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Congress should help our Afghan allies now in the United States integrate successfully by passing a bill that would speed their path to legal residency and eventual citizenship. 

(Forgive us if we repeat ourselves.) 

As thousands of our allies begin to get settled in communities after moving off military bases, they also remain in legal limbo, as Esther Eaton of WORLD magazine reports. Most have humanitarian parole, which is temporary. Some have opportunities to pursue other relief, but without a measure from Congress, many would need to apply for asylum. 

And that’s tedious: Think 500 or more pages of supporting evidence, according to Shane Ellison, supervising attorney at Duke University’s immigration law clinic, who with students is helping 10 families apply for asylum and writing document templates to speed up other applications.  

An Afghan Adjustment Act would give our allies a more certain route to legal status. "We shouldn’t penalize [our allies] for the hurried nature of the evacuation," says Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services. 

Welcome to Friday’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].   

‘SILVER BULLET’ — The restaurant industry in Texas is experiencing severe labor shortages, and the drop in migration is part of the problem, Maggie Glynn reports in Border Report. Migration to Texas decreased 50% from 2020 to 2021, census data show. Kelsey Erickson Streufert with the Texas Restaurant Association says that the restaurant and hospitality industry is down about 70,000 jobs, and that even before omicron, more than three-quarters of the state’s restaurant operators said they couldn’t meet customer demand because they had too few employees. What might help? "Immigration reform is probably the closest thing to a silver bullet, because it gives us the ability to bring a significant number of new employees online very quickly," Streufert said. 

MORE ON DESANTIS — Earlier this week Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that comparing Operation Pedro Pan, during which Cuban families sent their children alone to Florida in the 1960s, to unaccompanied migrant children today was "disgusting." Yesterday Florida business and faith leaders, and Pedro Pan children, pushed back, Carmen Sesin reports for NBC News. "As we did before, this community should rise to the challenge and recognize that every child is a child with dignity, deserving care," said Archbishop Thomas Wenski of the Archdiocese of Miami. "But that is especially true for the most vulnerable among us, the unaccompanied minors that travel through dangerous, very difficult paths to reach freedom."  

ONE-WAY TICKET — Some migrants hoping to gain asylum in the U.S. are bypassing dangerous land journeys and instead flying to Mexico, an option that is especially appealing for those who hail from countries from which Mexico does not require a visa, Elliot Spagat of the Associated Press reports. "Once arriving at a Mexican border city, they can walk across the border in broad daylight and surrender to U.S. agents," Spagat writes. "In doing so, they avoid the dangers of traversing Mexico and other countries over land and circumvent sweeping U.S. asylum restrictions." And migrants from countries such as Cuba and Venezuela are expelled less often under the Title 42 public-health order because of the cost of flying them to their countries of origin, or because of strained relations between the U.S. and those countries. After pressure from the U.S., Mexico is now adding countries to its visa-required list. 

TOUGH CROWD — The Dignity Act, introduced Tuesday by Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) and six Republican co-sponsors, is taking flak from other Republicans, Rafael Bernal and Mike Lillis report in The Hill. The proposal "is further exposing a split within the GOP between those who want the party to lead on immigration reform and hard-liners increasingly vocal against immigration as a whole," Bernal and Lillis write. Says Mario H. López, president of the conservative Hispanic Leadership Fund, "Until you fix the legal immigration system, then you cannot have a secure border. I mean, they go hand in hand, whether one likes it or not. For our part, we think Salazar’s bill should be a starting point for consensus-based reforms. 

DROP ON BY – Something nice to start your weekend in case you are in Amarillo, Texas: KFDA’s Earl Stoudemire reports that the Refugee Language Project’s PLACE (a "Place for Language, Art, Culture, and Economic growth") is opening to serve the community today. Ryan Pennington, Executive Director of the Refugee Language Project invites you to drop by and, "Be the one to welcome people into the space and drink tea and practice English with them." 

Thanks for reading, 
Ali