🤮 THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES ARE FEEDING US FEAR-DRIVEN BS 💩 ON THE BORDER (W/O Meaningful Pushback From the Complicit Media) — Get Some Constructive, Practical, Humane Alternatives From Rev. Craig Mousin and NIJC Policy Director Heidi Altman On The “Lawful Assembly” Podcast! 💡🗽😎⚖️

Rev. Craig Mousin
Rev. Craig Mousin
PHOTO: DePaul Website
Heidi Altman
Heidi Altman
Director of Policy
National Immigrant Justice Center
PHOTO: fcnl.org

Craig on Linkedin:

Instead of listening to our two primary presidential contenders vie over which one is tougher on immigration, let’s consider reframing the debate for a meaningful immigration reform that benefits our nation instead of depriving it of resources wasted on ineffective enforcement policies:

Let’s Reshape Immigration Policy

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Today we talk about 10 points to reshape and improve immigration policy in the USA. We used the National Immigrant Justice Center’s 10 points as a backdrop for our discussion:

Let’s Reshape Immigration Policy

Lawful Assembly

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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lets-reshape-immigration-policy/id1724492762?i=1000648467773

  • Show Notes 

Today we talk about 10 points to reshape and improve immigration policy in the USA. We used the National Immigrant Justice Center’s 10 points as a backdrop for our discussion:

https://immigrantjustice.org/staff/blog/humane-solutions-work-10-ways-biden-administration-should-reshape-immigration-policy

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-02-29/immigration-crisis-border-migrants-united-states-mexico-election-biden-trump

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Listen to the podcast and get a copy of NIJC’s “ 10 points” at the above links.

Thanks, Craig, for highlighting the work of my friend and former Georgetown Law colleague Heidi Altman, Director of Policy at NIJC. Heidi is the embodiment of what real leadership, innovation, humane, creative thought on immigration and the border looks like. She stands in dramatic contrast to the pathetic fear mongering (Trump) and fear of standing up for values (Biden) “leadership” coming from our candidates and reflected in the failure of politicos of both parties to embrace humane, cooperative, beneficial solutions for those seeking asylum at the border.

Heidi is a particularly great representative and leadership role model for Women’s History Month.  

I had additional thoughts on this podcast:

  • Better judges, not just more judges. To be effective and efficient, EOIR judges at both levels must be recognized experts in asylum, human rights, and due process who are not afraid to set positive precedents, grant protection to those who qualify under a properly generous interpretation of the law, simplify evidentiary requirements and state them in clear, practical terms, establish and enforce best practices, and steadfastly oppose the political abuse of the Immigration Courts as “deterrents” or as extensions of DHS enforcement. The failure of Garland to clean house at EOIR, particularly the BIA, and of Mayorkas to do likewise at the Asylum Office has been a national disaster driving much of the “disorder at the border.”
  • Incorporate “Judges Without Borders” into the solutions. See  https://immigrationcourtside.com/wp-admin/about.php. It’s a great concept waiting to happen!
  • Invest in VIISTA Villanova and other innovative programs to expand pro bono and low bono representation. See https://www1.villanova.edu/university/professional-studies/academics/professional-education/viista.html. Reach beyond lawyers and NGOs to train students, retirees, social justice advocates, and “ordinary citizens” who want to help by becoming “Accredited Representatives” for “Recognized Organizations” and represent asylum seekers before the AO and EOIR. The programs is top-notch, online, and “scalable.” The Biden Administration’s failure to tap into it and “leverage” it is another dramatic failure of leadership.
  • Better leadership needed in the Biden Administration. As we have seen over the last three years, all the great ideas (and there is a plethora of them) in the world are meaningless without the dynamic, courageous, effective leadership to make it happen! Garland, Mayorkas, the White House Domestic Policy Office, and the Biden Campaign are dramatic negative examples of folks who lack  the hands-on expertise, courage, creativity, and skills to lead on effective administrative immigration reform. I endorse Heidi’s proposal to create a White House Task Force. But, without expert, dynamic, empowered leadership, that Task Force will be ineffective. (Take it from me, over 35-years in the USG, I was on lots of “task forces” and other “action/study groups” whose voluminous reports and well-meaning proposals went directly into a dusty file cabinet or paper shredder.) Think Julian Castro, Dean Kevin Johnson, Judge Dana Marks, Professor Karen Musalo, Beatriz Lopez, Professor Michele Pistone, Anna Gallagher, Camille Mackler, Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, Heidi Altman, Alex Aleinikoff, Mary Meg McCarthy, Paula Fitzgerald, et al — any of these folks, or a combination, or other “battle tested experts” like them would be head and shoulders over the inept gang advising on and “implementing” (and I use this term loosely) immigration policy for the Administration and the campaign. Leadership counts! And, time’s a wasting to start fixing this asylum system before the election!
  • Acquiescence gets Dems the same place as activist racism. I “get” that the nativist border agenda now being shoved down our throats by both campaigns is driven by GOP fear-mongering and Dem acquiescence. That’s classic Jim Crow! I doubt that every White person south of the Mason-Dixon Line during my youth was overtly racist. Yet, a whole bunch of them were happy to acquiesce in segregation (and worse) because it served their political, social, or business purposes. For example, ”I’ve personally got nothing against Blacks, but if I hired one at my store all my business would go elsewhere.” In calling for “bipartisan” joining with the Trump-generated racist proposal to “close the  border,” Biden and many of his supporters are basically endorsing a lawless, cruel, anti-humanitarian program that couldn’t succeed if enacted. Does that he might be doing it as an act of “political strategy,” “shifting the blame,” or “one-upmanship,” rather than “genuine” racism, xenophobia, and hate, like Trump and MAGA nation, somehow make it more palatable? Not to me!
  • Stop the candidate’s negative campaigning. If Joe can’t think of anything better to say about human rights and the border than to point fingers at the GOP and try and match Trump’s cruelty, lawlessness, and stupidity on the issue, better he say nothing at all. 
  • Don’t get suckered by “whataboutism.” Undoubtedly, there are those in our community genuinely concerned that helping asylum seekers resettle and succeed will deflect resources and attention from existing problems like homelessness and poverty. Nevertheless, few, if any, of my friends and acquaintances who have actually spent their lives, or substantial portions thereof, helping the less fortunate in our communities express this fear. They believe that that if we treat all of our fellow humans as humans, we can expand opportunities and economic activities across the board so that there will be enough for everyone. It’s a  derivation of something we say every Sunday at the community church we attend: “All are welcome at Christ’s table.” Also, asylum seekers and other migrants disproportionately give back to communities, particularly low income communities, rural communities, or others in need. By contrast, many of those raising these fears are the same GOP folks who steadfastly want to cut meals for kids, slash after-school programs, defund proven-to-work programs that reduce poverty, and restrict or limit other existing aid programs. It’s not like these folks would “repurpose” any of the very limited funds spent on assisting migrants to helping the homeless or the less fortunate. No, they would almost certainly spend it on more deadly, yet ineffective walls, “civil” prisons, unnecessary tax cuts for the wealthy, and/or more counterproductive, wasteful, costly border militarization. Don’t get suckered by their “crocodile tears” for the poor and needy!

Contrary to the BS 💩 that is peddled every day by the presidential candidates, spineless politicos of both parties, and the mainstream media, the border is solvable with common sense, humane, innovative legal reforms. More cruel, wasteful, and essentially mindless enforcement and restriction is NOT the answer, nor will it ever be!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-10-24

🇺🇸🗽⚖️ “[O]ur leaders should be grand-standing with a 21st century plan that embraces immigration and immigrants for all that they can do for America,” Says Beatriz Lopez @ The Narrative Intervention on Substack!

Beatriz Lopez
Beatriz Lopez
Deputy Director
Immigration Hub
PHOTO: Immigration Hub

https://beatrizlopez.substack.com?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web

Immigration is Fueling America’s Economic Boom – So Why is Migration Still A “Bad” Thing?

Immigration makes America, America.

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BEATRIZ LOPEZ

MAR 1, 2024

This month, in case you missed it, there were several news headlines that once again proved that immigration is not just good for the U.S. economy, but freaking amazing. I’m not exaggerating – just take a look at the glorious reports revealed in February:

  • A Congressional Budget Office report found that, “The labor force in 2033 is larger by 5.2 million people, mostly because of higher net immigration. As a result of those changes in the labor force, we estimate that, from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenues will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise.”
  • The most powerful economic rebound post-pandemic in the world is thanks to immigration in the U.S. The Washington Post reported, “About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data.” Impressively, the surge in hires of immigrant workers filled “unprecedented gaps in the economy that threatened the country’s ability to recover from prolonged shutdowns.”
  • Even The New York Times piled on: “A resumption in visa processing in 2021 and 2022 jump-started employment, allowing foreign-born workers to fill some holes in the labor force that persisted across industries and locations after the pandemic shutdowns. Immigrants also address a longer-term need: replenishing the work force, a key to meeting labor demands as birthrates decline and older people retire.” The report also features a City Council president and member of the Plumbers and Steamfitters union in Indiana who says he would welcome migrants with open arms as his union is in desperate need of members.

Despite so many economists, industry and business leaders, and fellow Americans clamoring for immigrants to come to America and live and work in a small town in the middle of nowhere or somewhere, our politicians are stuck in the quicksand of deterrence, slowly sinking into policy and politics that muddle speeches and don’t make anyone want to save them.

Don’t get me wrong– I do want to save President Biden but, buddy, we need to work on those talking points. While I agree border communities and immigration officials are in dire need of resources and should be provided the proper funding and manpower, President Biden’s continual push for the Senate bipartisan bill was half futile. I get the political jab; use it, in fact, as it works against Republicans. But for the love of God stop trying to push the bill forward. It’s dead. Start planting the messaging seeds for better, more galvanizing solutions that address the border, resource welcoming communities, and deliver legal pathways. And above all center the economic and cultural contributions of Dreamers and immigrant families that Trump is eager to deport.

Humanizing the narrative is always a winning strategy. Recognizing the rewards of immigration and the hard work of immigrants, both in policies and messaging, speaks to those persuadable voters that Biden and Democrats must win over.

Where have you gone, John Fetterman? I roll my lonely eyes at you.

Now here’s someone who’s actually sinking. Yesterday, Senator John Fetterman (PA), on an apparent quest to prove he’s a tough border security hawk, said he would support H.R. 2 except for its aim to terminate DACA. He claims to have analyzed the bill, and if he did, then I am stupid for having ever thought he was a decent guy who understood the importance of immigration in America.

As a reminder, H.R. 2 is basically a Stephen Miller wet dream (I apologize for the imagery): it would (1) end legal representation for unaccompanied children and deport them faster, (2) shut down the asylum system, (3) give any DHS secretary the authority to deny every single migrant the right to seek asylum (in other words, permanent Title 42), (4) jail and detain immigrant families, (5) eliminate humanitarian parole, (6) punish and defund faith-based organizations and NGOs for supporting newly-arrived migrants, and (7) jail and penalize immigrants who overstay their visa. (Imagine if that last one were in place when Fetterman’s wife and mother-in-law had arrived in the U.S.)

Neither H.R. 2 nor the Senate bipartisan bill are “grand bargains” unless it’s a deal scored by a used car salesman hiding the 20% annual interest rate.  When immigration is decidedly incredible for the economy, when immigrants are proudly working and thriving alongside their fellow American, when those seeking freedom and opportunity are willing to risk their lives for a leg up to work – work! – when businesses and communities are desperate for immigrants to fuel their future, our leaders should be grand-standing with a 21st century plan that embraces immigration and immigrants for all that they can do for America.

After all, immigration makes America, America.

Thanks for reading The Narrative Intervention! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Pledge your support

**********************

Thanks for speaking truth to power, Beatriz!

While Trump and Biden trade barbs and disgracefully try to ”one up” each other as to who can be the most cruel, cowardly, and dumb on “bogus border security,” the real humanitarian and asylum processing crises go unaddressed; the most vulnerable continue to suffer at the hands of a country they want to help while saving their own lives. This is a potential “win-win” that our politicians refuse to embrace!

