Lawful Permanent Resident (“Green Card Holder”) – Page 2

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S UGLINESS IS EVERYWHERE IN AMERICA! – Beloit College Grad/Honorably Discharged Army Vet Target For ICE Removal Despite Mattis’s Assurances To The Contrary!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/alex-horton

Alex Horton reports for the Washington Post:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement appears to have ignored a directive from prevent the deportation of noncitizen troops and veterans, seeking to remove a Chinese immigrant despite laws that allow veterans with honorable service to naturalize, court filings show.

Xilong Zhu, 27, who came from China in 2009 to attend college in the United States, enlisted in the Army and was caught in an immigration dragnet involving a fake university set up by the Department of Homeland Security to catch brokers of fraudulent student visas.

Zhu paid tuition to the University of Northern New Jersey, created by DHS to appear as a real school, long enough to ship to basic training using the legal status gained from a student visa issued to attend that school.

Then ICE found him and asked the Army to release him for alleged visa fraud. He left Fort Benning, Ga., on Nov. 10, 2016, in handcuffs as an honorably discharged veteran. He was detained for three weeks and released.

Zhu is waiting for a Seattle judge’s ruling on his removal proceedings, which are based on allegations by ICE that he failed to attend classes in violation of his student visa. His attorney says his client is a victim of federal entrapment.

Zhu’s case comes amid Trump administration pressure on immigration judges to speed up deportation proceedings in an apparent move to adjudicate more removals, aligning with President Trump’s stated goals.

But it also comes after Mattis said he would protect certain immigrant recruits who enlist through a program designed to trade fast-tracked citizenship for medical and language skills. Those assurances followed sustained controversy over how the Pentagon has exposed more than a thousand foreign-born recruits to deportation. A background-screening logjam began in late 2016 when fears of insider threats slowed clearances to a glacial pace.

[ A deported veteran has been granted U.S. citizenship, after 14 years of living in Mexico ]

“Anyone with an honorable discharge … will not be subject to any kind of deportation,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon in February, describing exceptions for those who commit a “serious felony” and anyone who has been authorized for deportation in an agreement he said was made with DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Zhu’s attorney, retired Army officer Margaret Stock, told The Washington Post those exceptions do not apply to him.

DHS referred questions to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Spokesman Jonathan Withington declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. ICE declined to provide a comment attributable by name.

But through court documents, ICE has interpreted the Mattis directive applies to a narrow group of foreign recruits that exclude Zhu. It’s unclear whether ICE consulted with the Pentagon on the subject, or if the agency has moved to deport other immigrant recruits since Mattis spoke in February.

Xilong Zhu at Army basic training graduation in 2016. (Xilong Zhu)

Zhu graduated from basic training on June 9, 2016, and was handed over to ICE custody months later, after the Army lost a battle to retain him, Stock said. Zhu was included in a group of “holdovers,” an Army term he disdains that refers to soldiers who fail training.

That wasn’t him.

“It made me nauseous to be lumped into that group,” he told The Post.

How Zhu got in his predicament is a strange, bureaucratic odyssey after he graduated from Beloit College in Wisconsin in 2013. He wanted to become a U.S. citizen, so he decided to enlist through the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program that his father in China had read about. It trades expedited citizenship for language and medical skills in short supply among U.S.-born recruits.

. . . .

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Gee whiz, I thought that spending a week with the grandchildren in Beloit, Wisconsin might get us away from most of the Trump zaniness. But, no such luck as this story about a Beloit College graduate hit during the week. No end to the ways that ICE can think up to waste taxpayer money, clog already overwhelmed Immigration Court dockets with cases that no responsible prosecutor would even file, and exhibit mindless cruelty and irrationality in the process. Small wonder that some pols are starting to suggest that American would be safer and better off without ICE.

PWS

04-06-18

TAL @ CNN: TRUMP’S “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT POLICIES LIKELY TO FAIL AND ACTUALLY AGGRAVATE FORCES DRIVING UNDOCUMENTED MIGRATION!

How Trump’s policies could worsen the migration issue he says he wants to solve

By Tal Kopan, CNN

President Donald Trump in recent days has decried “weak” US border laws that he says leave the US vulnerable to unfettered immigration — but some of his policies could have the effect of worsening a Central American migrant crisis.

Even as the Department of Homeland Security says the southern border “is more difficult to illegally cross today than ever before,” Trump has stepped up his hardline immigration rhetoric, calling on the US military to guard the US-Mexico border until his long-promised wall is complete. He’s hammered Mexico and other countries for policies that he says are disadvantageous to the US and that send unsavory individuals into the country.

But experts say the President has been pursuing other policies that could substantially harm Central America — and in doing so, he risks creating conditions that generate the exact kind of mass exodus north that he talks about wanting to solve.

Immigration is driven by what are called push and pull factors. The US has been seeking aggressive immigration powers to cut down on what they say are pull factors — the perception that immigrants can live illegally with impunity in the US. But those very policies could affect push factors — the conditions of poverty and violence that drive immigrants elsewhere out of desperation.

“The US sort of talks out of both sides of its mouth,” said Eric Olson, a Latin America expert at the nonpartisan Wilson Center.

“If you’re investing in the region to address the drivers of migration and at the same time pursuing a policy of large-scale deportation, or at least potentially large-scale deportation, and you’re creating more obstacles for people leaving the region for reasons like violence and so on, you’re really creating more instability, not less instability.”

(Much) more: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/04/politics/trump-migration-central-america/index.html

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As Tal says, there’s much, much more to her report on the total stupidity and counter-productivity (not to mention inhumanity) of the Trump Administration’s “Gonzo” enforcement policy. Go on over to CNN at the link to get the full picture.

I’ve been saying for some time now that Trump is pursuing facially “hard-line” policies that are proven failures. Indeed, that forced migration from Central America is a phenomenon that spans four decades and six different Administrations with varying degrees of “same old, same old” would suggest to rational leadership that a different approach is required.

Contrary to Trump’s oft-made bogus claim, his is not the first Administration to try a “close the border, detain and deter” policy. Beginning with Reagan, every Administration has tried largely the same thing (although perhaps without some of the inflammatory and outright racist rhetoric favored by the Trumpsters) and all have failed. I know because I’ve been involved in some aspect of trying to implement those failed policies in at least four of those Administrations, two GOP and two Democrat.

That’s why the trend of migration from the Northern Triangle continues and will continue and fester until we get some enlightened leadership that 1) correctly applies our refugee and protection laws in the generous humanitarian spirit they were intended; and 2) recognizes and starts to deal effectively with the “push” issues in the sending countries.

Contrary to the false narrative spread by current Administration, most Central American refugees that I encountered personally during my career would have preferred to remain in their home countries, if political and country conditions had permitted it. Indeed, many were forced by targeted violence to give up promising careers, studies, or businesses to flee for their lives to the U.S. Here, they often had to perform “entry-level” work to support themselves unless and until they achieved some type of legal status (often TPS , asylum, withholding of removal, CAT relief, Special Immigrant Juvenile (“SIJ”) status, or a green card under NACARA).

Of course, many were denied protection despite having very credible, well-documented fears of harm because they didn’t fit the intentionally restrictive asylum criteria engineered by the BIA over several Administrations largely as a result of political pressure on the system to be “unwelcoming” to Central American migrants. Some of those who returned were killed or disappeared; others were tortured or attacked again and forced to flee second or third times, now bearing the scars or injuries to prove their cases — only as “prior deportees” they were no longer eligible for asylum but had to accept withholding of removal or CAT deferral.

Nobody in this Administration, and sadly relatively few in Congress and among the public, are willing to deal honestly with the phenomenon of Central American migration and the “push factors” that will never, ever be controlled by more restrictive laws, more violations of statutory, Constitutional, and international rights, inhumane and life-threatening detention , and racist rhetoric. Nor will it be stopped by any bogus “Wall.”

As I’ve said before, “We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but that won’t stop human migration!” If only someone would listen!

PWS

04-04-18

NEW SCHOLARSHIP FROM PROFESSOR RUTH ELLEN WASEM, LBJ SCHOOL @ UT TAKES ON PROBLEMS OF 21ST CENTURY IMMIGRATION GOVERNANCE — “Immigration is not a program to be administered; rather, it is a phenomenon to be managed.”

Immigration Governance for the Twenty-First

Ruth Ellen Wasem The University of Texas at Austin

6 Journal on Migration and Human Security 97 (2018)

KEY QUOTE:

Even with fragmented governance and strained resources, the US immigration system has enjoyed successes. Each year, approximately one million foreign nationals legally become permanent residents in the United States. In FY 2015 and FY 2016, the Bureau of Consular Affairs issued over 10 million visas each year to foreign nationals coming to the United States as nonimmigrants (i.e., for a temporary purpose and a temporary period of time) and over half a million visas to LPRs (Bureau of Consular Affairs 2017). CBP admitted almost 77 million foreign nationals as nonimmigrant admissions to the United States in FY 2015 (Office of Immigration Statistics 2016). That year, DOL processed 711,820 employer applications for 1,580,778 positions for temporary and permanent labor certifications Immigration Governance for the Twenty-First Century 117 (Office of Foreign Labor Certification 2016). In FY 2015, there were 730,259 LPRs who became US citizens. That same year, the United States admitted 69,920 refugees, and USCIS approved 26,124 asylees. DHS apprehended 462,388 foreign nationals and deported 444,431 foreign nationals in FY 2015. Another 253,509 foreign nationals were denied entry, and 129,122 foreign nationals returned home without a formal order of removal (Office of Immigration Statistics 2016). In FY 2016, EOIR judges received 328,122 cases and completed 273,390, including those of 8,726 foreign nationals who were granted asylum (EOIR 2017). Considerable credit is due to the people carrying out immigration-related responsibilities across the federal government.

