MICHAEL GERSON @ WASHPOST HAS SOME VERY BAD NEWS FOR AMERICA: The GOP Now Has Two Major Cohorts: Bigots & Cowards Who Won’t Stand Up To Them!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sure-not-all-republicans-hate-outsiders-but-many-defer-to-the-hater-in-chief/2019/12/12/6bb61b58-1d16-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story.html

By

Michael Gerson

Columnist

Dec. 12, 2019 at 3:36 p.m. EST

Certain questions haunt many of us who care about the nature and future of the Republican Party. Is the GOP as it currently appears — defined by white identity and excited by cruelty and exclusion — really the way it has always been? Does Trumpism represent a hostile takeover of Republicanism or its natural outworking?A recent study by political scientists Lilliana Mason, Julie Wronski and John V. Kane sheds some interesting light on these matters. They compare a Democracy Fund voter survey conducted in 2011 with a survey of the same voters done in 2017. And they analyze the factors in the 2011 group that predict current approval for the Democratic Party, for the Republican Party and for President Trump.

Mason, Wronski and Kane found that support for the Democratic Party is associated with warmer feelings toward African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims and LGBT people. This type of “in-group love” is what you’d expect. “Put simply,” said the authors, “when you like the people who make up the party, you like the party.”

The results concerning the GOP were more mixed, but similar. Warmer opinions about whites and Christians in 2011 predicted later support for the GOP — the Republican version of “in-group love.” But hostility toward African Americans and Hispanics did not drive future Republican support (though negative feelings toward Muslims and LGBT people did have limited predictive value).

Support for Trump, in contrast, was strongly associated with “out-group hatred” of African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims and LGBT people. “In every case, the people who felt hostile towards Democratic groups in 2011 are most likely to be Trump supporters today. The same cannot be said of Republican partisans.”

What to make of these distinctions? “In-group love” of whites and Christians for other whites and Christians is hardly a noble political motivation. “Love your white neighbor as yourself” doesn’t have quite the same moral ring to it. What Mason calls the “social sorting” of the parties — in which partisan identities are closely associated with ideological, racial and cultural identities — is a source of deep and damaging polarization.

Yet it comes as a relief to some of us that Republican partisans and Trump supporters can be distinguished from each other at all. And “in-group love” is certainly better than an “out-group hatred” of anyone who looks and thinks differently.

There is evidence, it appears, that the party of George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney was not merely the party of Trump in waiting. “Trump support,” say the authors, “is uniquely dependent upon out-group hatred.” This is not a normal sort of partisanship. It is partisanship supercharged by prejudice and contempt. This fits the experience of elected Republicans I have interviewed, many of whom no longer recognize the political party they rose within. The players and attitudes in many states and districts have shifted. Something different and disturbing is taking place.

Trump did not create this out-group animosity; he exploited it, organized it and sent it into political battle. “Even in the 2016 Republican presidential primary,” the authors note, “out-group hatred predicted support for Trump, but not for [Ted] Cruz, [Marco] Rubio or [John] Kasich.” They go on: “We tend to think of partisans as being generally intolerant of outsiders, but our findings suggest that Trump supporters are unique in terms of their out-group hatred.”

This offers the comfort of knowing that the whole GOP is not united and defined by contempt for outsiders. But the indictment of the Republican non-haters is still quite damning. In every way that matters politically, they have accepted the leadership of a president and a movement that cultivate hatred as a strategy. The GOP non-haters — say, business conservatives and social conservatives — have deferred to the hater in chief. They have (for the most part) held his coat, carried his water and licked his boots — which are not easy to do simultaneously.

All of which raises another vexing question: Which is worse, bigotry or cowardice in the face of bigotry?

Whatever the answer, we should prepare ourselves for an especially ugly and destructive 2020 presidential election. Trump seems to believe, with some justification, that the cultivation of anger against outsiders won him the Republican nomination and the presidency in 2016. We should expect more of the same, and worse. The racism, misogyny and dehumanization — the assault on migrants, Muslims and refugees — have only begun. And those who enable it are equally responsible for it.

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The GOP’s toxic combination of outright bigots and sleazy dishonest bootlickers willing to cover for corruption and bigotry has never been more on display than in this week’s “fact free, value free defense” of the indefensible before the House Judiciary. And, as I mentioned previously this week, it also explains why neo-Nazi White Nationalist hate monger Stephen Miller will be in the White House as long as Trump is, unless he falls out of favor with Trump for some reason unrelated to his odious views.

It also illustrates what I’ve been saying about the recent performance of the higher level Federal Courts. Trump’s war on migrants, non-Christian religions, women, the poor, journalists, lawyers, political opponents, and individuals of color has nothing to do with “normal legal issues.” It’s an existential struggle by the majority of Americans who didn’t vote for Trump and don’t agree with his authoritarian White Nationalism to preserve our republic against a fascist-style authoritarian regime that is running roughshod over our Constitution, our laws, and ethical and moral norms that have developed over many years. Those who won’t stand up and defend our republic and our individual rights are enabling the bigoted destroyers. There really is no “middle ground” in this battle.

To put it in Michael’s terms: “The racism, misogyny and dehumanization — the assault on migrants, Muslims and refugees — have only begun. And those [sitting on the Supreme Court and the Federal Appellate Courts] who enable it are equally responsible for it.”