On the plus side, Senior USDJ David Alan Ezra of the W.D. Tex., preliminarily enjoined SB 4, Texas’s extremist attempt to subvert the Constitution by taking over immigration law enforcement. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-court-blocks-extreme-texas-legislation-that-would-overstep-federal-immigration-law

Texas will appeal to the too-often-lawless Fifth Circuit, so this saga is only beginning. But, at least this time the “good guys” struck first and won the opening round.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-1-24

🎁 CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST “CHANNELS” LOPEZ & SCHMIDT —  THE MIGRANT “SURGE” IS A GIFT TO AMERICA’S ECONOMY & TO DEMS: Will Latter Be Able To  “Quit The Miller Lite” & Get Back “On Message?” — Tuesday’s Dem Victory In NY Could Be An Opportunity ONLY IF Dems Ignore The Mainstream Media & Showcase Sane, Humane, Solutions! — How About “Judges Without Borders?” — The Disgusting Immorality & Irresponsibility Of The Media!

Catherine Rampell
Catherine Rampell
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post
PHOTO: Linkedin

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/13/immigration-economy-jobs-cbo-report/

Catherine writes in WashPost:

As the economy has improved and consumers have begun recognizing that improvement, Republicans have pivoted to attacking President Biden on a different policy weakness: immigration. After all, virtually everyone — Democrats included — seems to agree the issue is a serious problem.

But what if that premise is wrong? Voters and political strategists have treated our country’s ability to draw immigrants from around the world as a curse; it could be a blessing, if only we could get out of our own way.

Consider a few numbers: Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released updated 10-year economic and budget forecasts. The numbers look significantly better than they did a year earlier, and immigration is a key reason.

The CBO has now factored in a previously unexpected surge in immigration that began in 2022, which the agency assumes will persist for several years. These immigrants are more likely to work than their native-born counterparts, largely because immigrants skew younger. This infusion of working-age immigrants will more than offset the expected retirement of the aging, native-born population.

. . . .

Instead, GOP lawmakers scaremonger about the foreign-born, characterizing immigration as an invasion. As Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) dog-whistled last week, “Import the 3rd world. Become the 3rd world.”

Alas, the faction working to turn the United States into a developing country is not immigrants but Collins’s own party. It’s Republicans, after all, who have supported the degradation of the rule of law; the return of a would-be dictator; the gutting of public education and health-care systems; the rollback of clean-water standards and other environmental rules; and the relaxation of child labor laws (in lieu of letting immigrants fill open jobs, of course).

America has historically drawn hard-working immigrants from around the world precisely because its people and economy have more often been shielded from such “Third World”-like instability, which Republican politicians now invite in.

Ronald Reagan, the erstwhile leader of the conservative movement, often spoke poignantly of this phenomenon. In one of his last speeches as president, he described the riches that draw immigrants to our shores and how immigrants in turn redouble those riches:

Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.

— https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-presentation-ceremony-presidential-medal-freedom-5

Reagan’s words reflected the poetry of immigration. Since then, the prose — as we’ve seen in the economic numbers, among other metrics — has been pretty compelling, too.

**********************

Read Catherine’s full article at the link. Compare it with the observations that Beatriz Lopez and I recently made in Substack and Courtside about Dem short-sightedness on immigration, particularly in light of all the “good stories” about immigrants that Dems are afraid to tell out here. See  https://immigrationcourtside.com/2024/02/13/🤯dems-miller-lite-strategy-🤮-could-spell-disaster-☠%EF%B8%8F-in-november-time-to-regrow-spines-put-fight/.

Already the media are “at it again,” most attributing Democrat Tom Souzzi’s easy win over his GOP opponent for the House seat vacated by George Santos to his “move right” on immigration. But, as Catherine suggests above, “what if that premise is wrong?”

There is certainly support for a more nuanced view, both anecdotally and in polls.  “Suozzi, [a voter]  said, would ‘protect us but also be fair to those who are seeking asylum.’” https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/02/13/new-york-district-3-special-election-george-santos/. Sadly, and outrageously, the so-called Senate “compromise” border bill that Souzzi touted and which has become the “darling” of the tone-deaf mainstream media does neither. Not even close!

Yet, supposedly responsible journalists are falling all over themselves touting the benefits to Dems of a horrible “Miller-Lite” bill that essentially would have destroyed the right to asylum while turning the border over to cartels and smugglers to exploit some of the world’s most vulnerable who are victims of our own failings. Today’s wrong-headed WashPost editorial is a particularly egregious piece of such media sophistry. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/14/immigration-border-suozzi-mayorkas-special/.

We don’t have to “guess” at the human consequences of the nativist-inspired “bipartisan” non-solution at the border being trumpeted and glorified by Post editorialists safely ensconced in their “ivory tower!” We know! The results of recent half-baked attempts to close the border and eliminate asylum seekers are clear and well documented: death and human carnage inflicted on legal asylum seekers! See, e.g.https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjq1pmw_qWEAxUwL1kFHUbSDMIQFnoECBAQAw&url=https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/migrant-protection-protocols#:~:text=According%20to%20Human%20Rights%20First,individuals%20sent%20back%20under%20MPP.&usg=AOvVaw2ehZRBR_jXYoI41NZZN2DK&opi=8997844.

We also know that abuses of forced migrants at our borders fall disproportionately on the who are Black, Hispanic, or other people of color. See, e.g., https://humanrightsfirst.org/library/card-us-discrimination-against-black-migrants-refugees-and-asylum-seekers-at-the-border-and-beyond/ .

So, here’s a more intellectually honest “rewrite” of today’s lead editorial:

POST EDITORIAL BOARD: Death, Murder, Rape, Torture, Assault, Robbery, Extortion, Kidnapping of Hispanics, Blacks, Other Forced Migrants A Small Price To Pay For Bipartisan Deal To Outsource Migration To Gangs, Cartels, and Traffickers!

We Must Not Only “Turn Away The St. Louis,” But Torpedo It So Every Man, Woman, & Child Goes To The Bottom Where They Will Be Effectively Deterred From Ever Again Invoking Our Laws & Moral Obligations!

Nowhere, and I repeat nowhere, are the voices of those with decades of actual hands on experience working with migrants at the border, and the voices of those migrants themselves, being heard and heeded in this “non-debate” that resulted not in a “compromise” but in a “human rights giveaway.” What gives us the right to arrogantly and immorally give away rights and human lives that are NOT ours in the first place as if they were “table favors at a political fundraiser?“

As Beatriz so pointedly said:

Hanging above our heads like a Florida cockroach threatening to fly into our faces was the fact that the Biden administration, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Chris Murphy, and Democrats who voted for the bill had officially moved the goalpost on immigration.

Thanks to the moral vapidity of Dem politicos and the Administration the “game” for the lives, rights, future, and human dignity of asylum seekers is now being “played” between the “Good Guys’”goal line and their ten yard line! We are being offered a “choice” between “cruel and stupid” and “crueler and dumber!” Certainly, the Dems and our nation could and should do better!

Supporting fairness, orderly processing, and actions that protect asylum and the community would be a far more prudent choice for Dems than the virulent “death to asylum craze” (the unstated part of which is that it also means “death to asylum seekers”) that currently seems to be “in vogue” with both parties and mindlessly hyped by the media. 

It’s quite possible that Souzzi won not because of his extreme position on asylum, but because his position was “less extreme” that that of his GOP opponent and her openly xenophobic party. This conclusion is actually supported by polls that show that while most voters understandably want “order at the border,” they also want to protect the right to claim asylum and a fair process for doing so. See, e.g.https://wp.me/p8eeJm-9hU.

There is opportunity here for Dems to change minds and create a stronger coalition for asylum seekers and other immigrants. NGO experts like Beatriz Lopez need to partner with Congressional Dems who understand asylum and the border (like Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX)) to reach out and meet with Rep. Souzzi and others like him to explain practical solutions and useful changes at the border that would create order while maintaining and enhancing fair and timely asylum processing. 

Among these is the low-budget, common sense proposal advanced by retired Wisconsin Judge Thomas Lister and me for “Judges Without Borders,” essentially “leveraging” voluntary service by trained, retired State and Federal Judges to work with groups informing and advising individuals before they make the dangerous journey to our Southern Border. Budget-friendly humane solutions that can reduce the pressure on the border should be a bipartisan winner. Read more about our proposal here! See https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/12/13/%F0%9F%91%A9%F0%9F%8F%BD%E2%9A%96%EF%B8%8F%F0%9F%91%A8%F0%9F%8F%BB%E2%9A%96%EF%B8%8F-%E2%9A%96%EF%B8%8F%F0%9F%97%BDjudges-without-borders-an-innovative-op/

Beyond that, advocates must explain and model how migrants themselves can help resolve the problems facing Rep. Souzzi’s district and improve the quality of life for all. They must show how migrants are “part of the solution,” perhaps, for example, by establishing public-private partnerships that would involve migrant communities in constructing high-quality, attractive affordable housing that would help the entire community. Working on various civic improvement projects might also be a mutually beneficial option.

Advocates, NGOs, and political supporters of migrants must do more than just point to graphs and cite statistics about the long-term economic and societal benefits of immigration. They must actually model and create practical joint projects and expand opportunities for the benefit of migrants and the communities to which they have been relocated. 

Problem-solving needs to be brought into the “here and now” rather than just being presented to U.S. communities as a vague promise of future benefits. My experience is that most people react to what’s before them today rather than than relying on a constructed view of tomorrow, now matter how attractive and statistically supported that future vision might be.

In addition to the misguided “Miller Lite nonsense” from the editorial board and, disappointingly, even the usually responsible and insightful Karen Tumulty, today’s WashPost contained useful observations from Eduardo Porter about the need to get migrants to places in the U.S. where they, their job skills, and their work ethic would be welcomed, appreciated, and useful.

But, both the Biden Administration and Congress have shamefully failed to convert this “low-hanging fruit” into reality. Even worse, that has allowed White Nationalist demagogues like Abbott and DeSantis to waste and divert millions in public funds to make the situation worse and to convert those who want to help America succeed and prosper into hapless “political footballs” being tossed back and forth between GOP nativists and wimpy Dem politicos who long-ago lost their moral bearings. Although NGOs and advocates are weary and overburdened, if they don’t take the initiative to make this happen, on at least some scale, the opportunity will be lost and the nativist myth-makers will prevail.

Only by modeling actual results in real time will we be able to demonstrate the fallacy and counterproductivity of the GOP’s nativist “burden myths.” There’s no time like the present to start!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-15-24

🗽🤯 ASYLUM SEEKERS & OTHER REFUGEES ARE FORCED MIGRANTS WHO MAKE OUTSIZED CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERCA ONCE ALLOWED TO WORK — They Can’t Understand Why Biden & Dems Are Abandoning Them By Giving In To GOP White Nationalists — Human Lives Shouldn’t Be Bargaining Chips! — Biden Vows To “Shut Down The Border,” But MAGAMike Says It’s “Not Enough” Cruelty,🏴‍☠️ As “Bipartisan Race To The Bottom” 🤮 Heats Up & Media Suffers Amnesia! 🤕

Border Death
Human lives and human dignity at our border have become mere “bargaining chips” and “collateral damage” to cowardly negotiators of both parties. Will history hold them accountable for their outrageous and immoral conduct? This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
n order to comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/us/politics/parole-immigration-biden-congress.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Zolan Kanno-Youngs reports for the NYT:

Artem Marchuk needed to escape Ukraine or die. He didn’t see any other options.

He and his wife and children had been living in Bakhmut, the site of the war’s deadliest battle. Even when they made it out of the city, nothing in Ukraine felt safe.

“My kids were very hungry,” Artem’s wife, Yana, said in an interview from the family’s home in Baltimore, where the U.S. government resettled them in 2022. “There was darkness everywhere.”

The Marchuks are among more than a million people whom the Biden administration has allowed into the United States over the past three years under an authority called humanitarian parole, which allows people without visas to live and work in the United States temporarily. Parole has been extended to Ukrainians, Afghans and thousands of people south of the U.S.-Mexico border fleeing poverty and war.

