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.