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    The US’s ‘immigration crisis’ is admitting too few immigrants, not too many | Deepak Bhargava and Rich Stolz

    The US’s ‘immigration crisis’ is admitting too few immigrants, not too manyDeepak Bhargava and Rich StolzLet’s make the US the most welcoming country on Earth – and bring order and humanity to a dysfunctional system Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s cruel scheme to lure and transport vulnerable asylum seekers from the south to Massachusetts marks a new low in the immigration culture wars. The refugee crisis in our hemisphere demands bold and humane solutions, but the policy debate is frozen by the politics of fear and racism. Republicans grandstand about the issue for political advantage, while many Democrats would prefer to change the subject.We propose a “Statue of Liberty Plan” for the 21st century that would set a goal for the US to become the most welcoming country on Earth for migrants and refugees and bring order and humanity to a dysfunctional system. The antidote to the venomous nativism that poisons our politics is to embrace immigration as a pillar of civic and economic renewal.To the migrants who died in Texas, Biden is no different to Trump on immigration | Maeve HigginsRead moreExpanded migration is necessary to fix a broken system that invites demagoguery. There are few accessible legal pathways for prospective immigrants. People who seek to come to the US wait in lines that extend for years or decades, or have no migration pathway at all. With no other options, migrants trek thousands of miles, risking death to seek asylum.Under US and international law, people arriving in the US claiming persecution must have their cases heard; vulnerable migrants would be better off if they could seek refuge without having to undertake hazardous journeys across continents. The public would not be inflamed by scenes of disorder, and nativist politicians wouldn’t be able to use vulnerable people as political props.Contrary to our national myth of being a welcoming nation, the US currently lags well behind Australia, Canada and other countries in the share of its population that are immigrants. Under our proposal, the US would admit 75 million immigrants over the next decade, which would double the foreign-born population from 15% to over 30%, giving it the largest share of any developed nation. Admitting 7.5 million people a year would be a dramatic increase compared with recent history – in the Obama years, the US admitted 1 million immigrants a year, and that number shrank dramatically under Trump.Under our plan, immigrants could enter the US based on family ties or through a revamped humanitarian visa that would recognize factors such as economic hardship and the climate crisis as well as political persecution.New immigration policy can only succeed with a new story about immigration that dispels historical amnesia. We tend to talk about migration as a matter of individual choices. Conservatives characterize migrants as threats while liberals talk about the positive contributions that migrants make. Both perspectives obscure the role of US foreign policy in installing and supporting repressive and authoritarian governments. Invasions, annexations, coups and mercenary wars are a bloody throughline in the history of US relations with Latin America. US corporations profit from extreme exploitation, while US trade and sanctions policies have increased poverty, notably in Venezuela where sanctions have increased extreme hardship.The climate crisis is also a growing cause of migration. In Central America and the Caribbean, nearly a third of migrants in hard-hit areas cite climate-induced lack of food as the main reason for becoming migrants. The number of climate migrants will surely grow; the World Bank estimates that 216 million people worldwide will be forced to migrate by 2050.Current US policy offers no path for people displaced by extreme weather events, desertification, or rising sea levels. The US contributes greatly to climate change, while countries in the global south are bearing the worst effects. We face a moral reckoning. Having burned down our neighbors’ houses, will we admit them when they seek refuge?Even those who don’t agree that US policy plays a large role in driving migration should embrace our plan. The country’s population growth rate has flatlined. Population growth between 2010 and 2020 was the second lowest in the country’s history, largely because of declining birth rates among native-born Americans. We face a crisis of “age dependency” as the number of seniors rises dramatically relative to working age adults. Demographic decline is feeding a nationwide care crisis and imperils the sustainability of programs like Medicare and social security. Immigration is a necessary solution.The absence of a progressive vision for immigration has fed a nativist consensus that has dominated our policymaking for too long. We now take for granted a vast, sprawling apparatus of border security that surveils and detains immigrants and generates profits for corporations who in turn finance the campaigns of nativist politicians. Studies show that left parties in Europe that embrace restrictionist views legitimize and strengthen the standing of the far right. The future of multiracial democracy depends on a new immigration paradigm.Standing where we do today at a nadir in the country’s immigration debate, proposals to dramatically increase immigration levels may seem far-fetched. But the political consensus rest on a faulty assumption that only a “get tough” posture on immigration is viable.In fact, the public’s reaction to the cruelties of the Trump era was to reject nativist policy making. For the first time since 1965, more Americans believed in 2021 that we should increase immigration levels than those who thought we should admit fewer. Organizations like Welcome.US have organized thousands of Americans across the political spectrum to assist Afghan refugees, while people in New York City and Martha’s Vineyard opened their arms to welcome asylum seekers cynically sent to them by DeSantis and the Texas governor, Greg Abbott.The policy and politics we urgently need will be built by the actions of millions of Americans to welcome new immigrants.
    Deepak Bhargava is a distinguished lecturer at Cuny’s School of Labor and Urban Studies and a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. Rich Stolz is a fellow at the Roosevelt institute. They recently published the report The Statue of Liberty Plan: A Progressive Vision for Migration in the Age of Climate Change
    TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS immigrationMigrationUS-Mexico borderRefugeescommentReuse this content More

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    'A man without morals': Chicago mayor chides Texas governor for expelling migrants – video

    Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, criticised Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, accusing him of cruelty and racism for expelling dozens of migrants from Texas by bus. ‘With these continued political stunts, Governor Abbott has confirmed, what unfortunately many of us had already known – that he is a man without any morals, humanity or shame,’ said Lightfoot at a press conference on Thursday. Seventy-nine Venezuelans arrived at Chicago’s Union Station late on Wednesday, officials said. ‘Last night, we showed our mettle, the best of who we are,’ Lightfoot continued, praising the city’s effort to welcome the new arrivals.

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    Four countries, six years, 7,000 miles: one Afghan family’s journey to the US

    Four countries, six years, 7,000 miles: one Afghan family’s journey to the US Zahra Amiri is among 41,000 working-age Afghans who have resettled in the US and are set to contribute $1.4bn to the US economy in their first year of work, according to new data The distance from Afghanistan’s south-western province of Nimroz to Iran’s historical city of Yazd is 480 miles (773km). To survive the journey, Zahra Amiri and her family ate snow.Since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last August, more than 76,000 Afghans have been resettled as part of the US government operation labeled Allies Welcome. Zahra, 21, and her family are among the newly arrived Afghans, relocating from the cities of Kabul and Nimroz to Yazd and Tehran in Iran, then to Ankara, Turkey, before finally resettling in Denver, Colorado, in February.Zahra and the rest of this new Afghan community are set to contribute nearly $200m in taxes and $1.4bn to the American economy in their first year of work, according to new data released this month by the International Rescue Committee (IRC).Since their arrival, more than 41,000 working-age Afghans have been placed into various industries including accommodation and food services, retail trade, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing. This new community of Afghans arriving in the US with a multitude of skills and degrees has the potential to contribute significantly to the American economy, especially as the country grapples with inflation and supply chain issues.Zahra Amiri’s trek, spanning four countries and more than 7,000 miles, illustrates what these refugees had to endure to begin their new life.Zahra’s father, who held a government-related job, was killed in a 2014 suicide attack. After her father’s death, Zahra and her four siblings in Kabul had lost not only a parent but also their family’s chief provider – and with that, the sense of peace that he helped shroud them with had been shattered.Being the eldest, Zahra was suddenly confronted with two options: either forcibly marry a husband who could financially support her or flee.“I did not want to end up … jobless and uneducated, so I chose to become a refugee,” Zahra told the Guardian.One day in 2016, Zahra sat down with her mom and revealed her plans to her.“Let’s move out of here,” she said about Afghanistan, where 65% of all civilian casualties from suicide attacks globally occur and where 57% of girls are married before the age of 16. “We are not in a situation where we can live out our lives in peace in Afghanistan.”Her mother agreed. That year, Zahra, her mother and her siblings – the youngest of whom was two at the time – journeyed from Kabul to Nimroz, a south-west Afghan province that lies east of Iran. From Nimroz, Zahra and her family traveled to Yazd, one of Iran’s largest cities, with scarcely any food or water, forcing them to eat snow in a desperate attempt to nourish themselves.Border officials in Yazd turned Zahra and her family away, deporting them back to Nimroz. They tried the trip a second time and finally made it through to Tehran where the next leg of the sojourn awaited: Ankara, Turkey.“They would just throw families in each truck,” Zahra said, recalling how she was separated from her family for nearly two weeks on the way from Iran to Turkey before finally reuniting with them in Ankara in March 2016.In Ankara, Zahra and her family filed for refugee status with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and submitted a visa application to the US. In the six years that it took for her family’s application to be approved by the US government, Zahra completed her high school education while working as a dishwasher and a coffee maker, earning between $1.10 to $1.93 daily.“It’s not unusual for an application to take that long, especially considering that she applied during [Donald Trump’s presidency] where refugee arrivals were repeatedly cut, where we had things like the travel ban that really damaged the US government’s ability to process refugee applications,” IRC spokesperson Stanford Prescott told the Guardian.The US government approved Zahra’s family’s visa application early this year. On 2 February, Zahra donned a knitted sweater and pushed two pink quilted suitcases across the terrazzo tiles of the Istanbul airport.She was finally bound for the United States.Federal immigration services chose Colorado as the state in which to resettle Zahra’s family. With the IRC’s assistance, Zahra and her family arrived in Denver, initially to stay at a hotel for two months before being relocated to an apartment.As with many of its refugee clientele, the IRC provided financial literacy classes, job training courses and an interpreter to Zahra and her family. The IRC helped Zahra lock down a job with the airline caterer Sky Chefs about a month and a half ago, building on the skills she had amassed while working in restaurants and kitchens.At Sky Chefs, Zahra earns $19 an hour as she takes orders, packages them and gives them to customers. She earned a promotion to a manager assistant’s position two weeks ago and now trains new hires.“I can move up positions here, unlike in Turkey where even when I gave my 100%, I could not move up because I am a woman and because of my refugee status,” she said.Top job titles held by newly arrived Afghans include general production, warehouse worker, food preparer, driver and security guard, according to data from the IRC.Typically, Afghan refugees are placed in their first jobs within 126 days of their arrival and earn an average of $16.67 an hour – which amounts to an annual income of $34,673.“For most of these families, this is their very first job,” the IRC’s director economic empowerment, Erica Bouris, told the Guardian. “They are getting lots of things situated in the first year.“In a lot of ways, this is very much step one in that much longer process of rebuilding their home, their life and integration into the communities.”Bouris added: “We see lots of really interesting pathways, whether it’s that they try to pursue a certification so that they can work in a job that’s similar to what they had back home, or they might, as they settle into a new community, see for example that there are a lot of jobs in healthcare in this community and they pay well so they might pursue education and training so that they can move into a healthcare job.“Each story is really individual, but people absolutely do take steps towards additional education, skills and training and have medium and long-term career goals that they pursue.”Zahra is currently taking English as a second language (ESL) classes as she prepares to enroll in Aurora University’s dentistry program at the start of next year.As many Afghans carve out new lives for themselves in the US, many still face the possibility of losing their legal right to reside in the country. The US government allowed them to enter the nation in attempts to bring thousands of fleeing Afghans to safety as quickly as possible.But humanitarian parole lasts only two years. It is not like the US’s refugee resettlement program, where participants have a clear path towards American citizenship.Afghans on humanitarian parole must seek other paths of obtaining permanent immigration status, such as asylum, at the end of the two-year period in question.However, without the assistance of specialized lawyers, the Byzantine asylum process is particularly difficult to navigate. Many Afghans who fled their country were also advised to destroy identification documents, professional certifications and other information that could support their asylum claims, further complicating their situation.Although organizations like the IRC have launched various programs and collaborate with pro-bono lawyers to assist Afghans with their asylum claims, there’s another hurdle: The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is facing its own mounting backlog of asylum applications.With the pandemic exacerbating processing delays, the USCIS is currently struggling with a backlog of nearly 5.2m cases and 8.5m pending cases. The backlog was significantly lighter – 2.7m cases – in July 2019.“This year, even though the [Joe Biden White House] set an ambitious goal of [admitting] 125,000 [refugees], they’re only going to admit a fraction of that amount and what that shows is that refugee admission is broken and needs a lot more work so that ambition can be reality,” the IRC’s senior director of resettlement, asylum and integration policy, JC Hendrickson, told the Guardian.As a result, the IRC has been calling on Congress to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, a bipartisan bill introduced earlier this month that would provide Afghan refugees with a pathway to lawful permanent residence in the US.“This bipartisan legislation will provide a pathway to lawful permanent status for certain Afghan civilians, offering them a way out of legal limbo and the looming threat of deportation with great risk to their personal safety,” said senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a co-sponsor of the bill. “Congress has a track record of passing similar legislation on humanitarian grounds, and we must swiftly do so again.”Many Afghans remain optimistic as they settle into American society’s fabric and rebuild their lives. To Zahra, being in the US means more than just experiencing upward economic mobility.“I know I’m new,” she said. “I know at the moment I have no voice, but in the future, I would like to raise my voice and let people know that men and women can work equally.“If anyone needs help now or in the future, I’m willing to show them a way that they can pursue. I want to let Afghan women know that they can do what a man can do. It’s my dream to let Afghan women know that we are as equal as men.”TopicsAfghanistanUS politicsRefugeesUS immigrationfeaturesReuse this content More

