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February 16, 2021
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Migration News: February 16, 2021
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Migration News
Biden, Hill Democrats plan to unveil immigration reform bill this week
Geoff Bennett, Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff, NBC News
The Biden administration and Hill Democrats are expected later this week to release an immigration reform bill, multiple sources familiar with the planning tell NBC News. The legislative text of the “U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021” will reflect the immigration priorities that President Joe Biden unveiled on his first day in office. His proposal includes an earned pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, expands the refugee resettlement program and deploys more technology to the Southern border. There are additional protections that are being considered in the legislation, such as asylum processing in home countries for minors, expanded benefits for DREAMers and ending the public charge rule.
Associated Press/Voices of America
While Biden has taken some major steps in his first weeks in office to reverse Trump's hardline immigration policies, his administration has not lifted some of the most significant barriers to asylum-seekers. In fact, it's discouraging people from coming to the country, hoping to avoid what happened under both Trump and former President Barack Obama — border agents getting overwhelmed by migrants, including many Central Americans with children.
Dianne Solis, The Dallas Morning News (TNS)
About a thousand asylum-seekers in a tent camp in Matamoros near the Rio Grande spent a frigid and anxious Monday night in below-freezing temperatures as a winter storm spread across Texas and northern Mexico. “We are frozen here,” texted a Honduran man at the camp named Rolando who asked that his full name not be used because of the nature of his persecution claim in U.S. immigration courts. “There is so much cold in the camp of migrants.”
KTVU San Francisco
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla has been named chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Immigration Subcommittee. Padilla made the announcement Sunday, noting that his priority is to restore humanity, dignity and respect to the immigration process. He said this includes everything from reunifying families, fixing the asylum system, streamlining the process for legal immigration and creating a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
Alexandra Villarreal, The Guardian
Thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children are attempting to flee to the United States amid the coronavirus pandemic, propelled by devastating natural disasters, chronic violence, and severe economic hardship at home. US Customs and Border Protection encountered 5,871 kids at the south-west border without a parent or legal guardian last month, the largest influx yet since the start of the public health crisis in early 2020.
Hansi Lo Wang, NPR
Even before taking office, former President Donald Trump's administration obsessed over the U.S. census. From a failed bid for a citizenship question to a presidential memo about unauthorized immigrants that was fast-tracked to the Supreme Court, its moves over the past four years followed a playbook first drawn up more than four decades ago by the Federation for American Immigration Reform. In 1979, the hard-line group that became the most influential advocate for extreme restrictions on immigration launched a campaign that has held onto one consistent goal — obtaining an official count of unauthorized immigrants through the census to radically reshape Congress, the Electoral College and public policy.
Rocio Villalobos, KGBT-TV
As more asylum-seeking migrants begin to trickle into the U.S., Good Neighbor Settlement House has begun providing them with hot meals at the Brownsville bus station and is inviting the community to help. Due to COVID-19, they can’t accept volunteers but say any help with supplies is appreciated as they expect the numbers of asylum seekers to slowly return to the pre-pandemic weekly range of 300 to 1,000. To leave a donation, you may visit their website or call them at (956) 542-2368.
Sarah Varney, Kaiser Health News
As Tennessee, like other states, embarks on the daunting task of inoculating millions of residents against covid-19, many health officials find their mission complicated by a pervasive mistrust of government and law enforcement among unauthorized immigrants, a population estimated at 11 million across the U.S. The challenges are particularly acute in the South, where large populations of immigrants living there illegally help maintain the region’s thriving agricultural and food-processing industries even as many state and local Republican leaders, emboldened by the Trump administration’s four years of anti-immigrant vitriol, denounce unauthorized residents as criminals and call for more limited paths to citizenship.
Hamed Aleaziz, Buzzfeed News
Department of Homeland Security officials are planning to scrap a Trump-era version of the civics test administered to would-be US citizens that was criticized as being harder and more complex than its predecessor, according to officials and government documents obtained by BuzzFeed News. The plans come just two months after the Trump administration issued a new version of the civics test that all immigrants have two chances to pass in order to become citizens.
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