Friday, February 3
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THE FORUM DAILY

"There are now about two job vacancies, on average, for every unemployed
American." 

That's one of the takeaways from the January job numbers announced
this morning, as reported by Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press
<[link removed]>.
It adds urgency to pleas for immigration reforms that can help stem
inflation and meet businesses' needs. 

It also adds to President Biden's opportunity to address immigration
- and, yes, border challenges - in Tuesday's State of the Union
address. As our colleague Marcela Aguirre wrote in a compelling post
<[link removed]>
yesterday, support for real solutions remains broad, and such solutions
could tackle labor shortages and inflation as well as the ongoing
uncertainty for Dreamers and their employers. 

Taking the jobs focus to the state level, Kristie De Peña, Robert
Leonard and David Oman write in a New York Times
<[link removed]>
op-ed that people seeking safety and opportunity should be an obvious
part of solving labor shortages, including in Iowa, where there are more
than 75,000 job openings <[link removed]>.
(Leonard and Oman are Iowans; the latter is a former state Republican
Party chair.) And as Texas grows, the state needs more workers to shore
up food supplies and restaurants, Texas Restaurant Association executive
Melissa Stewart writes in the Houston Business Journal
<[link removed]>.  

Welcome to Friday's edition of The Forum Daily. I'm Dan
Gordon, the Forum's strategic communications VP, and the great Forum
Daily team also includes Dynahlee Padilla-Vasquez, Clara Villatoro and
Katie Lutz. If you have a story to share from your own community, please
send it to me at [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>. 

**BORDER** - Preliminary government data for January shows a drop of
about 40% in migrants apprehended following the Biden administration's
new border initiatives, reports Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News
<[link removed]>.
For more on Biden's latest border plan initiatives, see our policy
explainer here
<[link removed]>.
Meanwhile, the U.S. needs to do away with Title 42 and focus more on the
root causes of migration, Utah State University researcher Josh T. Smith
writes in a Washington Examiner
<[link removed]>
op-ed. "[R]eforms will benefit immigrants who want to find a piece of
the American dream and Americans who worry about border security," he
concludes. 

**STILL SEPARATED** - Nearly 1,000 migrant children separated at the
U.S.-Mexico border under Trump's "zero tolerance" policy still have
not reunited with their parents, despite the Biden
administration's reunification effort, reports Ted Hesson of Reuters
<[link removed]>.
"The number of new families identified continues to increase, as
families come forward and identify themselves," per a DHS fact sheet
<[link removed]>.
The task force has reunited 600 families. 

**FREED, THEN DETAINED** - A judge vacated Sandra Castañeda's
murder conviction and ordered her release in 2021, after she'd spent
19 years in prison. But then ICE picked her up, as Tyche Hendricks
reports in KQED
<[link removed]>.
"Castañeda's story highlights how noncitizens, even longtime legal
residents with green cards like Castañeda, are routinely funneled from
state prison into the federal deportation system - even after the
convictions that would make them deportable have been overturned,"
Hendricks writes.  

**AFGHAN FAMILIES** - Two Afghan families with a total of 16 kids are
still temporarily living in St. Paul's Episcopal Church in
Newburyport, Massachusetts, struggling to afford and build a life there,
report Lisa Mullins and Lynn Jolicoeur of WBUR
<[link removed]>.
The church, together with other local churches, "have raised enough
money to put down payments on one or two homes for the Afghan evacuees,
but the families wouldn't be able to afford the mortgage payments."
The Rev. Jarred Mercer says the community hopes the families can stay in
town. Elsewhere: 

* Young Afghan evacuees are learning how to swim with help from the
women's swim team at nearby Merrimack College. (Cameron Morsberger,
Lowell Sun
<[link removed]>) 

* Thanks to the owners of the Pamir Afghan Restaurant
<[link removed]> in Owensboro, Kentucky,
Afghan natives can get a taste of authentic Halal Afghan food every
weekend. (Aimee Blume, Evansville Courier & Press
<[link removed]>) 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan 

 

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