Innocent folks are being harmed and abused every day, while the judicial enablers are drawing their pay!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-13-19

LABOR DAY TRIBUTE: Carlos Lozada’s “Review of ‘A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st Century’ by Jason DeParle”

Carols Lozada — Carlos Lozada
Journalist

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/30/many-immigrants-family-separation-happens-long-before-border/

There is a family separation that occurs long before an immigrant reaches America’s borders. It is no less wrenching than the ruptures that the Trump administration inflicted on thousands of children and parents last year as part of its “zero tolerance” policy against illegal entry, and may at times be even more painful, since it happens voluntarily. That is, if acts born of despair can ever be described as entirely voluntary.

In “A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves,” journalist Jason DeParle’s riveting multigenerational tale of one Filipino family dispersing across the globe, from Manila to Abu Dhabi to Galveston, Tex., and so many places in between, separation is a constant worry and endless toll. Parents leave their kids and country for years at a time so they can send back wages many multiples of what they previously earned. Children yearn for their parents, rebelling or wilting without them, while the youngest latch on to aunts and grandparents. Births, birthdays, weddings, illnesses, funerals — daily life slips by for the absent, imagined and unexperienced. Meanwhile, the government encourages the exodus; 1 in 7 laborers in the Philippines becomes an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW), a status so common it rates not just an acronym but also an industry of private middlemen and government agencies managing a sector that accounts for one-10th of the country’s economy.

But the price is loneliness and longing. “The two main themes of Overseas Filipino Worker life are homesickness and money,” DeParle writes. “Workers suffer the first to get the second.” With immigration a central battleground in the Trump-era culture wars, and with the southern U.S. border and Hispanic influx dominating the political debate, this book provides crucial insight into the global scope, shifting profiles and, above all, individual sacrifices of the migrant experience.

DeParle, a New York Times reporter, tells the story of Emet, Tita and their daughter Rosalie, as well as their other children and grandchildren — a Manila family he first encountered and lived with for several months in the late 1980s. As a young reporter, DeParle wanted to better understand poverty, but in the Philippines, that meant learning about migration instead. The title of his book is also the Portagana family’s unofficial creed, a pained mix of self-affirmation and abnegation.

Emet cleaned pools in a government complex in the Philippines, earning $50 a month, barely enough to scrape by with his family in their Manila shantytown. When he has the chance to clean pools in Saudi Arabia for $500 per month, he takes it, while his wife of 14 years and their five children stay behind. “Ever since his orphaned childhood, all he had wanted was a family, but to support one, he had to leave it.” Tita cries when Emet departs, left to fend for herself and the family, rising at 4:30 a.m. to boil the breakfast rice, washing the school clothes every day, making every tough decision — does she pay for a doctor’s visit or for more food? — on her own.

When Emet first sends money, she cries again. “Tita stopped running out of fish and rice,” DeParle recounts. “She bought extra school uniforms so she didn’t have to wash every day. . . . After years of toothaches, she had seven teeth pulled and treated herself to dentures. . . . But the ultimate luxury was the family’s first bed.” She told Deparle how “I was ecstatic we could lay on something soft.”

New comforts are part of “migrant lore,” DeParle writes. Some analysts worry that remittances lead to consumerist splurges, but families receiving migrant income also invest in housing, health care and education. Migration serves as a tool of economic development, DeParle suggests, because of migrants’ enduring loyalty to the family back home. Of the 11 siblings in Tita’s own family, nine worked abroad, as did all five of Tita and Emet’s children. When DeParle returned to the Philippines two decades after having lived in Tita’s home, he saw that the family’s old straw huts had morphed into a compound of a dozen houses for various relatives — and the quality of the amenities bore a direct relationship to how long each owner had worked abroad. But an aging Emet still pondered the price, nostalgic for the days in the slum. “I was happier then,” he acknowledges, “because I was with my children.”

[Who gets to dream? America’s immigration battles go beyond walls and borders.]

Rosalie, their middle child, emerges as the book’s itinerant protagonist, not simply because she becomes the clan’s essential breadwinner as a nurse in America but because, for DeParle, she embodies the new face of migration. “Since 2008, the United States has attracted more Asians than Latin Americans, and nearly half of the newcomers, like Rosalie, have college degrees. Every corner of America has an immigrant like her.” Long male-dominated, migration has been increasingly feminized, in part because of the demand for caregiving workers in rich countries, a need that women have disproportionately filled. “By the mid-1990s when Rosalie went abroad, nearly half the world’s migrants were women — more than half in the United States — and they increasingly went as breadwinners, not spouses.”

Rosalie was a quiet child and an average student who considered religious life in Manila — not necessarily someone you’d pick to make it through nursing school, move to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for several years, and take and retake English-language tests until, after 20 years of working, she could obtain a visa to the United States, take on a night shift in a Galveston hospital and embrace suburban life. She is separated from her own children, just as she suffered years without Emet. Her eldest daughter grows attached to Rosalie’s sister Rowena as a sort of surrogate mother, calling her “Mama Wena” and struggling with her aunt’s absence after reuniting with Rosalie in Texas.

Having long operated as a far-flung family, Rosalie, her husband, Chris, and their three kids must not only learn to live in America — they have to learn to live together. DeParle’s examination of how the two daughters adapt to U.S. elementary schools, seeking to become more all-American than the Americans, even as their parents find solace in Texas’s Filipino immigrant networks, is a minor classic of the assimilation experience. He also reflects on the impact of communications technology on migrant communities: “Can assimilation survive Skype?” DeParle wonders, seeing how it eases transitions by helping relatives stay in touch across time zones but also lengthens and deepens immigrants’ ties with the old country.

After all, even when you’ve left, you’re never entirely gone. Any health crisis among her extended family in the Philippines results in new bills for Rosalie to cover from afar. Chronically exhausted at the hospital — where Filipino nurses feel they get shorthanded shifts and sicker patients — she must also deal with the insecurities of her suddenly stay-at-home husband, whose masculine self-perception suffers in the face of his provider-wife. (“Would you be ashamed of Daddy if I worked as a janitor?” Chris asks the kids as he seeks a job in Galveston.) DeParle highlights this “inversion” of traditional gender roles in the modern migrant experience. For women, “migration elevated their incomes, raised their status, and increased their power within their marriages,” he writes. “But it also took many away from their children, often to care for the children of others, and elevated the risks of abuse.”

DeParle has a gift for distilling complexity into pithy formulations. “Migration is history’s ripple effect,” he writes, noting how U.S. colonialism led to the establishment of the Philippines’ first nursing schools, an industry that would propel Rosalie to America a century later. He also aptly captures the United States’ conflicted feelings about immigrants, a mix of resentment and need. “Unwelcomed is not the same as unwanted,” he explains simply. And the ominous U.S. Embassy in Manila, the repository of so much hope and so many fears for Filipino visa seekers, is “the gateway to opportunity, but marines guard the gate.” The book is packed with insights masked as throwaway lines — lines that convey so much.

So I wish DeParle had conveyed more about his own role in the story of this remarkable family. “Our relationship defies easy categorization; it’s part author-subject, part old friends,” he writes, likening himself to a big brother for Rosalie and uncle to her kids. “This was a journalistic endeavor but not an entirely arm’s-length one,” DeParle admits. “Occasionally my presence shaped events I was trying to record.” Some of these events were crucial. He gets Rosalie an English tutor for her exams. He spends hours on the phone helping Rosalie practice for her interview with the Galveston hospital. Most essential, he intervenes when bureaucratic scheduling nearly derails a final visa approval. “I was there as a journalist, not an advocate,” he writes. “But Rosalie had been waiting for twenty years.” So he helps by speaking with a U.S. Foreign Service officer. It is an entirely humane impulse, and DeParle stresses that the determination that got Rosalie to America “is hers alone.” But the author’s unexpected appearances complicate and at times confuse his narrative.

“A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves” has political implications without being an overtly political work. Yes, DeParle’s sympathies are clear. “Rosalie’s experience was a triple win: good for her, good for America, and good for her family in the Philippines,” he writes. “Migration was her vehicle of salvation. It delivered her from the living conditions of the nineteenth century. It respected her talent, rewarded her sweat, and enlarged her capacity for giving.” He also stresses how Filipino immigrants thrive in America, with more education, higher employment, and lower poverty and divorce rates than the native-born.

Yet he mainly calls for calm and compromise around the immigration debates. “Be wary of seeing the issue in absolutist terms,” DeParle warns. He worries that if immigration becomes entrenched as another American culture war, like those over guns or abortion rights, its supporters will have more to lose. The warning comes under a Trump administration that has defined itself through its offensive against migrants, not just rewriting policies but seeking to write immigration out of the American tradition. On this point, DeParle offers a devastating rebuttal in another simple line.

“It’s good,” he concludes, “for your country to be the place where people go to make dreams come true.”

Follow Carlos Lozada on Twitter and read his latest essays and book reviews, . . . .

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This story reminds me of the dramatic presentation about her own family’s immigrant experience delivered by my friend and co-teacher Professor Jennifer Esperanza of Beloit College during our recent Bjorklunden Seminar on American Immigration. I’ve posted it before, but here it is again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEODrtuj_Pk&t=323s

One of the points Jenn makes is how she channeled the challenges of her childhood into learning that led to a lifetime of success and high achievement.

PWS

09-02-19

BJORKLUNDEN REPORT, PART I: “American Immigration: A Legal, Cultural, & Historical Approach to Understanding the Complex and Controversial Issues Dominating Our National Dialogue”

I had the pleasure of co-teaching this course with my good friend Professor Jennifer Esperanza of the Beloit College Anthropology Department. The venue was Lawrence University’s amazing Northern Campus, known as Bjorklunden, on the wildly beautiful shores of Lake Michigan in Door County, Wisconsin, from August 4-9, 2019. This was a “derivative” of an immigration component of a summer session of Jenn’s class for undergraduates at Beloit. This time we had a group of 15 enthusiastic, well-informed post graduate students from a variety of professional backgrounds.

Here’s what we set out to achieve:

Class Description:

All Americans are products of immigration. Even Native Americans were massively affected by the waves of European, involuntary African-American, Asian, and Hispanic migration. Are we a nation of immigrants or a nation that fears immigration? Should we welcome refugees or shun them as potential terrorists? Do we favor family members or workers? Rocket scientists or maids and landscapers? Build a wall or a welcome center? Get behind some of the divisive rhetoric and enter the dialogue in this participatory class that will give you a chance to “learn and do” in a group setting. Be part of a team designing and explaining your own immigration system.

