Yesterday Blaine Bookey, Legal Director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Hastings, tweeted, "I’m at the San Ysidro port of entry and CBP will not allow a Ukrainian family seek asylum. Outrageous. … Stop the cruelty. End Title 42." 

Around the same time, Reuters’ Ted Hesson reported that the Biden administration "is leaning toward ending a COVID-era order that has blocked more than a million migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border," otherwise known as Title 42. Officials told Hesson a decision could come within weeks, "though the outcome was not yet clear." 

For more on Title 42’s real-world impacts, read about Sásabe, Sonora, along Mexico’s border with Arizona. In Sásabe, population 1,200, the Casa de la Esperanza migrant shelter has been helping about 1,200 people per month who have been expelled from the U.S. under Title 42, Melissa Del Bosque reports in The Border Chronicle. "Our mission is to restore some of their dignity with a hot meal and a little hope," said Dora Rodriguez, who co-founded Casa de la Esperanza last year. 

Just end the program already, Mr. President. 

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PREPARING TO WELCOME — Good on Gov. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) for convening a March 17 summit in Northeast Ohio to prepare for the potential arrival of Ukrainian refugees, as Fox19’s Brian Planalp reports. "While we do not yet know what role Ohio will play in helping these families, I want us to be prepared when the time does come," DeWine said. Meanwhile, in Poland, mothers are leaving strollers on train platforms for Ukrainian families, as Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse writes: "Typically the leaders who start and end wars are not in a position to understand that prams are war supplies too. And yet mothers would know to ask this. Every mother would know." 

MEANWHILE — Bureaucracies and politics stand in the way of Ukrainians hoping to secure a visa to the U.S. Roll Call’s Suzanne Monyak found that in the region, "wait times for temporary visas have grown, with some stretching to nearly a year — if appointments are available at all." Also on the room-for-improvement list has been the U.K. While the European Union has waived visas for all Ukrainian refugees for up to three years, the Brits continue to require security checks and visas. The BBC’s Doug Faulkner reports that "The Home Office has come under pressure to speed up visa processing." 

HAITIAN ODYSSEY — In a year with plenty of dramatic immigration stories, one standout was the arrival of 16,000 Haitians in Del Rio, Texas, last fall. The Houston Chronicle’s Elizabeth Trovall and Marie D. De Jesús are out with an amazing three-chapter description of what, for many, was a 10-year journey from Haiti to Brazil to Chile, and eventually to the U.S. To give you a sense of the magnitude, Trovall and De Jesús found that "[t]he some 100,000 making this journey in 2021 are nearly three times the number of people that made the same odyssey during the entire previous decade." Our treatment of Haitian refugees fleeing violence, poverty and natural disaster offers a stark contrast to the outpouring of support for Ukrainians now.  

FLORIDA — The Sunshine State’s legislature continues to do everything it can to be more anti-immigrant than its counterparts in Texas. On Wednesday, the Florida House passed legislation "targeting transportation companies that bring undocumented immigrants into the state and expanding a 2019 law that sought to ban so-called ‘sanctuary cities,’" according to News Service of Florida’s Dara Kam. The legislation now heads to the desk of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who is also working to "shutter shelters that provide housing and other services to unaccompanied children whose immigration or refugee status is being processed after they enter the country." The Forum has posted an explainer about the legislation. 

WORKFORCE ISSUE — "If we want to save our local economies, we must open our doors to the world," Tod Bowen, managing director of external affairs and government relations at the Ohio Restaurant Association, writes on Cleveland.com. More than 3,000 Ohio restaurants have closed since the start of the pandemic, Bowen notes, and labor shortages are a big reason why. "[I]mmigration is a workforce issue, not just a border issue," he writes. "Immigrants fill crucial job openings that would otherwise go unfilled, help businesses expand, and allow consumers to get the goods and services they need without delay. Immigrants could literally save Ohio’s restaurant industry." 

ARRIVAL CENTER — A temporary facility in Northern Virginia has welcomed its first newly arrived Afghan evacuees, reports Ben Fox of the Associated Press. The National Conference Center in Leesburg replaces military bases as refugees’ temporary home until resettlement agencies can find more permanent housing. The arrivals include people who escaped Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal and have passed medical and security screening elsewhere. 

Meanwhile, on the local-welcome front: