Friday, June 24
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THE FORUM DAILY

Some companies are offering legal-immigration benefits to workers as an
incentive to retain and attract talent, Alicia A. Caldwell reports for
The Wall Street Journal
.  

As companies nationwide grapple with labor shortages, incentives such as
reimbursement for document renewals and other immigration fees can
help.  

Amazon and Tyson Foods Inc. are among the businesses offering and
expanding their benefits program: "We're providing legal services to
people that are doing entry-level labor work," said Garrett Dolan, a
senior manager at Tyson's corporate social-responsibility
department. 

The benefits of helping immigrant employees is nothing new to the Forum.
As just one example, meet Yaneth Diaz
,
a former nurse and doctor who emigrated from Colombia in 2002 and has
been participating in our English at Work
program since
2021. An employee at Hilmar Cheese Company, Diaz has recently been
promoted to bench technician. "I'm grateful that Hilmar was able to
provide me with this opportunity," said Diaz.  

Welcome to Friday's edition of The Forum Daily. I'm Dan Gordon,
the Forum's strategic communications VP. If you have a story to share
from your own community, please send it to me at
[email protected] . 

TEMPORARY VISAS - According to Mexico's interior minister, the Biden
administration is planning to propose issuing 300,000 temporary work
visas to Mexicans and Central Americans next month to help ease
migration and labor challenges, reports Julian Resendiz of Border Report
.
The proposal may be announced when Mexican President Andrés Manuel
López Obrador visits Washington, D.C., next month, Interior Minister
Adan Augusto Lopez said Wednesday. Although the type(s) of visa the U.S.
would employ remains a central question, easing pressures at the border
- and in the U.S. labor market - by expanding legal-immigration
channels is a good idea. 

'CRUEL AND UNUSUAL'- New revelations from former Cabinet members
and others show that President Trump's immigration policies could have
been harsher, "including placing a quarter-million soldiers on the
U.S.-Mexico border, enacting crueler measures to separate families and
targeting children for deportation at American schools," Stuart Anderson
reports for Forbes
.
Plans had been drafted for the dispatch of troops, a number equivalent
to more than half of the U.S. Army. Overall, the accounts "remind us
that the Trump administration's immigration policies were often cruel
and unusual," he notes.  

UNSTUCK - In a new Tent Partnership for Refugees initiative called
Unstuck (great name), companies small and
large "are making products sourced from suppliers who have also agreed
to hire refugees," reports Adele Peters of Fast Company
.
"We thought we can make it a win-win," said Chobani founder Hamdi
Ulukaya. "If a company encourages their supply chain to hire refugees
[to work] on the products that they're making for them, and if we have
activated consumers who are really passionate about this topic in the
Western world - who say, 'I'll buy your product if it's helping
someone in another part of the world' - that could be very
interesting." 

**UKRAINIAN REFUGEES** - More than 71,000 Ukrainians have arrived to
the U.S. since March, per new data from the Department of Homeland
Security, reports Julia Ainsley of NBC News
.
While this is welcome news, most did not come via the Uniting for
Ukraine

program Biden announced then - but instead through visas they already
had or other channels. "Ukrainian refugees are creatively exploring
every avenue in order to seek refuge in the U.S. But we should be making
it as simple and straightforward as possible," said Krish O'Mara
Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee
Service. Separately, the Forum's policy team has published a new
explainer

on immigration and refugee assistance in the recent Ukraine funding
bill.  

AFGHAN ALLIES - With help from an in-law working at Hamid Karzai
International Airport, Afghan ally Nasirullah Mohammadi and his family
were able to flee Afghanistan and come to the U.S., reports Rebecca
Kheel of Miltary.com
.
"I left my business. I left my country. I left my house. Everything. But
still I'm glad I saved my life, my wife's life," Mohammadi said.
Today, he dreams of becoming a business owner, selling traditional
Afghan clothes. But without permanent residency, which the Afghan
Adjustment Act

would provide, he feels stuck. 

On local welcome: 

* Global nonprofit Room to Read will give
more than 51,000 children's books with themes related to refugee
resettlement to Afghan families in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and elsewhere in the
U.S. to "help children process their experience of adjusting to a new
home and culture." (Kelsey Kane, FOX23 News
)  

* Allie Reeser, an afterschool director at Indian Creek Elementary in
Clarkston, Georgia, has been a "guide, friend and neighbor" to refugee
children's parents living in the Willow Branch apartment community,
"offering assistance with everything from getting a driver's license
to communicating with doctors." (Linda Jacobson, The 74
)  

* Afghan restaurant Bamyan Kebab House, run by the Hashimi brothers,
recently opened in Winooski, Vermont. Said co-owner Awran: It's "a
social space for [Afghan refugees] to get connected, to feel closer to
home, as well as to introduce Afghan culture to Vermonters." (Melissa
Pasanen, Seven Days
) 

ALTERNATIVES - The number of immigrants enrolled in the Alternatives
to Detention program more than doubled between 2015 and 2020 and has
risen substantially since then, Kylie Bielby of Homeland Security Today

reports. The Department of Homeland Security, concurring with Government
Accountability Office recommendations, is looking "to improve
implementation, assessment, and oversight of the ATD program and its
$2.2 billion contract." 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan 

P.S. "If I can change one person's mind about the value that
immigrants bring to the United States, and show them how important DACA
is, my job is done," former "Top Chef" contestant Byron Gomez, a
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient, told Jaya Saxena of
Eater
.

 

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