Class Objectives:

_Understand how we got here;

_Understand current U.S. immigration system and how it is supposed to work;

_Learn more about the various lived experiences of immigrants and refugees through their personal stories and ethnographic accounts

_Develop tools to become a participant in the ongoing debate about the future of American immigration;

_Get to know a great group of people, enjoy Door County, and have some fun in and out of class

Here are our “five major themes:”

Day 1: An Introduction to Immigration (From the Top Down and the Bottom Up)

Highlight: Getting the “immigration histories” of the participants

Day 2: Labor Migration: Push/Pull Factors

Highlight: Stories and examples of the “hard-work culture” created by various groups of hard-working immigrants to the U.S. both documented and undocumented with a particular emphasis on the culture created by Hispanic restaurant workers

Day 3: “Making Home”

Highlight: Watching and discussing NPR broadcast on German immigrants in rural Wisconsin which related directly to the family histories of many of us in the class (including me)

Day 4: “Well Founded Fear”

Highlights: Jenn’s live storytelling performance of her own family immigration experience, watch on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEODrtuj_Pk&t=323s

My coverage of the entirety of refugee history and modern U.S. refugee and asylum laws in 70 minutes (favorite student comment/compliment: “I expected this to be deadly, but it wasn’t.”)

Day 5: Contemporary Issues: The Future of Immigration, Refuges, & Asylum

Highlight: The class presentations of the famous (or infamous) “Mother Hen v. Dick’s Last Resort” “Build Your Own Refugee System” Exercise

Here’s the complete Course Outline (although admittedly we varied from this when necessary):

Bjorklunden 2019 Syllabus_American Immigration

Here’s my “Closing Statement:”

“CLOSING STATEMENT”

Lawrence University

Bjorklunden Campus

Bailey’s Harbor, WI

August 9, 2019

Jenn and I thank you for joining us. We’ve had our “Last Supper” and our “Final Breakfast” here at beautiful Bjorklunden. That means that our time together is ending.

In five days, we have completed a journey that began on Monday with hunter-gatherers in Africa thousands of years ago, and ends inside today’s headlines about ripping apart families in Mississippi and trying to develop better approaches to refugees: individuals who are an integral part of the human migration story as old as man, and who will not be stopped by walls, prison cells, removals, or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or rhetoric from our so-called “leaders.” On the way, we wound through our own rich immigration heritages and personal stories about how migration issues continue to shape our lives, including, of course, bringing this wonderful group together in the first place.

Jenn shared with you some very personal stories about her own family’s recent immigration experiences and how it shaped, and continues to mold her own life and future. I introduced you, at least briefly, to a key part of my own life, the U.S. Immigration Court, the retail level of our immigration system, where “the rubber meets the road” and where the maliciously incompetent actions of unqualified politicos have created “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and made a bad joke out of the precious Constitutional right to Due Process under law for all in the U.S. regardless of status or means of arrival.

Our lively class discussions have not been “merely academic,” but real and practical. We have discussed real life scenarios literally “ripped from today’s headlines,” involving real people and real human dilemmas, including the challenges facing those whose job it is to ensure that justice is served. Although this class is done, the learning, the intense human drama, and the “living theater” of American immigration will continue.

Jenn and I have enjoyed working with all of you over this week. The past five days have certainly been a high point for us this summer.

We have communicated our shared values of fairness, scholarship, timeliness, respect, and teamwork! And, we hope that our ability to bond and bridge generational, age, academic, gender, professional, cultural, and geographic gaps to bring you this learning experience has served as a “living example” of how those shared values play out in “real life.”

For me and others like me, our “time on the stage” is winding down. Others, like Jenn and Chuck, are still very much engaged in the production. Still others, like Mary’s inspiring grandchildren, Jenn’s boys, and my eight grandchildren, are “waiting in the wings” to take the stage and assume their full roles in the ongoing drama of human history.

Our hope and challenge for each of you is that no matter where you are in the process of lifelong learning and doing, you will reach your full potential as informed, caring, and compassionate human beings, and that you will continue to strive to make our world a better place! We also hope that something that you have learned in this class will make a positive difference in your life or the life of someone you care about.

Thanks again for inviting us into your lives, engaging, participating, and sharing. Journey forth safely, good luck, and may you do great things in all phases of life!

Here’s our “Class Photo” taken on the deck outside the Lakeside Seminar Room where we met:

Left to right: Steve Handrich, Judge Charlie Schudson, Nancy Behrens, Mary Poulson, Jeff Riester (fellow LU ’70), Chuck Meissner, Genie Meissner, Chuck Demler (LU ’11, Associate Director of Major and Planned Giving), Greta Rogers, Me, Professor Jennifer Esperanza (Beloit College), Renee Boldt, Susan Youngblood, Chris Coles, Cynthia Liddle, Fred Wileman (my cousin), Mary Miech

Here are some shots of Bjorklunden:

Bjorklunden -- Lake Michigan South — Looking South Along Lake Michigan Shore

Exploring the Ice Age With “Naturalist Jane”

Lake Michigan North — AM on Lake Michigan Looking North Toward Bailey’s Harbor

And, this is Jenn and me conducting our “exit session” @ the Door County Brewing Co. in Bailey’s Harbor:

Jenn & Paul — “Oh, the beauty of exam-free teaching!”