Now the program is at the heart of a battle in Congress over legislation that would unlock billions of dollars in military aid for some of President Biden’s top foreign policy priorities, such as Ukraine and Israel.

Republicans want to see a severe crackdown on immigration in exchange for their votes to approve the military aid — and restricting the number of people granted parole is one of their demands.

For Mr. Marchuk, the fact that a program that saved his family has become a bargaining chip on Capitol Hill feels wrong. Although the latest version of the deal would mostly spare Ukrainians seeking parole, he feels a deep sense of solidarity with other people — regardless of their nationality — who may be left behind if Congress imposes limits on the program.

Americans, he said, should welcome people like his family. Mr. Marchuk, a former technology in Ukraine, said he has found work helping other refugees with the advocacy organization Global Refuge, as well as driving for DoorDash, UPS and Amazon since he arrived in Baltimore.

“Refugees deliver these packages,” said Mr. Marchuk, 36. “American citizens who have an education,” he said, very often don’t want to work as drivers.

. . . .

The particulars of the deal in Congress are still being negotiated. A deal that is being discussed in the Senate seeks to reduce parole numbers by tightening immigration enforcement at the southern border.

That would not have a direct impact on the route that many Ukrainians took to America, since they generally do not arrive by the southern border. (Some Ukrainians do make it to the United States that way, however.)

But there is still deep uncertainty about whether the program will survive without changes.

Even some congressional Democrats who oppose substantially changing the parole program have acknowledged they may need to give in to some Republican demands to limit the program if they have any chance of passing the military aid package.

. . . .

As lawmakers debate the merits of the parole program, some immigrants in the United States say all the political talk glosses over the calamities in their home countries.

“People are dying left and right, being kidnapped and it’s just impossible,” said Valerie Laveus, who came to America from Haiti nearly 20 years ago and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2008. “I am concerned because I feel like a lot of times these people are having these conversations and they’re forgetting the human factor. They’re forgetting that they’re talking about lives.”

. . . .

Mr. Biden’s allies say restricting use of parole would very likely backfire.

“It means that people in desperate circumstances, who need protection, who need to leave, who need to flee, their options will be more limited, which increases the likelihood they choose the dangerous option of coming to the border,” said Cecilia Muñoz, one of Mr. Biden’s top immigration officials during the transition and co-chair of Welcome.US, an organization that helps Americans sponsor the resettlement of refugees to the United States.

Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting.

*******************************

Notably, according to this article, Congress appears ready to carve out a “White Guy Exception” for Ukrainians arriving from Europe. So much for the idea that current immigration policy by both parties isn’t “race driven” — with Hispanics and Blacks generally on the short end of the stick. 

Remarkably none of the politicos “negotiating” away the lives of others have the guts to bear witness to the human pain, misery, torture, and death they are about to inflict on those seeking refuge at our Southern Border. The GOP recently did a disgusting “dog and pony” show at the border, but refused to meet, despite requests, with their intended human victims, those assisting them, and local humanitarian religious groups and NGOs. See https://immigrationcourtside.com/2024/01/11/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-expert-to-congress-fix-your-border-mess-stop-picking-on-asylum-applicants-ruth-ellen-wasem-the-messenger-do-they-really-think-that-raising-the-bar-will-dete/.

By contrast, high level politicos of the Biden Administration and Congressional Dems avoid the border like the plague, except for the few who represent border districts. They are not that much different from GOP nativists. They refuse to engage with border experts, those who have devoted their lives to assisting forced migrants at the border, and the migrants themselves, who certainly will face severe harm, even death, due to the cowardly “sellout” by Congressional Dems and the Administration.

Let’s be very clear about the documented consequences of eliminating asylum at the border:

NEW YORK – With Congress considering codifying additional policies that will trap asylum seekers in Mexico, Human Rights First today reports that it has tracked over 1,300 reports of torture, kidnapping, rape, extortion, and other violent attacks on asylum seekers and migrants stranded in Mexico since the administration’s asylum ban was enacted in May.  

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwifws7dj_yDAxUSEVkFHUZmC50QFnoECA0QAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fhumanrightsfirst.org%2Flibrary%2Fhuman-rights-first-details-violence-against-asylum-seekers-at-u-s-border%2F%23%3A~%3Atext%3DNEW%2520YORK%2520%25E2%2580%2593%2520With%2520Congress%2520considering%2Cstranded%2520in%2520Mexico%2520since%2520the&usg=AOvVaw0Q1cbvPBwyaGST5Aww5e_z&opi=89978449

Basically, those pushing to appease the GOP White Nationalist restrictionists at the border are knowingly and intentionally advocating for deadly human rights violations! How is that acceptable?

Foreign-born workers consistently have a higher labor market participation rate than native-born workers. https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-immigrants-are-in-the-american-workforce/. Consequently, there is little reason to doubt that new waves of migration ultimately will benefit the U.S., particularly the many U.S. cities, large and small, in danger of depopulation and “death.” Ironically, many of the localities with the most to gain from robust migration are in “red” states. https://apple.news/AQkO0JQjKS9aXF-V-RD9-_Q

Instead of planning to avoid these “ghost towns,” using the influx of individuals who seek to help us as an opportunity, we’re “strategizing” and spending huge amounts of money expelling, “deterring,” imprisoning, rejecting, dehumanizing, and even killing those who seek refuge!

There are legitimate issues as to how to “front” services for asylum seekers until they can obtain work authorization and find jobs. THIS, is where bipartisan cooperation, creative solutions, and resources could be focused, rather than exclusively on counterproductive and expensive gimmicks to punish, deter, and deny. But, there’s no chance of that!

Instead, in an example of how far the one-sided debate has departed from reality and human decency, Biden now vows to “shut the border” if Congress will only give him the authority! https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/26/biden-vows-shut-down-an-overwhelmed-border-if-senate-deal-passes/. But, that’s apparently not enough cruelty and xenophobia for MAGAMike and his White Nationalist insurrectionists! They seek eradication of the lives and humanity of anybody with the temerity to seek refuge in the U.S. 

Lost in this latest burst of bipartisan xenophobia are the “Dreamers” who are part of our nation’s future. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/26/congress-border-deal-daca-immigration-dreamers/. Although already contributing mightily to our nation’s success, they too are victims of the political cowardice and dehumanization that is now par for the course on both sides of the aisle.

And so it goes, ever onward and downward. The media has developed amnesia on the well-documented unmitigated disaster and cascade of human suffering that our nation’s most recent border shutdown generated. As stated by expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick on “X:”

Will the DC press (not those on the immigration beat) continue to ignore the fact that the last time we “shut down the border” under Title 42, it did not work and in fact led to 15 out of 20 of the highest months for border apprehensions in the 21st century?

We don’t know yet who the “winners” of the 2024 election will be, other than traffickers, cartels, exploiters, private prison corporations, undertakers, and body bag makers! But, we already know the “losers:” asylum seekers, Dreamers, human rights, persons of color, and those brave souls who continue to stand up for truth and equal justice for all!

Dem politicos and the Administration seem to be counting on the view that the Trump GOP is so horrible and antithetic to democracy that Dems can afford to dehumanize migrants, ignore their supporters, and break campaign promises without consequences. Just what they are getting in return isn’t obvious. From an immigrants rights’ and humanitarian standpoint, it’s “zilch.”

With Dems supposedly in charge of the Presidency and the the Senate, why are they ready to gift GOP restrictionists with what many have characterized as a “generational chance” to destroy asylum, hamstring legal immigration avenues, and squander even more money on hyper-cruel, race-driven, “sure to fail” border militarization and human rights violations?

Talk about “selling your soul!” That appears to have become the Democrats’ mantra in 2024. Whether it will prove a successful political strategy, remains to be seen!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-26-24

☠️ ⚰️ FIRST IT WAS IMMIGRANTS, THEN WOMEN, LGBTQ+, ELECTION OFFICIALS, TEACHERS, LIBRARIANS — GOP’S LATEST TARGET OF TOXIC LIES, CRUELTY, STUPIDITY:  Hungry Kids! 🤮 “The announcements by Reynolds and Pillen seem almost tailor-made to validate the adage that for Republicans, ‘life begins at conception and ends at birth.’” 

Michael Hiltzik
Michael Hiltzik
Author & LA Times Columnist
PHOTO: X

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=52a9eb75-c262-45a3-93e8-89f8e05a06b5

Michael Hiltzik writes in the LA Times:

Question: Is there anything more absurd than red state governors rejecting federal programs that directly benefit their constituents?

Easy answer: Yes. It’s the explanations they give to make their actions appear to be sober, responsible fiscal decisions.

The Republican governors of Iowa and Nebraska brought us the most recent examples of this phenomenon just before Christmas.

The issue in both states is a summer food program that provides $40 a month per child in June, July and August to families eligible for free or reduced-price school meals.

The program is known as the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer Program for Children, or Summer EBT. Its purpose is to give the eligible families a financial bridge during the months when their kids aren’t in school.

The governors didn’t see it that way. Here’s how Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds justified her decision to reject the federal subsidy

for low-income Iowans: “Federal COVID-era cash benefit programs are not sustainable and don’t provide long-term solutions for the issues impacting children and families.”

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen’s explanation was,

“I don’t believe in welfare.”

Both governors said their states already had programs in place to address food needs for low-income families, and that was enough.

It’s worth noting that the explanations by both Reynolds and Pillen are fundamentally incoherent. What does Reynolds even mean by calling the program “not sustainable”? It would be sustained as long as Congress continues to fund it, which is almost certain as long as Republicans don’t take control of both houses and kill it.

As for Pillen’s crack about “welfare,” he didn’t bother to explain what he believes is wrong with “welfare” as such; he just uttered the term knowing that it’s a dog whistle for conservative voters aimed at dehumanizing the program’s beneficiaries.

What makes these governors’ refusals so much more irresponsible is that the federal government is picking up 100% of the tab for the benefits; the states only have to agree to pay half the administrative costs. Their shares come to $2.2 million in Iowa and $300,000 in Nebraska, according to those states’ estimates.

In return, 240,000 children in Iowa would receive a total of $28.8 million in benefits over the three summer months, and 150,000 Nebraskans would receive a total of $18 million. Sounds like a massively profitable investment in child health in those states.

The governors’ defenses smack of the same strained plausibility of those statements made by banks, streaming networks and other commercial entities that explain that their price hikes and service reductions are “efforts to serve you better.”

. . . .

*************************

Read the complete article at the link.

Cowardly, irresponsible GOP governors pick on poor kids and their families.  And, the other things that might lift families out of poverty:  higher wages, shorter hours, more childcare, better health care, educational opportunities, vocational assistance, family planning assistance —   the GOP opposes them all in their totally corrupt and disingenuous “race to the bottom.” 

Just look at the amount of money GOP politicos have wasted on cruel stunts and gimmicks intended and guaranteed to make the humanitarian situation worse!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-04-23

😎👍🏼🗽🇺🇸BIDEN, DEMS GET THE JOB DONE FOR AMERICA ON INFRASTRUCTURE, WITH SOME BIPARTISAN SUPPORT FROM GOP!

President Joe Biden
President Joseph R.Biden
46th President of The United States
(Official portrait of Vice President Joe Biden in his West Wing Office at the White House, Jan. 10, 2013. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)..This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.)

😎👍🏼🗽🇺🇸BIDEN, DEMS GET THE JOB DONE FOR AMERICA ON INFRASTRUCTURE, WITH SOME BIPARTISAN SUPPORT FROM GOP!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

Nov. 7, 2021

After a long series of very public squabbles and false starts, President Biden this week delivered on one of his key campaign promises with a $1 trillion investment in America’s infrastructure. With a rebounding economy, it’s hard to think of any higher priority than rebuilding and modernizing America’s often crumbling roads and bridges, among other things. Directly or indirectly, that effort also should create lots of good jobs across the country.

Whether they are prepared to admit it or not, every American will benefit from this historic investment in our country. It remains to be seen however, whether the Dems will be able to reap any political capital from spearheading this achievement (with some bipartisan help). In the past, “messaging” about their substantial, positive achievements for all Americans has not been a Dem strongpoint. 

