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NOORANI'S NOTES

 

The Gatsby Social Club, a gathering spot for many of the 60,000
Ukrainians living in New York City, has "morphed into a factory
churning out humanitarian supplies for Ukraine."   

The Washington Post's

Maria Sacchetti reports that in New York, home to more Ukrainian
immigrants than any other U.S. city, "[s]ome U.S. residents have already
left to fight alongside Ukrainians, while others are proudly donating
money to the army and humanitarian aid groups online."    

And "in neighborhoods where more Russians and Ukrainians live together,
many immigrants are worried about people in both countries. New York is
home to similar numbers of immigrants from both countries, and they
share social media sites, grocery stores and restaurants. Many Russian
immigrants oppose the invasion." 

Meanwhile, the New York Times'

Miriam Jordan reports how the conflict is leading immigrants from
Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet countries to reassess how they
define their identity: "Some, fearing how they will be perceived by the
public at large, are shifting from accepting being broadly painted as
Russians to explicitly identifying with their countries of
origin."   

At the U.S.-Mexico border, data from U.S. Customs and Border
Protection show that officials encountered 6,400 Russians in the four
months between October 2021 and January of this year, Reuters

reports. "That's more than the roughly 4,100 apprehended during the
entire 2021 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30." A little more than 1,000
Ukrainians were apprehended from October 2021 through January, compared
to about 680 last fiscal year.  

To increase their chances of entering the U.S. and avoiding Title 42
restrictions, migrants are purchasing cars, which are stopped less
frequently at the border than people crossing on foot. Migrants are
also sharing tips on social media platforms and messaging apps: "In a
recent exchange in one Russian-language Telegram group, viewed by
Reuters, a chat member said 'helpers' charge at least $1,500 per
person to provide a car. Another was trying to find a seat in a car for
his Ukrainian mother." 

More on Title 42 below.  

Welcome to Monday'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] .

**FLEEING** - The International Organization of Migration has
described the nearly 1.5 million refugees fleeing Ukraine as "the
fastest and largest displacement of people in Europe since World War
II," The Wall Street Journal

reports, and BuzzFeed News

posted a series of gut-wrenching photos of Ukrainians saying goodbye to
their families at train stations across the country.
Meanwhile, BuzzFeed's

Adolfo Flores and Hamed Aleaziz tell the story of Alex and his family,
who were able to make it to Seattle just in time because Alex was lucky
enough to have a tourist visa. And in an op-ed for USA Today
,
Henna Hundal, a public policy specialist at the Stanford University
School of Medicine, and Simran Jeet Singh, executive director of the
Aspen Institute's Religion & Society Program, underscore a critical
point: The plight of Ukrainian refugees and how the world is welcoming
them should "reaffirm that the decimation of homelands, livelihoods and
dreams is unequivocally tragic and compelling, no matter which groups of
refugees it happens to or where."  

**STILL SEPARATED** - Some immigrant families separated by the Trump
administration are yet to be united, per recent court filings. NBC's
Jacob Soboroff tweeted
,
"Biden admin and ACLU say they can confirm reunification of 2,762
children with parents from whom they were deliberately separated at
border by Trump. More than 1,000 may still remain separated." Meanwhile,
NPR

looks at the long-term effects of Trump's travel ban and tells the
story of Naser Almuganahi, a U.S. citizen from Yemen, who is still
trying to get a visa for his wife. 

**'HOT MESS DUMPSTER FIRE'** - Friday afternoon was a head spinner.
Early in the afternoon, as CBS News'

Camilo Montoya-Galvez reported, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld
the government's authority to use Title 42 to expel migrants "but barred
U.S. border officials from expelling families to countries where they
could be harmed." Hours later, Montoya-Galvez reported

that Texas District Court Judge Mark Pittman ruled that the Biden
administration cannot exempt unaccompanied migrant children from Title
42 expulsion. As my friend and immigration super-lawyer Karen Tumlin of
the Justice Action Center said in a twitter thread

explaining what Biden should do now, "That answer has always been clear:
end the hot mess dumpster fire ️of a policy that is Title 42
once and for all for all migrants."  

**AFGHAN RESETTLEMENT PLAN** - The Biden administration is planning to
complete Afghan resettlement by the end of August - about a year after
the Taliban took over Afghanistan, reports Zainab Fattah of Bloomberg
.
A senior State Department official told reporters Friday that while an
estimated 85,000 Afghan refugees have been resettled across communities
in the U.S., "thousands more remain in facilities in the United Arab
Emirates, Albania, Mexico and other countries." To date, about 100,000
Afghans who have applied for Special Immigrant Visa (SIVs) are still
stuck in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, more than 900 Evangelical leaders
recently signed a letter to Congress, spearheaded by The Evangelical
Immigration Table
,
calling for a path to permanent legal status for Afghans in the U.S.,
per The Jerusalem Post
.   

Here's today's local stories:  

* In partnership with Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital
Area and other groups, the ADAMS Center in Sterling, Virginia, has been
"offer[ing] spiritual and physical aid to Afghan refugees, through its
social services, youth, education and Imam's departments." (Samantha
Willis, VPM News
)  

* A $65,000 grant from the nonprofit Interfaith Works CNY is helping
Afghan arrivals with housing and employment needs in Syracuse, New York.
(Katie Zilcosky, WAER
)  

* Members of Detroit's Dawoodi Bohras Community joined local Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints members over the weekend to help the
nonprofit Zaman International deliver housewarming kits to resettled
Afghans in the area. (Mark Hicks, The Detroit News
) 

Thanks for reading, 
Ali

 

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