A few pieces jump out: A newly proposed $4.7 billion contingency fund would help better manage temporary immigration increases at the U.S.-Mexico border. The funds would cover 350 new Border Patrol agents and 460 new processing assistants for CBP and ICE. They also would increase investments for border technology at and between ports of entry.  

ICE funds also would go toward processing an increasing asylum caseload, reducing the immigration benefits request backlog, and supporting the Citizenship and Integration Grant Program.  

And, not least, $7.3 billion would go toward rebuilding our refugee resettlement infrastructure. That’s still very much needed, as our former colleague Danilo Zak wrote this week in sharing the latest refugee resettlement numbers. 

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]. 

NEEDED: 3,000 WORKERS — A new, $20 billion Intel Corp. plant in Ohio is meant to revive domestic chip production, ease dependence on Asian imports and compete with China. But as Shawn Donnan of Bloomberg reports, the company is already struggling to find the estimated 3,000 workers it needs due to labor shortages. Donnan analyzes the factors that have led to current labor shortages and the potential solutions including (you guessed it) revamping immigration policy. 

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE — "My children shouldn’t have to worry about my future — or our very existence as a family," Monica Carrillo Martinez writes in the Idaho Statesman. "If our politicians say they fight for families, they need to show some real leadership and protect all of us," writes Carrillo Martinez, a DACA recipient and mother of two who lives in Driggs, Idaho.   

FOR OUR ALLIES — About 150,000 Afghan special immigrant visa applicants are still trying to escape Afghanistan, per estimates by officials and advocates, Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer write in Foreign Policy. Meanwhile, in an op-ed for WBUR, Lina Tori Jan and Melanne Verveer of the Georgetown Institute urge Congress to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act to protect Afghan women and all Afghan evacuees from the Taliban. 

Locally: 

• The Joplin Interfaith Coalition will hold its annual bake sale Saturday, with proceeds going to refugees in the Missouri community. (Roger Namer, The Joplin Globe) 
• Thanks to Wazir Hashimi, President and founder of the nonprofit Vermont Afghan Alliance, Afghan families are learning how to drive to become self-sufficient. (Auditi Guha, VTDigger) 
• Toba Adina-Jao writes about her life having come full-circle when she read Me, Mommy, Mantu, her children’s book celebrating Afghan culture, to elementary school students in West Sacramento, California: "I realized that I too was the little refugee girl I saw in front of me." (Alameda Post) 

CHILD LABOR — "Immigrants are particularly vulnerable" to child labor, Harvest Prude reports in a good explainer in The Dispatch. Says Reid Maki, director of child labor advocacy for the National Consumers League and coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition: "I see it as primarily a story of immigrants who are being exploited."   

POTENTIAL TEACHERS — Pennsylvania state Sen. Judy Schwank (D) is pushing a bill to allow undocumented immigrants to get certified as teachers to help address labor shortages, reports Sanika Bhargaw of WHTM. "There’s so many of them that have just dreams of being successful in this country, and many of them want to be educators as well," she said. 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan