AFGHANISTAN TO ALBANY — Noor Khan, who worked alongside the U.S. Army, is one of some 250 Afghans resettling in Albany this year, reports Rayan El Amine for The River. When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, Khan  travelled across multiple countries before reuniting with his family of twelve, who left their home country in 2019. While his arrival to the U.S. felt like "someone gave me a hundred billion dollars," Khan said, he still has a heavy heart for leaving behind his wife and kids, who did not qualify for resettlement in the U.S. "In Afghanistan, if you have a problem with me, you have a problem with my whole family," he said of the threat his family faces from the Taliban. "Given the chance to kill my brothers, my wife, my children, it’s not a problem. They won’t hesitate." 

Here’s today’s local stories of welcome: 

• Village Fabric shop in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, auctioned a welcome blanket made by the community for a little more than $1,300, which went to Church World Service to support their Afghan resettlement efforts. (Taylor Neuman, Spectrum News) 
• The Washington Post’s Antonio Olivo details heroic efforts in the D.C. area to facilitate Afghan resettlement.  
• A retired chief warrant officer with the South Dakota Army National Guard and his son, who serves with the Iowa National Guard, are joining forces to assist evacuees at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. (Randy Dockendorf, Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan) 
• Medical and dental students from Campbell University, Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill volunteered at a health clinic on Saturday to provide Afghan evacuees awaiting refugee status with medical and dental care. (Hayley Fixler, CBS 17) 

ROOM TO GROW — The percentage of foreign-born citizens and residents in the U.S. has declined significantly for the first time in over a decade, Stef Kight reports for Axios, according to an analysis of new and experimental U.S. Census Bureau data. The new American Community Survey (ACS) data "also revealed the smallest decade gain in the foreign-born population since the 1960s, at 3.6 million. In comparison, the immigrant population grew by 8.8 million during the 2000s." With an aging U.S. population, Kight notes, we need to boost immigration to fill job openings and support economic growth (our Room to Grow paper explains this in detail).