Large disparities have emerged among national responses to Ukrainian refugees, Chantal Da Silva reports for NBC News. Ukraine’s neighbor Moldova has taken in 82,000, for example, while the UK’s barriers have been labeled a "cruel farce." 

The whole point of the 1951 Refugee Convention, Sonya Sceats of Freedom From Torture told NBC, "was to put a stop to these kinds of barriers and to establish the principle that if you’re fleeing for your life … you are allowed to turn up and claim asylum on arrival."  

In Poland, the arrival of 1.4 million people — two refugees every three seconds — is causing a strain, Drew Hinshaw and Ian Lovett report in The Wall Street Journal. "This is like our biggest humanitarian crisis after the Second World War," said Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who has seen 200,000 Ukrainians arrive in his city in just over a week. "What can we do? We are one city."  

Meanwhile, at the Mexico-U.S. border, the Ukrainian family that was turned away Wednesday under Title 42 was allowed in Thursday, as Priscilla Alvarez of CNN reports. 

And this morning for The xxxxxx, I wrote, "The United States can and must do more—for Ukrainians, yes, but also for refugees fleeing conflict around the world, regardless of their nationality."  

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]. And if you know others who'd like to receive the Notes, please spread the word. They can subscribe here.

TITLE 42 — Pressure is building on the Biden administration to lift the Title 42 public health restrictions at the border. Hamed Aleaziz at BuzzFeed News scoops (of course) that Homeland Security officials are planning to tell their Mexican counterparts of plans to end Title 42 this April. Aleaziz writes that in a draft document, DHS warned that  "[r]eturning to prepandemic [border processing] practices could ‘seriously strain’ border resources and lead to a challenging humanitarian situation in northern Mexico." DHS officials, according to the documents, also want Mexico "to impose a ‘hardcopy’ visa requirement for Russians and Brazilians, which would theoretically make it harder for them to enter the country for the intention of heading to the US border." 

THAT WAS THEIR PLAN — Yesterday, the Census Bureau published the 2020 Census’ post-enumeration survey and demographic analysis estimate. Per Roll Call’s Michael Macagnone, "The agency missed almost 5 percent of the country’s Hispanic population, the largest miss for that population group in decades." Remember, the Trump administration spent years trying to add a citizenship question to the census to stoke fear in immigrant communities around completing the census. And, as Macagnone writes, Trump "later cut counting short as part of an effort to exclude undocumented immigrants from apportionment results." Yes, this was their plan. But, as it turns out, conservative-leaning states of Texas, Florida and Arizona, "received fewer congressional districts in apportionment than projected."   

‘NOTHING CAN EXPLAIN’ — In a world of soul-crushing stories about people trying to flee violence and conflict, this may be one of the most soul-crushing. In The Atlantic, George Packer writes about Afghan women who fought against the Taliban, now scared for their lives as they try to figure out a way to escape the country before Taliban soldiers find them. Telling the story of Lieutenant Shakila Nazari, a member of the Afghan military who now lives in Kansas after a harrowing escape from her home country, "Nothing can explain why Nazari should be safe while Noori, Mahdieh, Fatima, and Najibeh should be running for their lives, why America should welcome one and refuse the others." If there is one thing you read today, it should be this.