Monday, September 20
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NOORANI'S NOTES

 

With thousands of migrants from Haiti living under a bridge in
Del Rio, Texas, "others are rethinking their plans amid fears that they
could find themselves on a flight to Haiti," reports Jaqueline Charles
of the Miami Herald
. That's
because the Biden administration has announced that it's ramping
up deportation flights to Haiti. 

Jean Négot Bonheur Delva, head of Haiti's Office of National
Migration, said the country "is undergoing a
difficult period; whether it's the insecurity, the lack of
infrastructure - we just had a major earthquake on the 14th of August
in the south ... To be repatriating people back to Haiti at this same
moment, and with COVID-19, I think the U.S should be trying to help
Haiti" with a moratorium on deportation flights. 

Hope, fear and misinformation are what led Haitian migrants to the
U.S. border in the first place, a team at The New York Times
 reports.
More may come: Thousands of Haitians are stranded in Tapachula,
Mexico, along the border with Guatemala, per The Los Angeles Times
.
There, "waves of Mexican national guard forces in riot gear, backed by
immigration agents, block the roads heading north."  

As Charles reports in the Herald, Haiti and Mexico have agreed to
address "irregular migration flows." Meanwhile, the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) implemented a new six-point strategy
 to
address the increase in migrants in the Del Rio sector, and CNN's
 Paul
LeBlanc reports that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will travel to the
southern border soon.   

For more context on Haiti and how it fits into the larger immigration
debate, I encourage you to read Ali's Medium post from last night
.  

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

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AFGHANISTAN - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo
Grandi  is warning
of a potential "humanitarian crisis" if countries do not engage with the
interim government in Afghanistan, Asad Hashim reports
for Al Jazeera
. Grandi
met with officials in Afghanistan as well as in Pakistan, which
is home to 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees. (Grandi will be
speaking at our annual Leading the Way convening
 next
month.) Stateside, here's a must-read from a few days ago:
The Indianapolis Star's
 Rashika Jaipuriar tells
the story of Marine Cpl. Humberto Sanchez and the community that is
remembering him. Sanchez, a Mexican American and Indiana
resident, was one of the 13 U.S. service members killed in the Aug.
26 attack in Kabul. And in The Wall Street Journal
, Jessica
Donati tells how a family of eight escaped Afghanistan and is
beginning a new life in Rochester, New York.  

Meanwhile, local support and aid for Afghan refugees continue:  

* Minnesota and Wisconsin will welcome hundreds of Afghan refugees.
"They're human beings just like us," said Yazdan Bakhsh, who was
adopted from Afghanistan by a Minnesota family as a young boy. (Liz
Collin, WCCO-TV
) 

* In Wisconsin, Habitat for Humanity La Crosse Area is hosting a
fundraiser next Saturday to aid Afghan allies and their families who
remain in Afghanistan. (WIProud.com
) 

* Worcester, Massachusetts, leaders are preparing help 200 Afghan
evacuees resettle and find apartments and jobs this fall. (Katie
Benoit, Spectrum News 1
) 

* From Duke University classrooms to the town's resettlement
agencies, Durham, North Carolina, is helping welcome new Afghan
arrivals. (Adejuwon Ojebuoboh, The Duke Chronicle
) 

* As the Catholic Church's National Migration Week kicks off this
week, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, is
"focusing on refugee education and empathy," including a live refugee
simulation. (Robert Burton, ABC 7 News
)  

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**LEGISLATIVE STEP** - The Senate parliamentarian on Sunday
evening said no to Democrats' efforts to include immigration
measures in their budget reconciliation plan, reports Marianne Levine
of Politico
. Next
steps are unclear; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats
"plan to meet with the Senate parliamentarian in the coming days and
pursue other options." Meanwhile, in Morning Consult
 today, two
police chiefs and members of the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force
write of their support for immigration solutions via
reconciliation. "We have always supported bipartisan paths to
immigration solutions, and still do," write Ramon Batista, the retired
chief of Mesa, Arizona, and Brian Kyes, the police chief of Chelsea,
Massachusetts. "But when push comes to shove, the solutions themselves
matter most." 

H-1B VISAS

** **- A recent court ruling could make it easier for international
students to obtain H-1B visas, Stuart Anderson of the National
Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) writes for Forbes
. A
federal judge blocked a Trump administration regulation that would
have ended the H-1B lottery system. "An international student may be
54% more likely to get an H-1B petition under the current H-1B lottery
system than under the Trump administration's regulation," according
to an NFAP analysis
 of
cases of recent international students and filings for H-1B
petitions.   

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY - Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's (R) order
restricting ground transportation of migrants
 "undermine[s]
our religious obligation to help those in
need," writes Bishop Daniel Flores, leader of the Roman Catholic
Diocese in Brownsville, Texas, in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal
.
"We have a religious obligation to serve the poor who are suffering in
front of us. That's why we have asked a federal court - with the
help of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty-to protect our First
Amendment right to serve these migrants. ... In these extraordinary
times, it is essential that the Catholic Church in the United States be
free to meet the needs of migrants."  

Thanks for reading, 

Dan 

 

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