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THE FORUM DAILY

A year after the completion of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan,
nearly all resettled Afghans lack permanency in the U.S. 

In the first installment of a three-part series in The Hill
,
Rebecca Beitsch shares the stories of evacuees marking one year since
they fled Afghanistan. One is that of Khalis Noori, who in early August
2021 was about to start a job as an international aid adviser with the
country's Ministry of Finance. By mid-month he was fleeing. 

Now Noori works for a Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services office
in Virginia, helping other evacuees like himself. "They are struggling
with everything," he says. 

In The Los Angeles Times
,
Sarah Parvini, with photos by Marcus Yam, documents how evacuees
including Zabiullah Musafer and his family escaped Afghanistan for
Northern California but now face many challenges and have no word on a
path to permanency in the U.S.  

"Our fellow armed service members of the Afghan army, the airborne
division, and special force units are still stuck back home," said
Musafer, a former fixed-wing squadron commander in Afghanistan's air
force. "I urge the U.S. government not to abandon the evacuation process
and ultimately not abandon the people of Afghanistan." (In The New
Yorker
,
Steve Coll has more on the tightrope of getting humanitarian aid to
Afghans in need while also pressuring the Taliban on human rights.) 

As both Beitsch and Parvini point out, the recently introduced Afghan
Adjustment Act

would help. 

Elsewhere locally:  

* After six deployments to Afghanistan, Army Veteran Matt Coburn was
ready to move on. But when Kabul fell, he sprang into action,
sponsoring and supporting about 10 Afghan families who resettled in
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and surrounding towns. (Deirdre
Shesgreen, USA Today
) 

* The North State Building Industry Foundation and the Health and
Education Council held a two-week paid workforce training in Sacramento,
California, that included nine Afghan evacuees. Participants learned
skills including how to operate a forklift and how to build scaffolding.
(Jay Kim, ABC 10
) 

* A group of former government contractors from Loudoun County,
Virginia, is helping Afghan allies safely evacuate - and is raffling
off a Tesla to support its work. (Karen Graham, Loudoun Times-Mirror
) 

Welcome to Monday'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] . 

MAINE FARMERS - Maine farmworkers are facing labor shortages and
pushing for immigration reforms for relief, reports Peter McGuire of
The Portland Press Herald
.
"We make decisions every day about what we will harvest and what we will
leave," said Penny Jordan, who owns Jordan's Farm in Cape Elizabeth.
"... We can no longer deny that undocumented workers are the backbone of
our agricultural workforce." The bipartisan Farm Workforce Modernization
Act

- passed in the House and pending in the Senate - would help relieve
labor pressures for farmworkers in Maine and beyond, as speakers
underscored during a recent press conference
.

PEOPLE NOT POLITICS - A group of volunteer faith leaders took a trip
to the southern border last week and came away looking to focus on
"people instead of politics," per Jala Washington of KXAN
.
"I truly believe that sometimes, politicians may create a narrative that
would cause fear in the population that they represent," said Elia
Moreno of the Texas Christian Community Development Network. "And I know
that I was one of those people that was fearful to come over because of
the narrative that is in place." The group worked with pastors in
Brownsville and on the Mexican side of the border, met with
unaccompanied minors, and plans on collaborating with ministries along
the border to "help communities better deal with asylum seekers" and
involve more people in finding solutions.  

**MIGRANT CHILDREN** - Migrant children being bused to Washington,
D.C., from Texas and Arizona are not getting the support they need,
creating "a local humanitarian crisis," Theresa Vargas writes in a
column for The Washington Post
.
"The children who have arrived on those buses - and who will
inevitably come on the next round of them - may stay for one week or
one year or longer," writes Vargas. "But while they are here, they are
the city's children. They are our children. And they need help, not
politics." The city has been slow to assist migrant children with
enrolling in school, and advocates continue to worry about access to
medical care and other crucial support services. Elsewhere, Pharr,
Texas, Police Chief Andy Harvey (also a Law Enforcement Immigration Task
Force member) spoke with Neil Cavuto of Fox News

over the weekend about the need to engage, and make part of our
communities, migrants who have been bused. 

INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES - As officials in Juarez, Mexico, work to
assist indigenous people that have settled in the city, they "also will
consider expanding interpretation services to the transient Central
American Indigenous populations that pass through or remain briefly in
the city on their way to the U.S.," reports Julian Resendiz of Border
Report
.
Criminals often target migrants who speak Mayan dialects, according to
international advocacy groups, and need to be understood when they need
help. "That is something we have to work on and that is part of our work
regarding human and migrant rights," said Karen Mora, a Social
Development Department official.   

Thanks for reading,  

Dan  

 

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