Thanks again to Mark Breseman (LU ’78), Executive Director; Kim Eckstein, Operations Manager; Alex Baldschun, Assistant Director; Jeff Campbell, Head Chef; Mark Franks, General Maintenance Mechanic; Lynda Pietruszka, Staff Assistant/Weekend Program Manager, and, of course, the amazing, brilliant, personable, and talented LU student staff at Bjorklunden for taking care of our every need and making everything work.

The student staff basically runs the place from an operational standpoint. While many universities brag about their hotel and hospitality management programs, as far as I could see the student staff at Lawrence was getting great “hands on” experience and training in hospitality management from the ground up. How do I know? Well, in the “corporate phase” of my career, I represented some of the largest international hotels and hospitality corporations in the world. The “hands on” training that these students were getting appeared to be very comparable to those of well-known hotel management programs and just the type of skills that major hotel chains are always looking for in their executives and managers.

Special thanks to Alex and Kim, for emergency copying and technical services; to Kim for showing me the only “Level 2” Electric Vehicle Charger in Bailey’s Harbor (I’ve recommended that as a proudly eco-friendly institution Lawrence install Level 2 EV Chargers and dedicated plugs for Level 1 EV Chargers in convenient locations on both the Appleton and Northern Campuses); to Jeff for giving me tasty vegan options for every meal; and to Lynda and Mark Franks for their general cheerfulness and “can do” attitude. I also appreciate the student staff who resided on my corridor for putting up with my constant whistling.

I thank Chuck Demler for getting me involved in the Bjorklunden teaching program. I am indebted to Jeff Riester for not sharing his recollections (if any) of our time together as undergraduates at Lawrence with particular reference to our two terms at the Lawrence Overseas Campus then located in Boennigheim, Germany.

Finally, thanks to my good friend and professional teaching colleague Professor Jenn Esperanza of Beloit College (who also happens to be “best buds” with my daughter Anna and her husband Daniel, a fellow Professor at Beloit College) for undertaking this adventure together and being willing to share so much of her very moving and relatively recent personal experiences with immigration and being part of the “American success story.” Jenn and I appreciated the enthusiastic participation of all the members of our group and their signing up for our class.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-21-19

JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”

New from JMHS | An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era

View this email in your browser

A publication of the Center for Migration Studies

Donald Kerwin, Executive Editor
John Hoeffner and Michele Pistone, Associate Editors

An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era

By Paul Wickham Schmidt (Georgetown Law)

This paper critiques US immigration and asylum policies from perspective of the author’s 46 years as a public servant. It also offers a taxonomy of the US immigration system by positing different categories of membership: full members of the “club” (US citizens); “associate members” (lawful permanent residents, refugees and asylees); “friends” (non-immigrants and holders of temporary status); and, persons outside the club (the undocumented). It describes the legal framework that applies to these distinct populations, as well as recent developments in federal law and policy that relate to them. It also identifies a series of cross-cutting issues that affect these populations, including immigrant detention, immigration court backlogs, state and local immigration policies, and Constitutional rights that extend to non-citizens. It makes the following asylum reform proposals, relying (mostly) on existing laws designed to address situations of larger-scale migration:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and, in particular, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) should send far more Asylum Officers to conduct credible fear interviews at the border.
Law firms, pro bono attorneys, and charitable legal agencies should attempt to represent all arriving migrants before both the Asylum Office and the Immigration Courts.
USCIS Asylum Officers should be permitted to grant temporary withholding of removal under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) to applicants likely to face torture if returned to their countries of origin.
Immigration Judges should put the asylum claims of those granted CAT withholding on the “back burner” — thus keeping these cases from clogging the Immigration Courts — while working with the UNHCR and other counties in the Hemisphere on more durable solutions for those fleeing the Northern Triangle states of Central America.
Individuals found to have a “credible fear” should be released on minimal bonds and be allowed to move to locations where they will be represented by pro bono lawyers.
Asylum Officers should be vested with the authority to grant asylum in the first instance, thus keeping more asylum cases out of Immigration Court.
If the Administration wants to prioritize the cases of recent arrivals, it should do so without creating more docket reshuffling, inefficiencies, and longer backlogs

Download the PDF of the article

Read more JMHS articles at http://cmsny.org/jmhs/

Want to learn more about access to asylum on the US-Mexico border? Join the Center for Migration Studies for our annual Academic and Policy Symposium on October 17.

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My long-time friend Don Kerwin, Executive Director of CMS, has been a “Lt. General of the New Due Process Army” since long before there even was a “New Due Process Army” (“NDPA”). Talk about someone who has spent his entire career increasing human understanding and making the world a better place! Don is a great role model and example for newer members of the NDPA, proving that one can make a difference, as well as a living, in our world by doing great things and good works! Not surprisingly, Don’s career achievements and contributions bear great resemblance to those of our mutual friend, the late Juan Osuna.

So, when Don asked me to consider turning some of my past speeches about our immigration system and how it should work into an article to honor Juan, I couldn’t say no. But, I never would have gotten it “across the finish line” without Don’s inspiration, encouragement, editing, and significant substantive suggestions for improvement, as well as that of the talented peer reviewers and editorial staff of JMHS. Like most achievements in life, it truly was a “team effort” for which I thank all involved.

