LA TIMES: GOP APPARENTLY ADOPTS TRUMP’S WHITE NATIONALIST RESTRICTIONIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA WHILE ESSENTIALLY DEFENDING HIS RACISM — GOP Now Openly RepresentsThe Forces Of Ignorance & Intolerance In America!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=c072dbb1-9778-4e79-a635-ce0b9b58b8d4

Lisa Mascaro reports for the LA Times:

“WASHINGTON — The furor over President Trump’s language about immigrants from “shithole countries” has partially obscured the substance of what he was demanding and the profound shift among Republicans beyond opposing illegal immigration to also pushing new limits on legal migrants, particularly of color.

Trump made the remark as he rejected a bipartisan proposal from Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to resolve the status of some 700,000 so-called Dreamers facing deportation. In exchange for protecting them, Trump wanted more restrictions on legal immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, among other changes.

Those demands come as Trump has already put the country on track to remove 1 million immigrants over the next two years. Among them are the Dreamers — young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children — and more than 200,000 Salvadorans, nearly 60,000 Haitians and others from Central America who have lived in the U.S. legally, in some cases for decades, under temporary protected status that the administration is ending.

The mounting total is a policy reversal for Republicans, who until recently insisted that welcoming new arrivals was vital not just to the fabric of American life but in boosting the domestic economy. Now, many Republicans in Congress have moved to a more restrictionist position, following Trump’s lead.

Trump “has taken our issues off the back burner and thrust them into the spotlight,” said Roy Beck, executive director at Numbers USA, which argues for reducing immigration to midcentury levels, before passage of the 1965 immigration overhaul ushered in a new era of diverse migrants.

Beck marvels at the turn of events.

“The president has done as much as we hoped for,” he said.

Trump’s insistence on immigration restrictions may have increased the odds of a confrontation this week when Congress must vote on a measure to fund agencies or risk a partial government shutdown.”

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Read the complete article at the link.

Aligning yourselves with Roy Beck says it all. The GOP’s push on undocumented immigration has become a smokescreen for a war on legal immigrants from non-European countries. That, in turn, is part of the White Nationalist attack on ethnic Americans, particularly individuals of color.

Trump’s crassness and lack of judgment has just blown the smokescreen and exposed the ugly racist and xenophobic underpinnings of the GOP’s “merit based” immigration charade. Folks who care about America’s future must resist this un-American GOP initiative.

Eventually, the majority of us who believe in a tolerant, diverse, welcoming, unafraid America that can resume its world leadership role must regain power from those driven by the toxic, intolerant views of a minority of Americans who foisted the national disaster of Trump upon our country!

PWS

01-14-18

Private Immigration Legislation & Change In DHS Policy Explained

http://www.ilw.com/immigrationdaily/news/20170712%20Policy%20changes.pdf

The following article prepared by CRS recently appeared in ilw.com. Nolan Rappaport was kind enough to forward it to me.

“Therefore, while private immigration bills have previously delayed an alien’s removal from the United States— sometimes indefinitely—ICE’s new policy markedly changes that established procedure. Aliens who are the beneficiaries of private immigration bills can no longer count on automatic stays of removal as their respective bills wind their way through the legislative process. Moreover, even if ICE is willing to grant a stay of removal, such a stay will be more limited in duration than in the past. Given these developments, Congress may be urged to modify its own existing rules governing the private immigration bill process to ensure that aliens seeking to benefit from such legislation receive prompt consideration by the agency of their requests to remain in the United States during that process. In addition, ICE’s change in policy may encourage some Members of Congress to work to expedite the disposition of private immigration bills in the future—potentially increasing the likelihood that some of these bills will be acted upon before the agency takes action. Congress also may consider legislative initiatives that would offer some removable aliens alternative and more practical ways to legalize their status and remain in this country.”

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Read the rest of the (short) article at the link.

PWS 07-13-17