With less than two weeks before the deadline, 41 states and 86 local governments have filed letters with the federal government permitting refugee resettlement in accordance with President Trump’s executive order, reports Bekah McNeel in Christianity Today. “As GOP governors weighed their decision, the Associated Press reported that evangelical Christians presented the strongest political counterpoint to the pressure those governors felt from immigration hardliners. The Evangelical Immigration Table delivered petitions signed by evangelicals to 15 governors on December 9.”

Of those 15 governors, 11 have signed letters allowing refugees. While Texas, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia have not yet made a decision, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is reportedly close, Jeremy Redmon and Greg Bluestein write for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Last fiscal year, 1,189 refugees were resettled in Georgia, up from 837 the year before. The largest numbers last year came from Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Eritrea and Ukraine.”

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

PUBLIC CHARGE – Yesterday the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan maintained the sole nationwide injunction blocking the implementation of the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule, writes Camilo Montoya-Galvez in CBS News. “In recent weeks, circuit courts lifted three of the four nationwide injunctions against the public charge rule, leaving only the order by a judge in New York.”

GUATEMALA UPDATE – Outgoing Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales says reports that Guatemala would begin accepting Mexican deportees from the U.S. are “completely untrue,” reports Jeff Abbott in Reuters. “The United States has talked about the possibility of including Mexican nationals, but that will have to be discussed with the next government,” said Morales.
MODEL CITIZENS – Judy and Hillel Salomon have opened their home to Charlie and Michael, two Ugandan refugees who fled the country due to its strict laws against homosexuality, Teresa Cotsirilos writes at KALW. Hillel, the son of Holocaust survivors and an immigrant himself, remembers arriving in the U.S. as a small child and being welcomed by Jewish Family and Community Services volunteers. The couple thought it would be fitting to work with the non-profit, which has connected over 60 Bay Area families with refugees in need of housing. “Charlie recently moved out of the Salomon’s house, though he made a point to find an apartment nearby. ‘Family is not just by birth,’ he says. ‘This is my family.’”

WIN/LOSE – Jesus thought he’d won the lottery when his asylum judge granted him withholding of removal — which less than 1% of asylum applicants receive — but then he was deported anyway, writes Joel Rose in NPR. He isn’t alone: “Immigrant advocates have identified at least 17 cases of migrants who have been returned to Mexico after being granted protection by an immigration judge.” However, Jesus once again got lucky and after his lawyer and staff at Human Rights First talked to the Department of Homeland Security and Members of Congress, Jesus was released and is now reunited with his mother and sister in Florida.

100,000 Children – New estimates show that more than 100,000 children are living in London without secure immigration status — even though more than half of them were born in the U.K., reports Amelia Gentleman in The Guardian. “The study, commissioned by the mayor and undertaken by the University of Wolverhampton, estimated that there were around 107,000 undocumented children and 26,000 18- to 24-year-olds in London. Once an undocumented child turns 18, they face the threat of deportation to a country they may never have visited. … The report highlights the high cost of regularizing [sic] immigration status.”
ARKANSAS – A couple of days before Christmas, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) agreed to continue allowing refugee resettlement in the state — but one of the state’s two resettlement programs hasn’t received any refugees since 2015, reports Aprille Hanson in the Arkansas Catholic. And while resettlement workers like Jennifer Verkamp-Ruthven, interim director of Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement Office in Springdale, are “very, very appreciative” of the Governor’s decision, “the U.S. cap on refugees limits their ability to make even a dent in the overall refugee crisis. ‘It’s a drop in the bucket … We’re not the saviors in this one; people like to think that we are.’”
Thanks for reading,

Ali