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NOORANI'S NOTES

 

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Backlogs at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are preventing
immigrant essential workers from doing their jobs, Rafael Carranza
reports for the Arizona Republic
.
The agency is dealing with upwards of 8 million pending applications for
citizenship and for a wide range of visas and permits.  

The backlog of employment-authorization applications is particularly
troublesome, having doubled and then some between the start of the
pandemic and October of last year. That's leaving essential workers in
the lurch - not to mention everyone who depends on them.  

"There are serious consequences for immigrants, but also for the economy
more broadly," Jorge Loweree of the American Immigration Council points
out. "We're [experiencing] this significant labor shortage, and things
that are happening at this agency are contributing to that problem."  

Guito Tata, a Haiti-born asylum seeker and truck driver, has been
waiting more than 11 months while his application to renew his work
permit is pending. His current permit and commercial driver's license
have expired, and he hasn't worked in five months. "I'm not sick,"
Tata said. "I'm in good shape, I can work. Because of a work permit
[delay], I'm sitting home every day doing nothing and it's very
frustrating."  

Welcome to Tuesday'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] .

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**'NEW NORMAL'** - A shortage of immigrants is contributing to the
"remarkable imbalance" between the number of available jobs and
available workers, The Economist

reports. Giovanni Peri and Reem Zaiour of the University of California,
Davis, note that pre-COVID trends pointed toward 2 million more
working-age immigrants than we have in the U.S. today, and their absence
is hurting industries across the spectrum. The bottom line? "[T]he
extreme tightness today will have offered a glimpse into the future as
ageing depletes the pool of potential workers. ... Getting by with less
help will be the new normal." Barring, you know, smarter
legal-immigration policy. 

**FLORIDA** - The Sunshine State's latest effort to scapegoat
unaccompanied migrant children has passed the state's Judiciary
Committee on a party line vote. The bill would "prohibit any government
agency, state or local, from doing business with any airline, bus or
other transportation company paid by the federal government to bring
immigrants who are in the country illegally to Florida," per Brendan
Farrington of the Associated Press
.
Democratic state Sen. Tina Polsky pointed out that most immigrants being
brought to Florida are children, and the bill "would prevent children
from being united with their families or resettled with a sponsor."
Yesterday, I had some thoughts about Florida Man
.

[link removed]

**VETTING** - Forum Board Member Elizabeth Neumann is out with a new
paper for the National Foundation for American Policy

examining the security vetting of refugees. Based on her years of
experience and detailed analysis, Neumann concludes that "these
procedures provide adequate security for the United States to welcome
refugees without fear of a terrorist attack." But she adds an important
level of nuance to what needs to be done moving forward: "The goal is
not zero risk, the goal is a strong and continually improving layered
set of defenses." And something we don't talk about a lot: "We need to
significantly strengthen and rapidly scale local prevention capabilities
to intervene with individuals vulnerable to being radicalized to
violence."  

**THANKFUL** - "Everything is OK now," 32-year-old Massoud Ahmad
Vighagh said after being one of the last Afghan evacuees to be resettled
from Indiana's Camp Atterbury. Rashika Jaipuriar tells Vighagh's
story in the Indianapolis Star

as resettlement operations at the base wind down. "Something very
profound happened here on Hoosier soil," Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb (R)
said of the efforts at Camp Atterbury. "This truly was one of Indiana's
finest hours." [Holcomb also tweeted
Monday, "To
our newest Hoosiers who are beginning their new lives here, welcome
home."] Don't miss the Star's gallery of the mural at that base,
which evacuees helped create. Per CNN's Priscilla Alvarez
,
"As of Monday, there are ~11,000 Afghan evacuees on domestic military
bases, per DHS. Officials previously said the admin expects to move all
Afghans off the domestic bases by mid-February. More than 63,000 Afghans
have been resettled as part of Operation Allies Welcome. 

Elsewhere on the local-welcome front: 

* Up the road in South Bend, Indiana, about 100 volunteers are helping
the United Religious Community of St. Joseph County
welcome evacuees and help them get settled.
(Joseph Dits, South Bend Tribune
)

* Several houses of worship in Kalamazoo, Michigan, are helping gather
donated items and money for arriving refugees. (Chris Yu, News Channel 3
)

* "It's just incredible, everything that they've gone through, and we're
just so happy to be able to be involved and welcoming them here in
Wausau," said Gwen Paul of the volunteer-run nonprofit New Beginnings
for Refugees in Wisconsin. (Diane
Bezucha, Wisconsin Public Radio
)

**TREASURES** - A reminder that refugees are real people who lead
meaningful lives. Refugees in a makeshift camp in France, hoping to make
it to England, are turning to storytelling for a measure of comfort,
Alexander Durie reports in Al Jazeera
.
Durie spoke to refugees about their treasured objects. For Haven, age,
10, it's her scooter. Hide, 30, treasures a photo of him working as an
ambulance driver before he fled: "It makes me happy because it reminds
me how I helped many people." Senzai, from Afghanistan, says of his
Afghan flag necklace: "This necklace [is] so important to me because in
Afghanistan we've given so many lives because of it, and now the
Taliban don't accept it. This flag is all of my heart."

Thanks for reading,

Ali

 

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