Monday November 28, 2022
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THE FORUM DAILY

I hope you had a joyful, restful Thanksgiving weekend. Let me know if
you'd like some really good pie recipes. 

We've talked about the push for immigration reforms as a marathon. Now
we're hoping that Congress is ready to sprint the final mile on some
specific measures before the holidays. New polling reaffirms
Americans' support (stay tuned for more on that this week).  

In an op-ed for Fox News,
<[link removed]>
our friend Matthew Soerens of World Relief urges Republicans to
recognize that support and seize the moment: "The border needs real
solutions - but if Republicans want to provide them, they should act
now. They cannot wait for the new Congress when partisan stalemate
between the two chambers will make actual legislation all but
impossible," he writes.   

The answer could lie in bipartisan border solutions together with bills
that help farmers and offer permanence for Dreamers, he writes. That
combination was top of mind for Kathryn Freeman of Waco, Texas, when she
visited her senators' offices during our Leading the Way
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convening before Thanksgiving, as Alicia Naspretto of KXXV
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reports. "The majority of Texas wants both border security and
immigration reform," Freeman said. "They don't feel like it's a choice
of either/or. We can have both and that's the voice I wanted to
represent when I went to DC." 

Regarding farmers: Ag groups and farmworker organizations are making a
final push for the Farm Workforce Modernization Act this year, with
their sector one of the most affected by labor shortages, Kristina
Peterson and Michelle Hackman report in the Wall Street Journal
<[link removed]>.
The bill passed the House last year with the support of 30
Republicans. 

Elsewhere in the Wall Street Journal
<[link removed]>,
Carine Hajjar focuses her column on the administration's lack of
action to address both labor shortages and immigration-system failings.
Backlogs in employment authorization for new arrivals who qualify are
depriving employers of willing workers, she writes: "The system fails
migrants and strains social services while depriving American businesses
of the labor they need." 

It's time for Congress to act - and the president could do more to
bring legislators to the table.  

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]
<mailto:[email protected]>.   

**TEXAS JOBS AT STAKE** - In a Dallas Morning News
<[link removed]>
op-ed, a quartet of Texas business leaders urges Congress to protect
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, noting
recipients' role in the economy. "Without a solution from Congress,
Texas could see 5,000 jobs vacated each month
<[link removed]> and 1,000
U.S. citizens
<[link removed]> could
see their spouses subjected to deportation risk each month for the next
two years," they write. "The U.S. economy could suffer from as much
as $11.7 billion 
<[link removed]>in
lost wages annually from previously employed DACA recipients, equating
to roughly $1 billion
<[link removed]> a
month." The editorial board of the Austin American-Statesman
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sounds a similar theme. 

**'CLOUD OF UNCERTAINTY' **- Passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act
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is urgent lest we forget our Afghan allies, Elliot Ackerman writes in
The Atlantic
<[link removed]>. "Those
tens of thousands of Afghans we evacuated have been living under a cloud
of uncertainty, and they will soon be subject to deportation unless
Congress acts by adjusting their status," Ackerman notes. "The Afghan
Adjustment Act - a bipartisan, bicameral piece of legislation
introduced this past August - aims to do just that. Astonishingly,
it's struggling to pass." Separately, Arezou Rezvani, Fazelminallah
Qazizai and Claire Harbage of NPR
<[link removed]>
file an in-depth report on the struggles of former Afghan army officers
who remain in Afghanistan - another group the Afghan Adjustment Act
would seek to help. 

**MIGRANT CAMP EVICTED** - Mexican police violently evicted hundreds
of Venezuelan immigrants from a camp along the Rio Grande that started
in October, Daniel Borunda of the El Paso Times
<[link removed]>
reports. Tents were burned and scuffles broke out during the eviction on
Sunday. Juárez government officials said migrants will be sent to
shelters. Thousands of Venezuelan migrants remain in limbo in Mexico
after being returned from the U.S. border. Last week, Mexico's National
Institute of Migration said more than 16,000 migrants were detained in a
four-day span, of whom nearly 5,000 were Venezuelans, per Reuters
<[link removed]>. 

**FAMILY SEPARATIONS** - More than 5,500 children were forcibly
separated from their parents under the Trump administration's zero
tolerance policy
<[link removed]>
in early 2017. Family separations are still happening, albeit on a much
smaller scale, report John Washington and Anna-Catherine Brigida in an
investigative piece for the Texas Observer
<[link removed]>.
From January 2021 through August 2022, at least 372 cases
<[link removed]> of
family separation have been reported by U.S. authorities - and the
Observer has identified additional cases. One contributing factor: Title
42, under which minors can be separated from parents and allowed into
the U.S. as "unaccompanied" while their parents are turned back to
Mexico. "[Border Patrol] told me that the child was staying with them,
and I said 'No, you have to deport me with him,'" recalled Raquel
Andrade, who was separated from her 8-year-old grandson. "He started to
cry, and he hugged me, but they practically took him from me by force."
We must do better. 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan 

**P.S.** On a more positive note: In the midst of the World Cup, Daniel
Beekman of The Seattle Times
<[link removed]>
reports on Cultures United <[link removed]>, a
semiprofessional soccer club founded by a Colombian immigrant two years
ago. The group develops young players on its men's and women's teams
at no cost while also training them to become community leaders. 

 

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