Immigration is not a program to be administered; rather, it is a phenomenon to be managed. While there are limits to how much one government can control migration, the building blocks in Figure 3 offer a reasonable set of priorities. Effective immigration governance, coupled with laws and policies that incorporate the national interests, is key to maintaining a robust sovereign nation.

Get the entire article, which I highly recommend, at this link:

Wasem,ImmigrationGovernance21st Century

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Words of wisdom, to be sure. If only our policy makers had the same degree of understanding.

Today, we operate on an illusion that a few folks sitting in Washington, D.C. can “pull all the strings” to seal borders, override market forces, ignore international conditions and agreements, change behavior in foreign countries, and dominate forces of human migration that have been at work since before all of us were born and will continue long after we’re all gone. It’s a toxic mix of arrogance and ignorance that will leave immigration and refugee policy in tatters for years to come.

I can only hope that there are those out there in the upcoming generations who will bring to the immigration phenomenon practical scholarship, reason, humanity, fairness, and better ideas on management of our laws for the benefit of our country and humanity as a whole.

PWS

03-07-18

BIA EXPOSEE: DID THE BIA SUPPRESS EVIDENCE IN MATTER OF J-C-H-F- THAT WOULD HAVE DIRECTLY UNDERMINED THEIR ANTI-IMMIGRANT RULING? — HON. JEFFREY CHASE THINKS SO, & HE HAS THE EVIDENCE TO BACK UP HIS CHARGE!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/3/2/matter-of-j-c-h-f-an-interesting-omission

Mar 2 Matter of J-C-H-F-: An Interesting Omission

In its decisions involving claims for protection under Article III of the U.N. Convention Against Torture, the BIA defines “government acquiescence” to include “willful blindness” by government officials.

In its recent decision in Matter of J-C-H-F-, the BIA addressed the criteria an immigration judge should use in assessing the reliability of a statement taken from a newly-arrived non-citizens at either an airport or the border. The BIA largely adopted the criteria set out by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in its 2004 decision in Ramsameachire v. Ashcroft.

Ramsameachire set out four reasonable factors for consideration: (1) whether the record of the interview is verbatim or merely summarizes or paraphrases the respondent’s statements; (2) whether the questions asked were designed to elicit the details of the claim, and whether the interviewer asked follow-up questions to aid the respondent in developing the claim; whether the respondent appears to have been reluctant to reveal information because of prior interrogation or other coercive experiences in his or her home country; and (4) whether the responses to the questions suggest that the respondent did not understand the questions in either English or through the interpreter’s translation.

Both the Second Circuit in Ramsameachire and the BIA in J-C-H-F- applied these criteria to the statement in question in their respective cases; both found the statement reliable, which led to an adverse credibility finding due to discrepancies between the statement and later testimony. But there is a big difference between the two cases. Ramsameachire was decided one year before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which is part of the U.S. government, published the first of its two reports (in 2005 and 2016) assessing the expedited removal system in which Bureau of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers encounter arriving asylum seekers. USCIRF conducted field research over several years before issuing each report. As I wrote in an earlier blog post summarizing these reports, USCIRF’s first recommendation to EOIR was to “retrain immigration judges that the interview record created by CBP is not a verbatim transcript of the interview and does not document the individual’s entire asylum claim in detail, and should be weighed accordingly.”

As I already noted in my prior post, USCIRF described its findings of the airport interview process as “alarming.” It found that the reports were neither verbatim nor reliable; that they sometimes contained answers to questions that were never asked, that they indicate that information was conveyed when in fact it was not. USCIRF found that although the statements indicated that they were read back, they usually were not, and that a CBP officer explained that the respondent’s initials on each page merely indicated that he or she received a copy of each page, and not that the page was read back to the respondent and approved as to accuracy.

The Second Circuit in Ramsameachire would have no way of knowing any of this, and therefore reasonably considered the statement to be a verbatim transcript which had been read back to the respondent, whose initials on each page were deemed to indicate approval of the accuracy of its contents. But the BIA in 2018 could claim no such ignorance. USCIRF had specifically discussed its reports at a plenary session of the 2016 Immigration Judge Legal Training Conference in Washington D.C., where the report’s co-author told the audience that the statements were not verbatim transcripts in spite of their appearance to the contrary. As moderator of the panel, I pointed out the importance of this report in adjudicating asylum claims. The person in charge of BIA legal training at the time was present for the panel, and in fact, had the same panelists from USCIRF reprise its presentation two months later at the BIA for its Board Members and staff attorneys. I personally informed both the chair and vice-chair of the BIA of the report and its findings, and recommended that they order a hard copy of the report. The report was even posted on EOIR’s Virtual Law Library, which at the time was a component of the BIA, under the supervision of the vice-chair (along with training and publication). I can say this with authority, because I was the Senior Legal Advisor at the BIA in charge of the library, and I reported directly to the BIA vice-chair.

In spite of all of the above, J-C-H-F- simply treats the statement as if it is a verbatim transcript, and noted that the pages of the statement were initialed by the respondent; in summary, the Board panel acted as if the two USCIRF reports did not exist. Very interestingly, sometime in 2017, the USCIRF report was removed from the EOIR Virtual Law Library. Based on my experience overseeing the library, I can’t imagine any way this could have happened unless it was at the request of the BIA vice-chair. But why would he have required the report’s removal?

If any reader has information as to when J-C-H-F- was first considered for possible precedent status by the BIA, please let me know via the contact link below.

Copyright 2018 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

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I can largely corroborate what Jeffrey is saying. I, of course, have been gone from “The Tower” for 15 years.

But I know 1) that BIA judges and staff were present during the USCIRF sessions at the Annual Immigration Judges Conference (in fact, I believe it was “required training” on religious asylum claims), 2) as an Immigration Judge I had access to the Annual Reports of the USCIRF and used them in my adjudications; 3) I was well aware, and believe that any competent EOIR judge would also have been aware, that airport statements and statements taken by the Border Patrol were a) not verbatim, and b) often unreliable for a host of reasons as pointed out by the USCIRF.

I am certainly as conscious as anyone of the precarious positions of BIA Appellate Immigration Judges as administrative judges working for the Attorney General. I’m also very well aware of the human desire for self-preservation, job preservation, and institutional survival, all of which are put in jeopardy these days by siding with immigrants against the DHS in the “Age of Trump & Sessions,” where “the only good migrant is a deported migrant.”

But, the job of a BIA Appellate Immigration Judge, or indeed any Immigration Judge, is not about any of these things. It’s about “guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.”

That means insuring that migrants’ rights, including of course, their precious right to Due Process under our Constitution, are fully protected. Further, an EOIR judge must insure that the generous standards for asylum set forth by the Supreme Court in Cardoza-Fonseca and by the BIA itself in Matter of Mogharrabi are fully realized, not just “rote cited.”

If standing up for migrants’ rights turns out to be job threatening or institutionally threatening, then so be it. Lives are at stake here, not just senior level US Government careers, as important as I realize those can be!

Unfortunately, I think today’s BIA has become more or less of a “shill” for the enforcement heavy views of Jeff Sessions, DHS, the Office of Immigration Litigation, and the Trump Administration in general.

What good is “required training” in adjudicating asylum requests based on religion if the BIA and Immigration Judges merely ignore what is presented? It isn’t like DHS or CBP had some “counterpresentation” that showed why their statements were reliable.

Indeed, I had very few DHS Assistant Chief Counsel seriously contest the potential reliability issues with statements taken at the border. And never in my 13 years on the bench did the DHS offer to bring in a Border Patrol Agent to testify as to the reliability or the process by which these statements are taken.

I can’t imagine any other court giving border statements the weight accorded by the BIA once the problems set forth in the USCIRF Report were placed in the record. And, I’m not aware that the DHS has ever set forth any rebuttal to the USCIRF report or made any serious attempt to remedy these glaring defects.

We need an independent Article I United States Immigration Court that guarantees Due Process and gives migrants a “fair shake.” Part of that must be an Appellate Division that functions like a true appellate court and holds the Government and the DHS fully accountable for complying with the law.

PWS

03-03-18

SPLINTERED SUPREMES PROVISIONALLY OK “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” — Trump/Sessions Successfully Fight To Preserve Obama Legacy Of Never-Ending “Civil” Immigration Detention — Case Remanded To Lower Court, But Alito & Fellow GOP Justices Show Scant Concern For Human (Non-Economic) Rights & Freedom Under Constitution!

Jennings v. Rodriguez, O2-27-18

MAJORITY: Chief Justice Roberts, Justices Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch

CONCURRING OPINION: Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch

DISSENTING OPINION: Justice Breyer, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor

NOT PARTICIPATING: Justice Kagan

HERE’S A COPY OF THE COURT’S FULL DECISION:

15-1204_f29g

ANALYSIS BY ERIC LEVITZ @ NEW YORK MAGAZINE:

“For much of his presidency, Donald Trump has appeared more committed to nullifying his predecessor’s legacy than to any affirmative political principle. The president campaigned on a promise to repeal Obamacare and expand access to affordable health insurance — but when these goals came into conflict, he opted for the former. Trump argued vociferously that rogue regimes must be blocked from acquiring nuclear weapons — then “decertified” an Obama-era nuclear agreement that did just that. He claimed to believe in regulatory policies that protect “clean air and clean water,” then rolled back Obama-era rules aimed at that objective. Trump praised Janet Yellen’s economic management — but still took the precedent-defying step of refusing to grant the Obama-appointed Federal Reserve chair a second term.

