Administration launches private refugee sponsorship in bid to raise resettlements—02-01-23
Immigration news, in context
This is the 150th edition of BORDER/LINES, a newsletter by Felipe De La Hoz and Gaby Del Valle designed to get you up to speed on the big developments in immigration policy. Reach out with feedback, suggestions, tips, and ideas at BorderLines.News@protonmail.ch.
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This week’s edition:
In The Big Picture, we analyze a new program that will let private individuals and groups sponsor refugees.
In Under the Radar, we discuss the latest development regarding New York City’s confusing, often contradictory stance on migrants.
In Next Destination, we look at the potential outcomes of Biden’s announcement that it will soon end the emergency Covid-19 declarations.
The Big Picture
The news: In a move that was long expected, and had been alluded to in an early-term Biden executive order, the State Department rolled out a new private refugee sponsorship program, allowing groups of private citizens to directly sponsor refugees to be brought to their communities. While the impact of the new program might be wide-ranging, the mechanics here aren’t particularly novel, as the groups of five or more U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents that would be banding together to accept the refugees are essentially expected to function as de facto nonprofits of the sort that are already tasked with helping new arrivals get their bearings.
This means at least 90 days of active assistance including securing a place for the refugees to live, assisting with the navigation of U.S. systems like healthcare, employment, and education, and generally smoothing the landing in a new community. To apply, the groups of people — who can be practically anyone — will need to present a so-called welcome plan that will examine among other things how to best integrate a refugee into their specific community, as well as raise a minimum of $2,275 in both cash and in-kind contributions per refugee.
The administration is clearly finding a novel solution to what has been the consistent issue of its inability to actually resettle anywhere near the annual caps it’s been setting, a problem partly downstream from the collapse of the infrastructure itself as a result of both Trump-era policy and the COVID pandemic. At first, the program will merely match pre-approved refugees with U.S. sponsors, but eventually will allow sponsors to actively recommend specific refugees for resettlement, a notion that comes with some potential pitfalls.
Under the Radar
Migrants in New York City protest over attempted relocation to Brooklyn Cruise Terminal
New York City mayor Eric Adams recently announced that his administration would be requiring migrants who are staying at hotels in Midtown to move to a shelter at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook, Brooklyn—an out-of-the-way location that asylum seekers say will make it harder for them to find work. In response, migrants demonstrated outside the Watson Hotel in Midtown, camping out in front of the building in protest of the attempted relocation. NYPD officers cleared the encampment on February 1, though they told Gothamist no arrests were made.
The protest over the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal shelter highlights the tensions that have come to a head in New York City under the Adams administration. A so-called “sanctuary city” with right-to-shelter laws that require the local government to provide shelter space to anyone in need of housing, New York sounds like an ideal location for asylum seekers who recently arrived in the U.S.—at least on paper. Adams has repeatedly said the city is “full” and cannot take in more migrants (a few days after Christmas, for example, he said there is “no room at the inn”) and has blamed asylum seekers for overcrowding in the city’s shelter system, which was already under strain long before migrants started arriving in New York in large numbers.
Next Destination
The White House will in a matter of months end the national emergency and public health emergency declarations that have been in place since 2020, the AP reports. House Republicans, meanwhile, will soon bring forward a resolution ending the emergency declarations immediately.
Ending the emergency declarations will affect a number of programs and policies, including the pause on federal student loan payments. Most importantly for our purposes, eliminating the state of emergency may affect Title 42, though it’s not yet clear what will happen. As a reminder, the border policy is actually a public health measure, at least statutorily. Title 42 was issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention early in the pandemic (even though top scientists at the CDC initially refused to do so, telling the Trump administration that denying entry to asylum seekers had no public health benefit). The law allows public health authorities to deny entry to certain people at the border in order to limit the introduction or spread of a communicable disease—e.g., Covid-19. Once the emergency declarations are lifted, the Biden administration will have no rationale for keeping Title 42 in place. If the administration doesn’t rescind Title 42 shortly after lifting said emergency declarations, it may face new lawsuits from migrant advocacy organizations. However, if it does, it may once again be sued by Republican-led states.
The Big Picture – Premium
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