In partnership with us, the Fortune 500 company recently launched its "Welcome Door" program, aimed at supporting refugees and immigrants with legal support for their naturalization applications and financial aid for work permit fees.  

"Being able to promote this benefit when the employee is signing on is huge," said Helena Coric, the Forum’s senior manager of integration programs. "Knowing an employer is going to provide this deeply discounted legal assistance can really increase retention, especially if that employer ends up extending the benefit to an immediate family member as well." 

Elsewhere, here’s something to keep an eye on next week: The president will "present a plan to tackle increasing migration when he hosts the Summit of the Americas," which begins Monday in Los Angeles, Matt Spetalnick reports for Reuters. We’ll be watching to see how the U.S. works with other countries to address northward migration. More on the Summit of the Americas just below. 

Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Becka Wall, the Forum’s digital communications VP. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected].    

REFUGEE DEALS? — Spain could, for the first time, resettle refugees from the Western Hemisphere, reports Stef W. Kight of Axios. An agreement could be announced at the Summit of the Americas. Documents suggest that the nation, which is [also] enduring a labor shortage, would resettle a " ‘modest’ but ‘symbolically important’ " number of refugees in addition to multiplying its admission of temporary workers from Central America. Canada might also announce an increased commitment to resettle refugees from our hemisphere and recruit Haitians to come to Canada to work, the documents suggest. This is an opportunity not only for regional cooperation, but also for the U.S. to reaffirm our commitments to immigration and humanitarian protections for migrants. Will we rise to the occasion?  

TITLE 42 — Despite a recent court ruling that keeps Title 42 in place, migrants are still seeking safety. In his report for NPR, Kirk Siegler visits the border and speaks with Sheriff David Hathaway of Nogales County, Arizona, among others. For the Texas Observer, James Dobbins examines the effects of Title 42 expulsions, centering on the plight of Haitians. "The people of Haiti, mired in poverty, hostage to the terror, kidnappings, robberies, massacres of armed gangs, and suffering under a corrupt government with gang alliances, simply cannot support the forced infusion of thousands of returned migrants lacking food, shelter, and money without additional, avoidable tragedy," wrote Daniel Foote, the former special envoy for Haiti, in his resignation letter last September. Two other quick hits: To manage migration in a secure and humane way, coordinated efforts among the entire Western Hemisphere is key, writes Dan Restrepo, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, in an op-ed for Foreign Affairs. And locally, Michigan is ready to welcome more asylum seekers without the use of Title 42, a group of educators and immigrant advocates write for The Michigan Daily.  

REUNIFICATION VISAS — Cubans like Roberto De la Yglesia were hoping to reunite with the rest of their family members under the reactivated Family Reunification Program starting in April, reports Andrea Rodríguez of the Associated Press. Yet, they are still waiting for their paperwork to be processed. A backlogged system of an estimated 20,000 visa applications (since 2017 alone), several Trump administration restrictions, and pandemic-related delays have only further complicated the challenges. "My life is on pause," said Roberto’s wife, Danmara Triana in Cienfuegos, Cuba. "My day-to-day life hangs on this — to see my son, to see my husband... "I get up in the morning and look at the telephone. Will I have an interview [for a visa] or won’t I have an interview."  

GREAT REPLACEMENT — If the Great Replacement Theory were accurate, President Ronald Reagan’s signing of the 1986 bill that granted amnesty to millions of immigrants should have been a death knell for the Republican Party, conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby writes in the Boston Globe. "It’s all nonsense," Jacoby concludes. "There is no ‘great replacement’ in the offing. Voting patterns are not coded in DNA or determined by ethnic identity. No party owns the votes of immigrants. [Reagan] understood that in his bones. What a scandal that so many of today’s Republican leaders are blind to such a fundamental American truth."  

Thanks for reading, 

Becka