PWS

11-07-21

🛡🗽PROTECTING THE WORKERS WHO PROTECT US: Immigrants, Documented & Undocumented, Are The Core Of Our “Essential Workforce” That Has Carried Us Through The Pandemic — We Should Help Those Who Have Helped Us!

https://apple.news/A2LsyASukRaOXDQDOABC9cA

Jeremy Robbins writes in The Hill:

Before the inauguration, President Biden pledged a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. Then, hours after he entered the Oval Office, he introduced an immigration bill, The U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which aims to put millions of undocumented immigrants on a pathway to citizenship. At first glance, these initiatives seem unrelated; in fact, they are deeply connected. Combining them is the best way to help us battle the COVID-19 pandemic and recover from the recession. Here’s why.

In the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States and the world over learned a lesson about who was truly essential to the economy: the home health aides and nurses who care for the sick, the grocery and delivery workers who keep our stores and kitchens stocked, and the workers at our farms and food processing plants who keep our food supply chain from collapsing. These and so many other overlooked jobs — classified as “essential and critical” by the Department of Homeland Security — hold our society together, protect us, and make our economy work.

Large numbers of these essential workers are also undocumented immigrants. Over 78 percent of immigrants without legal status work in these fields, according to a report by UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative. They’re not just risking their lives to keep American citizens safe and help rebuild our economy, but they do so without legal protections and under the constant fear of deportation. That’s inhumane. But it’s also dangerous for Americans. With hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients surpassing 52,000, Congress must follow the lead of countries like France and give these essential workers a fast track to the citizenship they deserve.

It’s no secret that immigrants are helping to keep us all afloat. Despite being just 13 percent of the population, immigrants make up 37 percent of all home health aides and almost one third of all physicians and psychiatrists. With a very real threat of meat and poultry shortages at the beginning of the pandemic, immigrants filled more than a third of the tough food processing jobs and nearly half of all farm jobs picking our fruits and vegetables. And as parents across the country are placed in the impossible situation of balancing full-time work and parenting during a pandemic, once again immigrants help shoulder the burden, making up more than 20 percent of all childcare workers in day care centers.

And yet, despite all of this, our federal government acted as though we didn’t need these workers. As the pandemic raged, millions of immigrants were explicitly left out of the CARES Act relief efforts, as were millions of their U.S. born children and spouses who were penalized for having an unauthorized immigrant in the family. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration sought to shut the border to immigrant workers and students, all but stopped processing citizenship applications and ended asylum for people fleeing horrific violence. It also fought unsuccessfully all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to end protections for Dreamers, tens of thousands of whom are essential health care workers.

So what would an effective federal response look like?

. . . .

***************

Read the rest of Jeremy’s article at the link for his ideas on how to join immigration reform with economic expansion. 

Makes sense to me!

PWS

02-28-21

GETTING BEYOND THE RACIST MYTH OF THE “ZERO SUM GAME ECONOMY” — Heather  C. McGhee @ NYT

Heather C. McGhee
Heather C. McGhee speaks at TEDWomen 2019: Bold + Brilliant, December 4-6, 2019, Palm Springs, California. Photo: Stacie McChesney / TED, Creative Commons License

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/opinion/race-economy-inequality-civil-rights.html

Ms. McGhee is the author of “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together,” from which this essay is adapted.

Over a two-decade career in the white-collar think tank world, I’ve continually wondered: Why can’t we have nice things?

By “we,” I mean America at-large. As for “nice things,” I don’t picture self-driving cars, hovercraft backpacks or laundry that does itself. Instead, I mean the basic aspects of a high-functioning society: well-funded schools, reliable infrastructure, wages that keep workers out of poverty, or a comprehensive public health system equipped to handle pandemics — things that equally developed but less wealthy nations seem to have.

In 2010, eight years into my time as an economic policy wonk at Demos, a progressive policy research group, budget deficits were on the rise. The Great Recession had decimated tax revenue, requiring more public spending to restart the economy.

But both the Tea Party and many in President Barack Obama’s inner circle were calling for a “grand bargain” to shrink the size of government by capping future public outlays and slashing Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Despite the still-fragile recovery and evidence that corporations were already paring back retirement benefits and ratcheting down real wages, the idea gained steam.

On a call with a group of all-white economist colleagues, we discussed how to advise leaders in Washington against this disastrous retrenchment. I cleared my throat and asked: “So where should we make the point that all these programs were created without concern for their cost when the goal was to build a white middle class, and they paid for themselves in economic growth? Now these guys are trying to fundamentally renege on the deal for a future middle class that would be majority people of color?”

Nobody answered. I checked to see if I was muted.

Finally, one of the economists breached the awkward silence. “Well, sure, Heather. We know that — and you know that — but let’s not lead with our chin here,” he said. “We are trying to be persuasive.”

The sad truth is that he was probably right. Soon, the Tea Party movement, harnessing the language of fiscal responsibility and the subtext of white grievance, would shut down the federal government, win across-the-board cuts to public programs and essentially halt the legislative function of the federal government for the next six years. The result: A jobless recovery followed by a slow, unequal economic expansion that hurt Americans of all backgrounds.

The anti-government stinginess of traditional conservatism, along with the fear of losing social status held by many white people, now broadly associated with Trumpism, have long been connected. Both have sapped American society’s strength for generations, causing a majority of white Americans to rally behind the draining of public resources and investments. Those very investments would provide white Americans — the largest group of the impoverished and uninsured — greater security, too: A new Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco study calculated that in 2019, the country’s output would have been $2.6 trillion greater if the gap between white men and everyone else were closed. And a 2020 report from analysts at Citigroup calculated that if America had adopted policies to close the Black-white economic gap 20 years ago, U.S. G.D.P would be an estimated $16 trillion higher.

. . . .

I’ll never forget Bridget, a white woman I met in Kansas City who had worked in fast food for over a decade. When a co-worker at Wendy’s first approached her about joining a local Fight for $15 group pushing for a livable minimum wage, she was skeptical. “I didn’t think that things in my life would ever change,” she told me. “They weren’t going to give $15 to a fast food worker. That was just insane to me.”

But Bridget attended the first organizing meeting anyway. And when a Latina woman rose and described her life — three children in a two-bedroom apartment with bad plumbing, the feeling of being “trapped in a life where she didn’t have any opportunity to do anything better” — Bridget, also a mother of three, said she was struck by how “I was really able to see myself in her.”

“I had been fed this whole line of, ‘These immigrant workers are coming over here and stealing our jobs — not paying taxes, committing crimes and causing problems,’” Bridget admitted. “You know, us against them.”

Soon after she began organizing, the cross-racial movement had won a convert. “In order for all of us to come up, it’s not a matter of me coming up and them staying down,” she said. “It’s the matter of: In order for me to come up, they have to come up too. Because honestly, as long as we’re divided, we’re conquered.”

*******************

Read the complete article at the link.

Inability to think beyond racist myths and false narratives is holding America back from realizing our full potential. 

“Dividing and conquering” is the strategy of the modern GOP. If one could get behind the racist stereotypes and white resentment, rural America probably has far more in common with hard-working undocumented immigrants, African Americans, and Latinos than with elitist GOP politicos and corporate moguls — certainly more than with the notoriously lazy, dull, corrupt grifter Trump! But, the key seems to be to promote minority rule by sowing hate and distrust, thereby preventing the common good of the majority from prevailing.

While much of the “beggar thy neighbor” fear mongering comes right out of the current GOP playbook, Dems, including many in the Obama Administration, have also been guilty, as Heather points out. Just read some the alarmist stuff being put out by former Obama economic honcho Larry Summers.   

And, contrary to White Nationalist myths about “job stealing,” much of American economic growth and innovation can be traced directly to immigrants, both documented and undocumented. 

PWS

02-15-21

🇺🇸LOOKING FORWARD TO JAN 20: How The Biden Administration Can Reach Out To Rural America & Bring Our Nation Back Together! — Rural & Urban Areas Need Each Other To Maximize Growth & Prosper In The Future!

Rob Riley
Rob Riley
President, Northern Forest Center
Co-Founder, Rural Development Innovation Group
Picture: Aspen Group Website

https://www.pressherald.com/2020/12/30/commentary-how-to-make-federal-policy-work-for-maine-and-other-rural-places/

Rob Riley in the Portland (ME) Press Herald:

. . . .

President-elect Joe Biden, who pledged to serve all Americans, can respond boldly to address the needs of large swaths of rural America where people feel left behind. In the first 100 days of his administration, he can prove that he wants to see real change and will act to secure broader prosperity.

Drawing on more than 20 years of working in communities across four rural states, we see actionable, specific opportunities for Biden to make federal policy work for rural places. Here’s what we recommend:

• Engage in genuine conversations in rural places about the role of the federal government. The pandemic aside, fundamental economic changes, limited career pathways and crumbling (or non-existent) infrastructure plague many rural places. These challenges require public-private partnerships, directed by local needs and leadership. Many of the federal programs designed to address the underlying issues in rural places fail because they were designed for the rural reality of 1960, not of today. Let’s get current, understand why programs aren’t working and make them better.

• Elevate rural to the level it deserves in the president’s Cabinet. Rural places are currently served through a web of programs spread across numerous federal agencies. One might think this approach would help address policy deficiencies, but in fact, when everyone is in charge, no one is. The Biden administration can send a strong message that it means business by putting someone clearly in charge of its rural agenda and creating a new Department of Rural Development dedicated to improving, centralizing, and deploying the support and services necessary for rural people and places to thrive.

• Invest in doing economic development differently in rural places. Federal employees work diligently on their mission, providing grants and other services to constituents as directed by statute. And yet, the available tools for solving complicated, systemic and immediate issues are limited. To do economic development differently – and better – we need to eliminate programs that have limited utility, expand others that focus on building capacity in rural places, increase the flexible application of federal dollars and move the measurement of economic development outcomes beyond one-dimensional (and fleeting) metrics like job creation.

• Focus on and communicate about rural-urban connections rather than the divide. Rural places don’t benefit from being talked about as a monolith, a backwater or fly-over country. Rather, we as a nation need to raise up narratives and policies that recognize differences in rural places across the country, and that celebrate and support the natural, community, and economic assets that define those communities and their relationship to nearby urban areas. The stereotype of the American dream is changing. We now have a tapestry of rural, suburban and urban, and an opportunity to focus on collective prosperity rather than competition, exclusion and negative trade-offs.

The first hundred days will show how the Biden presidency will serve all Americans. Yes, there is a pandemic raging, but the widening gulf between rural and urban, rich and poor, red and blue requires a new tone, a new path and new solutions. Let’s get to it.

Rob Riley is president of the Northern Forest Center, a regional innovation and investment partner that creates rural vibrancy across Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York. The center co-founded the national Rural Development Innovation Group with the Aspen Institute and the U.S. Endowment for Forestry & Communities.

**************************

Read Rob’s full article at the link.

These are great, and timely ideas. They also present an outstanding opportunity to use the power of immigration to make our country a better place for everyone.

  • Immigrant entrepreneurs, small businesspeople, and investors can pool their ideas, skills, and resources with rural communities. Innovative rural Americans can help redesign and tailor methods that have worked in other countries for the American situation.
  • Immigrants with experience in agriculture and product marketing can help alleviate some of the labor shortages in rural areas.
  • Immigrants with tech skills can partner with rural Americans to help insure that, rather than sometimes being left behind, rural areas are on the cutting edge of accessible, high speed, state of the art technology that will integrate many educational and commercial activities with those now centered in “urban hubs.” (For example, why couldn’t a high tech area in rural America where land and housing are cheaper and a skilled (or highly motivated and trainable) workforce is eager for work be just as effective as Crystal City, VA as the next big tech hub?)
  • Immigrants with health service backgrounds can assist even more rural communities in insuring that first-class healthcare (and the jobs and economic opportunities it creates) is available everywhere in America.
  • My experience is that immigrants of all types, like rural Americans, highly value education, particularly for future generations. Innovative educational programs can be developed to meet the common needs of immigrant and rural communities. 

There are just a few of the opportunities that come to mind. Obviously, I’m not a labor economist. But, I’m sure that if immigrant advocates concentrate on ways to actively engage and integrate immigrants into solving problems and improving the quality of life in rural and small-town America there are many other great opportunities for success out there just waiting to be tapped.

Immigrants have always been “part of the solution” rather than “part of the problem” in America. After four years of counterproductive unrestrained bigotry, false narratives, and hate-driven lies, its time for “truth, justice, and the American way” to come to the forefront again.

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

01-02-21

🏴‍☠️THE TRUTH ABOUT THE “TRUMP ECONOMY” — Good For Trump Family & Other “Fat Cats” — Not So Much For Most Working Folks — Contempt For Workers Runs Deep In Today’s Elitist GOP & The Trump Kakistocracy! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: IMMIGRANTS & THEIR ADVOCATES NEED TO MAKE THEIR VOICES HEARD, NOW! (A “PWS Mini-Essay”)

Tara Golshan
Tara Golshan
Politics Reporter
HuffPost
UW- Madison Grad

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-american-dream-economy-pandemic_n_5f494aebc5b64f17e13d6e4d

Unemployment is in double-digits, renters are scared of eviction notices, aid is stuck, and economic recovery seems to have slowed.

By Tara Golshan

For HuffPost

Republicans want Americans to believe that Joe Biden would “demolish” the American dream.

“This election will decide whether we save the American dream,” Trump said while accepting the Republican nomination for president on the final night of the Republican National Convention. “Or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny.”

Speaker after speaker repeated the same message: Trump is the only candidate who can save the American dream, Democrats’ insistence on expanding the social safety net will stymie individuals’ opportunities, and Republicans are the party of dreaming big.

“Let me assure you, socialism doesn’t offer opportunity. Socialism deprives,” Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez said on the second night of the convention. “We can go down a dark road of chaos and government control, or we can choose the path of freedom and opportunity that was paved by those who sacrificed everything to preserve the American dream for future generations.”

But for many working Americans, policies under the Trump administration and Trump’s response to the pandemic have put the American dream further out of reach.

Trump’s message that he’s the savior of the American dream comes as the nation is in the middle of a widespread coronavirus outbreak, which public health experts and a vast majority of Americans say was worsened by Trump’s slow response. Unemployment sits at 10 percent, and the economy’s recovery has slowed over the summer months. Federal aid, which economists say kept upwards of 10 million people out of poverty, has been slashed or cut completely, as Republicans remain reluctant to continue unemployment benefits at the same levels.

Even before the pandemic hit and the economy appeared to be doing fine, Americans were dubious that there was an equality of opportunity afforded to everyone under Trump’s leadership.

In a January Pew Research Center survey, 70% of Americans said the economy was rigged in favor of the wealthy. There are partisan divides in the poll, with Republicans generally seeing the economy under Trump as fairer than Democrats do. But notably, 79% of lower-income Republicans said the wealthy had too much power today, and Democrats and Republicans agreed that small businesses were being overtaken by major corporations.

. . . .

***************

Thanks, Tara! Read Tara’s complete article at the link. Tara is a UW-Madison grad!

IMMIGRANTS & THEIR ADVOCATES NEED TO MAKE THEIR VOICES HEARD, NOW!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
Aug. 29, 2020

Truth is, Trump has no plan for reviving the American economy and is firmly opposed to equality. He hopes that the virus will go away or that he can shift the blame for his abject failure to deal with it to someone else (a false narrative already well underway). He has no clue on how to deal with businesses that will never reopen, jobs that no longer exist, industries (e.g., travel, hospitality, education) whose “traditional models” no longer will be economically viable, and workers whose ability to return to former jobs is limited by the long-term effects of COVID. 

What’s the regime’s plan to deal with mental health issues arising from unemployment or loss of loved ones? Beyond berating them for being sick or out of work, Trump and the GOP have no plan! Cut their unemployment, take away their health insurance, promote unsafe and exploitative working conditions, and immunize careless or negligent employers from liability — that’s the Trump/Moscow Mitch plan.

While I’m not a labor economist, I see evidence that the Trump regime’s gross mishandling of the pandemic, it’s glorification of myth over science, its open disdain for workers and their health and safety, and its nativist immigration restrictions will eventually cause a long term shortage of healthcare workers and teachers — essential workers whose lives and expertise are almost daily demeaned and devalued by the Trump regime and the GOP.

What’s Trump’s plan for African-American, Latino, and low-income communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID and its collateral effects? More police brutality? Terrorism by DHS agents? Forced labor? Starvation? Disenfranchisement? Public assistance cuts? Lousy education? Slash Social Security? Tax cuts for the rich? Dirty air? Polluted water? How will folks living “paycheck to paycheck” (at best) save for retirement? Work till they drop dead to support the Trumps and McConnells of the world and finance more tax breaks for the rich and powerful?

Biden and Harris have an established record of concern for all workers and all communities. They are certainly American worker’s best chance for a better life and a better future!

My observation is that the immigrant and particularly refugee and asylee communities have a disproportionate number of entrepreneurs, businesspeople, innovators, risk takers, and practical problem solvers who have been able to reinvent and often retrain themselves under the most difficult circumstances imaginable with minimal outside assistance. This community, their colleagues, and immigration and human rights advocates need to be working at the highest levels with the Biden/Harris campaign on a plan to reestablish legal immigration (including refugee and asylum programs) as an essential part of the overall plan to create jobs, develop new or improved industries and businesses, and get all Americans back to work in jobs that will be both satisfying and economically viable.

This plan that would include rebuilding, strengthening, and creating new opportunities within our healthcare, safety net, educational, and vocational programs rather than destroying and looting them as Trump and his cronies have done. It’s called “teamwork, innovation, and best practices,” and it’s an anathema to Trump and the GOP —  the party that promotes systemic economic inequality and despises and ridicules expertise and cooperative efforts.

Immigrants of all types and statuses have helped all of us get through the pandemic, notwithstanding the racist abuse heaped on them by Trump, Miller, Wolf, and the GOP. Robust legal immigration is, as it always has been, part of the solution, not (as the Trump/Miller false narrative would have it) part of the problem. 

And, to state the obvious, most of the so-called “undocumented population” in the US, residing (many with families including U.S. citizens or green card holders) working, paying taxes, and otherwise contributing to our society, mindlessly targeted by Trump and GOP nativists, could and should long ago have been integrated into our legal immigration system at some level. 

But, it’s up to the immigration and human rights experts to get into the “inner circles” of the Biden/Harris campaign now, and to place immigration in its rightful place as one of the keys to American equality and prosperity, rather than that being “left on the sidelines” as happened with Obama. 

In many ways, Trump and his fundamentally anti-America policies, as masterminded by neo-Nazi Stephen Miller, are the price we have paid for the Obama Administration’s negligent failure to harness the positive power of immigration and of the notable absence of true immigration/human rights policy experts and advocates from the key positions in his Administration. 

Immigrants and their advocates can’t let history repeat itself! Policy, legislation, administration, and indeed judging are just variants of “advocacy.” In this case “advocacy” of due process, fundamental fairness, human rights, practical problem-solving, and human dignity. That’s something that the GOP right wrecking crew “gets” but to which Dems and liberals sometimes seem willfully oblivious! 

We can’t afford to get it wrong again. And, neither can the Biden/Harris campaign or the American people! The stakes are simply too high!

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

Also, immigration and human rights advocates need to make their voices heard by Biden/Harris campaign! Now!

PWS

08-29-20

DEBUNKING THE TRUMP REGIME’S WHITE NATIONALIST MYTHS☠️: Furthering & Protecting Immigrants’ Rights Benefits Society — Bogus “COVID-19” Visa Restrictions & Other Nativist Nonsense Enabled By Feckless Congress & Failing Courts Hurts America!

Gaurav Khanna
Gaurav Khanna
Assistant Professor of Economics
U.S. San Diego

https://apple.news/AtzkkrgAGThCSMutjCZCjAg

 From SCIENMAG:

New Visa restrictions will make the US economic downturn worse

New research shows legal protections for immigrants improve lives and livelihoods of citizen workers

The Trump administration is expected to set limits on a popular program that allows international students to work in the U.S. after graduation while remaining on their student visas. The restrictions on the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program are designed to help American graduates seeking jobs during the pandemic-fueled economic downturn; however, the move is likely to further hurt the economy, according to new University of California San Diego research on immigrant rights.

In a new research paper, economists find that immigrant rights enhance the lives and livelihoods of native-born workers in many ways. Drawing from a sweeping collection of studies on the U.S. labor market over the past century, the paper is the first of its kind to look at how legal protections for immigrants affect domestic workers of immigrant-receiving countries in terms of generating income, innovation, reducing crime and increasing tax revenues.

One in eight persons living in the United States was born in a different country. Therefore understanding the impact of migrant worker rights on receiving economies is crucial to immigration policymaking, especially with the White House’s immigration policies growing more exclusionary during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This time the political restrictions seem to be on high-skill foreign-born, like students, OPTs and those with H1B visas,” said Gaurav Khanna, co-author and assistant professor of economics at the UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS). “Many high-skill workers have lost their jobs, which means many will have to leave the country soon. When the U.S. crisis abates, there may be a scarcity of high-skill professionals, which could stall a robust recovery.”

Legal protections for immigrants aid entrepreneurship and innovation

About 45 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. These companies amass more than $6 trillion in revenue per year and include tech-giants like Google-Alphabet, Microsoft, Tesla and Apple. With one in four of computer scientists born in a different country, the U.S. immigrant workforce comprises of many of Silicon Valley’s top entrepreneurs, current CEOs or company founders.

As entrepreneurs know, starting a business requires a lot of money up front while the return on investment may take years, but the benefits to the local populations prove to be very positive from the start.

With the economy contracting at unprecedented levels, the White House’s decision to impose more visa restrictions is expected make economic recovery more difficult because the less confidence immigrants have in their status, the less likely they are to seed innovation and create businesses.

Providing legal permanence and stability to immigrants may help incentivize long-term local investments like businesses which lead to an increase in jobs and a larger tax base, Khanna and co-author Anna Brown, a graduate of GPS’s Master of Public Policy program write.

H1-B under fire, despite its well-documented economic benefits

Most technology workers enter the U.S. on H-1B visas, which are temporary work visas that are valid for three years and renewable up to another three years. At the end of the six-year period, these highly-skilled workers must either leave the country or apply for a costly green card that has a long waitlist, particularly for citizens of India and China.

“Extending the H-1B limit or making the green card process easier would provide immigrants with a longer legal work status in the U.S. and allow employers to retain high-skill talent, which could have downstream effects on other industries that use software, like banking, manufacturing and other sectors,” the authors write.

Since the H-1B visa was in introduced in 1990, it has yielded many economic benefits. For example, U.S.-born workers gained $431 million in 2010 as a result of the H-1B, according to previous research from Khanna. Moreover, another study of his revealed that hiring H-1B workers was strongly associated with firms introducing newer products.

However, new restrictions to the H-1B, the same type of visa the founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, used to begin working in the U.S., could be released soon as the White House recently indicated it is reevaluating the program. This could yield another roadblock for the legalization of immigrants with entrepreneurial ambition.

“Unless immigrants are certain they will be allowed to remain within a country, they may not invest in developing a business in that country,” Khanna and Brown write. “This highlights a problem faced by many migrants who have ambitions to start businesses but will not because they know they may not be able to stay in the country for long.”

More protections for immigrants increases the likelihoods of jobs going to native born-workers, over immigrants

In addition to analyzing how immigrant rights aid entrepreneurship, Khanna and Brown also looked at how these policies impact the competition between native-born and immigrant workers. Immigrant worker rights protect migrant workers from employer exploitation; an indirect benefit of these laws is that they even the playing field between immigrants and non-immigrants.

“Migrant workers, who are not legally protected, face much lower wages compared with their native counterparts,” according to Khanna. “This is detrimental to U.S. born workers, who are less likely to be hired. Ensuring migrant workers have substantial rights inadvertently helps U.S. born workers as well.”