Those of you who might have attended my Boynton Society Lecture last Saturday, August 10, at the beautiful and inspiring Bjorklunden Campus of Lawrence University on the shores of Lake Michigan at Bailey’s Harbor, WI, will see that portions of this article were “reconverted” and incorporated into that speech.

Also, those who might have taken the class “American Immigration, a Cultural, Legal, and Anthropological Approach” at the Bjorklunden Seminar Series the previous week, co-taught by my friend Professor Jenn Esperanza of The Beloit College Anthropology Department, and me had the then-unpublished manuscript in their course materials, and will no doubt recognize many of the themes that Jenn and I stressed during that week.

Perhaps the only “comment that really mattered” was passed on to me by Don shortly after this article was released. It was from Juan’s wife, the also amazing and inspiring Wendy Young, President of Kids In Need of Defense (“KIND”):“Juan would be truly honored.”

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

Juan P. Osuna (1963-2017)
Judge, Executive, Scholar, Teacher, Defender of Due Process

Wendy Young
President, Kids In Need of Defense (“KIND”)

PWS

08-19-19

TRUMP, MILLER, & “COOCH COOCH” ARE AS INTELLECTUALLY DULL AS THEY ARE RACIST — “USEFUL IDIOTS” PROVE NO MATCH FOR SMART WOMEN: CNN’S ERIN BURNETT, HUFFPOST’S SARAH RUIZ-GROSSMAN, HISTORIAN ANNIE POLLAND, & VANITY FAIR’S BESS LEVIN — No Wonder The Administration’s Malicious Incompetents Surround Themselves With (Mostly Old White Male) Folks Who Might Be Even Dumber (But Not More Vile) Than They Are!

Watch Erin eviscerate “Coach Cooch” — talk about debunking many of Trump’s flse narritives and blatant racist lies in one short piece:

https://apple.news/AzfXx6N_GTA-c-0HtLeBxmQ

Sarah Ruiz-Grossman — Sarah Ruiz- Grossman
News & Politics Reporter
Huffington Post

Read Sarah’s report of the mismatch, featuring American Jewish Historical Society’s Historian Annie Polland:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ken-cuccinelli-statue-liberty-poem-about-europe_n_5d535ed3e4b05fa9df0671ee

POLITICS

7 hours ago

Ken Cuccinelli: Statue Of Liberty Poem About ‘People Coming From Europe’

Trump’s citizenship and immigration chief followed up his earlier comments about the famous Emma Lazarus poem with a racist clarification.

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Ken Cuccinelli, the Trump administration’s acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, reinforced his controversial interpretation of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty ― this time giving it a racist twist.

CNN journalist Erin Burnett was asking Cuccinelli about his earlier interview with NPR, in which he reworded the Emma Lazarus poem “The New Colossus,” saying: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge.”

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“‘Wretched,’ ‘poor,’ refuse’ – right? That’s what the poem says America is supposed to stand for. So what do you think America stands for?” Burnett asked Cuccinelli.

“Well, of course, that poem was referring back to people coming from Europe,” Cuccinelli answered, “where they had class-based societies, where people were considered wretched if they weren’t in the right class … And it was written one year after the first federal public charge rule was written.”

It is unclear why Cuccinelli felt the need to specify the group of immigrants Lazarus was referring to. The poem itself describes the Statue of Liberty by saying, “From her beacon-hand/ Glows world-wide welcome.” USCIS did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

Cuccinelli was on NPR defending the Trump administration’s controversial new rule effectively barring legal immigrants who are on government benefits, like food stamps and Medicaid, from becoming permanent residents.

Josh Marshall

✔@joshtpm

Lotsa folks asking for longer version of this cuccinelli clip. Here it is.

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After his remarks on NPR, HuffPost spoke to Annie Polland, a historian and director of the organization that has the original manuscript of Lazarus’ poem.

“To see how something so expressive of the country’s greatest ideals, to see how it could be so contorted or distorted, is really, I think, dismay is the only word,” said Polland, the executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York, adding that she was “not surprised because we’ve been hearing these sentiments more than we have in the past.”

Lazarus originally wrote the poem in 1883 and it was added to the statue in 1903. Since then, the poem has become a symbol of the United States’ history of immigration.

Polland argued that the poem “is as much about who America or what America should be, as it is about immigrants,” adding that “in many ways, America defines itself by how it’s welcoming immigrants.”

And, speaking of “evisceration,” perhaps no pundit in American does it better than Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin, who as had “Don the Cons’s “number “dialed up” from the get-go:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/ken-cuccinelli-statue-of-liberty

Lady Liberty

TRUMP OFFICIAL REWRITES STATUE OF LIBERTY POEM TO REFLECT TRUMP’S “NO POORS” POLICY

Ken Cuccinelli doesn’t think the whole “give me your tired, your poor” business applies anymore.

BY

BESS LEVIN

AUGUST 13, 2019

BY WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES.The base of the Statue of Liberty famously displays the words of Emma Lazarus, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” But, if Donald Trump’s top immigration official had it his way, the poem would be revised to reflect the president’s “rich immigrants only” policy.

