Far away from D.C. and all that went down yesterday, Gov. Bill Lee (R) announced that Tennessee will continue accepting refugees, joining only a handful of Republican-led states to do so as a new Trump administration deadline looms, Natalie Allison and Joel Ebert report in the Nashville Tennessean.

The governor put it well: “The United States and Tennessee have always been, since the very founding of our nation, a shining beacon of freedom and opportunity for the persecuted and oppressed, particularly those suffering religious persecution.”

Meanwhile in Wisconsin, Gov. Tony Evers (D) wrote in a letter to the State Department that his state would continue accepting refugees as well, the Associated Press reports. In the letter, Evers “said Wisconsin has ‘a rich history of opening its doors’ to people of all backgrounds and has done so for more than 16,000 refugees in the past two decades.”

Big Republican-led states yet to make a decision? Texas, Florida and Georgia. Keep in mind that in fiscal year 2018, Texas resettled the most refugees in the country. And we’re also still waiting on Democratic governors in states including New York and California.
Welcome to Thursday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].
ERODING – Pointing to Greg Ip’s reporting in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times’ Dealbook notes that “[t]he U.S. job market continues to exceed expectations, but it is on a collision course with a dimming demographic outlook.” In an article rich with data, Ip writes that the U.S. “has had two longstanding demographic advantages over other countries: higher fertility and immigration. Both are eroding.”

HELPING ASYLUM SEEKERS – Health care professionals and medical students from both sides of the southern border are volunteering to help keep asylum seekers safe and healthy while their lives are in limbo, Julie Watson reports for the Associated Press. The situation at the border “has thrust volunteer doctors into new and unusual roles where they often have to improvise while working with limited donated medications and equipment and dealing with non-medical issues. Besides giving patients a pill for pain relief, the doctors might need to direct them to legal help for their cases while offering a listening ear as a kind of therapist to a population suffering deep trauma from violence that forced them to flee their homelands.”

RESTRICTING ASYLUM SEEKERS – The Trump administration has proposed more mandatory limits on asylum seekers, Geneva Sands at CNN reports. “Under the proposal asylum seekers would be found ineligible for crimes committed in the US such as: a felony under federal or state law, alien smuggling or harboring, illegal reentry, crime involving criminal street gang activity, operation of a motor vehicle while under the influence, domestic violence even with no conviction and offenses related to false identification.”

WILLETS POINT – The New York Times unveiled a powerful feature that captures the changes facing Willets Point, a New York City neighborhood that has long been a haven for immigrant workers in automotive shops — but will, at some point soon, be redeveloped. The photographs, made using a technique common in the 19th century, convey how the immigrant dream is dying out for this “automotive shantytown.” The neighborhood “has been a vital source of blue-collar work, especially for newcomers who lack English skills, proper documentation and certification as an auto mechanic. Instead of streets paved with gold, new immigrants find them lined with tire joints, junkyards, hubcap sellers, muffler shops, and brake and transmission specialists.”

WHAT LINE? – James Stacey Taylor writes about his immigrant success story in Reason — how he arrived in the U.S. with $97 in cash and ultimately earned a Ph.D. — but points out that the proverbial “line” that people say immigrants should wait in doesn’t actually exist. “There is an implication in the line metaphor that the current immigration system operates as it did at the time of Ellis Island,” but in reality, Taylor argues, “[t]here are vanishingly few paths to being legally able to live and work here.”

#FREEMADDIE – A six-year-old girl named Maddie has been confined with her dad in Pennsylvania’s Berks County immigration detention center for almost six months, and it has led to a #FREEMADDIE campaign on social media calling her for release, Jeff Gammage reports for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Maddie’s lawyers say the duration of her time in detention is “the longest the federal government has held a child in any of its three family lock-ups. They say a sweet, shy girl once defined by a sparkling smile has become deeply depressed.”

DED FIX – In other congressional news this week, the U.S. Senate approved an amendment offering a pathway to citizenship for Liberians currently under Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) status, which President Trump has pledged to sign into law, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. “Many Liberians fleeing civil war in the 1990s were given temporary protected status to stay in the U.S. — with no path to citizenship — and became part of the DED program in 2007. They faced the prospect of deportation under administrations of both parties, with continual extensions.”

Thanks for reading,
Ali