"Today’s sobering 100 million displacement figure is indisputable proof that global leaders are failing the world’s most vulnerable people on a scale never before seen," said Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council. 

The main challenge, Semotiuk explains, is how we manage vulnerable displaced populations arriving from wars, climate change, or environmental disasters. We must "adopt a new paradigm to deal with these issues and lead the world in addressing this mounting problem. 

"Adopting an approach similar to how it helped displaced persons at the end of World War II, we can help at least some of these 100 million individuals, without discrimination, by helping those who have ties to the U.S., or to other developed countries." 

But to make it happen, better leadership is needed.  

Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The Forum Daily, and happy Immigrant Heritage Month and Pride Month to all. I’m Joanna Taylor, Senior Communications Manager at the Forum. 

Today is my last day at the Forum, and it still hasn’t sunk in how lucky I am to have been a part of the Forum communications team and work on The Forum Daily since we started it as Noorani’s Notes back in 2017. While I’ll no longer be on the team, you can still send stories from your own community to my fabulous colleagues at [email protected]. And thank you, as always, for reading. 😊  

CALIFORNIA FARMWORKERS — Employers have reached the limit of additional H-2B seasonal returning worker visas for the summer, per U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, reports Andrew Kreighbaum of Bloomberg Law. And with less young undocumented farmworkers coming from Mexico, the dynamic of farming in California is changing, Eduardo Porter writes for The New York Times with photographs from Ryan Christopher Jones. "The new demographic reality has sent farmers scrambling to bring in more highly paid foreign workers on temporary guest-worker visas, experiment with automation wherever they can and even replace crops with less labor-intensive alternatives," Porter writes. While hiring seasonal workers isn’t cheap, alternatives like automation have their limits, too. Passing the Farm Workforce Modernization Act could help.  

TITLE 42 — Title 42 has nothing to do with truly protecting the public’s health, writes Linda Hill, director of the UC San Diego-San Diego State University General Preventive Medicine Residency, in an op-ed for The San Diego Union-Tribune. "While effective COVID-19 prevention and mitigation strategies have been identified and implemented, including ongoing masking in high-risk situations, vaccine and anti-viral medication, policies like Title 42 remain in place — a clear disparity between the evidence-based and effective public health protocols and the immigration practices," Hill writes. But as my colleague Danilo Zak told Adam Klepp of Fox 9, the policy will remain in place through the rest of this year, at minimum. And migrants will continue to face dangerous conditions and uncertain futures while Title 42 winds through court challenges. 

‘UNETHICAL’ — With resettlement offices stretched thin, Afghan refugees in California are facing challenges with permanent resettlement, reports Deepa Fernandes of the San Francisco Chronicle. Ahmad, Firoza, and their daughter are among the more than 900 Afghan evacuees resettled in Sacramento, Oakland, San Jose, and Turlock. But they have met obstacle after obstacle, from lack of communication from their caseworker to limited access to grocery stores and a tough housing market. "Don’t just bring the refugees and dump them and say you should survive on (your) own," said Ahmad Kayello, imam of the Islamic Center of Modesto. "This is unethical."  

AFGHAN ADJUSTMENT ACT — Congress must honor its promise of providing safety and security to Afghan allies and their families by passing the Afghan Adjustment Act, writes the editorial board at Bloomberg. "Swift passage would allow procedures to be established by the time most evacuees have been in the U.S. for a year and need to apply for permanent status," they write. "Further delay risks dragging out the process uncomfortably close to when their parole status will expire." 

Meanwhile, on local welcome: 

• An Afghan refugee family named their newborn after Selli Abdali, a volunteer at the Philadelphia International Airport with Afghan heritage, who urged U.S. officials to treat and transfer the extended family together as a single unit. (Jeff Gammage, The Philadelphia Inquirer) 
• Carter J. Carter, who is sponsoring the Ahmadi family’s resettlement, collaborated with two local churches in Ashfield, Massachusetts, to help the Ahmadis settle into their new home in Red Hook, New York. (Greenfield Recorder) 

Thanks for reading, 

Joanna