Speaking to NPR on Tuesday, the day after the administration unveiled a new rule that will penalize green card applicants for “financial liabilities” like having a low credit score or using Medicaid, Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, was asked if Lazarus’s poem, “The New Colossus,” remains “part of the American ethos.” To which Cuccinelli offered some suggested edits inspired by the executive branch’s take on who should or shouldn’t be allowed to live in the United States. “They certainly are,” Cuccinelli said. “Give me your tired and your poor—who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.”

Aaron Rupar

✔@atrupar

Here’s acting USCIS director Ken Cuccinelli saying on NPR this morning that the Statue of Liberty plaque should be changed to read, “give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge.”

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One day prior, Cuccinelli had told reporters at the White House that he was “certainly not prepared to take anything down off the Statue of Liberty,” though apparently, having slept on it, he’s now up for some kind of appendage. During his interview with NPR, Cuccinelli noted that the plaque bearing Lazarus’s words “was put on the Statue of Liberty at almost the same time as the first public charge was passed—very interesting timing.” It’s not at all clear what point he thought he was making.

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Jon Favreau Breaks Down The Lion King’s Opening Scene

Despite having zero actual experience in immigration policy, Cuccinelli was hired in May thanks to previous work sponsoring bills that tried to repeal birthright citizenship and would force employees to speak English in the workplace. (Had the latter passed, we assume Cuccinelli would have proposed revising the Statue of Liberty’s poem to read, “Speak English, bitch.”) In 2013, his mother told the Washington Post that as Christians, the Cuccinellis raised their children to “care [for] the poor” and that “if someone is starving, you want to bring him a meal, not a book on how to cook,” lessons her son apparently forgot. (Speaking of his Christian values, Cuccinelli has said that homosexuality “brings nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of their soul.”)

This isn’t the first time a member of the Trump administration has cast aspersions on the whole “give me your tired, your poor,” business. Back in 2017, Stephen Miller, the president’s chief white rage officer, told Jim Acosta that he didn’t give a shit about the poem because it “was added later and is not part of the original Statue of Liberty.”

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We are “governed” by evil racist fools. It’s up to the “The Due Process Army” and others to defend America and American ideals from these ignorant, yet existentially dangerous, White Nationalist racists!

PWS

08-14-19

HISTORY: CHINESE WORKERS MADE AMERICA GREAT BY BUILDING THE TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILWAY: Their “Reward” From A Racist Nation: Deportation, Exclusion, Bias!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/racists-deported-my-chinese-ancestor-he-still-loved-the-railroad-he-worked-on/2019/05/16/cac91328-75ac-11e9-b7ae-390de4259661_story.html

Ava Chin writes in the Washington Post:

One of the earliest stories I heard as a child was that my immigrant great-great-grandfather worked out West on the first transcontinental railroad. Yuan Son, along with tens of thousands of other Chinese workers, blasted tunnels, carved footholds and laid grade at death-defying heights through the most arduous parts of the Sierra Nevada, miraculously making it out alive. I envisioned him tough and swashbuckling — a cross between my tall, bartender grandfather, who often told me these stories while smoking a Marlboro in our home in Queens, and Yosemite Sam.

My great-great-grandfather and his fellow laborers toiled around the clock in rotating shifts, handling explosive nitroglycerine, blasting through miles of granite, hauling tons of rock and dirt, even in upwards of 30 feet of snow. They endured brutal working conditions we would consider unconscionable today to complete the most difficult sections through the Sierra Nevada — the same terrain that stopped the ill-fated Donner Party in its tracks — and finally out to Nevada and Utah’s blistering desert heat. They were paid less and worked longer hours than their Irish or American counterparts, and they had to provide their own food and accommodations. Although some claimed it could never be done, Yuan Son and other Chinese workers completed the task in record time.

It wasn’t until, as an adult, I traveled to Promontory Summit, Utah, and saw the site of the railroad’s completion with my own eyes that I realized the true weight of this legacy. The railroad is a complicated affair for Chinese American descendants like me: The greatest U.S. engineering feat of the 19th century may have physically unified the country when it was finished in 1869, but this new network of rail also brought scores of white workers to the West, many of whom grew resentful when they saw Chinese holding down jobs they considered rightfully theirs. Not 15 years after the completion of the railroad, this ire, coupled with a severe economic depression, helped usher in the Chinese Exclusion Act — the country’s first major federal law that limited immigration based on race, class and nationality — setting the tone for future wide-reaching restrictive immigration policies.

My great-great grandfather was a teenager when he arrived in California, a mere boy, one of upwards of 20,000 Chinese, mainly from the Pearl River Delta area (in Guangdong province), who made up the majority of the Central Pacific Railroad workforce. He, like most of the others, was raised in a poor farming family, in a country that had been hammered by drought, famine, Western colonialism, warlordism and one of the bloodiest civil wars of the 19th century — conditions that would look familiar to many refugees and migrants today. So when the opportunity arose to feed his family by working for a railroad an ocean away, he took it.

As a schoolgirl, I scanned the official photograph that came to symbolize the railroad’s completion — engineers shaking hands, flocks of laborers posing for the camera, the champagne toast, a carefully choreographed scene — more than 100 years later, searching for faces like my great-great-grandfather’s. Only white faces stared back. Chinese workers were written out of this triumphant American story.

