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A significant drop in immigration is the key reason that the U.S. grew at the slowest pace in history in 2021, Derek Thompson writes for The Atlantic. The steady decline in immigration, due in part to economic factors in various countries along with restrictionist U.S. immigration policies, drove the record-setting downturn in overall population growth.

"Simply put, the U.S. has too few births, too many deaths, and not enough immigrants. Whether by accident, design, or a total misunderstanding of basic economics, America has steered itself into the demographic danger zone."

Last year, we talked about how immigration is necessary for the U.S. to grow. And given the growing U.S. labor shortage, that’s even more true today.

David Casas, director of The Libre Initiative Georgia, writes an op-ed for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that "there is a strong correlation between access to education opportunities and a robust workforce" in the state.

Casas, a former Republican member of the Georgia House of Representatives, goes on to voice support for federal reforms like the "Dream Act, Farm Workforce Modernization Act, and Bipartisan Border Solutions Act that would improve the legal immigration system, protect dreamers and essential workers, empower doctors and nurses, and protect the border."

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UKRAINIANS — With millions of Ukrainians internally and externally displaced, family reunification and resettlement efforts in the U.S. are especially critical, report Rupa Shenoy and Hafsa Quraishi of WBUR in an interview with Sasha Chanoff, founder of RefugePoint. Chanoff explains the urgent need for the Biden administration to rebuild the refugee resettlement system to meet the needs of displaced families, adding that we also must be prepared for "alternate options if this war doesn’t end quickly." A key point: "... as we build our new resettlement program, and as we look to support Ukrainians, we can’t overlook those who are in extreme and desperate circumstances around the world."

AFGHAN CHILDREN — An estimated 200 Afghan teens who fled the country alone after last year’s Taliban takeover remain unaccompanied and in U.S. federal custody, report Melissa Sanchez and Anna Clark of ProPublica. An investigation including law enforcement records, internal documents, and interviews with about a dozen people who have worked with or talked to the children in the shelters reveals that "young Afghans have been waiting in what seems like never-ending detention," while suffering from severe trauma. While the State Department is still working on coordinating their parents’ evacuation from Afghanistan, it is unclear how or when families will be reunited. Meanwhile, thousands of Afghan evacuees face an uncertain future in the U.S. because they only have access to temporary forms of legal status, Abigail Hauslohner writes for The Washington Post. This is why we need an Afghan Adjustment Act.

On the local front:

With private-public sponsorships and strong public support, more than 700 Afghans have resettled in Connecticut since September. (Tom Condon, CT Mirror)
A group of around 25 Afghan men have found a "safe space" at Ramin Mohamand’s daily soccer games at Gillis Neighborhood Park in Austin, Texas. (Jake García, KVUE)

BIDEN’S BUDGET — The Biden administration’s Fiscal Year 2023 budget "would substantially increase funds for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) while further taking the agency away from the enforcement-heavy policies imbued into it by the Trump administration," Rafael Bernal and Rebecca Beitsch report for The Hill. "Notably, the Budget makes smart investments in technology to keep our borders secure and includes funding that will allow us to process asylum claims more efficiently as we build a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system," said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a statement. In addition to increased CBP and ICE funding, the budget request also includes $765 million for USCIS, although the agency would remain mainly funded by application fees. Moreover, the budget proposal almost doubles funding for the immigration courts, which would allow them to hire 100 additional immigration judges.

DETENTION — In addition to the increases, the administration seeks "to cut more than 25 percent of the bed capacity at immigration detention facilities" via its budget request, per Eileen Sullivan of The New York Times. The administration recently ended a contract with a detention facility in Alabama and is reducing the use of three other detention centers which have been heavily criticized for poor living conditions. For more on this, see Maria Sacchetti and Nick Miroff’s piece in The Washington Post. These necessary changes are being proposed against a backdrop of immigrants and advocates urging the administration to shut down immigration detention centers like Florida’s Glades County Detention Center and LaSalle Correctional Center in Louisiana. Cruel treatment and abuse of Black migrants in these facilities have underscored the "disturbing and overlooked problem of anti-Black racism in immigration detention."

COVID-19 VACCINES — The Biden administration plans to offer COVID-19 vaccines to migrants taken into custody at the U.S.-Mexico border, reports Priscilla Alvarez of CNN. The administration will provide up to 2,700 vaccines per day and increase to 6,000 daily by the end of May, according to a notice to Congress. "We have to ensure that as we apprehend individuals and that they are turned over to an NGO or released in the community that we’ve set them up for proper care," Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz told CNN last week. Meanwhile, "a bus brigade is vaccinating Mexican citizens with COVID-19 shots that Texans aren’t using," report Karen Brooks Harper and Jason Garza of The Texas Tribune. Thanks to a cross-border initiative launched in June, "roughly 2,000 Nuevo Laredo residents per day get COVID-19 shots in Laredo — 10% of Texas’ daily total."

Thanks for reading,

Ali