Wednesday, March 9
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NOORANI'S NOTES

 

The sheer magnitude of the Ukrainian refugee crisis that has impacted
some 2 million people makes it hard to process. Put into the larger
context of the 34.4 million people worldwide who have been forcibly
displaced from their homeland as of the end of 2020, it just takes your
breath away.   

CBS News
'
Li Cohen offers a sobering summary of the places in the world facing
significant external displacement. Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan,
Myanmar, Palestine, Venezuela, Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen,
Ethiopia's Tigray region, northeast Nigeria, the Sahel region - and
now Ukraine - have all seen well over a million people displaced.  

As Katrina vanden Heuvel writes in The Washington Post
,
"Instead of welcoming refugees with open arms, current efforts hold them
at arm's length." 

Meanwhile, Axios
'
Erica Pandey has compiled a list of four ways to support Ukrainians.

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]
.   

**'HEAL DIVISION'** - Faith, business, national security and
advocacy organizations last week launched the Alliance for a New
Immigration Consensus
,
calling for protections for Dreamers, farmworkers and TPS
recipients along with humane border security. In an op-ed for Newsweek

this morning, Bishop Mario Dorsonville, chair of the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration; Walter Kim, president of the
National Association of Evangelicals; and Ed Litton, president of the
Southern Baptist Convention, write: "What most Americans probably do not
realize is just how close we are to the DACA program being
dissolved-throwing the lives of 650,000 individuals into turmoil."
Going beyond a range of polling highlighting the deep public support for
reform, they write, "Despite our disagreements on how to interpret the
scriptures-and even what texts are canonical-we agree that
immigrants are made in God's image and worthy of respect." Even though
the nation is divided, "addressing our nation's long-dysfunctional
immigration policies can be a unique way to heal division." 

**ANKLE MONITORS II** - The second part of Johana Bhuiyan's
investigation of ICE's alternatives to detention program in The
Guardian

finds that the contractor, BI Inc., uses substandard technology, with
reports of ankle monitors overheating, causing bruising, and at times
sending out electroshocks, plus BI's proprietary app frequently
malfunctioning. "At least 182,607 people were enrolled in [ICE's
alternatives to detention program] as of January, according to [ICE]
data
,
making it the largest supervision program of any US law enforcement
agency." And it's a supervision program operated by a company that
got its start in monitoring cattle
 and
is owned by one of the country's largest private prison corporations,
the GEO Group. 

**GREEN CARDS** - The push to include language that would recapture
unused green cards in an omnibus spending bill is looking tenuous. Ellen
M. Gilmer with Bloomberg News

reports that the spending bill "omits previously drafted provisions that
would have salvaged unused immigrant visas from recent fiscal years
beset by processing delays ... More than 200,000 immigrant visas in the
family and employment categories went to waste last year." Early this
morning, Gilmer tweeted
an
update that the bill "overall softens Dems' prior efforts to cut $ for
immigration/border enforcement," and "CBP, ICE get more than White House
requested." 

**TWO WARS IN SIX MONTHS** - In August, Mir Safi and his family had
fled Kabul, Afghanistan, after having worked for USA TODAY and serving
as a prosecutor in the Afghan government. His family found safety in
Ukraine and his daughter Sumayya was born on February 23. Now,
they're escaping their second war in six months. USA Today
's
editor-in-chief, Nicole Carroll, reports on the family's harrowing
journey out of Ukraine - including being turned back at the border.
"But the children kept asking, 'Are the Ukrainian soldiers gonna come
after us? Are they gonna come and take us back?'" 

Today's stories of local welcome:  

* Twenty Fort Worth firefighters climbed 100 flights of stairs on Monday
to raise money for Afghan refugee families. (Malini Basu, WFAA
) 

* For Afghan refugees temporarily housed at a hotel in Albany, New
York, weekly meals prepared by volunteers with the Muslim Soup Kitchen
Project have been a welcome taste of home. (Massarah Mikati, Times Union
) 

* The School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont, ceased
its full-time, on-location program in 2018. Now the campus is home to
language and cultural orientation for Afghan evacuees, run by about 20
volunteers. (Howard Weiss-Tisman, Vermont Public Radio
) 

**ICE SURVEILLANCE** - ICE obtained about 6 million financial records
of people who sent or received money transfers - and the information
went into a database that law enforcement officials can access,
according to a letter to DHS from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon). Hamed
Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News

that Wyden is seeking an investigation of the program, which comprised
Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico since 2019, to
determine whether it was constitutional. "Instead of squandering
resources collecting millions of transactions from people merely because
they live or transact with individuals in a handful of Southwestern
states or have relatives in Mexico, [Homeland Security Investigations]
and other agencies should focus their resources on individuals actually
suspected of breaking the law," Wyden wrote in his letter. 

**ANOTHER TRAGEDY** - We need border policies that put order and
dignity above opportunities for cartels - and the tragedies that
result. On Saturday, authorities found migrants in an overheated freight
truck in northern Mexico, including a pregnant woman who had perished,
the Associated Press

reports. Fourteen others were hospitalized among the 64 people,
including six children, who were found. Countries of origin included
Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Cuba. Mexico's National Immigration
Institute said it "condemns the fact that 'guides' and traffickers
profit from and endanger the lives of migrants" and that the migrants
would receive humanitarian visas.

Thanks for reading, 
Ali

 

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