to start my career," said Sarahi Magallanez, a
psychology student in Los Angeles whose DACA application is now on
hold. "Now there is a chance I can't. DACA is not safe, and we are at
the mercy of whoever is in power." Over at CNN
,
Maeve Reston shares more reactions from DACA recipients, applicants
and others.   

The uncertainty will continue unless and until Congress acts on a
permanent legislative solution. As we noted Friday
, the policy
solutions exist. What we need is political will. 

Also on Friday (slow news day), Customs and Border Protection released
official June border numbers, as Maria Sacchetti reported
in The Washington Post
. While
numbers are up, more than a third reportedly are repeat
crossers. More context here
, thanks to Ali
and our colleague Danilo Zak. 

Welcome to Monday's edition of Noorani's Notes. I'm Dan
Gordon, the Forum's strategic communications VP, filling in to start
the week while Ali is on the road. If you have a story to share from
your own community, please send it to me
at [email protected]
.   

[link removed]

**UTAH AND TEXAS** - Even before Friday's DACA ruling, Utah
business leaders, Republican state lawmakers and immigration
advocates were calling on Republican Sens. Mike Lee and Mitt Romney to
pass bipartisan legislation on immigration reform, reports Ivana
Martinez of KUER
.
"As we try to address some of these struggles that we're seeing in our
economy, the solution that I see is increased immigration," state Rep.
Robert Spendlove (R) said at a meeting in Salt Lake City's World Trade
Center Wednesday. "Immigrants play a vital role in the Utah economy.
They help fill in many of those essential roles where we need more
people and where we have a high demand for jobs." The same goes for
Texas: In May, foreign-born workers accounted for nearly 23% of the
state's nonfarm workers - almost 6 percentage points higher than
the share nationwide, Mitchell Schnurman reports in The Dallas Morning
News
.
"If we want to fill all these jobs in restaurants, hotels, construction,
landscaping - then immigration is the solution," added Texas
restaurateur Jim Baron. 

**IN BETWEEN** - The immigration challenges President Biden is facing
have him "caught between the costly reality of a historic border influx
and supporters who erupt in anger when his administration hints at
tighter controls," report Nick Miroff and Sean Sullivan
of The Washington Post
.
They note that Americans want limits on immigration alongside humane
treatment of immigrants, but also that following Trump, who inflamed
passions on both sides of the spectrum, this presents a "unique
challenge" for Biden. Said Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), "I
don't want to beat up on the administration, but we have to make
decisions that are not easy and soft. We need to be humane and treat
people with dignity, but we have to have orderly process on the southern
border." 

**A.B.** - In June
, we
applauded Attorney General Merrick Garland's decision to undo Trump
administration policies that limited access to asylum for those fleeing
gang- or gender-based violence. The Trump administration's chosen case
when toughening restrictions was that of A.B., a domestic abuse survivor
from El Salvador. Last Wednesday, seven years after first applying,
A.B. was granted asylum, Tanvi Misra reports for The Fuller Project
.
"So many women have died at the hands of their ex-partner," A.B. said
via a translator. "They are not here now to tell their stories of what
they lived through." The case "reveals the extent to which top political
appointees in former President Donald Trump's administration
controlled life-and-death immigration court decisions," Misra
reports.  

[link removed]

**RESETTLEMENT** - Houston-based refugee support
organizations Houston Welcomes Refugees
 and The Alliance
 are gearing up to welcome a large number
of Afghan nationals as the U.S. withdraws troops from Afghanistan,
Courtney Carpenter reports for KTRK-TV
.
"When there was the war in the Balkans, we figured out, as a nation, how
to welcome those individuals and help take care of things. We can do
this," said Dan Stoecker, CEO of The Alliance. "... once they are
brought in and getting their culture orientation, they are going to be
your neighbors that are working hard and caring about the exact same
things you do." (Related: Neil Schoenherr at The Source
 reports
on the Self-Reliance Index, a tool developed by researchers at the Brown
School at Washington University in St. Louis to track the long-term
progress of refugees and displaced populations over time.) 

**MORE THAN PUSHBACK** - Thousands of migrants are attempting the
sea crossing
 from
Turkey to the Greek islands, but Greece keeps illegally pushing
migrants out, reports Carlotta Gall of The New York Times
. Just
recently, Turkish Coast Guard officials rescued a 7-year-old girl and
an older woman - two of 20 asylum seekers from Afghanistan - who
were left drifting in the dark after Greek police officers confiscated
their documents and other items. "They kicked us all, with their feet,
even the children, women, men and everyone," said Ashraf Salih,
21. "They did not say anything, they just left us. They weren't
humane at all." Greece denies such actions, though it "has struggled to
handle the influx of more than 100,000 asylum cases and overcrowded
refugee camps on its islands," Gall writes.  

Thanks for reading, 

Dan

 

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

10 G St NE, Suite 500

Washington, DC 20002

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, 10 G St NE, Suite 500, Washington, D.C. 20002, United States