Immigration

One measure, an executive order from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, jeopardizes foster care licenses for anyone who takes in unaccompanied immigrant children who arrive in the country without authorization. The other, a bill being fast-tracked through the state legislature, would bar state and local governments from contracting with businesses that knowingly transport undocumented immigrants, including bus companies or airlines.

In a hearing on Capitol Hill last week, leaders from humanitarian nonprofits and resettlement agencies asked the House Homeland Security Committee to pressure the Biden administration to do more to help resettle evacuated Afghans into U.S. communities.

Their demands come as thousands of Afghans who had initially been housed at U.S. military bases in Virginia, Wisconsin, Texas, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Indiana are moving into communities in the United States. At least an additional 55,000 Afghans remain at the military bases.

Religion can be a source of resilience and strength for individual refugees as well as the refugee community as a whole. Mosques, temples, and other sites of worship and ritual practice foster rich social networks, generous mutual aid, and meaningful forms of spiritual and cultural connection. Religious institutions, long recognized as pillars of ethnic community life, are especially vital for refugees who have experienced the traumas of war, forced migration, and resettlement.

This March, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents encountered nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children at the U.S.-Mexico border — a record high. To many, this number was shocking; media outlets used militaristic language to describe the arriving minors as a “surge.” However, this influx is not surprising given seasonal migration patterns and the horrific immigration policies instated by the Trump administration — policies the Biden administration has not yet repealed. The current administration must address the immediate needs of people seeking refuge at the southern border while also tackling the root causes of forced displacement and migration: U.S. imperialism.

This year is the best chance we have had in nearly a decade to change our broken immigration system.

My kids are the great-granddaughters of Chinese immigrants, but until recently, I hadn’t shared much about our immigration story or been a vocal advocate for immigrant rights. Instead, like many evangelicals, I had absorbed hardline views on the subject.

IN JUNE, NEARLY 700,000 DACA recipients could breathe a sigh of relief when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The court determined that the basis for President Trump’s action was “arbitrary and capricious.” The grounds presented for termination failed to consider the impact of the program’s rescission, wrote Chief Justice John Roberts.

The grounds of the ruling are important because the court did not address whether DACA was legal. For now, DACA remains fragile. People who have benefited from the program, put in place by executive action under President Barack Obama in 2012, can continue to obtain valid work permits and are protected from deportation.  An estimated 130,000 people would have been eligible to submit new applications for the program, except that the Trump administration released a memo on July 28 saying it would “reject all initial requests for DACA and associated applications for Employment Authorization Documents.”

This momentary reprieve and upsurge of hope resulted from decades of fierce social, political, and legal organizing by undocumented youth and their supporters, often at great personal risk. The Trump administration may decide to attack DACA again. It would likely be a costly undertaking since a substantial bipartisan majority of Americans support DACA.

While DACA prevents the eviction from the U.S. of a sector of immigrants, it does not dismantle the massive deportation machine that operates in this country nor create a pathway to citizenship—key components of comprehensive immigration reform. Authentic immigration reform begins with the recognition that U.S. immigration laws, from their inception, have been informed by discriminatory narratives. The first immigration law, the Naturalization Act of 1790, made it possible for those born elsewhere to become citizens—but only if they were “free white persons” (“white” meaning certain Europeans, and “persons” essentially meaning men), excluding enslaved people, Native Americans, those without property, most women, and all others not defined as white. Only property-owning white male citizens could vote.

Even as we allow ourselves to savor this victory and be lifted by the hope of this moment, we also need to prepare and strategize for what’s next, because the fight for immigration justice is far from over. The justices of the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of whether Trump is allowed to end DACA — but rather on the way in which he attempted to do so.

Like grocery store workers and first responders, domestic workers occupy a space on the frontlines of the pandemic. While some care for the elderly and people with chronic illnesses in their homes, others face dwindling job prospects, with little savings to stock up on the groceries and cleaning supplies Americans have flocked to stores for.