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