|
RESETTLEMENT REALITIES — Afghan allies who have been able to resettle in the U.S. still face economic and emotional challenges. In Northern Virginia, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington is "working overtime" to help Afghan families resettle and say the biggest challenge is finding permanent housing, reports Gigi Barnett of WTOP. A team at CNN tells the story of Mohammed Iqbal Selanee — who first started interpreting for U.S. forces as a teenager — and his emotional journey to the U.S. "I am happy because I am safe here with my family," Selanee said. "But I'm still unhappy because I left some of my family back there." For the Los Angeles Times, Brittny Mejia sheds light on the realities of Afghan evacuees in California, with photos by Irfan Khan. HAITI — A broad coalition of 344 groups on Monday called on the Biden administration to halt deportations to Haiti and expand relief for Haitian migrants, reports Rafael Bernal of The Hill. "Since February 1, 2021, the Administration sent at least 37 deportation flights to Haiti, even as your officials acknowledged internally that those being deported ‘may face harm’ on return and the COVID-19 pandemic raged," the coalition wrote in a letter to Biden and others. "By March, the Biden-Harris Administration had removed more Haitians since taking office than during all of fiscal year 2020."
MPP LIMBO — Per Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, the Trump administration sent more than 71,000 asylum seekers to Mexico in 2019 under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a.k.a. "Remain in Mexico," reports Rafael Carranza of the Arizona Republic. Though Biden paused MPP in February, a Supreme Court decision last week "effectively requires the Biden administration to restart the program while its appeal continues to play out in court." The decision has led international organizations processing asylum seekers enrolled in MPP to pause their work, leaving thousands of migrants in limbo. MEXICO — Yesterday, we noted the spike in violence in southern Mexico as the government tried to block the movement of asylum seekers to other parts of the country. In this morning’s The Washington Post, León Krauze digs deeper into the issue. Arturo Viscarra, an immigration lawyer with CHIRLA, told Krauze: "As more Haitian asylum seekers are purposely bogged down in Tapachula due to the governments’ containment strategy, they become more visible and exposed to the already existing xenophobia of the local population." DEPLETED — New projections indicate that Social Security costs are expected to exceed the total income in 2021 amid COVID-19's ongoing financial toll, reports Kate Davidson of The Wall Street Journal. Trustees "expect Social Security’s reserves to be depleted by 2034, only one year sooner than they estimated in their April 2020 report," writes Davidson. "The trustees now project elevated mortality rates related to the pandemic through 2023, and expect lower immigration and child-bearing this year and next, compared with their 2020 estimates," adds Davidson. We’ve touched on this issue in our Room to Grow paper: The country will need more immigrants in order to combat the worst effects of demographic decline — especially during and after the pandemic — to protect the nation’s social and economic health. Thanks for
reading, |