Nevertheless, for all his policy nihilism, the president can still occasionally put substance over spite, and admit that on this or that specific issue, Barack Obama actually had a point. Thus, on Tuesday the Trump administration celebrated the preservation of one piece of Obama’s legacy.

In 2014, a federal district court ruled that immigrants detained while awaiting deportation proceedings were entitled to periodic bond hearings. The lead plaintiff in the case was a legal permanent resident of the United States, Alejandro Rodriguez, who was arrested as a teenager for joyriding and misdemeanor drug possession – and then jailed for three years, without ever receiving a bond hearing, as his lawyers (successfully) contested his deportation. The federal judge ruled that Rodriguez had a legal right to request to await trial outside of a detention facility. The Obama administration disagreed, arguing that the federal government has the authority to decide whether any individual immigrant should be afforded that right – or whether he or she is simply too dangerous for such due process – even if the person in question is a legal permanent resident or asylum-seeker.

Upon his election, Trump set aside his differences with Obama, and continued his predecessor’s appeal. Even when the Ninth Circuit upheld the lower court’s ruling, Jeff Sessions & Co. persisted in their defense of the Obama Justice Department’s position.

And on Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority sided with the government in a narrow ruling: The justices did not rule that detained immigrants have no right to bond hearings under the Constitution; rather, they merely ruled that immigrants had no such rights under federal immigration law. As the New York Times explains:

The Ninth Circuit had ruled that bond hearings are required after six months to determine whether detainees who do not pose flight risks or a danger to public safety may be released while their cases proceed. The court based its ruling on an interpretation of the federal immigration laws, not the Constitution, though it said its reading was required to avoid constitutional difficulties.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority on Tuesday, said that this interpretive approach, called “constitutional avoidance,” was unavailable here, as the words of the immigration laws were plain. “The meaning of the relevant statutory provisions is clear — and clearly contrary to the decision of the court of appeals,” Justice Alito wrote.
This ruling will send the case back to the Ninth Circuit, which will have the opportunity to assess whether the Constitution requires bond hearings for detained immigrants.

Three of the court’s liberals opposed the decision, while Elena Kagan recused herself (due to relevant work she had performed as Obama’s solicitor general). In an impassioned dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer insisted that the court should have reached a determination on the underlying Constitutional question – and ruled that all human beings in the United States are entitled to our founding document’s basic protections.

“[W]ould the Constitution leave the Government free to starve, beat, or lash those held within our boundaries?” the Justice asked. “If not, then, whatever the [legal] fiction, how can the Constitution authorize the Government to imprison arbitrarily those who, whatever we might pretend, are in reality right here in the United States?”

“We need only recall the words of the Declaration of Independence, in particular its insistence that all men and women have ‘certain unalienable Rights,’ and that among them is the right to ‘Liberty,’” Breyer wrote.

But thanks to the bipartisan efforts of the patriots in our Justice Department, the Trump administration will remain free, for the moment, to indefinitely imprison any legal immigrants and asylum-seekers it wishes to deport.

And Trump wishes to deport quite a few — although he’ll need to get much more aggressive on that front, if he wishes to preserve the pace of deportations set by his predecessor.

But, as Tuesday’s ruling demonstrated, with enough will and bipartisan cooperation, there’s little the American government cannot do.”

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HERE’S WHAT JUSTICE ALITO, JUSTICE THOMAS & THEIR BUDDIES REALLY ARE SAYING BEYOND THE LEGAL GOBBLEDYGOOK:

The plaintiffs are neither corporations nor guns. They are mere human beings. Therefore, they are entitled to no Constitutional protections that we care to enforce.

FROM JUSTICE BREYER’S DISSENT:

The relevant constitutional language, purposes, history, traditions, context, and case law, taken together, make it likely that, where confinement of the noncitizens before us is prolonged (presumptively longer than six months), bail proceedings are constitutionally required. Given this serious constitutional problem, I would interpret the statutory provisions before us as authorizing bail. Their language permits that reading, it furthers their basic purposes, and it is consistent with the history, tradition, and constitutional values associated with bail proceedings. I believe that those bail proceedings should take place in accordance with customary rules of procedure and burdens of proof rather than the special rules that the Ninth Cir cuit imposed.

The bail questions before us are technical but at heart they are simple. We need only recall the words of the Declaration of Independence, in particular its insistence that all men and women have “certain unalienable Rights,” and that among them is the right to “Liberty.” We need merely remember that the Constitution’s Due Process Clause protects each person’s liberty from arbi trary deprivation. And we need just keep in mind the fact that, since Blackstone’s time and long before, liberty has included the right of a confined person to seek release on bail. It is neither technical nor unusually difficult to read the words of these statutes as consistent with this basic right. I would find it far more difficult, indeed, I would find it alarming, to believe that Congress wrote these statutory words in order to put thousands of individuals at risk of lengthy confinement all within the United States but all without hope of bail. I would read the statutory words as consistent with, indeed as requiring protection of, the basic right to seek bail.
Because the majority does not do so, with respect, I dissent.

ONE POINT THAT ALL EIGHT JUSTICES AGREED ON:

The 9th Circuit was without authority to rewrite the statute to require bond hearings at 6 month intervals with the DHS bearing the burden of proof on continuing detention.

PWS

02-27-18

TAKING THE “SERVICE” OUT OF USCIS — Agency’s Mission Is Now To Serve White Nationalist, Anti-Immigrant Agenda — REWRITING HISTORY — US No Longer A Nation Of Immigrants — How Did All These NWGs (“Nasty White Guys”) Like Trump Cissna, & Sessions Get Here, Anyway?

https://www.vox.com/2018/2/22/17041862/uscis-removes-nation-of-immigrants-from-mission-statement

Dara Lind reports for Vox News:

“US Citizenship and Immigration Services isn’t for immigrants anymore.

That’s not an exaggeration. USCIS, the federal agency responsible for issuing visas and green cards and for naturalizing immigrants as US citizens, has unveiled a new mission statement that strips out all references to immigrants themselves — including taking out a line that called the US a “nation of immigrants.” And in an email to agency staff Thursday, as first reported by the Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux, director L. Francis Cissna bragged about the change — saying that USCIS wasn’t supposed to help immigrants and the US citizens seeking to sponsor them, but rather “the American people.”

The new mission statement, and Cissna’s justification, downplays the agency’s commitment to helping immigrants become American citizens and plays up the idea that US citizens attempting to bring their family members to the US don’t count as real Americans whose interests deserve to be protected.

USCIS’s new mission statement doesn’t just reflect the Trump administration’s hawkishness toward legal as well as unauthorized immigration. It encourages the notion that Americanness is a matter of blood and soil, of birth and descent, rather than an idea that anyone can be proud of regardless of where they were born.

Taking “citizenship” out of the mission of Citizenship and Immigration Services
The changes to the USCIS mission statement don’t change the work the agency actually does. But they make a symbolic statement that the Trump administration sees that work differently not just from how the Obama administration did, but from our traditional understanding of what Americanness means.

It’s not just the removal of the “nation of immigrants” line. The new mission statement removes all references to citizenship — instead of “immigration and citizenship benefits,” USCIS now just provides “immigration benefits,” and “promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship” is kicked out of the mission entirely.

At the same time as the agency is deemphasizing the part of its job that involves turning immigrants into citizens, its new mission implies that the two groups — immigrants and Americans — are naturally in conflict:

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.
Cissna’s email also told USCIS staff that they’re not supposed to call applicants “customers” anymore because their real customers aren’t immigrants — they’re the American people:

Referring to applicants and petitioners for immigration benefits, and the beneficiaries of such applications and petitions, as ‘customers’ promotes an institutional culture that emphasizes the ultimate satisfaction of applicants and petitioners, rather than the correct adjudication of such applications and petitions according to the law. […] Use of the term leads to the erroneous belief that applicants and petitioners, rather than the American people, are whom we ultimately serve.” [emphasis added]
It’s an odd statement to make. For one thing, USCIS is the rare federal agency that isn’t primarily funded through taxes — most of the money to run the agency comes from application fees. Immigrants applying for visas, green cards, and citizenship — and the US citizens and companies that have to sponsor some of those applications — are paying USCIS for the services they provide. By a commonsense definition, that’s what a customer is.

But what’s even more jarring than the redefinition of “customer” is the definition of “American.” Cissna’s statement strongly implies that “applicants and petitioners” don’t count as part of the “American people.” That might make sense if he were talking just about people newly coming to the US, or even if he were distinguishing “Americans” from noncitizens. But he’s not.

The “applicants” Cissna refers to include immigrants who are applying for US citizenship — the part of USCIS’s function that got stripped out of the mission statement. Not only does the new mission statement suggest that helping immigrants become Americans is no longer part of USCIS’ job, but by distinguishing “applicants” from “the American people,” it suggests that they can’t.

Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of petitioners for immigrants are US citizens petitioning for family members (or American businesses petitioning for employees). Those citizens may have been born abroad, but they’ve naturalized. They are as American as anyone else.

Does the Trump administration believe immigrants can integrate?
USCIS tends to be the most obscure of the Department of Homeland Security’s three immigration agencies, precisely because it’s the one that doesn’t deal with immigration enforcement (Customs and Border Protection addresses border enforcement; Immigration and Customs Enforcement takes care of interior enforcement). But immigrant rights advocates have been worried about the agency.