The study points to exclusionary immigration policies over the course of U.S. history, from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations’ policies targeted at farmworkers, all of which were driven by fear of low-skill laborers from other countries depressing wages of native-born workers in the U.S.

However, economist all over the world have been unable to find evidence that proves these theories. Rather, in each of these cases throughout U.S. history, employers adjusted to the missing workers in ways other than substantially bidding up wages, such as by shifting to production technologies that use less labor.

“Often, such policies have been motivated by resentment against foreign workers; however, this fear may be based on false perceptions and lack of evidence,” the authors of the paper, which appeared in the UCLA Journal of International Law & Foreign Affairs, write. “This resentment may also be driven by racial prejudices and xenophobia.”

Rights for immigrants also lower crimes in receiving countries

Even as the discussion on the impact of immigration has predominantly focused on wages and employment, the current U.S. President has strongly alluded to a link between immigrants and crime, propelling growing discourse on the subject.

Between 2001 and 2017, Gallup polls consistently reflected that roughly half (45 percent to 58 percent) of American respondents believe immigrants make the crime situation worse. These assumptions are false. The authors cite ample research that sheds light on incarceration rates being lower for immigrants, and far lower for newly arrived immigrants, revealing the baseline for criminal activity among immigrants is lower than native-born workers.

In addition, the authors point to previous studies that revealed a correlation between immigrant rights with decreased crime over the course of four decades (1970 to 2010).

“This is because the less protection and work opportunities immigrants have, the more likely they are to turn to criminal activity, as an act of desperation,” said Khanna. “Criminal behavior is widely understood to be a result of necessity and when given legal employment opportunities at livable wages, crime is reduced.”

For example, after the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of was implemented in 1986, which gave legal status to three million immigrants in the U.S., it led to a marked decrease in crime up to 5 percent.

Legal protections lower the fiscal burden and reduce deficits

Contrary to popular belief, undocumented migrant workers pay taxes, mostly income taxes, which are estimated to at $11.7 billion. Yet the number would be higher (by $2.2 billion) if undocumented migrants were granted legal status, an important consideration as the national deficit mounts in the wake of COVID-19.

Additional ways more protections for migrants would help domestic populous could be lower health care costs. Undocumented migrants may not be eligible for insurance, adding to healthcare costs in times of emergency.

“We find that the fiscal burden can be greatly reduced if immigrants are given working status and allowed to contribute to the tax base,” the authors wrote. “In conclusion, we find there are several areas where strengthening migrant worker rights benefits native-born workers, outweighing any costs borne by them.”

To read the full paper, go to the UCLA Journal of International Law & Foreign Affairs website.

Media Contact
Christine Clark
ceclark@ucsd.edu
https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/new-visa-restrictions-will-make-the-u.s-economic-downturn-worse

***********************

The fear mongering, racist lies, anti-scientific BS, and White Nationalist false narratives pushed by the Trump regime and enabled by a feckless Congress and complicit Article III Courts that refuse to give meaning to our Constitution and statutes while failing to require honesty and candor from the Administration are destroying America.

No, everything can’t be changed overnight. Sadly, the damage inflicted by Trump, his corrupt cronies, and his supporters on America and on our democratic institutions is huge; it will take years if not decades to repair. That’s what makes the exceptionally poor performance of Congress and the Federal Judiciary as a whole under the defective leadership of the Supremes so reprehensible. Far, far too many of the wrong people in the wrong jobs at the worst time in our history for fecklessness, lack of courage, and absence of integrity, not to mention empathy and compassion for “the other.” Disgraceful!

But regime change and appointing Federal Judges who demonstrate “community creds,” a commitment to due process, fundamental fairness, equal justice under law, human rights, and human decency would be an important necessary step to making social justice in America a reality rather than just a slogan. It would also help protect us against any future “Trump-style, neo-fascist regime.” 

This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it does!

 PWS

06-06-20

🏴‍☠️BRING IT ON! – “Moscow Mitch” 🇷🇺 Throws Down The Gauntlet, Challenges Trump For “Vilest Pol In America” 🤮☠️ — Can He Beat A Guy Who Uses The “Bully’s Pulpit” To Encourage Americans To Drink & Inject Poison? ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️ — Nobel Prize 🏆 Winning Economist Paul Krugman @ NY Times Tells Us How “MM” Can Go Even Lower: “So yes, McConnell’s position is stupid. But it’s also vile.”

Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman
American Economist, Columnist, & Nobel Prize Winner

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/opinion/mcconnell-coronavirus-states.html

 

Krugman writes, in part, in the NYT:

.  .  .  .

So yes, McConnell’s position is stupid. But it’s also vile.

Think of who would be hurt if state and local governments are forced to make drastic cuts. A lot of state money goes to Medicaid, a program that should be expanding, not shrinking, as millions of Americans are losing their health insurance along with their jobs.

As for the state and local government workers who may be either losing their jobs or facing pay cuts, most are employed in education, policing, firefighting and highways. So if McConnell gets his way, America’s de facto policy will be one of bailing out the owners of giant restaurant chains while firing schoolteachers and police officers.

Last but not least, let’s talk about McConnell’s hypocrisy, which like his stupidity comes on multiple levels.

At one level, it’s really something to see a man who helped ram through a giant tax cut for corporations — which they mainly used to buy back their own stock — now pretend to be deeply concerned about borrowing money to help states facing a fiscal crisis that isn’t their fault.

At another level, it’s also really something to see McConnell, whose state is heavily subsidized by the federal government, give lectures on self-reliance to states like New York that pay much more in federal taxes than they get back.

We’re not talking about small numbers here. According to estimates by the Rockefeller Institute, from 2015 to 2018 Kentucky — which pays relatively little in federal taxes, because it’s fairly poor, but gets major benefits from programs like Medicare and Social Security — received net transfers from Washington averaging more than $33,000 per person. That was 18.6 percent of the state’s G.D.P.

True, relatively rich states like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut probably should be helping out their poorer neighbors — but those neighbors don’t then get the right to complain about “blue state bailouts” in the face of a national disaster.

Of course, McConnell has an agenda here: He’s hoping to use the pandemic to force afflicted states to shrink their governments. We can only hope both that this shameless exploitation of tragedy fails and that McConnell and his allies pay a heavy political price.

******************************

Read the rest of  Krugman’s article at the link.

Have we all just been transported to “Jonestown 1978” ☠︎⚰️☠️⚰️?” Is our “Clown Prince” 🤡 actually the reincarnation of Rev. Jim Jones 🏴‍☠️?

Tired of being in the “Blue Majority” supporting “Red America” while excluded from control of our National Government? Tired of a Government of self-centered grifters — incapable of governing responsibly and in the public interest, but great at lining their pockets and those of their fat cat backers? Tired of an “Amateur Night at the Bijou” foreign policy that diminishes our nation and makes us the laughingstock the world? Tired of dealing with dirty water, polluted air, and crumbling bridges while the “Chief Clown” 🤡 sharpens his golf game? Tired of a kakistocracy that’s also a kelptocracy 💸 and practices nepotism? Tired of expensive health care that too often doesn’t improve the health of our nation? Tired of wages stagnating and benefits disappearing while the stock market goes bonkers and execs and shareholders get big payouts? Tired of lousy, anti-democracy judges 👨‍⚖️ who advance the interests of corporations, guns, and the GOP over the rights and dignity of individuals under our laws? Tired of paying the salaries of Neo-Nazi bigots like Stephen Miller? Tired of funding the “Afternoon Clown Show” 🤡 from the White House every day and dealing with its never-ending stream of dangerous ☠️ lies, misrepresentations, and fabrications?

Vote ‘Em Out, Vote ‘Em Out!

This November, send the “Clown Prince” 🤡, MM 🤮, and the rest of their anti-American party of disunity, incompetence, disorder, cruelty, stupidity, racism, and grift packing!  Vote like your life depends on it! Because, it does!

PWS

04-24-20

 

THANK UW LAW: Unemployment Insurance Was The Brainchild of Two Amazing UW Law Students Who Were Also In Love — It All Began In L-1 Torts! — PLUS: The “Wisconsin Idea” Continues Today Through The Work of Professor Erin Barbato!

Michael S.Rosenwald
Michael S. Rosenwald
Enterprise Reporter
Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/04/18/unemployment-checks-great-depression-coronavirus/h

Michael S. Rosenwald writes in the WashPost:


A line to apply for unemployment benefits in San Francisco in 1938. (Library of Congress)

A line to apply for unemployment benefits in San Francisco in 1938. (Library of Congress)

They first laid eyes on each other in torts class.

It was 1923, a period of prosperity before the Great Depression.

He was the son of Walter Rauschenbusch, a prominent theologian and key figure in the Social Gospel movement. She was the daughter of Louis Brandeis, the progressive Supreme Court justice and the most famous Jew in America. Each inherited their parents’ zeal for social justice.

At the University of Wisconsin Law School, these two idealists — Elizabeth Brandeis and Paul Raushenbush — noticed each other immediately. She was brainy and shy, her hair long and dark. He was handsome and outgoing. On hikes and canoe outings, they fell in love romantically and intellectually — a partnership instrumental in passing the nation’s first unemployment compensation law.

The story of how they did it is largely forgotten, but the 22 million people who have applied for unemployment during the coronavirus pandemic — and, of course, the millions before them — have this unlikely couple to thank. The law they conceived of and helped pass in Wisconsin laid the foundation for unemployment insurance throughout the country.

“Their story is absolutely staggering to think about right now,” said their grandson Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, a Baptist minister and senior adviser for public affairs and innovation at Interfaith Youth Core, a nonprofit organization. “It was their life’s work to make laws like this available to everyone.”

Raushenbush, who lives in New York, has spent the last few years writing a history of his family, including interviewing his father, Walter, who is 92 and lives in McLean, Va. Raushenbush was working on the unemployment insurance section as the coronavirus pandemic arrived in America.

Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush and Paul Raushenbush. (Courtesy of Paul Brandeis Raushenbush)
Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush and Paul Raushenbush. (Courtesy of Paul Brandeis Raushenbush)

As part of his research, Raushenbush has been reading a privately published book his grandparents wrote based on interviews they gave to a Columbia University oral history project. The book is the story of the legislation — where the idea came from, the characters involved, how the law was ultimately passed.

“It really reads like a novel,” Raushenbush said.

The main characters, of course, are his grandparents.

And Wisconsin.

His grandmother moved there to attend law school. She had lost her job as a researcher for the D.C. Minimum Wage Board following the Supreme Court’s ruling that the minimum wage for women was unconstitutional. Justice Brandeis, who as a lawyer and jurist was renowned for his progressive stance on social issues, did not cast a vote because of his daughter’s job.

E.B., as she was known to family and friends, wanted a career at the intersection of economics, labor and the law. She hoped to attend an elite East Coast law school, but those programs, including Harvard, where her father studied, didn’t accept women. With her father’s approval, she chose the University of Wisconsin, where the “Wisconsin Idea” — fusing academic research to solving social problems — was flourishing.

“I have no doubt that the Wisconsin Law School is good enough for your purposes,” E.B.’s father wrote to her, “and should think it probable that you would find economics instruction, and doubtless, other considerations more sympathetic there than at Yale.”

Her future husband chose Wisconsin for the same reason. There, the couple studied under professor John R. Commons, an influential social economist who crafted Wisconsin’s workers’ compensation law. Commons tried and failed several times to pass legislation protecting unemployed workers, whose numbers were soaring, especially after the stock market crash in 1929.

Paul Raushenbush signing the paperwork for the first unemployment compensation check in 1936. (Courtesy of Paul Brandeis Raushenbush)
Paul Raushenbush signing the paperwork for the first unemployment compensation check in 1936. (Courtesy of Paul Brandeis Raushenbush)

Commons took a particular interest in his graduate students, inviting them for regular dinners on Friday nights to discuss societal problems.

“I suppose the characteristic thing about Commons was that he was trying to use his brains and enlist the brains of his students in attempting solutions of economic problems,” Raushenbush said during the Columbia University oral history interviews. “This was no ivory tower guy. Sure, he did research and wrote books, but perhaps the main interest that attracted his students was that they were being invited to participate in an attempt to deal with difficult problems on an intelligent basis.”

