On July 16th, a federal District Court judge in Texas halted new applicants to DACA or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The ruling does not affect the more than 600,000 young people currently protected by DACA. In the written ruling, the judge said DACA is unlawful because the federal government violated the [...]
Habimana Kabera and Leniya Mukamuganga met in the Democratic Republic of Congo and soon had to flee violence in their home country. Arriving in a refugee camp in Rwanda, they had seven children, now ages 7 to 22, over the next 25 years. On July 9th, they arrived in the U.S. and were [...]
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren visited the Lowell Community Health Center (Lowell CHC) today. She met with the Lowell CHC leadership, toured the Mill City Grows mobile market, and visited IINE’s new offices on the second floor of the Health Center. Senator Warren participated in a roundtable discussion with Lowell CHC staff [...]
The International Institute of New England (IINE) applauds President Biden’s decision to set the ceiling on the number of refugees the U.S. can admit to 62,500 people this year. The President’s determination gives hope to thousands of families here in the U.S. awaiting their loved ones as well as those abroad who have already [...]
Late last week, the White House announced that the ceiling on the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. this year would remain at 15,000, the number established by former President Trump. This year’s cap is the lowest in U.S. history. In fact, since October, the country has admitted just 2,050 refugees, on pace to [...]
Today a jury in Minneapolis convicted a White police officer of the murder of a Black man, George Floyd. Such a verdict is a rare event in the United States. The facts were never in dispute. Derek Chauvin placed his knee on George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds, an excessive amount [...]
In February, President Biden announced he would expand the number of refugees admitted to the United States to 125,000 annually, with an immediate increase beginning soon. The 15,000-person cap set by the Trump administration was the lowest since the Refugee Act became law in 1980 with overwhelming bipartisan support. International Institute of New England’s Chief [...]
On March 18, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the American Dream and Promise Act. Now it is up to the Senate to pass this bill, which will provide pathways to citizenship to 2.3 million Dreamers, young people who have lived, studied, and worked here for most of their lives and know no [...]
On March 16, 2021 eight people were murdered in Atlanta. Six of those people were Asian women. While it is not yet clear if these murders will carry hate crime charges, we know that hate incidents against the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community increased nearly 150% since the beginning of the pandemic. [...]
On March 9, 2021, the Biden administration declared that it had stopped defending the public charge rule enacted during the Trump administration. The Justice Department notified the Supreme Court of the new policy, leading to the dismissal of cases challenging the rule. The public charge rule allowed for the rejection of green card applicants [...]
