Wednesday, September 28
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THE FORUM DAILY

First off, prayers for those in the path of and affected by Hurricane
Ian, and those worried about family and friends.  

On to some good news: Evangelical Christians have become more open to
welcoming immigrants and refugees, and to immigration reforms, reports
Emily Belz of Christianity Today
.
That's according to a new Lifeway Research survey

commissioned by World Relief and the Evangelical Immigration Table.  

Relationships with Dreamers at church may be one reason why, Belz
reports, and the resettlement in the past 13 months of Afghans and
Ukrainians forced to flee their home countries may also play a role.  

Seventy-seven percent of self-identified evangelicals are "strongly" or
"somewhat" in favor of a path to citizenship for undocumented
immigrants, compared with 61% in a similar Lifeway survey in 2015. And
80% said they would support bipartisan immigration reform "that
strengthens border security, establishes a pathway to citizenship for
undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, and provides a
reliable number of screened, legal farmworkers," according to the
survey. 

Furthermore, the percentage of respondents who cited the Bible as the
top influence on their immigration views rose significantly from 2015.
 

Unlike the 2015 poll, the 2022 survey also asked about refugees: 70% of
evangelicals "agreed that the U.S. has a moral responsibility to accept
refugees," a higher number than in other surveys in the past five years.
That's a timely finding, as President Biden announced yesterday that
the refugee admissions cap for fiscal year 2023

will again be 125,000, as Julie Watson reports in the Associated Press
.
 

For the current fiscal year, which ends Friday, we're on pace
to come up
more than 100,000 people short of the cap, a clear sign that we need to
restore our resettlement infrastructure. It's a point Evangelical
Immigration Table organizations made in a letter they sent Friday

to the president and Congress. 

Welcome to Wednesday'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] .  

'OUR CALL AS BELIEVERS' - Politicians and pundits who dehumanize
immigrants may claim Christianity, "but their fearmongering is in direct
opposition to our call as believers to love and welcome strangers," Rev.
Dr. Andrew R. Polk, a member of the Southern Christian Coalition, writes
in an op-ed for The Tennessean
.
"To be clear, people of conscience and goodwill can have reasonable
debates about immigration policy. In fact, I think it's imperative for
politicians to stop fearmongering in order to have that complicated and
necessary discussion," he writes. "However, repeatedly broadcasting
obvious disinformation about the reality of immigration on our border
and dehumanizing people made in the image of God is not 'good
politics' and isn't close to actual policy." 

THE IDEA OF ASYLUM - The current debate around processing and
transporting asylum seekers raises a bigger question: "Does America
still embrace its obligation under international law to provide
sanctuary to at least some unauthorized immigrants? The answer is no
longer obvious," writes Dara Lind in The New York Times
.
"The American people (and refugees around the world) at very least
deserve something better than mixed messages about the fundamental
commitment of asylum," she writes. Meanwhile, elsewhere in The Times
,
Michael D. Shear and Miriam Jordan report on the administration's
nascent effort to mitigate growing backlogs by giving asylum officers
the authority to decide whether a migrant can stay in the U.S. -
within weeks rather than years. 

SEN. CORNYN - The Bipartisan Border Solutions Act

would be a step toward better managing the border, Sen. John Cornyn
(R-Texas) writes in a Dallas Morning News

op-ed. The bill, he writes, would help streamline migrant processing by
establishing four regional processing centers in high-traffic areas,
reprioritizing the immigration court docket, expanding and reinforcing
access to counsel for asylum seekers and more. "It's in everyone's
best interest to resolve cases fairly and efficiently and deliver
migrants the legal certainty they need to move forward with their
lives," Cornyn writes. Glad to see the senator talking about bipartisan
solutions, as we so clearly need (and Americans want
)
to address border challenges, as well as Dreamers and the farm
workforce. 

TEMPORARY SHELTER - The Migrant Welcome Center in El Paso, Texas, is
now helping up to 400 migrants per day as the city works more closely
with the Border Patrol, reports Hannah Ray Lambert of Fox News
.
The main goals are to avoid migrants sleeping in the streets, which
occurred earlier this month, and to coordinate their next destination
within 24 to 48 hours. Deputy City Manager Mario D'Agostino said that
50% of the migrants have sponsors who can pay for travel to their
destination, and the rest may end up on chartered buses that El Paso
coordinates with other cities. "We got heart. It's not our normal.
This isn't. But it's what's needed to be done for the community,"
said D'Agostino.  

UNDOCUMENTED STUDENTS - Alisa Reznick of KJZZ's Fronteras Desk

tells the story of Angel Palazuelos, an undocumented student enrolled at
Arizona State University. Palazuelos is not eligible for DACA, as he
arrived in the U.S. three days after the entrance date cutoff. With a
court ruling on DACA's future expected any day, undocumented students
such as Palazuelos are looking for solutions - for more than just
current and would-be DACA recipients. Said Mark Delich, director of
federal policy and government relations at FWD.us., "What we really need
is Congress to act not only for the 680,000 current DACA recipients, but
also for the roughly 2.5 million Dreamers that don't qualify for DACA,
young people that were brought here as children." Hear, hear. 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan 

 

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