Cissna worked for Senate Judiciary Committee Chair (and immigration hawk) Chuck Grassley (R-IA) before being appointed to USCIS. The agency’s ombudsman office, which is supposed to provide transparency to the people who used to be called “customers,” is headed by Julie Kirchner, the former executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform — a group whose mission includes reducing legal immigration to the US.

There are already indications that the new leadership is encouraging applications to be processed more slowly and with more scrutiny. In winding down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, they were more aggressive than Trump’s statements implied. At the same time, there’s been an apparent slowdown in the processing of naturalization applications and of work permits for some categories of immigrants.

By overhauling the mission statement, it’s clear that the new leadership wants to be noticed.”

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The White Nationalist attack on America continues. At least they don’t make any secret about their xenophobia and disdain for immigrants, their rights, and their advocates.

It’s “war.” That’s why we need the “New Due Process Army!”

PWS

02-23-19

THE HILL: NOLAN RAPPAPORT THINKS A COMPROMISE TO SAVE DREAMERS IS STILL POSSIBLE!

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/374580-make-the-compromise-ending-chain-migration-is-a-small-price-to-legalize

Nolan writes:

. . . .

Compromise.

A compromise is possible. It does not have to be a choice between the current chain migration system and a purely merit-based system. The two systems can be merged with the use of a point system.

Visas currently allocated to extended family members can be transitioned to a merit-based point system that provides extra points for family ties to a citizen or LPR. The merit-based aspect of the point system would eliminate the main objection to chain migration, which is that it allocates visas to extended family members who do not have skills or experience that America needs.

Trump’s framework also would terminate the Diversity Visa Program. Those visas could be transitioned to the new point system too.

This would be a small price to pay for a legalization program that would provide lawful status for 1.8 million Dreamers.

Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an executive branch immigration law expert for three years; he subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.“

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Go on over to The Hill at the link to read Nolan’s complete article.

I disagree with Nolan’s statement that extended family members don’t bring needed skills. As David J. Bier of the Cato Institute recently pointed out in the Washington Post, that argument is one of a number of “Myths” about so-called chain migration.

Bier writes:

“MYTH NO. 5
Chain immigrants lack skills to succeed.
In making his case for the president’s proposals last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, “What good does it do to bring in somebody who is illiterate in their own country, has no skills and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful?” This description distorts the picture of immigrants who settle in the United States.

Nearly half of adults in the family-sponsored and diversity visa categories had a college degree, compared with less than a third of U.S. natives. America would lose nearly a quarter-million college graduates every year without the family-sponsored and diversity programs.

Even among the 11 percent who have little formal education, there is no evidence that they aren’t successful. By virtually every measure, the least-skilled immigrants prosper in America. Immigrant men without high school degrees are almost as likely as U.S.-born men with college degrees to look for a job and keep one.

Family-sponsored immigrants are the most upwardly mobile American workers. Whether high-skilled or not, chain or not, immigrants succeed in and contribute to this country.”

I highly recommend Bier’s article

All of my many years of first-hand observation of family immigration at every level supports Bier’s analysis.

Indeed, even if I were to assume that the majority of extended family were so-called “unskilled” (meaning largely that they have skills elite restrictionists don’t respect) that would hardly mean that they aren’t greatly benefitting the US. In many ways, immigrants who perform important so-called “unskilled jobs” essential to our economy but which most Americans neither will nor can do well, are just as important to societal success as more doctors, professors, computer geeks, and baseball players. Fact is, immigrants of all types from all types of countries consistently benefit the US.

That being said, why not try something along the lines that Nolan suggests by taking the Diversity visas and establishing a “pilot program” that combines skills and family ties in a numerical matrix? Then, track the results to see how they compare with existing employment-based and family-based immigration.

PWS

02-21-17

BESS LEVIN @ VANITY FAIR: CORPORATE AMERICA HELPED DIVVY UP THE SPOILS AFTER TRUMP & THE GOP LOOTED OUR TREASURY – THEY APPROPRIATED MOST OF THE LUCRE, LEAVING MERE CRUMBS FOR WORKERS – BUT, WHEN THEIR “USEFUL IDIOT” TURNED HIS IDOCY ON “DREAMERS,” THEREBY THREATENING OUR ECONOMIC WELL-BEING, THEY WERE VERY UNHAPPY!

Bess writes:

When Donald Trump was running for president, absent any actual relevant experience, he claimed he was qualified for the job thanks to his superior deal-making skills—an argument that many ended up buying, despite vast stores of evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately for the U.S., what Trump didn’t explain—though laid out pretty clearly in his book The Art of the Deal—was that as a businessman, making “a deal” to him meant the other side loses, rather than both parties walking away with a happy compromise. “Sometimes, part of making a deal is denigrating your competition,” he wrote, because yes, he’s just that much of an asshole. But whereas his business-world competition could simply get up from the negotiating table and leave, sadly for America, that asshole is our president. And this week, we all got a taste of his singular deal-making style. Only instead of jockeying over some crappy Atlantic City casino or Versailles-inspired condo, this deal had to do with the fate of hundreds of thousands of people who might be sent back to a country they’ve never known because the president is a fraud.

Despite claiming over and over that he has a “big heart” where DACA recipients are concerned, that he wants to come up with a solution before the March 5 deadline he set, and that if lawmakers came to him with an agreement, “I will be signing it,” Trump this week chose to torpedo Congress’s best stab at a bipartisan deal. With four proposed Senate bills to protect the Dreamers from deportation, the White House chose to “work vigorously to oppose” a centrist bill that had the best chances of passing, with the Department of Homeland Security claiming it amounted to “mass amnesty for over 10 million illegal aliens.” While the Common Sense Coalition measure, sponsored by eight Republicans, seven Democrats, and one independent, would have provided $25 billion for border security, including Trump‘s precious wall, it would have done so over a period of 10 years and not immediately, as the man-child in the Oval Office has demanded. “I don’t think the president helped very much,” Senator Lindsey Graham, told The New York Times, adding, “As long as the president allows Steve Miller and others to run the show down there, we’re never going to get anywhere.” Thanks to Congress’s paralysis, experts estimate that more than 100 DACA recipients are losing their status daily. And Trump’s the business world is pissed.

“I’ve been very worried for quite a while that I was watching a train wreck in slow motion, and yesterday we had that train wreck,” Tamar Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, an alliance of small businesses, told the Financial Times. Echoing the sentiment was Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, who noted: “We have people who are working here contributing to our society. Many of them are in the manufacturing sector. We don’t want to lose those folks. And frankly our country shouldn’t want to lose those folks—especially in manufacturing where we have 364,000 open jobs.” Earlier in the week, Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein said in interview, “I couldn’t bear the idea of sending outside the country someone who grew up here his or her entire life,” adding that “over time, immigrants add to the economy because they bring in skills,” a data point the administration would rather not hear. To that end, the Cato Institute estimates that if the employers lost all of their DACA employees, it would set businesses back $6.3 billion in worker-turnover costs.

You might think a guy who just delivered a billion-dollar tax break to corporations would remain invested in keeping those corporations happy. But of course, Trump doesn’t deal in facts, so such negotiating points are lost on him. Art of the Deal, indeed.

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“Putin’s Idiot” Donald Trump specializes in taking potential “win-win” situations and turning them into “lose-lose.” That’s certainly what he has done with the Dreamers. And, we all share in their loss.

Nevertheless, if our country survives, the Dreamers will end up better than Trump and his apologists. The Dreamers aren’t going anywhere, for the most part. But, I’m betting that we will see a number of the super slimy folks who served Trump in the White House or his campaign headed for jail (or at least a few years of “supervised release.”).

PWS

02-17-18

TAL @ CNN – STATUS OF PARENTS STICKING POINT IN SENATE DREAMER NEGOTIATIONS

http://www.cnn.com/2018/02/14/politics/daca-parents-flashpoint/index.html

DACA parents become flashpoint in negotiations

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

As the debate over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program goes down to the wire, the parents of the young undocumented immigrants affected — not the recipients themselves — may be the trickiest flashpoint.

Negotiations on a bipartisan Senate plan have been thorny on the issue of what to do about the parents, according to sources familiar with the group’s discussions, and comments from lawmakers. And threading the needle could be the difference on whether it can get 60 votes.

“If you deal with the parents now, you lose a lot of Republicans. If you try to do the breaking chain migration now, you lose a lot of Democrats,” South Carolina’s Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said of the talks. “We’re going to say that parents can’t be sponsored by the Dream Act child they brought in illegally.”

According to a draft of the bipartisan deal obtained by CNN, the compromise would prevent parents from being sponsored for citizenship by their children if the children received citizenship through the pathway created by the bill or if the parents brought them to the US illegally. That leaves Democrats grappling with the idea that they may have to trade protections for DACA immigrants for a penalty for their parents, who brought them to the US illegally.

“I don’t like that part,” Hawaii’s Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono said, leaving a meeting of Democrats where they were briefed on the bill, though she indicated she may be able to accept it as a compromise.

At issue are laws that allow US citizens to sponsor family members for eventual citizenship, including parents.

The Trump administration and allies have seized on the issue of family-based migration as a wedge, arguing that all forms of family sponsorship except spouses and minor children should be cut.

But even Republican moderates who don’t support that position are concerned about the implications for parents of recipients of DACA.

