Thursday, March 24
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NOORANI'S NOTES

 

New this morning: Kristen Welker, Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner, and Rebecca
Shabad of NBC News

report that "[t]he Biden administration [today] is expected to announce
plans to welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainians

and others fleeing the country into the United States." Pathways will
include the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and nonimmigrant and
immigrant visas, they report.  

That's welcome news. 

It's welcome in part because a new report finds that the Trump
administration's "mass exclusion of refugees" not only reduced refugee
admissions by 295,000 "but cost the U.S. billions in economic growth,"
writes Michael Clemens, Director of Migration, Displacement, and
Humanitarian Policy and Senior Fellow for The Center for Global
Development
. 

"[E]ven a 10 percent reduction in refugee resettlement may cost the U.S.
$1.4 billion, and cost federal, state, and local governments more than
$310 million over 5 years," Clemens writes. 

We're also taking a moment to remember Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright

this morning. As a refugee from Czechoslovakia, she embodied the
American dream. From her leadership on global concerns to her ongoing
support of a tiny organization in Colorado that helps immigrants learn
English, she was a remarkable human being. 

Welcome to Thursday'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.
 

ASYLUM RULE - More breaking news this morning: The Biden
administration has posted
a new
asylum rule ahead of publication in the federal register next week. The
rule is designed "to settle claims at a faster pace and help alleviate
the immigration court backlog," reports Priscilla Alvarez of CNN
.
Our take: This rule is a positive step
.
The rule comes as preliminary CBP data show that authorities are on
track "to make more than 200,000 detentions along the Mexico border in
March, the highest monthly total since August," report Nick Miroff and
Maria Sacchetti of The Washington Post
. 

BORDER INVESTIGATIONS - An estimated 1,000 pages of newly uncovered
internal Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) documents reveal the lengths
the U.S. and Mexican governments went in 2019 to "surveil, detain, and
deport migrants on their way to the U.S.-Mexico border" and block
asylum, report John Washington and José Olivares of The Intercept
.
The emails and daily situational reports show how CBP partnered with
several countries and U.S. agencies to effectively "seal the southern
border." As Andrew Case, senior counsel for LatinoJustice told The
Intercept, the investigation tells "a harrowing story about how CBP was
made aware of a humanitarian crisis and, rather than address it,
worsened it by adopting a military posture and implementing the MPP
program." In other wild border news, QAnon conspiracy theorists are
"intercepting unaccompanied minors at the Arizona-Mexico Border, and the
Border Patrol seems fine with it," per Melissa del Bosque of The Border
Chronicle
. For
more on this, see Mark Brodie's interview with del Bosque on KJZZ
. 

'I THINK IT'S ESSENTIAL' - There's promising news on a bill
meant to bolster U.S. competitiveness, perhaps including immigration
provisions: On Wednesday, the Senate voted to proceed with resolving
differences between Senate and House versions of the bill, Suzanne
Monyak reports for Roll Call
.
The House version includes legal-immigration provisions that "could even
garner support from some Senate Republicans," Monyak writes. Said Sen.
Todd Young (R-Indiana): "If there's broad support for the provisions,
then I'm absolutely open to including it. More broadly in terms of
skills-based immigration reform, I think it's essential to maintaining
our national competitiveness." (The Council on National Security and
Immigration agrees
.) The kicker: Sens.
Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Wednesday that
they've restarted a conversation to find immigration measures where
there's "common ground." 

AFGHAN WELCOME - In an op-ed for The Washington Post
,
Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and
Refugee Service, writes: "We must send a resounding message that the
word of the United States still means something and that our promise of
protection is anything but temporary." As she notes, an Afghan
Adjustment Act

would offer our allies certainty. Meanwhile, in partnership with five
resettlement agencies and several community organizations, The Tennessee
Office for Refugees has resettled 640 Afghan refugees and counting,
reports Liam Adams of The Tennessean
.
"It takes a lot of people and a lot of hours over many, many months to
do this work," said Judy Orr, executive director of Catholic Charities
of the Diocese of Nashville.  

On the local front: 

* The Catherine McAuley Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, continues to
assist 250 Afghans resettling in the area, who are now able to register
for Temporary Protected Status. (Brian Tabick, KCRG
) 

* In the past three weeks, the Oklahoma Dental Foundation has offered
dental care to Afghan refugees via its Mobiles Smiles unit. (Kilee
Thomas, KOCO 5 News
) 

* Agencies in Albany, New York, are working hard to continue resettling
and integrating more than 350 new Afghan arrivals - a higher number
than initially expected. "We already have such a robust Afghan
community, and six mosques in the area," said Jill Peckenpaugh, director
of the USCRI's field office. "Easily 90 percent of the families who
came already had families or friends here." (Giulia McDonnell Nieto del
Rio, Documented
) 

Thanks for reading, 

Ali 

 

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