By 1930, E.B. and her husband both were teaching economics at the University of Wisconsin. They had become friends with Philip La Follette, the local district attorney, whose parents were friends with Justice Brandeis. One day in June, La Follette invited the couple, along with another Wisconsin economist, Harold Groves, to his house in Madison.

La Follette told them he planned to run for governor, that he planned to win, and that he wanted to pass legislation instituting unemployment compensation. He asked the trio to come up with a plan.

And did they ever.

They spent the weekend hiking along the Wisconsin River batting around ideas. Their key idea — one that survives today — was that the benefits should be funded entirely by employers, thus giving them the incentive to maintain steady levels of employment or bear the cost of not doing so. The economists also decided that Groves, who grew up on a Wisconsin farm, should run for the State Assembly and introduce the legislation.

Everything clicked.


In 1932, Wisconsin Gov. Philip La Follette signs the nation’s first unemployment measure into law. Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush and Paul Raushenbush are second and third from the left. (Courtesy of Paul Brandeis Raushenbush)
In 1932, Wisconsin Gov. Philip La Follette signs the nation’s first unemployment measure into law. Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush and Paul Raushenbush are second and third from the left. (Courtesy of Paul Brandeis Raushenbush)
The first unemployment check issued in Wisconsin. (Wisconsin Historical Society)
The first unemployment check issued in Wisconsin. (Wisconsin Historical Society)

. . . .

********************

Read the rest of the article in the WashPost at the link.

Scholarship, teamwork, creativity, hard work, and a healthy dose of romance produces results that are still “making a difference” today. Nice story! Beyond that, it’s an inspiring story for today’s world.

What if we had more folks like the Raushenbusches in government today? Folks looking for ways in which government could work to make the lives or ordinary working people better. Compare that with the “Trump Kakistocracy,” a bunch of self-centered incompetents mostly out to disable government, screw working folks, line their own pockets, glorify and suck up to their “Supreme Leader-Clown,” and shift blame for their mess, all while attempting to advance a destructive far-right political agenda that cares not for the public good! Then we had folks like Phil La Follette; now we have Stephen Miller!

Professor Walter Brandeis Raushenbusch, the son of Elizabeth & Paul, was on the faculty of U.W. Law when I was there from 1970-73. However, I never had him for a class. We did study the “LaFollette Era” and its contributions to President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” in several of my classes.

I believe that U.W. Law gave me a strong grounding in teamwork with my colleagues (now retired Wisconsin State Judge Thomas S. Lister was one), how to apply scholarship to achieve practical results, and solving complex problems.

Speaking with Judge Lister earlier this year during a “pre-lockdown” visit with his wife Sally to D.C., I could see how our time together at U.W. Law had a continuing profound influence on both of our careers, particularly the “judicial phases.” In our different ways, we were always striving to establish “best practices,” promote “good government,” and make the “system work better” for the public it served. Just like some of the “progressive ideas” that were interwoven with our legal education in Madison. “Teaching from the bench” was how I always thought of it. Sometimes we succeeded, other times not so much; but we were always “in there pitching,” even up to today. See, e.g., the “Lister-Schmidt Proposal” for an Auxiliary Judiciary for the U.S. Immigration Courts here: https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/08/19/an-open-letter-proposal-from-two-uw-law-73-retired-judges-weve-spent-90-collective-years-working-to-improve-the-quality-delivery-of-justice-in-america/.   We haven’t given up on this one!

Thomas Lister
Hon. Thomas Lister
Retired Jackson County (WI) Circuit Judge

And, the “Wisconsin Idea” is still alive and thriving at U.W. Law, thanks to dedicated professors like my good friend and fellow warrior for the “New Due Process Army,” Professor Erin Barbato, Director of the U.W. Immigrant Justice Clinic. Erin uses creative scholarship, teaches practical, usable, courtroom and counseling skills, promotes teamwork, and saves “real lives” in her work with asylum seekers and other migrants. She is also a role model who is inspiring a new generation of American lawyers committed to advancing social justice and guaranteeing Due Process and fundamental fairness for all. Indeed, Erin was a guest lecturer at my Georgetown Law class and inspired my students with her courage, energy, and real life examples of “applying law to save lives!” It really made the “textbook come alive” for my students! Thanks for all you do, Erin!

Professor Erin Barbato
Professor Erin Barbato
Director, Immigrant Justice Clinic
UW Law

On Wisconsin!

On Wisconsin!
On Wisconsin!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-19-20

POLITICS: DANIEL DENVIR @ LITERARY HUB: The Case Against Immigration Centrism – Liberals Inevitably Get Co-Opted Into “Nativism Lite” & The Result Is Donald Trump & His Overtly White Nationalist GOP!

Daniel Denvir
Daniel Denvir
American Journalist

https://apple.news/ASCSwefgISM2mLjzRVdJeWQ

 

When It Comes to Immigration, Political Centrism is Useless

With Trump in office, things can seem absurdly bleak. But after Republicans lost the House, it became clear that Trump’s first two years were for nativists a critical opportunity to reshape the contours of the American demos. And they blew it: Republicans had total control of government yet legislative cuts to legal immigration went nowhere. Meanwhile, Democratic voters are moving sharply left in the face of accelerating Republican extremism. The percentage of Americans calling for a decrease in legal immigration has plummeted since the early 2000s—particularly but not exclusively among Democrats. Indeed, since 2006 Democratic voters have swung from a strong plurality supporting legal immigration cuts to a stronger plurality backing increased legal immigration.

In promoting attacks on “illegal immigration” and militarizing the border, establishment politicians from both major parties inflamed popular anti-immigrant sentiment. But they helped move the Overton window so far right that it snapped loose of its bipartisan frame, prompting vociferous resistance on the left. The war on “illegal immigrants” was based on a bipartisan consensus. It is becoming very partisan. That’s good.

As nativists well know, immigration means that we the people is increasingly made up of people who don’t look like Trump and his base. And they correctly worry that immigration is driving a large-scale demographic transformation that could ultimately doom the conservative movement—a prospect that the most honestly racist figures on the far-right call “white genocide.” Non-white people disproportionately vote Democrat—a trend gravely exacerbated by unconstrained Republican racism that has alienated even wealthy and economically conservative non-white people. Demographics aren’t destiny. But thanks to the foundational role that racism plays in American capitalism, they do mean quite a bit.

In August 2019, Trump finally implemented an aggressive attack on legal immigration, expanding the definition of what makes an immigrant “likely to become a public charge” and thus excludable from the country.28 The rule further empowers immigration officers to deny entry to poor and working-class immigrants, particularly from Latin America, or to deny immigrants already in the country a green card. The rule radically expands a provision of US immigration law dating back to the Immigration Act of 1882 and, before that, to New York and Massachusetts’s enforcement targeting Irish paupers. The Migration Policy Institute predicts that the rule “could cause a significant share of the nearly 23 million noncitizens and U.S. citizens in immigrant families using public benefits to disenroll.” And visa denials under Trump had already skyrocketed before the new rule was in place.

It is unclear how profoundly the rule will reshape either the size or the class, national, and racial makeup of legal immigration. But regardless, the new rule is a reflection of Trump’s inability to secure cuts or changes to legal immigration in Congress. The rule will very likely be rolled back under even a milquetoast Democratic president. The same holds true with Trump’s deep cuts to refugee admissions, and the draconian proposal pushed by some in his orbit to cut admissions to zero. Trump is effectively terrorizing migrants in the present but failing to secure the enduring legislative change that would outlast his presidency.

There is no majority constituency today for enacting such legislation—nor any viable institutional vehicle for it. Whatever opportunity existed to leverage a white-grievance-fueled presidency toward a full nativist program has faded even as the right clings to power thanks to the system’s profoundly anti-democratic features. The left is nowhere near winning. But it is at long last emerging as a real force in clear conflict with both the Trumpist right and the center that facilitated its rise.

For Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Obama, Biden, Feinstein, Schumer, and a host of other Democrats, a measure of nativism was useful. Quite a bit more than that has proven necessary for Republicans. But too much nativism is a problem: no rational capitalist favors shutting out exploitable migrant labor. As Karl Marx wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire, political stances that seem rooted in principle are in reality founded—if often in indirect, unconscious, and obscure ways—in “material conditions of existence.” This is no doubt the case here.

The United States has undergone decades of enforcement escalation, fashioning a useful scapegoat for neoliberalism and empire while maintaining a segmented labor market. But business frequently lost too, most spectacularly with the repeated defeat of comprehensive immigration reform. Business wants the undocumented to be legalized and guest workers who provide the benefits of undocumented labor without the risk. But what perhaps best reflects—but by no means exclusively reflects—the power of business is what hasn’t happened: deep legislative cuts to authorized immigration have been consistently off the table for more than two decades. This has been the case since the 1996 legislation to slash legal immigration was defeated in favor of a law to persecute undocumented immigrants and “criminal aliens.” The immigration debate has taken on a bizarre and contradictory life of its own. The unspeakability of cuts to authorized immigration, and the failure to impose effective employer sanctions and employment verification systems reveal that immigration policy was still tethered, narrowly but firmly, to the interests of capital. With Trump, full nativism is spoken. But substantial immigration reductions still cannot pass Congress.

A full examination of the complex role of business, the rich, and their various factions during the past two decades of immigration politics is yet to be written. Some of its basic contours, however, are clear. For one, the capitalist class has become recklessly polyphonic. Lumpen-billionaires like the Mercer family and the Koch brothers have spent vast amounts to promote their ideologically distinct priorities rather than those of the collective. The Tanton network is a case in point: it received more than $150 million since 2005 from the Colcom Foundation, founded by the late Mellon heir Cordelia Scaife May. Ironically, independent right-wing oligarchs who pursue idiosyncratic agendas now rival the Chamber of Commerce for influence thanks to the policy achievements of groups like the Chamber of Commerce, which helped those oligarchs make and keep their billions. But does establishment big business even care about immigration anymore?

Political scientist Margaret Peters argues that productivity gains and globalization’s facilitation of an overseas supply of low-wage labor has led to a lessening of business’s need for immigrant workers, resulting in more restriction. The evidence for this, however, is mixed. On the one hand, business has not won a major legislative expansion of immigration since 1990. But it has also not suffered a major defeat. What’s clear is that business can tolerate border security theatrics and the demonization of “criminal aliens,” and is content to exploit undocumented workers. As anthropologist Nicholas De Genova writes, “It is deportability, and not deportation per se, that has historically rendered undocumented migrant labor a distinctly disposable commodity.”34 Business opposes dramatic cuts to authorized immigration, effective employer sanctions, and mandatory employee verification. Business prefers legalization, but that doesn’t rival priorities like tax cuts and deregulation; if it did, business would abandon the Republican Party. The roles played in immigration politics by business interests with various and often bipartisan attachments require further research, which will in turn help to clarify the woefully under-studied sociology of ruling class power more generally.

Meanwhile, business’s hold on the Democratic Party has come under intense assault. The war on “illegal immigrants” that accelerated in the 1990s is facilitating a realignment of left-of-center politics in favor of a diverse, immigrant-inclusive working class in opposition to war, neoliberal oligarchy, and hard borders. The post–Cold War dominance of carceral neoliberalism had made such a popular coalition impossible; the exhaustion of that model signaled by the 2008 crisis has made it astonishingly credible. Record deportations and a radicalizing racist right triggered a revolt among the Democratic Party’s young and increasingly diverse base. That base has along with much of American public opinion moved to perhaps the most staunchly pro-immigrant position in American history—and, in doing so, toward a radically inclusive vision of the American working class. Amid a post-Recession boom in labor militancy, that portends trouble for the entire political establishment and the racist and oligarchic order it protects.