If eligible young immigrants are granted a path to becoming citizens in roughly a decade, as per most proposals, that could allow them to sponsor their parents down the road — though experts say it’s not that simple.

Conservatives object to the notion that parents who came here illegally could eventually be rewarded with citizenship.

In a call with reporters on Wednesday, a White House official said that without blocking parental sponsorship for people who came to the US illegally with their children, a deal “would massively incentivize” more illegal immigration and would create a “perverse incentive of adult illegal immigrants to (not) enter illegally without their children.”

How to do it is tricky. Lawmakers agree it’s impossible to create a class of citizen that has different rights than others, so that leaves either cutting parental sponsorship for all citizens, a massive cut to current legal immigration or specifically addressing parents of DACA immigrants.

Advocates and experts point out that it’s false to claim that a DACA pathway would quickly, or even easily, allow parents to get citizenship.

The law already requires that individuals who came to the US illegally and have been here without status for more than a year — statistically a substantial majority of DACA parents — are required to return to their home countries for at least 10 years before they can apply for green cards. Nothing in proposed legislation would remove that requirement, which would come after a 10- to 12-year waiting period for the children.

After that, all of those individuals would still have to meet other requirements on all green card applicants, including clean criminal records and being able to prove they could support themselves once here. Advanced age can be used as a factor to reject immigrants on the latter grounds.

William Stock, a partner at Klasko Immigration Law Partners and the former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said “nearly all” DACA parents would have trouble becoming citizens even with a bill because of the 10-year penalty.

“If they didn’t have to deal with the 10-year bar, they would have done it already,” Stock said. “They wouldn’t be undocumented, because they could have found some way (to legalize their status.)”

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How screwed up is U.S. Immigration policy under Trump and the GOP?

Under a rational policy, we would not only legalize the “Dreamers” and give them a path to citizenship, but also eliminate the stupid, cruel, and ineffective (actually counterproductive) 10-year bar. Then, over time, as the Dreamers naturalized (five or more years down the line from any green card) they could petition for their parents, and gradually, those who were still alive could gain legal status. Pretty much another win-win. Parents of “Dreamers” are almost all good, hard-working folks who took risks and “put it all on the line” for their kids’ futures. Basically “salt of the earth.”What better people could you want for fellow citizens? And the parents who are already here are basically supporting the rest of us with their work.

But, when one side of the “debate” is driven by bias, racism, xenophobia, White Nationalism, bogus narratives, and fake statistics, well, you get folks like the immigration restrictionists and the mess we have today. We’d do much better if we just incorporated all the good folks who are already here into our society over time and moved forward as a united country. That would be common sense, enlightened self-interest, and basic human decency. Not in the restrictionists’ play book, I’m afraid. But, someday we’ll either get to that point, in spite of the restrictionists, or perish as a viable nation. That’s why Putin loves Trump and the GOP so much. America’s worst enemies are his best friends!

PWS

02-14-18

JAMES HOHMANN @ WASHPOST DAILY 202 — TRUMP, GOP DON’T APPEAR SERIOUS ABOUT PROTECTING DREAMERS OR IMMIGRATION REFORM — RATHER, SEEK WAYS TO ADVANCE INTENTIONALLY DIVISIVE, RACIALLY BIASED, “FACT-FREE” WHITE NATIONALIST AGENDA! — Plus, My Point By Point Analysis Of Why The Democrats Should “Hang Tough” On A Dreamer Deal!

Hohmann reports:

BY JAMES HOHMANN

with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve

THE BIG IDEA: Democrats are so eager to shield young foreign-born “dreamers” from deportation that they’re now offering to make compromises that would have been hard to imagine a year ago. Republicans, who feel like they have them over the barrel, are demanding more.

Showing his pragmatic side, for instance, Bernie Sanders says he’s willing to pony up big for border security if that’s what it takes. “I would go much further than I think is right,” the Vermont senator said in an interview Tuesday afternoon. “Unwillingly. Unhappily. I think it’s a stupid thing to do. But we have to protect the dreamers. … I’m willing to make some painful concessions.”

Sanders said a wall is still a “totally absurd idea” and that there are better ways to secure the border with Mexico, but he also emphasized that there will be “a horrible moral stain” on the country if President Trump goes through with his order to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program next month.

— Anti-immigration hardliners are staking out a firm position because most of them are not actually concerned about the plight of the dreamers. They have never thought these young people, whose undocumented parents brought them to the United States as children, should be here anyway. They agitated for Trump to end the program.

This means they’ll be fine if no bill passes, and they know that gives them way more leverage to demand wholesale changes to the entire legal immigration system. “The president’s framework bill is not an opening bid for negotiations. It’s a best and final offer,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who has emerged as the leader of this group in the Senate. He made this comment yesterday on “Fox and Friends,” knowing the president watches. Sure enough, Trump echoed the same talking point on Twitter, calling this the “last chance” for action.

— Mitch McConnell wants to use this week’s immigration debate to force show votes that can be used to embarrass vulnerable Democratic senators from red states. For example, the majority leader introduced a measure yesterday that would penalize so-called sanctuary cities for not cooperating with federal immigration laws. This issue tests well in polls and focus groups in most of the 10 states Trump carried in 2016 where a Democrat is now up for reelection. GOP insiders on the Hill say that McConnell is mainly focused on doing whatever it takes to protect his majority now that 2018 has arrived, and he has a narrower majority after the loss in Alabama.

— Democrats stuck together to block the Senate from taking up the poison pill on sanctuary cities, but the fact that the debate has so quickly devolved into a fight over process offered another data point – if for some reason you needed one – of how dysfunctional the Senate has become.

Trump urges senators to back his immigration proposal

— “Most Republicans on Tuesday appeared to be rallying behind a proposal by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and six other GOP senators that fulfills Trump’s calls to legalize 1.8 million dreamers, immediately authorizes spending at least $25 billion to bolster defenses along the U.S.-Mexico border, makes changes to family-based legal immigration programs and ends a diversity lottery system used by immigrants from smaller countries,” Ed O’Keefe reports. Senate Minority Leader Chuck “Schumer said the Grassley plan unfairly targets family-based immigration and that making such broad changes as part of a plan to legalize just a few million people ‘makes no sense.’

“In a bid to soften Trump’s proposals and win over Democrats, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) unveiled a watered-down version of the GOP proposal — but had not won support from members of either party by late Tuesday. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a longtime proponent of comprehensive immigration changes, said the Grassley proposal should be the focus of the Senate’s debate. … Schumer and other Democrats, meanwhile, voiced support for a plan by Sens. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would grant legal status to dreamers in the country since 2013 but would not immediately authorize money to build out southern border walls and fencing.”

— Democrats would like to pass a narrow bill that only protects DACA recipients, but they know that’s not possible with Republicans in control of Congress and the presidency. To get the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster, they’re conceding on at least some of Trump’s demands related to security. Sanders said there are between 55 to 57 votes for a compromise that would save the dreamers and fund border protections. “We are scrambling now for three to five more votes,” he said.

— The Senate will convene at 10 a.m. to continue debate, as negotiations behind the scenes continue. Somewhat counterintuitively, conservative hardliners believe that Latinos will be less likely to turn out this November if nothing passes in Congress because activists will blame Democrats for not delivering.

Bernie Sanders heads to a Democratic caucus meeting in the Capitol. (Oliver Contreras for The Washington Post)

— Despite concerted efforts by Trump and McConnell to drive a wedge through the Democratic caucus, there remains a remarkable degree of unity. This highlights how much the terms of the immigration debate have shifted over the past decade. Every Democrat in Congress now wants to protect DACA recipients. It wasn’t always this way. The House passed a Dream Act in 2010 that would have allowed undocumented immigrants to apply for citizenship if they entered the United States as children, graduated from high school or got an equivalent degree, and had been in the United States for at least five years. Five moderate Democrats in the Senate voted no. If each of them had supported it, the bill would have become law, and DACA would have been unnecessary. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) is the only one of those five Democrats still left. (The others retired or lost.) Now Tester speaks out against the president’s decision to end DACA. (I explored this dynamic in-depth last September.)

Sanders marveled during our interview at how much the polling has shifted in recent years toward protecting dreamers, with some public surveys showing that as many 90 percent of Americans don’t think they should be deported. The share who think they should also have a pathway to become U.S. citizens has also risen. “If we talked a year or two ago, I’m not sure I would have thought that would be possible,” he said.

Hillary Clinton relentlessly attacked Bernie during the debates in 2016 for voting to kill comprehensive immigration reform in 2007. Sanders – working closely with some of the leading unions – expressed concern back then that the bill would drive down wages for native-born workers by flooding the labor market with cheap foreign workers. This position caused him problems with Hispanics during his presidential bid.

Sanders rejects the idea that his views have changed since 2007, and he still defends his 11-year-old vote. He noted that the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) opposed that bill, as did the Southern Poverty Law Center, because it included a guest worker program that was “akin to slavery.” He said he remains just as concerned about guest worker programs as he was back then, but that he’s always favored a comprehensive solution that includes legal protections for the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants who live here. “You can say you support immigration reform, but obviously the devil is in the details on what that means,” the senator explained. “I stood with progressive organizations who said you don’t want to bring indentured servitude.”

Sanders criticized a guest worker program in his home state that allows resorts to hire ski instructors from Europe instead of native Vermonters. “Now do you not think we can find young people in Vermont who know how to ski and snowboard? But if you go to some of the resorts, that’s what you would find,” he said. “When I was a kid, we worked at summer jobs to help pay for college. … So I think we want to take a hard look at guest worker programs. Some of them remain very unfair.”