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    The Right to Fair Recollection

    The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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    Biden raises US refugee admissions cap to 62,500 after delay sparks anger

    Joe Biden has formally raised the US cap on refugee admissions to 62,500 this year, weeks after facing bipartisan blowback for his delay in replacing the record-low ceiling set by Donald Trump.Refugee resettlement agencies have waited for Biden to quadruple the number of refugees allowed into the United States this year since 12 February, when a presidential proposal was submitted to Congress saying he planned to do so.But the presidential determination went unsigned until Monday. Biden said he first needed to expand the narrow eligibility criteria put in place by Trump that had kept out most refugees. He did that last month in an emergency determination, which also stated that Trump’s cap of up to 15,000 refugees this year “remains justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest”.That brought sharp pushback for not at least taking the symbolic step of authorizing more refugees to enter the US this year, and within hours the White House made a quick course correction. The administration vowed to increase the historically low cap by 15 May – but probably not all the way to the 62,500 Biden had previously outlined.In the end, Biden returned to that figure.“It is important to take this action today to remove any lingering doubt in the minds of refugees around the world who have suffered so much, and who are anxiously waiting for their new lives to begin,” Biden stated before signing the emergency presidential determination.Biden said Trump’s cap “did not reflect America’s values as a nation that welcomes and supports refugees”.But he acknowledged the “sad truth” that the US would not meet the 62,500 cap by the end of the fiscal year in September, given the pandemic and limitations on the country’s resettlement capabilities – some of which his administration has attributed to the Trump administration’s policies to restrict immigration.Biden said it was important to lift the number to show “America’s commitment to protect the most vulnerable, and to stand as a beacon of liberty and refuge to the world”.The move also paves the way for Biden to boost the cap to 125,000 for the 2022 fiscal year, which starts in October.Since the fiscal year began last 1 October, just over 2,000 refugees have been resettled in the US.Refugee resettlement agencies applauded Biden’s action.“We are absolutely thrilled and relieved for so many refugee families all across the world who look to the US for protection,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the head of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, one of nine resettlement agencies in the country. “It has a felt like a rollercoaster ride, but this is one critical step toward rebuilding the program and returning the US to our global humanitarian leadership role.”Biden has also added more slots for refugees from Africa, the Middle East and Central America and ended Trump’s restrictions on resettlements from Somalia, Syria and Yemen.“We are dealing with a refugee resettlement process that has been eviscerated by the previous administration and we are still in a pandemic,” said Mark Hetfield, president of Hias, a Maryland-based Jewish non-profit that resettles refugees. “It is a challenge, but it’s important he sends a message to the world that the US is back and prepared to welcome refugees again.” More