Trump’s election set that trajectory into overdrive, rendering opinions on immigration a basic proxy for one’s partisan allegiance. Border militarization that once garnered bipartisan support is now the polarizing Wall. Obama’s brutal migrant detention centers have under Trump been labeled “concentration camps.” The number of Republicans who believe that the United States risks losing its national identity if the country welcomes immigrants from the world over has increased since Trump’s election.35 At the same time, Democrats have become more hostile to enforcement. In 2010, 47 percent of Democrats said that they equally prioritized a pathway to legalizing undocumented immigrants and “better border security and stronger enforcement of immigration laws,” while just 29 percent prioritized a pathway to legalization alone. By 2018, the number prioritizing legalization alone skyrocketed to 51 percent. As the war on immigrants kicked into high gear in 1994, just 32 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans agreed that immigrants strengthened the country. By 2016, the share of Democrats who said so had surged to 78 percent.

Extreme polarization, the establishment’s bête noire, is in fact the only solution to the long-standing bipartisan agreement that immigration is a problem for enforcement to solve. Demanded and rejected, oppressed and expelled, this country’s many others have long insisted that the promise of American freedom, designed for if never truly delivered to white settlers, belongs to them too because they too are the people. And contrary to what Trump’s presidency might suggest, a growing number of Americans agree and are turning against nativism and war. Racism is, as the remarkable number of Americans embracing socialism understand, an obstacle to freeing everyone.

The issue of borders is, in turn, a simple one in principle for socialists: borders are a nationalist enterprise and thus incompatible with an internationalist workers’ creed. Migration is a symptom of social violence when it is compelled by poverty, war, or climate change. But moving to faraway and strange places is often a beautiful journey too, one nurtured by love, adventure, and the drive for self-determination and realization. Migration should be free and the choice to migrate should be freely made. The border does not protect Americans against cultural change, economic insecurity, and terrorism. It bolsters a system of global inequality that harms people everywhere by dividing them.

Even with public opinion moving rapidly to our side, border controls will not fall anytime soon. To chip away at them, we must understand their historical particularity. The legal right to travel was, for most white people, a basic one for much of American history. It remains so for wealthy people, particularly those with passports from rich countries. Border controls arose in the United States not out of any neutral law enforcement principle but to exclude Asians, Jews, Italians, Latinos, blacks, Muslims, and other Others in the service of an exploitative and expansionist empire. Our land borders began to harden only alongside the rise of industrial capitalism, and were only militarized in recent decades.

If Democrats stick to the center on immigration, they will find themselves fighting on two fronts. A fight against Republicans, with the left at their back, will be far easier to win—and a more noble victory. Simple realism dictates that no legislation to grant citizenship to millions will be passed until Republicans are defeated. There’s no use trying to appease them. The bipartisan consensus supporting harsh immigration and border enforcement has fractured. Democratic elected officials need to catch up or be defeated too. It’s the task of the left to accelerate the nascent split, demanding radical reforms that correspond to our dream of a world where no human being is illegal. We must transform nation-states so that they no longer divide workers but instead are conduits for the democratic control of our social, economic, political, and ecological futures.

We must urgently develop demands for policies that will not create an open border overnight but a radically more open border soon. The border must be demilitarized, which would include demolishing the hundreds of miles of already existing wall and dramatically downsizing the Border Patrol. Criminal sanctions on illegal entry and reentry and the public charge rule must be repealed. Links between ICE and local law enforcement created by Secure Communities and 287(g) must be broken. Opportunities for legal immigration, particularly from Mexico and Central America, must be expanded. The right to asylum must be honored. And citizenship for those who reside here must be a stand-alone cause, unencumbered by compromises that are not only distasteful but also politically ineffectual—and that today would provoke opposition from both the nativist right and the grassroots left.

 

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The nativists start with lies, myths, and distortions. The liberals start with truth and humane values. They used to meet in the “center right” which is “nativism lite” and bad news for migrants and for humane values.

 

With some logic, Denvir argues that the nativist right has now come “out of their shell” and just advocates against all foreigners and for maximum human cruelty.  In other words, complete dehumanization and abandonment of the common good: A trashing of the “Statute of Liberty” (see, e.g., Stephen Miller & “Cooch Cooch”) and an obliteration of the real, diverse America, a nation of immigrants, in favor of a mythical “Whitbread” version that never really existed (as American has always been heavily reliant on the labor of non-white immigrants — but they often were intentionally kept without social standing or political power).

 

In many ways, the right’s abandonment of the “pro-immigration, anti-illegal immigration” false narrative frees liberals to explore more robust, realistic immigration policies that would serve the national interest, recognize the truth of American as a rich and diverse nation of immigrants, and, perhaps most helpfully, sharply reduce the amount of time, effort, and goodwill squandered on ultimately unrealistic and impractical immigration enforcement schemes and gimmicks (see e.g., “The Wall” & “The New American Gulag”). In that context, immigration enforcement could be rationalized and made more efficient to serve the actual national interests rather than the political (and sometimes financial) interests of the far-right nativist minority.

 

Interesting thoughts to ponder.

 

PWS

 

01-17-20

NICOLE NAREA @ VOX: “CONFIRMING THE AMERICAN DREAM” –Debunking Another Trump White Nationalist False Narrative: Even The Poorest Immigrants Quickly Adapt & Become Self-Sufficient! — “The adult children of immigrants, almost universally, show more upward economic mobility than their peers whose parents were born in the United States.”

Nicole Narea
Nicole Narea
Immigration Reporter
Vox.com

https://apple.news/A54Jcss-aTZ21cr6npgpyDA

Nicole Narea reports at Vox News:

 

A new study shows that even the poorest immigrants lift themselves up within a generation

It appears that the idea of the “American Dream” has some truth.

By Nicole Narea@nicolenarea  Nov 1, 2019, 2:20pm EDT

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Carmen del Thalia Mallol holds her daughter Lia, 4, after becoming a new US citizen during a naturalization ceremony inside the National September 11 Memorial Museum on July 2, 2019, in New York City. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The adult children of immigrants, almost universally, show more upward economic mobility than their peers whose parents were born in the United States. Indeed, a new working paper by Stanford University’s Ran Abramitzky; Princeton University’s Leah Platt Boustan and Elisa Jácome; and the University of California Davis’ Santiago Pérez finds that this is especially true for the lowest-income immigrants and remains true for the most recent cohorts for which data is available.

Drawing from census data, publicly available administrative data, and federal income tax data, they traced the income levels of millions of fathers and sons over time dating back to 1880. The children of immigrants climbed higher in the income rankings than those born to US natives across history and in 44 of the 47 sending countries they studied.

The paper contradicts President Donald Trump’s rhetoric suggesting that immigrants drain the social safety net rather than pulling themselves up and that immigrants from a select few countries are more desirable than others. On that basis, the president has pursued numerous policies aimed at preventing low-income immigrants, particularly those from what he has referred to as “shithole countries,” from entering and settling in the US.

Even poor immigrants’ kids achieve success

Prior research has shown that immigrants who start out earning less than their US-born peers are unlikely to catch up in their lifetimes. And among more recent immigrants, that initial income gap is growing bigger and harder to close.

But the new study shows that, even if immigrants start out with low income levels, most are not only catching up eventually but surpassing their US-born peers — even if it takes a generation.

Even children of the poorest immigrants from most countries have higher levels of economic mobility than their peers born to American parents. https://economics.princeton.edu/2019/10/25/immigrant-mobility-abramitzky-boustan/

The typical explanation offered for this kind of immigrant achievement is some inherent quality resulting from cultural differences, such as a strong work ethic or placing a value on education. But the working paper offers a more tangible explanation for the mobility gap: Immigrants tend to settle where there is more economic opportunity and take jobs that are below their true skill level.

“We don’t even have to reach for these cultural explanations,” Boustan said in an interview. “A lot of it has to do with immigrants being willing to move anywhere and choosing locations where there are growing industries and a good set of job opportunities for their kids. Those are choices that immigrants are making that are different from the US-born and that could be a feature of immigrant success.”

It makes sense why immigrants choose to move to areas of higher economic opportunity as compared to the US-born. Without social and professional networks anchoring them to one place, they are more “footloose” and flexible in where they ultimately settle, Abramitzky said. Historically, that has meant that foreign-born populations tend to cluster in urban areas.

The first generation arriving in the US, however, might also have difficulty finding work at income levels that reflect their true talents and abilities due to a variety of factors: limited English skills, lack of an established professional network in the US, and discrimination, Boustan said.

A classic scenario might be a Russian scientist who comes to the US and works as a cab driver. In that case, the second generation might be able to move up more quickly than their father’s income ranking would suggest.

“What might matter for the kids is what their father’s true talents and abilities were, rather than where he gets placed in the labor market,” Boustan said.

The economic mobility gap, the paper finds, is particularly stark when examining the children of those on the lowest rungs of the income ladder, ranked below the 25th percentile. In that category, the children of immigrants climb three to six percentile rank points higher than the children of natives.

The gap narrows, however, when examining families from the top income levels. And it even reverses slightly when comparing children growing up in the same geographic area.

The paper, while expansive, has some limitations: It relies on federal income tax records that likely do not capture unauthorized immigrants, the primary target of the president’s ire as he attempts to make the southern border all but impenetrable to migrants from Central America attempting to cross illegally.

But it’s reasonable to speculate that unauthorized immigrants would also settle in areas of economic opportunity and take jobs below their skill level, potentially resulting in similar rates of economic mobility as compared to other immigrants, the researchers said. The only caveat could be that unauthorized immigrants and their children experience more discrimination in the US, limiting their access to higher-paying jobs.

All kinds of immigrants move up the ladder

Boustan said the paper pushes back on the idea of “model minorities”: that minorities from certain ethnic or racial backgrounds tend to find more socioeconomic success than others. It’s typically been used to describe Asians in contrast to Hispanics and African Americans. But regardless of race or ethnicity, children of immigrants from the overwhelming majority of the countries they studied performed better than the US-born.

The paper’s findings also challenge Trump’s ideas about who should be allowed to immigrate to the US.

In January 2018, he reportedly derided immigrants from what he considers “shithole countries,” including El Salvador and African nations, while simultaneously calling for “more people from Norway.” And he infamously maligned Mexican immigrants when launching his campaign for president in 2015.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us.”

In fact, immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, and African nations such as Nigeria are all performing better than the US-born. And in past waves of immigration, immigrants from Norway actually performed worse than the US-born.

“We take it as a warning against taking a nostalgic view of immigration,” Abramitzky said.

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Trump’s (and his fellow White Nationalists’) racist-inspired false narratives are harming America and preventing us from becoming even greater. Obviously, a smarter, more decent Administration would cut the xenophobic nonsense, legalize the law-abiding migrants already here, and propose ways to expand legal immigration across the board.

Those actions, not expensive, mean-spirited, and ultimately futile “enforcement only” gimmicks, would address the “immigration issue” in a fair, humane, and mutually beneficial manner. Also, by reducing the “unnecessarily undocumented population” and providing more realistic opportunities for future legal immigration and integration into our society, immigration enforcement would become far more focused, efficient, and effective.

Instead of treating needed workers and legitimate refugees like “bank robbers” (often actually ignoring the real criminals), the DHS could concentrate on a smaller number of individuals attempting to evade a more reasonable and realistic system.  Additionally, with real lines for legal immigration, rather than imaginary ones the Trump crowd often disingenuously references, being sent “to the back of the line” would be more of a deterrent than it is now.

Although, as Nicole points out, the study didn’t specifically cover undocumented individuals, the findings of this study certainly match my “real life” experiences in Immigration Court. The overwhelming majority of those coming before me on the non-detained docket were basically decent, law abiding folks performing productive functions in our communities. For a short time at the end of the Obama Administration, ICE actually recognized the futility of removing such individuals and exercised “prosecutorial discretion” (“PD”) through “administrative closing” in many cases where removal would actually diminish our nation while wasting limited court time.

Those very few individuals who ”flunked out” of the “PD program by getting in trouble were returned to court, usually on the detained docket, and in most cases removed. The others formed a “natural core” for a future legislative legalization program that a smarter,  kinder, braver Administration would have proposed.

Naturally, one of the first things the Trump White Nationalists tried to do was end two of the most successful programs ever instituted within DHS: DACA and PD. The results of these mean-spirited and short sighted actions have been highly problematic for the individuals involved as well as our country.

PWS

11-02-19