— After coming surprisingly close to toppling Clinton and winning the Democratic nomination two years ago, Sanders is at or near the top of the pack in every poll of potential 2020 primary match-ups. He’s going to Des Moines next Friday for a rally with congressional candidate Pete D’Alessandro, his first visit to Iowa this year. Sanders will also go to Wisconsin for Randy Bryce, who is running against Speaker Paul Ryan, and Illinois, where he’ll boost Chuy Garcia’s bid for retiring Rep. Luis Gutierrez’s open seat. A few weeks after that, he plans a tour of the Southwest. “I’m going to do everything I can to help people in 2018,” Sanders said.

Lobbying for their lives

— Republicans have gone the other direction. Before Trump came on the scene, the party was divided but GOP elites agreed that, for the long-term survival of the party, they needed to embrace more inclusive policies. Losses in 2012 prompted many Senate Republicans to endorse a comprehensive bill the next year (Sanders voted for it too), but the legislation was doomed in the House after Majority Leader Eric Cantor went down in a Virginia primary partly because of his perceived softness on the issue.

Elected Republicans used to insist adamantly that they were not anti-immigration but anti-illegal immigration. That’s changed. At the behest of Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Republicans are rallying around the idea of dramatic reductions in legal immigration. Two years ago, this was an extreme idea that most GOP senators would have quickly distanced themselves from. Now it’s considered mainstream and the centerpiece of the bill that McConnell has rallied his members behind.

To put it in perspective: By cutting the rate of legal immigration, Trump’s proposal – codified in Grassley’s bill — would delay the date that white Americans become a minority of the population by as many as five additional years, according to expert analysis.

“What’s very sad, but not unusual given the moment we’re living in, is that Republicans are more concerned about their right-wing, extremist, xenophobic base,” said Sanders. “You would think that, with 85 to 90 percent of people supporting protections for the dreamers, that it would not take a profile in courage to pass legislation to protect them.”

Kelly: ‘Dreamers’ who didn’t sign up for DACA were ‘too afraid’ or ‘too lazy’

— A dual-track fight over DACA is playing out in the courts. A federal judge in New York issued a preliminary injunction last night that keeps the program alive beyond Trump’s March 5 deadline so that legal challenges can play out. “A federal judge in California has issued a similar injunction, and the Supreme Court is expected this week to consider whether it will take up the fight over DACA,” Matt Zapotosky reports.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis recognized that Trump “indisputably” has the authority to end the program put in place by Barack Obama, but he also called the administration’s arguments that DACA was unconstitutional and illegal under federal law flimsy. “Because that conclusion was erroneous, the decision to end the DACA program cannot stand,” he wrote.

— Happy Valentine’s Day. Don’t forget to get a gift.

— What I’m especially excited about this morning is baseball. Pitchers and catchers are reporting for spring tr

Listen to James’s quick summary of today’s Big Idea and the headlines you need to know to start your day:

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Contrary to most of the “chatter,” I think that the Dreamers and the Democrats have the upper hand in this one. I’ll tell you why below!

A “border security package,” could involve the Wall, technology and much needed management improvements at DHS (but certainly no additional detention money — stop the “New American Gulag” — or personnel for the Border Patrol until they full current vacancies and account for how they are currently are deploying agents).

Beyond that, the Dems probably could agree to a reallocation of diversity and some preference visas while maintaining current legal immigration levels. Cutting legal immigration levels, eliminating family immigration, or authorizing further denials of due process (the totally bogus and essentially evil claim that the current already inadequate protections for children and other vulnerable migrant’s are “loopholes”) should be “non-starters.”

If they can’t get the deal they want, the Dems can walk away and still win for the Dreamers in the long run. Here is why:

I doubt that Trump would actually veto a compromise bill passed by both Houses that protected Dreamers without his full “Four Pillars of White Nationalism” program.
- If he does, any Democrat who can’t make Trump and the GOP pay for such a dumb move in the next election cycle doesn’t deserve to be a Democrat.
- The “full Dreamer protection” trade for border security with no other changes should be a “no brainer.” If Trump or the GOP “tank” it over the restrictionist agenda, the Democrats should be able to make them pay at the polls.
Right now, the Administration is under two injunctions halting the repeal of the “core DACA” program.
- If the Supremes don’t intervene, that issue could be tied up in the lower Federal Courts for years.
  - It’s very clear that the Administration’s current position is ultimately a loser before the lower Federal Courts.
  - If the Administration tries to “short-circuit” the process by going through APA to promulgate a regulation to terminate DACA, that process also is likely to be successfully challenged in the Federal Courts.
    - The so-called “legal rationale” that Sessions has invoked for ending DACA has literally been “laughed out of court.”
    - Trump himself has said that there is really no reason to remove Dreamers from the U.S.
    - So, on the merits, an attempt to terminate DACA by regulation probably would be held “without any legal or rational basis” by the lower Federal Courts.
Even if the Supremes give the “green light” to terminate DACA, most “Dreamers” by now have plausible cases for other forms of relief.
- Many DACA recipients have never been in removal proceedings. If they have been here for at least 10 years, have clean criminal backgrounds, and have spouses or children who are U.S. citizens they can apply for “cancellation of removal.”
- “Former DACA” recipients appear to be a “particular social group” for asylum and withholding of removal purposes. They are “particularized, the characteristic of having DACA revoked is “immutable,” and they are highly “socially distinct.” Many of them come from countries with abysmal human rights records and ongoing, directed violence. They therefore would have plausible asylum or withholding claims, or claims under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”).
- If ICE tries to use information voluntarily given by the Dreamers during the application process to establish removability or for any other adverse reason, that is likely to provoke a challenge that will be successful in at least some lower Federal Courts.
Safety in numbers.
- There is nothing that Trump, Sessions, and the DHS can actually do to remove 700,000+ Dreamers.
- The U.S. Immigration Courts are backed up for years, with nearly 700,000 already pending cases! Sessions is doing everything he can to make the backlog even worse. Dreamers will go to the “end of the line.”
- Sure Sessions would like to speed up the deportation “assembly line” (a/k/a “The Deportation Railway”).
  - But, his boneheaded and transparently unfair attempts to do that are highly likely to cause “big time” pushback from the Federal Courts and actually “tie up” the entire system — not just “Dreamers.”
  - The last time the DOJ tied to mindlessly accelerate the process, under AG John Ashcroft, the Courts of Appeals remanded defective deportation orders by the basket-load for various due process and legal violations — many with stinging published opinions.
    - Finally, even former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (“Gonzo I”), hardly a “Due Process Junkie” had enough and slowed down the train. It took years for the “haste makes waste” Circuit Court remands to work their way back through the system. Some might still be hanging around.
  - Because the GOP White Nationalists and Trump read off of “restrictionist cue cards” that don’t take account of the law, facts, or history, the Dems should have a huge advantage here if and when individual “Dreamer” removal cases get to the Federal Courts.
- Each “Dreamer removal case” should present the Democrats with excellent example of the cruelty, stupidity, and total wastefulness of the Trump/Sessions/DHS enforcement policies. Wasting money to “Make America Worse.” Come on, man!
- Bottom Line: Trump and Sessions have created a “false Dreamer emergency” that they can’t escape without some help from the Democrats. If the Democrats see an opportunity to make a “good deal” for the Dreamers, they should take it. But, they shouldn’t trade the Dreamers for the harmful White Nationalist restrictionist agenda! Eventually, the problem will be solved in a way that is favorable for most Dreamers, regardless of what the White Nationalists threaten right now. The Dreamers might just have to hang on longer until we get at least some degree of “regime change.”

PWS

02-13-18

ENJOINED AGAIN: US DISTRICT JUDGE IN EDNY ALSO TEMPORARILY HALTS DACA REPEAL — FINDS GONZO’s “LEGAL” RATIONALE “PLAINLY INCORRECT!”

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/13/politics/federal-judge-daca/index.html

Ariane de Vogue Reports for CNN:

(CNN)A second federal judge Tuesday has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Success for Harvard medical students in DACA could mean their parents are deported
Success for Harvard medical students in DACA could mean their parents are deported
Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled that DACA participants and states are likely to succeed in their challenge that the way President Donald Trump terminated the Obama-era program was arbitrary and capricious.
Trump last year announced his plan to end DACA, the policy that allowed undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children to stay in the country, effective March 5. That deadline has become central in the congressional debate over immigration, but Democrats and Republicans are nowhere near a breakthrough.
Tuesday’s ruling, combined with a ruling from a California judge last month, means the program could end up going beyond the March 5 date. The ruling means DACA recipients can renew their status, but the administration will not have to hold the program open to those who never applied.
“Defendants indisputably can end the DACA program,” Garaufis wrote, referring to the Trump administration. “The question before the court is thus not whether defendants could end the DACA program, but whether they offered legally adequate reasons for doing so. Based on its review of the record before it, the court concludes that defendants have not done so.”
The judge said that the decision to end the program was based in part on the “plainly incorrect factual premise” that the program was illegal.
“Today’s ruling shows that courts across the country agree that Trump’s termination of DACA was not just immoral, but unlawful as well,” said Karen Tumlin of the National Immigration Law Center.
This week the Supreme Court is set to meet behind closed doors to discuss whether to take up the Trump administration’s appeal of the related case.
The Justice Department said it maintains that the administration acted “within its lawful authority” in deciding to end DACA and will “vigorously defend this position.”
“DACA was implemented unilaterally after Congress declined to extend these benefits to this same group of illegal aliens. As such, it was an unlawful circumvention of Congress,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “Promoting and enforcing the rule of law is vital to protecting a nation, its borders, and its citizens.”
Impact on immigration negotiations
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina, urged lawmakers to “focus” on March 5, despite the two district court rulings blocking the DACA drawdown, but acknowledged there will be more time.
“We should still focus on the March 5 date,” Tillis said on Fox News Tuesday afternoon. “The reality is, unless there’s any action by the Supreme Court, looks like we have some number of weeks following March 5 to solve the problem.”
Judge brought up “Norway” comments
In fiery oral arguments last month, Garaufis gave a blistering critique of what he called the President’s “recurring, redundant drumbeat of anti-Latino commentary.”
“It’s not just an ad hoc comment that was overheard on an open mic,” the judge said. “It’s not just that somebody at INS said something derogatory about Mexicans. This came from the top.”
Garaufis was responding to a question regarding Trump’s comments in a closed-door meeting with senators in which the President asked why people from Haiti and more Africans were wanted in the US and added that the US should get more people from countries like Norway.
CNN’s Laura Jarrett contributed to this report.

