Wednesday, October 27
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NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

The White House released a fact sheet
 Tuesday
on how the administration, through a partnership between Operation
Allies Welcome  and the private
sector, is spearheading  "a whole-of-America approach to safely,
securely and effectively welcoming our Afghan allies and Afghans
at-risk." Together, their efforts will "equip [Afghans] for success as
they rebuild their lives." 

Companies involved include airlines
 like United,
American, Delta, and JetBlue; Airbnb; Chamber of Commerce; CVS; JP
Morgan Chase; Starbucks; Trip Advisor; Google; Etsy; Walmart and many
others.  

On Day One of Leading the Way 2021
, we dove into the
Afghanistan situation with Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois)
and Jason Crow (D-Colorado). And on Day Two, we talked
about how immigration reform can help shape the workforce of the
future with Tom Linebarger, CEO of Cummins Inc., and Portia Wu,
Managing Director of U.S. Public Policy at Microsoft. If
you missed LTW, full videos will be available soon. We'll keep you
posted.  

Welcome to Wednesday'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]
.  

[link removed]

**AFGHAN SISTERS** - Libby Cathey of ABC News
 tells
the story of sisters Amina and Zahra, who were living in India
but traveled home to Afghanistan this summer to visit family - a
decision they call the "worst mistake of our lives," as they now hide
out from the Taliban. An ad-hoc group of volunteers, dubbed "Team 13,"
helped get their older sister out of the country. Now, they're doing
their best to save the rest of the family.  

Here's today's collection of local stories: 

* The Tampa Bay, Florida, non-profit Save Settle Support Initiative
 or S3I - founded
by an Air Force veteran who served in Afghanistan - is
helping Afghans evacuate and resettle in the U.S. (Vanessa
Araiza, ABC Action News
) 

* With the help of local volunteers including a former colleague, Afghan
evacuee Edris has become the first refugee to resettle in Muncie,
Indiana. (Courtney Spinelli, FOX 59
) 

* White Rock Presbyterian Church in White Rock, New Mexico,
raised over $1,000 for Afghan resettlement in the area and
is collaborating with other local churches to sponsor at least one
Afghan family who will resettle in Sante Fe soon. (Los Alamos
Reporter
)

**IMMIGRATION PIECES** - Democrats are quietly scrambling to include
immigration provisions in their social spending
bill, Sean Sullivan and Marianna Sotomayor report in The
Washington Post
. Options
on the table include a "plan to provide protected status that stops
short of a path to citizenship," and "a proposal that would enable
immigrants who arrived in the United States before 2010 to apply for a
green card."  Meanwhile, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa)
told The Cedar Rapids Gazette's
 Adam
Sullivan: "Right now, I'm not seeing a willingness to tackle
[comprehensive immigration reform] in a bipartisan fashion. I do see
willingness to tackle these small parts." Miller-Meeks is sponsoring
the Preserving Employment Visas Act
,
which would roll over unused visas from the past two fiscal years.  

[link removed]

'

**PRISON STATE' **- More than thirty thousand Haitians, as well as
other migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, are effectively
being detained in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula, Joe
Penney writes for The New Republic
.
"About 800 migrants are being held in the notorious Siglo XXI detention
center, but most of them are in an open-air prison bound by the
city limits: Migrants must be granted refugee status in Mexico to leave
Tapachula, and that onerous process can take months," Penney
writes. Per Andrés Ramírez, the head of Mexico's refugee
agency, Haitians have made up 88 percent of new refugee applications in
Mexico over the last few weeks. "U.S policy has forced Mexico to use
Tapachula as a prison state, caging migrants and
creating a bottleneck where they're barely surviving," said Haitian
Bridge Alliance co-founder and executive director Guerline
Jozef (who was named the 2021 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award
Laureate
 yesterday).  

LABOR SHORTAGES - Across the country, pandemic-related visa
processing delays mean "[h]undreds of thousands of foreign workers
have gone missing from the labor market ... leaving holes in
white-collar professions," reports Jeanna Smialek for The New York
Times
. "Fewer
immigrants means  fewer future workers." Vox's
 Nicole
Narea points to a proposed solution: Reform our visa system and
bring in more foreign workers to fix the U.S. labor
shortage. Immigration is key to addressing our nation's demographic
and labor challenges: As Natalie Walters writes for The Dallas Morning
News
, the
only reason Texas isn't facing bigger demographic issues amid a
declining birth rate is its net migration.  

DÍ

**A DE LOS MUERTOS** - For Día de los Muertos, celebrated Nov. 1
and 2, the Los Angeles Times
 created a communal
digital altar to honor and celebrate loved ones who have passed away.
Participants can choose a decorative template and upload a photo of a
loved one in memory of them as an ofrenda, or offering. Highly
recommend spending some time with this moving collection of stories in
Spanish and English paired with personal photos.  

Thanks for reading, 

Ali

P.S.  [link removed] A new exhibition at
Austin College from artist and activist Scott Nicol, "Ladders and
Walls
," consists
of 14 makeshift ladders migrants have used in attempts to reach the
U.S., Michael Marks reports for The Texas Standard
. "There
are people who are trying to survive and we need to see what we, as a
nation, can do to help them, not try to militarize the border, not
destroy the environment along the border, not do damage to border
communities, but think of it rationally and compassionately and address
it in that manner," Nicol said of the project. 

 

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