Our policy and advocacy manager Danilo Zak notes that this is the third straight month of declining numbers, underscoring a troubling lack of progress in rebuilding the refugee resettlement system.  

A third of the way into the fiscal year, the Biden administration is on track to resettle only 13,086 refugees for FY 2022 if current trends hold. And we’re not remotely close to the refugee ceiling set at 125,000.  

So, what should the U.S. government do?  

Danilo and Dan Kosten, another Forum policy expert, have a proposal: The U.S. should set an annual baseline for refugee admissions at 10% of UNHCR’s Refugees in Need of Resettlement (RINOR) number — the estimated population of forcibly displaced people who are most in need of permanent resettlement each year. 

"This method would live up to the purpose of the refugee admissions program as enumerated in the Refugee Act of 1980," Danilo and Dan write. "It would ‘respond to the urgent needs of persons subject to persecution;’ it would create a ‘systematic and permanent procedure’ for doing so; and it would recognize the ‘historic policy’ of the U.S. to serve as a place of welcome and a beacon of freedom to those throughout the world."  

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].  

MISSION POSSIBLE — Remember when President Trump, Stephen Miller et al. changed the mission statement of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to remove the phrase "nation of immigrants" and instead focus on "safeguarding its integrity" and "securing the homeland"? CNN’s Geneva Sands reports that this morning, under the leadership of Director Ur M. Jaddou, USCIS announced a new mission statement that captures the possibility of the United States: "USCIS upholds America’s promise as a nation of welcome and possibility with fairness, integrity, and respect for all we serve." Love it.  

PIPELINE — The Biden administration announced Tuesday that it is setting up an expedited processing hub in Qatar to fast-track the evacuation and resettlement process for some at-risk Afghans, Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports for CBS News. The new program would allow these refugees to enter the U.S. after they have completed (or are near completion of) their refugee or Special Immigrant Visa (SIVs) application without further processing at U.S. military bases, notes Montoya-Galvez. "The goal is both to minimize the use of [humanitarian] parole so that people come in with a more durable immigration status, but at the same time, if we’re able to complete the assurance process overseas, people may be able to travel directly to their new communities in the United States," per a senior administration official. 

DIGNITY ACT — On Tuesday, Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R) officially introduced an immigration reform bill called the Dignity Act. The bill includes "measures to increase border security, an expedited process for asylum seekers and a new program to provide a path to legal residency for undocumented immigrants already in the country," reports Bryan Lowry of the Miami Herald. The program would also require qualified undocumented immigrants to pay $10,000 in restitution to the government over ten years. "You can come out of the shadows and live a dignified life," Salazar told reporters in a phone call Tuesday morning. While there are opportunities for improving this bill, our take is that it’s a good first step towards the immigration reforms we need. 

COURT CRITICISM — After a Feb. 1 San Diego court hearing on the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a.k.a. "Remain in Mexico," attorney Monika Langarica tweeted some observations from it. The next day, the Justice Department requested that she delete the tweets, "[claiming] she violated a policy against making a record of immigration court proceedings and [threatening] potential criminal penalties if she committed ‘further violations,’" reports Tal Kopan of the San Francisco Chronicle. Only after The Chronicle inquired about the threat did the DOJ retract their request and issue an apology to Langarica. Kopan notes that the DOJ’s mistake raises concerns around the First Amendment, transparency in immigration courts, and the controversial MPP policy itself.  

THE SAYYIDS — Abdul, a former Afghan refugee himself, is now a caseworker with Jewish Child & Family Services Chicago helping Afghan evacuees like the "Sayyids" family resettle in the area, reports Joshua Flanders of Forward. Abdul — and a network of staff and volunteers from various synagogues — are currently working on raising "$10,000 needed to cover rent and other indirect support, to find and furnish the apartment with help from the Chicago Furniture Bank, as well as arranging tutoring and mentoring to help the family acclimate to America."  

More local welcome: 

• When Rabbi Adam Raskin and his congregants at Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, Maryland, saw the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan unfold, they decided to sponsor an Afghan refugee family. To "demonstrate to the family what kind of country they’ve relocated to," he connected with St. Francis Episcopal Church and the Islamic Community Center of Potomac to create an interfaith initiative to help integrate the family into the community. (Sydney Page, The Washington Post) 
• As a former attorney in Afghanistan and now a cross cultural navigator with Refugee Connections Spokane in Washington, advocate Atia Iqbal "takes new [Afghan] arrivals to appointments, translates their mail and helps them apply for food stamps or rental assistance." (Dhivya Sridar, The Spokesman-Review) 
• A group of San Juan County, New Mexico, residents have joined together to become part of the local Sponsor Circle Program for Afghans "to provide financial, logistical, moral and other support" for a newly arrived family. (Mike Easterling, Farmington Daily Times) 

Thanks for reading, 

Ali