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Who knows how this eventually will end if Congress doesn’t solve the problem? I certainly can imagine a conservative majority of the Supremes cooking up a way to empower Trump and dump on the Dreamers.

But, no matter how this comes out, it’s never been about the “rule of law,” border security, or protecting Americans. Indeed, every commentator who isn’t Jeff Sessions or one of his White Nationalist xenophobic buddies agrees that ending DACA and removing “Dreamers” would make America a worse place in every possible way.

No, it’s always been about White Nationalism, racism, xenophobia, dividing America, and the general alt right “agenda of hate and intolerance” which has been what Sessions and those like him are all about. And, he’s not even a very good lawyer, taking most of his bogus so-called “legal arguments” off of “cue cards” prepared for him by restrictionist interest groups.

And racist, xenophobic statements by Trump himself continue to undermine the DOJ attorneys’ arguments that there is some type of “rational basis” for Trump immigration policies.

PWS

02-13-17

A WASHINGTON ANOMOLY – THE SENATE IS ABOUT TO EMBARK ON AN “IMMIGRATION DEBATE” WHERE THE OUTCOME HASN’T ACTUALLY BEEN “COOKED” IN ADVANCE! — Tal Tells All @CNN!

“Open-ended immigration debate to grip Senate

By Tal Kopan, CNN

The Senate is set to begin debating immigration Monday evening, and in a rare occurrence for the upper chamber of Congress, no one is quite sure how that will go.

Late Sunday, a group of Republicans introduced a version of President Donald Trump’s proposal on how to handle the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protected young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation before Trump decided to terminate it. That is expected to be one of the amendments that will compete for votes this week.

Some things are known: McConnell teed up the debate early Friday morning, as he had pledged, immediately after the Senate voted to end a government shutdown. The bill McConnell chose was entirely unrelated to immigration, which he said he planned to do to allow a blank slate for proposals to compete for votes.

Let the debate begin

At 5:30 p.m. Monday, senators will vote on whether to open debate on the bill, a vote that is largely expected to succeed.

From there, a lot will be up to senators. Both sides will be able to offer amendments that will compete for 60 votes — the threshold to advance legislation in the Senate. It’s expected that amendments will be subject to that threshold and will require consent agreements from senators for votes, opening up the process to negotiations.

If a proposal can garner 60 votes, it will likely pass the Senate, but it will still face an uncertain fate. The House Republican leadership has made no commitment to consider the Senate bill or hold a debate of its own, and House Speaker Paul Ryan has pledged repeatedly to consider a bill only if President Donald Trump will sign it.

Different groups have been working to prepare legislation for the immigration effort, including the conservatives who worked off the White House framework and a group of bipartisan senators who have been meeting nearly daily to try to reach agreement on the issue. Trump has proposed giving 1.8 million young undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship in exchange for $25 billion for his long-promised border wall and a host of other strict immigration reforms.

The bill from GOP senators largely sticks to those bullet points, including sharp cuts to family-based migration, ending the diversity lottery and giving federal authorities enhanced deportation and detention powers.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of about 20 senators was drafting legislation over the weekend to offer perhaps multiple amendments and potentially keep the debate focused on a narrow DACA-border security bill. Multiple members of the group have expressed confidence that only such a narrow approach could pass the Senate — and hope that a strong vote could move Trump to endorse the approach and pave the way for passage in the House.

Advocates on the left may offer a clean DACA fix, like the DREAM Act, as well as the conservative White House proposal — though neither is expected to have 60 votes.

The move to hold an unpredictable Senate debate next week fulfills the promise McConnell made on the Senate floor to end the last government shutdown in mid-January, when he pledged to hold a neutral debate on the immigration issue that was “fair to all sides.”

Even Sunday, leadership aides weren’t able to say entirely how the week would go. The debate could easily go beyond one week, and with a scheduled recess coming next week, it could stretch on through February or even longer.

One Democratic aide said there will likely be an effort to reach an agreement between Republicans and Democrats on timing so that amendments can be dealt with efficiently, and, absent that, alternating proposals may be considered under time-consuming procedural steps.

“We just have to see how the week goes and how high the level of cooperation is,” the aide said.

Many Democrats and moderate Republicans were placing hope in the bipartisan group’s progress.

“We’re waiting for the moderates to see if they can produce a bill,” said the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, on Thursday. “And considering options, there are lots of them, on the Democratic side. There’s no understanding now about the first Democratic amendment.”

Durbin said traditionally both sides have shared a few amendments with each other to begin to figure out the process’ structure. He also said the bipartisan group could be an influential voting bloc, if they can work together.

“They could be the deciding factor, and I’ve been hopeful that they would be, because I’ve had friends in those Common Sense (Coalition), whatever they call themselves, and reported back the conversations, and I think they’re on the right track.”

As she was leaving the Senate floor Friday night after the Senate voted to pass a budget deal and fund government into March, Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins was optimistic about the preparedness of the bipartisan group she has been leading for the all-Senate debate.

“We’ll be ready,” she told reporters.

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford, who has been working both with the group introducing the White House proposal and the bipartisan group, said late Friday night that his plan is “to get things done.”

“It’s no grand secret that I have no problem with the President’s proposal; the challenge is going to be trying to get 60 votes,” Lankford said. “So I would have no issue with what (Sens. John) Cornyn and (Chuck) Grassley are working on and with the President supporting that, but I also want to continue to try finding out and see, if that doesn’t get 60 votes, what could.”

He said everyone is waiting to find out what happens next.

“Everybody’s trying to figure out the chaos of next week, and I’m with you,” Lankford said. “I don’t know yet how open the process is going to be. I hope it’s very open.”

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Fortunately, we can rely on Tal’s amazing up to the minute reporting and analysis to keep us abreast of what’s happening on the Senate floor and in the cloakrooms!

Stay tuned!

PWS

02-12-18

DREAMERS “LEFT OUT” AGAIN – CONTEMPLATE NEXT MOVE – News & Analysis From Tal @ CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/10/politics/daca-left-out-what-next/index.html

The “Amazing Tal” writes:

“Washington (CNN)As the ink dried Friday on a major budget compromise deal in Congress, immigration advocates were taking stock of getting left behind — again — without a resolution for hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants on the verge of losing protections.

It’s an open question if there are cards left to play in the push to enshrine the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy into law. While no advocates say they are giving up, many also openly admit that Democrats and allies gave up their best negotiating position on the issue without another clear avenue coming up.

In the meantime, a pending court decision on DACA, which President Donald Trump is terminating, means the immigrants protected by it and who mostly have never known another country than the US, won’t begin losing their protections as planned on March 5 — but their fate could be reversed at any moment by another court decision.

Trump signs massive budget deal after Congress votes to reopen government

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who has long served as one of the most outspoken advocates in Congress for immigration reform, was pessimistic with reporters early Friday morning as Congress passed the deal with virtually every Democratic priority except DACA in it.

“No, I don’t, I don’t,” he said when asked if there was any other way Democrats could exert leverage on the issue. Gutierrez said the plan from the beginning was to either attach a DACA compromise to the must-pass budget deal or raising the debt ceiling, both of which were passed in the early morning hours Friday without DACA. Arizona Democrat Raul Grijalva called the episode “disheartening.”

close dialog

“We have decoupled the issues. Your leverage is you want them one and the same,” Gutierrez said. “Do we need a new way forward? Yeah, we’re going to figure out a new way forward.”

Step 1: Senate vote next week

McConnell officially tees up immigration debate next week

There is one glimmer of hope for advocates. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made good on his promise to tee up an immigration debate on the Senate floor next week. Moments after the Senate passed the deal, McConnell filed to have a vote to open debate on an unrelated bill Monday evening — which will kick off a process where an as-yet-unknown number of amendments will be able to compete for a procedural threshold of 60 votes to then pass the Senate.

It was that promise that put in motion the deal that eventually severed DACA from other negotiations but also offers a rare opportunity for lawmakers to compete on a neutral playing field for bipartisan support.

“We’re pivoting, what can you do?” said longtime advocate Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-immigration group America’s Voice. “We’ve had our doubts about the viability of a standalone legislative process but that’s what we’re left with, so we’re hoping to make the most of it. … That will put pressure on the President and the House to do the same.”

Already, groups of lawmakers are preparing for the floor debate, even as it remains unclear how many amendments will be offered, how debate will be structured and how long it might last.

