Two good-news stories from Minnesota: This week, Gov, Tim Walz signed a bill raising the age limit for young immigrants who have escaped trauma to receive legal protections in the United States.
[Public News Service] “Veena Iyer, executive director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, said not only is there more stability for these youth, it benefits their communities as well.
“‘We’re talking about folks who have come here as young people,’ she said, ‘many of whom end up finishing high school getting their GED in the United States – and then are such an important part of the labor force.’
“She said that’s especially helpful for rural Minnesota, where there are challenges in finding skilled labor. Immigration experts who track these policies say nearly a dozen other states have taken similar action.”
Yia Vang, a James Beard-nominated chef, and Gia Vang, a journalist and news anchor, have joined forces in a new podcast, Hmonglish. Yia Vang explains:
[MPR] “The word “Hmonglish” is this idea that as Hmong kids growing up, we had to speak Hmong to our parents but then there were words and concepts that we just didn’t understand. So for example, how do you say computer in Hmong, there’s no word for computer, or if there is, it’s a long phrase, or even like the word Netflix. There’s no way of explaining what Netflix is like, Netflix is actually just part of the Hmong language. Now, YouTube is part of the Hmong language.
“We jokingly just call that ‘Oh, that’s Hmonglish.’ It’s also the way that this third culture works. You have the Hmong culture and then you have the western culture. And then, people like me and Gia, we kind of fall in that middle where we straddle both cultures.
“But Gia and I would talk about this stuff all the time. And I really felt like I had this kind of soulmate. Gia is just so cool. She’s so trendy and awesome and that was the other that was that was the other part.”
And in other news
Republicans and Democrats agree: giving Dreamers a path to citizenship is the right thing to do AND the right economic decision for the country. So why can’t Congress act?
[Politico] “In a letter being sent Wednesday to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, 14 donors who call themselves ‘life-long Republicans’ said that reaching a deal on immigration that provides permanent legal status to immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children ‘makes economic sense.'”
Border Patrol agents processed unauthorized border crossers 220,000 times in May.
[CBS] “May’s historic tally of border arrests was, in part, driven by record arrivals of Colombian and Nicaraguan migrants, high numbers of Cuban asylum-seekers continuing to reach the Mexican border and a sharp increase in Haitians entering U.S. immigration custody. Arrivals of migrants from Brazil, Ecuador, Russia and other nations also increased.
“The soaring number of migrant arrivals has also been partly fueled by an unusually high rate of migrants crossing the border multiple times after being returned to Mexico. CBP said Wednesday that 25% of the migrant encounters in May involved migrants who had been previously stopped by the agency in the past year.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is investigating offensive “challenge coins.” Investigation doesn’t change the ugly reality of a Border Patrol still permeated by racism and right-wing politics.
[Los Angeles Times] “The photograph encapsulates the intensity of the clashes between Border Patrol agents and Haitian immigrants desperate to get into the United States.
“An agent on horseback leans over, grabbing a man by the shirt as a rein dangles.
“Now an image mirroring the Sept. 19 photo by Paul Ratje of AFP has appeared on a ‘challenge coin’ typically collected by agents, law enforcement officials and aficionados.
“’Whipping ass since 1924′ is written along the coin’s border.
“The Times obtained photos of the coin. Its other side says ‘Haitian Invasion’ with crossed swords and the words ‘U.S. Border Patrol,’ ‘Horse Patrol Unit’ and ‘deflecting allegations for years.’”
The Biden administration ended the Trump-era public charge rule, and the Supreme Court has now refused to hear Republican state challenges to that decision.
[SCOTUSblog] “The Supreme Court on Wednesday threw out an effort by Arizona and 12 other states with Republican attorneys general to defend a contentious Trump-era immigration policy known as the “public charge” rule after the Biden administration refused to do so. In a brief unsigned ruling, the justices dismissed the case as “improvidently granted” – an unusual procedural move indicating that the court concluded it was wrong to have taken up the dispute in the first place. The Biden administration stopped enforcing the public charge rule in March 2021, and the court’s dismissal on Wednesday dealt a blow to the conservative states’ attempts to revive the policy.”
Immigration news 