U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced Thursday that it is hosting 50 naturalization ceremonies across the country in honor of the day. 

"USCIS is grateful to all members of the U.S. military, veterans, and their families who have put their faith and trust in America. We are honored to have a role in supporting non-citizen service members on their citizenship journey, so they can become citizens of the country they have already sworn to protect," USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou said. 

Yesterday the Smithsonian joined USCIS and the Department of Veterans Affairs to host one of the ceremonies. Among our 25 newest citizens is retired Army Brig. Gen. Stephen L.A. Michael of Kansas City, whom USCIS honored as an Outstanding American By Choice. Michael, born in Guyana, came to the U.S. in 1979, graduated from West Point and served in the military for more than 32 years — including deployments to Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Kosovo, Iraq, Ghana, Israel and Afghanistan. 

The journey to citizenship isn’t always smooth, to say the least. In the San Diego Union-Tribune, David Kinyua Bariu tells the maddening story of how he was deported after serving for many years, triggered by his having been told, wrongly, that his student visa allowed him to enlist. (His recruiter was court-martialed for recruiting ineligible foreign-born students to receive a bonus.)  

Bariu was deported in 2008 and allowed to return only this year. He will become an American citizen this coming Thursday. Mr. Bariu, we’ll be celebrating with you. 

In other news yesterday, the Biden administration announced that it would extend the deportation protections and work permits for some 337,000 immigrants from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Nepal, and Honduras who currently have Temporary Protected Status, Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports for CBS News. 

A reminder that next week the Forum is hosting a convening in D.C. to talk about what happens next in immigration and push for solutions. (Reporters, it’s not too late to contact me for more details.) Because of our packed schedule, we’ll be sending an abbreviated version of The Forum Daily, and no edition on Thursday. 

In the meantime, welcome to today’s edition. 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].  

JAMMED SYSTEM — There are nearly 2 million unresolved cases in the immigration court system, including 750,000 asylum applications, per government data compiled by TRAC at Syracuse University. Handling those cases: only about 600 judges. And the case number does not include hundreds of thousands of asylum-seeking migrants who have been released by U.S. border officials via humanitarian parole with instructions to check back with ICE later for court dates, reports Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News. That’s leaving people in limbo for years, and if their work permit expires, they’re stuck.  

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN — National security leader Stewart Verdery imagines a world in which broad immigration reform passed in 2007 for an op-ed in The Hill. [Verdery will be at our convening next week.] Temporary worker programs could have averted current labor shortages, and Dreamers would have had a pathway to permanence, he notes. "[T]he failure of Congress to turn bipartisan support for comprehensive immigration reform into an actual legislative achievement in 2007 should be considered one of the biggest missed opportunities in American history," writes Verdery, who is also an alumnus of DHS during the George W. Bush administration. "Let’s hope that the next window for bipartisan immigration reform opens soon and that Congress finally achieves what should have happened in 2007."  

CONSTANT UNCERTAINTY — "Only Congress can secure our future here," writes entrepreneur and DACA recipient Monsi Contreras in an op-ed for the San Antonio Report. As owner of an online business ‘Vida Mia Boutique,’ she fears what could happen soon if she loses her legal protections: "I could continue to operate without DACA, but I’d be doing so in the shadows, constantly afraid that my thriving business would be dismantled in the blink of an eye." Over at Refinery29, Estefania Saavedra reflects on the uncertainty she experienced as an undocumented Ecuadorian immigrant in Florida. "There have been so many moments throughout my life that made me believe that I was neither from here nor there, that there was no place for me to exist fully and safely," Saavedra writes.  

FEED THE PEOPLE — Labor shortages are contributing to higher food costs, but immigration reforms can help, Maine restaurant owner Keith Manaker writes in a Bangor Daily News op-ed. "We desperately need Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King to get behind a Senate version of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which the House already passed," he writes. "The bill would beef up our farm labor supply to help get food from American farms to our tables, and could also lead to an increased labor supply in the restaurant industry. … Immigration has powered America for hundreds of years. Maine’s senators must make sure we have the immigration laws we need to staff and feed our state." 

WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER — Former "Top Chef" contestant Byron Gomez — a DACA recipient — wants his new restaurant to be "the next Shake Shack for Costa Rican chicken," reports Boulder Weekly’s Colin Wrenn. Gomez’s new project, Pollo Tico, just opened at the Avanti Boulder food hall in Colorado, and it’s an homage to Gomez’s childhood meals in Costa Rica.  

Thanks for reading, 

Dan