A group of roughly 20 bipartisan senators is drafting legislation over the weekend to offer perhaps multiple amendments and potentially keep the debate focused on a narrow DACA-border security bill. Advocates on the left may offer a clean DACA fix like the Dream Act, and some on the right are drafting a version of the White House proposal that would include $25 billion for a border wall and heavy cuts to legal immigration with a pathway to citizenship — though neither is expected to have 60 votes.

Bipartisan group of senators scrambling to draft immigration bill

“First of all, we have the Senate procedure, which is my hope. We’re working with the (bipartisan group) to see if we can come to a two-pillar solution,” said Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who has long worked on the issue, when asked Thursday what comes next for DACA. “Hopefully we could gather 60 votes for that. And then that would be it — we’d resist everything else, any other amendments, and then go back to the House and create all the pressure in the House to make it happen.”

Step 2: Pressure Ryan

If the Senate can pass a bill, lawmakers hope Trump will fully embrace it, freeing House Speaker Paul Ryan to call it up.

Already as the budget deal was on track for passage, House advocates began a pressure campaign to urge Ryan to make a promise like McConnell — though Ryan continually demurred and insisted instead he’s committed to the issue of immigration and passing a bill the President can support.

Anger rises from left as DACA left out of budget deal again

“I think we have to be realistic,” said Arizona’s Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego. “We’re going to have to deal with reality and find whatever means possible to put pressure on Speaker Ryan and the Republican Party to bring, again, a fair vote on the Dream Act to the floor.”

“I think for me the strategy has to be pressure Ryan and bring it to the floor,” Grijalva said, adding the process should allow any proposal to vie for a majority — even if it doesn’t have a majority of Republican votes. “The Senate, when they gave up on not voting for it, at the very minimum extracted a time certain and a debate on something. We don’t even have that.”

Democrats also may have some Republican supporters in the House to pressure Ryan. A bipartisan group of lawmakers that includes two dozen Republicans sent a letter to Ryan asking to open a floor debate like McConnell.

Republican Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania said he’s been urging fellow moderates to use their numbers the way that conservatives on the right flank do.

“The Freedom Caucus has been effective because they’ll use their power of 24 (votes to deny a majority), and they take the hostage, they’ll do what they have to do,” Dent said. “I tell our members, we put our votes together, we can really direct an outcome. … I suspect if the Senate sends us a bipartisan DACA bill, that’s when we’re going to have to flex our muscles.”

Exclusive: Pressure grows on Paul Ryan to commit to immigration debate

But others have doubts. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a member of the bipartisan group, says he learned his lesson in 2013, when he co-authored legislation that passed the Senate with wide margins but died in the House.

“There are some who believe that if we get a bunch of votes it’ll force the House to do it. I don’t agree,” Rubio said. “We could vote on it 90-10. … This notion that the House is going to listen to what a senator tells them to do is not real.”

Step 3: Other leverage

If the legislative process can’t produce success, advocates say, they will look for any other leverage points they can.

“If that doesn’t work out, then there’s still an omnibus at the end of the day,” said Menendez, referring to the spending bills due in March to fund the government under the topline two-year budget deal passed Friday.

But Gutierrez doubted that approach — scoffing at the idea that Democrats would be taken seriously if they threatened to withhold their votes yet again without success.

“Really?” Gutierrez said about the omnibus as leverage. “Is it plausible? Is it realistic? Can you continue to threaten with something?”

Other options could include a temporary, one-year or two-year extension of DACA without a permanent solution, though lawmakers have decried that option.

Still, many aren’t ready to give up hope.

“This President clearly wants to get it done, I think the majority of Republicans want to get it done and the majority of Democrats want to get it done. Can we reach that balance? We can get there, I feel very confident we can get there,” said Florida’s Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.”

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

Although it should be a “no brainer,” I’m not as confident as Rep. Diaz-Balart that this group can “get to yes.” A fair resolution of the “Dreamers” situation just isn’t very high on the GOP agenda, particularly in the House. And, both the Dreamers and the Dems are coming to grips with the obvious reality: if you want to set or control the agenda, you have to win elections!

We need Julia Preston to lock these folks in a room for awhile!

PWS

02-10-18

BESS LEVIN @ VANITY FAIR – TRUMP FINDS A NEW WAY TO BE “A JERK” – PLANNING ANOTHER BOGUS ATTACK ON LEGAL IMMIGRANTS BY EXPANDING CONCEPT OF “PUBLIC CHARGE”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/trumps-spending-spree-global-sell-off-hellacious

Bess actually used a more “colorful descriptor” for Trump. But, since this is a “Family Based Blog” I toned it down a bit. You can go on over to the “Levin Report” at Vanity Fair at the above link for the “tell it like it is” version.

Donald Trump finds a new and unique way to be [ a jerk]

They said it couldn’t be done. They said it wasn’t possible. They said how could he, when he’s seemingly exhausted all possible avenues for an achievement like this? They underestimated him, yet again:

The Trump administration is considering making it harder for foreigners living in the United States to get permanent residency if they have received certain public benefits such as food assistance, in a move that could sharply restrict legal immigration. The Department of Homeland Security has drafted proposed new rules seen by Reuters that would allow immigration officers to scrutinize a potential immigrant’s use of certain taxpayer-funded public benefits to determine if they could become a public burden.

For example, U.S. officials could look at whether the applicant has enrolled a child in government pre-school programs or received subsidies for utility bills or health insurance premiums.

The draft, which reads a lot like it was written by senior adviser Stephen “white American males should be a protected class” Miller, states: “Non-citizens who receive public benefits are not self-sufficient and are relying on the U.S. government and state and local entities for resources instead of their families, sponsors or private organizations. An alien’s receipt of public benefits comes at taxpayer expense and availability of public benefits may provide an incentive for aliens to immigrate to the United States.” As a reminder, when the administration was trying to make the case that the U.S. should restrict the number of refugees it allows into the country to the lowest levels since 1980, it conveniently left out data that showed refugees generate $63 billion more in government revenues than they cost over the last decade. So take the latest immigrants are a drain on the economy and preventing us from Making America Great Again screed with a grain of salt.

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

Yeah, whatever term you use, Trump and his White Nationalist xenophobic, racist cabal are at it again. Masses of folks coming to the US to get “welfare” is another “restrictionist myth” used to distort the immigration debate, and whip up anti-immigrant sentiment.

PWS

02-09-18

DAN KOWALSKI @ LEXISNEXIS: EXPERTS “CALL OUT” TRUMP & GOP RESTRICTIONISTS’ BOGUS CLAIMS ABOUT THE ADVERSE EFFECTS OF FAMILY MIGRATION (Pejoratively Called “Chain Migration” By The Trumpsters)

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/immigration-law-blog/archive/2018/02/08/experts-debunk-trump-39-s-false-39-chain-migration-39-claims.aspx?Redirected=true

Here’s what Dan posted on LexisNexis Immigration Community:

“Experts Debunk Trump’s False ‘Chain Migration’ Claims

Miriam Valverde, Politifact, Jan. 31, 2018 – “President Donald Trump in his State of the Union address called for tighter control of legal immigration and for an end to “chain migration.” “Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives,” Trump said Jan. 30. “Under our plan, we focus on the immediate family by limiting sponsorships to spouses and minor children.” … But there is a long queue for certain relatives seeking to come through family sponsorship. For brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens, the waiting period for a visa is over 13 years. … But there are limits on the number of visas issued per year per family category. More than 3.9 million people were in line for a visa as of Nov. 1, 2017, according to the U.S. State Department. Brothers and sisters of adult U.S. citizens fall under a “fourth-preference” category, which had 2.3 million people waiting for a visa — the wait period is over 13 years for immigrants from most nations, but even longer for some countries with heavy demand, such as Mexico and the Philippines. Siblings in the Philippines would have to wait at least 23 years for a visa, and Mexican siblings at least 20 years. “As a practical matter, because of these long backlogs there is not as much chain migration as President Trump claims,” said Stephen W. Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School. Trump said “a single immigrant can bring in unlimited numbers of distant relatives.” … Trump’s statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.”

Philip Bump, Washington Post, Feb. 6, 2018 – “As is so often the case with his discussion of immigrants, President Trump’s State of the Union description of “chain migration” — the process by which people in the United States can sponsor family members to join them — was long on fearmongering and short on accuracy. “The fourth and final pillar protects the nuclear family by ending chain migration,” Trump said of his multipart immigration restructuring proposal. “Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives. Under our plan, we focus on the immediate family by limiting sponsorships to spouses and minor children. This vital reform is necessary, not just for our economy, but for our security and our future.” The idea that curtailing a process to bring in members of an immigrant’s nuclear family protects the nuclear family is one thing. But there is simply no way to defend the claim that “a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives.” … Immigrants can’t come to the United States and sponsor 20 cousins who arrive four months later, the sort of ease-of-entry that Trump and the White House seem to imply. At best, an immigrant could bring in a spouse or child — after likely waiting an extended period for that application to be approved. “You’re looking at years and years of waiting in this legal line,” [past president and past general counsel of the Washington, D.C.-based American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), David W.] Leopold said. “For anyone to say that the continuation of sponsorship based on family relationship is going to lead to an influx of people is either lying or doesn’t understand how the system works.” “

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Go on over to LexisNexis at the above link to get further links to the full articles. Many thinks to Dan for getting “the truth” assembled into one convenient blog.

PWS

02-09-18

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Step 1: Senate vote next week

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