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"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. 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 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 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. (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. 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]. 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. For more on Biden’s latest border plan initiatives, see our policy explainer here. 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 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. "The number of new families identified continues to increase, as families come forward and identify themselves," per a DHS fact sheet. 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. "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. 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:
Thanks for reading, Dan |
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