Migration News

Despite Concerns About Border, Poll Finds Support For More Pathways To Citizenship
Joel Rose, NPR
Across the political spectrum, Americans are worried about the rising number of migrants apprehended after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months, according to a new NPR/Ipsos poll. But whatever their misgivings about the situation at the border, majorities of poll respondents favor creating a legal pathway to citizenship for certain groups of immigrants already living in the country. "Americans are becoming increasingly concerned about the situation at the border and the number of migrants coming in, but at the same time, many are still in favor of reforming the system," said Mallory Newall, a research director at Ipsos. "We see support for allowing law-abiding migrants to become citizens under specific circumstances," Newall said, "and also reforms to ensure better treatment of those at the border, particularly children."

Migrant children describe poor conditions at makeshift U.S. shelters in interviews with attorneys
Camilo Montoya-Galvez, CBS News
Migrant children housed at two makeshift U.S. government shelters, an Army base in west Texas and a Houston warehouse that has been shuttered, described subpar living conditions, including limited access to showers, soiled clothes and undercooked food, attorneys who interviewed them told CBS News. Unaccompanied children housed at the two Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) emergency housing facilities — which are not licensed to care for minors — also reported feeling sad and desperate while in U.S. government custody, attorney Leecia Welch said, citing recent interviews with more than 30 migrant girls and boys. Several migrant children reported suicidal thoughts and talk of self-harm among other youths, Welch said, detailing "serious mental health deterioration" among some of the minors she interviewed. The minors longed to be with their families, Welch added, but some had not spoken to case managers charged with facilitating their reunifications.

Explore 100 Years of Immigration History With The Times Archive
Nicole Daniels, The New York Times
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first law passed in the United States to establish numerical limits on immigrants entering the country. However, the 1921 Emergency Quota Act was not the first time that the United States had introduced restrictive immigration laws. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited the entry of all laborers from China, and restrictive immigration laws would continue through the 19th and 20th centuries to today. In this lesson, you will look closely at primary sources covering five key moments of U.S. immigration history from the 1880s to the 1980s: the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1921 Emergency Quota Act, the Immigration Act of 1924, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. This list is not exhaustive, but these five laws have significant coverage in the Times archive and offer a point of entry for understanding immigration history by using primary sources.

Lawyers find the parents of 54 more migrant children from families separated under Trump
Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff, NBC News
Lawyers working to reach the migrant families separated by the Trump administration have found the parents of 54 more children in the past month, according to a court filing on Wednesday. Now the parents of 391 children have yet to be reached, down from 445 in April. And pro bono lawyers commissioned to find them by a federal judge say the parents of 227 of those children have been deported, 100 are somewhere in the U.S. and 14 have no contact information that the government has provided. The Biden administration set up a task force to reunite separated parents, and the task force is working with the lawyers to bring back deported parents who have been identified. This month, the first four families were reunited.

South Dakota business leaders call on Congress to pass immigration reform
Christopher Vondracek, Grand Forks Herald
A panel of business leaders in South Dakota called on Congress to solve the state's jobs crunch -- a cat's cradle of low unemployment with still tens of thousands of jobs to fill -- by passing bipartisan immigration reform and opening up the state to new workers ready to fill needed jobs from Wall Drug's donut counter to East River dairy farms to medical centers in Sioux Falls. The immigration roundtable, hosted on Wednesday, May 19 by the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce and Industry, brought together a former Republican state legislative leader, representatives of retailers and generals contractors, and even a DACA "dreamer," a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, who teaches Spanish language courses at a Sioux Falls preschool.

Migrant advocates enraged over Biden's slow Haiti moves
Rafael Bernal, The Hill
Pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to address worsening humanitarian conditions in Haiti and provide deportation protections covering tens of thousands of Haitians in the United States. Activists stateside are demanding that President Biden redesignate the country for temporary protected status (TPS), a move that would give more than 100,000 Haitians the right to live and work in the United States. Haitian migrants within the U.S. have long been demanding the country's redesignation for the TPS program, but they say it has renewed urgency amid political upheaval in the Caribbean country.

LGBTQ Africans struggle to navigate US asylum process
Prince Chingarande, Los Angeles Blade
It is no secret that many LGBTQ individuals around the world live in fear of the negative implications that result from identifying outside the limits of cisgenderism and heteronormativity. For Africans living in Africa, this panic is even more pronounced as many are abused, jailed, or even murdered for simply existing as queer. According to Global Citizen, homosexuality is still punishable by death in four countries on the African continent: Somalia, South Sudan, Mauritania, and Nigeria (in states where Sharia law applies). Only 22 out of the 54 countries on the African continent have legalized homosexuality, and South Africa is currently the only country where same-sex marriage is legally recognized by the government.

Further Reading

The dividing line
The Washington Post

Gay Immigrant Recalls His American Journey, Underscores Need for Support
Gay City News

After escaping multiple wars overseas, refugee in Spokane hopes U.S. citizenship will help her reunite with children
The Spokesman-Review