As DMV offices across New York State saw long lines on Monday to issue drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants for the first time, New Jersey's state legislature successfully passed similar legislation.

Per Tracey Tully and Michael Gold in The New York Times: “Tasks like grocery shopping, commuting to work, taking a child to school and visiting a doctor all hinge on the ability to drive legally, supporters have argued. … Gov. Philip D. Murphy said he would quickly sign [the legislation] into law, making New Jersey the 15th state to grant driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.”

Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

FUNDING DEAL – Congressional lawmakers have reportedly reached a spending agreement to stave off another government shutdown with a compromise of $1.375 billion in funding for continued border wall construction, Jordain Carney writes for The Hill. “The agreement, the text of which has not been released yet, would effectively provide President Trump the same level of funding for the border wall as the fiscal 2019 bills. … A Democratic aide said the bill also includes a restriction that limits Trump to using the money within the Rio Grande Valley sector, similar to the fiscal 2019 funding deal.”

CORPORATE PLEDGE – Ikea, Lego, Vodafone and other companies announced a combined pledge of “$250 million toward education and training in jobs and entrepreneurship to aid refugees in becoming more self-sufficient,” reports Claire Cozens in Reuters. Ikea and Lego have each made at least $100 million commitments, hoping to provide training and language skills 2,500 refugees across the globe and provide learning tools for displaced children in Africa, respectively.

GOT TALENT? – The long-term consequences of a short-term, isolationist, view of immigration: “if organizations can't bring the talent to them to do the work they require, then increasingly they will move the work to where the talent is instead,” writes Adi Gaskell in Forbes. Reporting on a range of academic studies, Gaskell lays out a clear economic case for a smarter immigration approach, and cites a letter signed by 40 heads of business schools across the country: “Without a substantial change in our [immigration] approach, this deficit of skills in key fields will hinder economic growth.”

BREXIT TAKES – Last week’s election in the U.K. should be a wake-up call to the United States, writes Rob Crilly for the Washington Examiner. Brett O’Donnell, a campaign strategist for past Republican presidential candidates who recently worked with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, told Crilly: “I still think there’s a lot of people in the United States who believe that bad trade policy, bad immigration policy have affected them, and they want Donald Trump to continue to work on that. … Democrats have far underestimated how important those issues are, because they aren’t really talking about them.” My post-Brexit advice to candidates, Republican or Democratic, who want constructive solutions? Be winsome.

SENT TO HONDURAS – Documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times reveal that a September agreement between the Trump administration and the Honduran government allows the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to send asylum seekers to Honduras, even if they aren’t from the country. “What’s significant about the Honduras agreement is that it is the first to explicitly state that if Honduras or another country rejects the individuals’ asylum claims, they won’t get another chance to apply in the United States, according to the text. Previously, the administration had suggested that if, say, a Guatemalan were forcibly sent to Honduras and denied asylum there, she might get another chance in the United States,” report Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Molly O’Toole.

MODI BACKLASH – India’s controversial citizenship bill is causing backlash for explicitly excluding protections for Muslim refugees, with more than 100 people injured in protests over the weekend. “Critics call [the bill] the latest discriminatory move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist government. It has stripped the special autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, the country's only Muslim-majority region, and cut off the Internet, the longest ever Internet shutdown in a democracy,” reports Nick Schifrin for PBS Newshour.

BUFFALO DEPORATATIONS – New data from Syracuse University show that deportations in the Buffalo, New York, region are up 45% under the Trump administration, writes Phil Fairbanks in The Buffalo News. “Immigration lawyers say the surge in arrests and deportations is the result of Trump doing away with the ‘prosecutorial discretion’ that Obama adopted his last few years in office. Lawyers and immigration advocates also point to other factors, including the willingness by local police agencies to cooperate and the huge federal enforcement presence in Western New York.”

GLOBAL REFUGEE FORUM – During the first ever Global Refugee Forum in Geneva this week, the United Nations called for a “reboot” of the global response to the growing refugee crisis, the Associated Press reports. “‘Our world is in turmoil and 25 million refugees are looking to us for solutions,’ Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told the event. He noted that the number is far higher if people displaced within their own countries are added in.”

Thanks for reading,

Ali