💸 U.S. citizenship application fees are rising for the first time in 8 years

Plus: Health care workers push for their own mental health treatment Estimated Reading Time: 3m 12s Forward to a Friend    The Reckon Daily logo L O THEreckon DAILY  February 22, 2024 Welcome to today’s Reckon Daily newsletter. For the first time in eight years, fees for a myriad of U.S. citizenship applications are rising. The agency responsible for the change claims it's to recoup losses, but immigration rights experts worry the higher costs could make it that much harder for migrants hoping to make a home in the U.S. Reckon Daily News Reporter Vanessa Arredondo looks at what led to the change. And now, without further delay, the news of the day: U.S. citizenship applications fees will increase for the first time in 8 years U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services welcomes 35 new citizens during a special naturalization ceremony, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023, at the Liberty State Park Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal in Jersey City in celebration of Constitution Day and Citizenship Day Several immigrant filing fees are slated to rise in the next few weeks to offset operating costs, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), but migrant advocates say the new steep charges will prevent family reunification and place more burden on employers hiring noncitizens... Premium fees will go in effect late February, with other costs increasing in April. "This will put some immigrant families in a difficult position. Larger families may have to decide to pay for the applications of certain family members before others because they can’t afford to pay them all at once,” said Adriel Orozco, the senior policy counsel at Immigration Impact, a project of the American Immigration Council. Read more about the fee increases for citizenship applications here Health care workers push for their own mental health treatment Health care professionals often wait to access mental health care or avoid it altogether for fear of treatment negatively impacting their careers. States are redefining when medical professionals can get mental health treatment without risking notifying the boards that regulate their licenses. Too often, health care workers wait to seek counseling or addiction treatment, causing their work and patient care to suffer, said Jean Branscum, CEO of the Montana Medical Association, an industry group representing doctors... In a Medscape survey released this year, 20 percent of physicians said they felt depressed, with job burnout as a leading factor. The majority said confiding in other doctors wasn’t practical. Read more about health care workers' fight for confidential mental health care here Audre Lorde ain’t here for your hopelessness: How her words are fueling a new generation of queer rage African-American writer, feminist, poet and civil-rights activist Audre Lorde (1934-1992) poses for a photograph during her 1983 residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. A poet and an author, Audre Lorde left a stark mark in the literary world in the ‘70s and ‘80s as a Black out lesbian woman, and eventually a mother and person who battled cancer. Born on Feb. 18, 1934 in New York City, Lorde first published her poem professionally in Seventeen magazine after her high school English teacher at Hunter High School rejected it, according to the National Women’s History Museum’s biography of her. She would become a prominent writer and thinker—to this day—having written “Uses of the Erotic” on pleasure as a catalyst for change, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” on the complexity of systemic power, “The Cancer Journals” on her personal journal entries and exposition during her time with breast cancer and undergoing a mastectomy, to name a few. Read more about Audre Lord's legacy here One more thing! The Reckon Report reckon report The news is a lot. We can all agree on that. It’s hard to keep up most of the time. But that’s what the Reckon Report is for. Every Tuesday, the Reckon Report newsletter will get you smarter, faster on one topic that’s been in the news. A quick rundown with historical context and some recommended reading if you want to go deeper. It’s all there and it usually takes less than 4 minutes to read. Sign up today. Sign up for the Reckon Report here The Reckon Daily could not have made it to your inbox without the wonderful reporters and editors we’re lucky to call coworkers. And this newsletter would be nothing without you readers. If you see something worth reckoning with, especially if it's breaking or trending, please feel free to write back. Or reach out to me on Twitter @ayetalian. If you enjoyed this newsletter, forward it to a friend. They can subscribe to the Reckon Daily Report and Reckon's other great newsletters at reckon.news/newsletters. Catch y'all tomorrow! Be good to yourselves and if you can't be good, at least be good at it. — April Alternate text InstagramTwitterFacebookTikTok Reckon Daily 1143 1st Ave. S. Suite 300, Birmingham, AL 35233 Email forwarded to you?  Sign up now! 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