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    Outcry as Biden breaks pledge to lift Trump-era cap on refugee admissions

    Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterJoe Biden was condemned on Friday for reversing a campaign pledge by leaving in place the historically low cap on refugee admissions set by his predecessor, Donald Trump.The number of refugees allowed to resettle in the US per year fell from 85,000 to 15,000 under Trump, whose hardline “America first” agenda frequently portrayed migrants as a security threat.Biden had considered raising the cap to 62,500 but instead opted for a policy that officials say will speed up the admissions process while keeping the 15,000 ceiling.The U-turn left Biden facing potentially his first major rebellion from the left of the Democratic party. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive congresswoman from New York, tweeted: “Completely and utterly unacceptable. Biden promised to welcome immigrants, and people voted for him based on that promise.“Upholding the xenophobic and racist policies of the Trump admin, including the historically low and plummeted refugee cap, is flat out wrong. Keep your promise.”Her Washington state colleague Pramila Jayapal said: “It is simply unacceptable and unconscionable that the Biden administration is not immediately repealing Donald Trump’s harmful, xenophobic and racist refugee cap that cruelly restricts refugee admissions to a historically low level … President Biden has broken his promise to restore our humanity.”Biden’s order could allow for a wider group of refugees to be considered for resettlement. It adjusts allocation limits set by Trump, providing more spaces for refugees from Africa, the Middle East and Central America, and lifts restrictions on resettlements from Somalia, Syria and Yemen.Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, posted on Twitter: “America needs to rebuild our refugee resettlement program. We will use all 15,000 slots under the new Determination and work with Congress on increasing admissions and building back to the numbers to which we’ve committed.”But refugee advocacy groups expressed deep disappointment, noting that Biden’s campaign website promised he would “prioritize setting the annual global refugee admissions cap to 125,000”.Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, described the move as both “bad policy and bad politics”.“There is no valid policy reason to maintain the shockingly low refugee cap,” he said. “As a political matter, President Biden will alienate a lot of his supporters by failing to turn the page on President Trump’s racism, xenophobia and scapegoating of immigrants and refugees.”The International Rescue Committee called the order “a disturbing and unjustified retreat” and suggested that at the current rate of admissions, Biden’s administration is on track to resettle the lowest number of refugees of any president in US history.David Miliband, the IRC president and chief executive, said: “This is a time of unprecedented global need and the US is still far from returning to its historic role of safe haven for the world’s persecuted and most vulnerable.”Biden previously signed an executive order pledging to increase the number of refugees admitted in the 2022 fiscal year, which begins on 1 October, to 125,000. In the current fiscal year, just over 2,000 refugees have been resettled.The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters the delay was because “it took us some time to see and evaluate how ineffective, or how trashed in some ways the refugee processing system had become, and so we had to rebuild some of those muscles and put it back in place”.Another concern has been the record pace of unaccompanied migrants crossing the US-Mexico border, which has drawn in resources that would go to vetting, processing and resettling refugees.“It is a factor,” said Psaki, noting that the Office of Refugee Resettlement “has personnel working on both issues and so we have to ensure that there is capacity and ability to manage both”.Eleanor Acer, refugee protection director at Human Rights First, rejected this argument.“As the administration certainly knows, the United States has the ability to both increase resettlement and uphold its asylum commitments at the border; not doing so means that America’s beacon of safety for refugees and asylum seekers remains dark,” she said.“It’s also disingenuous for this administration to say it is pursuing ‘other legal pathways’ for Central American refugees to come to the United States while maintaining its shutdown of asylum at the border and leaving the limit for refugee admissions at the lowest level in history.”Apparently stung by the outcry, Psaki later released a statement that claimed there had been “some confusion” over the cap. The statement acknowledged that Biden’s initial goal of 62,500 “seems unlikely” but added: “We expect the President to set a final, increased refugee cap for the remainder of this fiscal year by 15 May”. More