Their contributions were already being erased when Chinese Exclusion was enacted, and soon followed by a tsunami of anti-Chinese violence that swept across much of the West — lynchings, expulsions, boycotts of Chinese businesses, politicians jumping on the bandwagon. Nativism was as popular and potent then as it is today. Yuan Son, now an entrepreneurial shop owner, had happily settled in Idaho, where, after the railroad’s completion, Chinese made up close to 30 percent of the population. Although he had been living in the country for almost 30 years, one day he was forced out of his home at gunpoint by a band of masked vigilantes.

Despite these hardships, Yuan Son resettled back into life in China and surprisingly spoke of the work he had done on the railroad with great pride. He even taught my grandfather his first words in English: “Central Pacific,” “Southern Pacific” and “Union Pacific.” My chain-smoking grandfather repeated these names back to me through his ringing Cantonese intonations, in our home half a world away, as if he were a conductor calling out stations.

As the Trump administration attempts to rally support for ever more stringent immigration policies, I can’t help reflecting on railroad pioneers like Yuan Son. These men risked their lives hammering and detonating gunpowder, surviving avalanches and extreme conditions — engaging in the kind of backbreaking, chisel-to-granite “bone-work” that others refused to do. I am confronted by this complicated history, even as some wave patriotic flags amid cries to “make America great again.” One hundred and fifty years ago, my grandfather’s grandfather did help make this nation great, along with scores of his countrymen. It didn’t stop him from getting booted out, decades later, simply for being Chinese.

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Like it or not, supporting Trump means “buying in” to his noxiously false “Whitebread” vision of America’s past and future. It is also to disingenuously decline to recognize our true immigrant heritage and the overwhelming contributions of immigrants of color, enslaved Americans, immigrant women, and native Americans in making America great.

Sadly, the Chinese weren’t the only ones “airbrushed out” of the triumphant picture of the Transcontinental Railroad’s completion. Blacks, women, and Native Americans also made major contributions while suffering disproportionately; yet, they also received little or no appreciation or recognition.

Here’s a “differently take” on the ‘golden spike ceremony.:”

PWS

05-31-19

REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

OUR DISTINGUISHED PANEL:

Eileen Blessinger, Blessinger Legal

Lisa Johnson-Firth, Immigrants First

Andrea Rodriguez, Rodriguez Law

FBA Austin -Central America — Intro

JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW

Paul Wickham Schmidt

U.S. Immigration Judge (Retired)

Federal Bar Association Immigration Conference

Austin, Texas

May 17, 2019

Hi, I’m Paul Schmidt, moderator of this panel. So, I have something useful to do while my wonderful colleagues do all the “heavy lifting,” please submit all questions to me in writing. And remember, free beer for everyone at the Bullock Texas State Museum after this panel!

Welcome to the front lines of the battle for our legal system, and ultimately for the future of our constitutional republic. Because, make no mistake, once this Administration, its nativist supporters, and enablers succeed in eradicating the rights and humanity of Central American asylum seekers, all their other “enemies” — Hispanics, gays, African Americans, the poor, women, liberals, lawyers, journalists, civil servants, Democrats — will be in line for “Dred Scottification” — becoming “non-persons” under our Constitution. If you don’t know what the “Insurrection Act” is or “Operation Wetback” was, you should “tune in” to today’s edition of my blog immigrationcourtside.com and take a look into the future of America under our current leaders’ dark and disgraceful vision.

Before I introduce the “Dream Team” sitting to my right, a bit of asylum history.

In 1987, the Supreme Court established in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca that a well founded fear of persecution for asylum was to be interpreted generously in favor of asylum applicants. So generously, in fact, that someone with only a 10% chance of persecution qualifies.

Shortly thereafter, the BIA followed suit with Matter of Mogharrabi, holding that asylum should be granted even in cases where persecution was significantly less than probable. To illustrate, the BIA granted asylum to an Iranian who suffered threats at the Iranian Interests Section in Washington, DC. Imagine what would happen to a similar case under today’s regime!

In the 1990s, the “Legacy INS” enacted regulations establishing that those who had suffered “past persecution” would be presumed to have a well-founded fear of future persecution, unless the Government could show materially changed circumstances or a reasonably available internal relocation alternative that would eliminate that well-founded fear. In my experience as a judge, that was a burden that the Government seldom could meet.

But the regulations went further and said that even where the presumption of a well founded fear had been rebutted, asylum could still be granted because of “egregious past persecution” or “other serious harm.”

In 1996, the BIA decided the landmark case of Matter of Kasinga, recognizing that abuses directed at women by a male dominated society, such as “female genital mutilation’ (“FGM”), could be a basis for granting asylum based on a “particular social group.” Some of us, including my good friend and colleague Judge Lory Rosenberg, staked our careers on extending that much-need protection to women who had suffered domestic violence. Although it took an unnecessarily long time, that protection eventually was realized in the 2014 precedent Matter of A-R-C-G-, long after our “forced departure” from the BIA.

And, as might be expected, over the years the asylum grant rate in Immigration Court rose steadily, from a measly 11% in the early 1980s, when EOIR was created, to 56% in 2012, in an apparent long overdue fulfillment of the generous legal promise of Cardoza-Fonseca. Added to those receiving withholding of removal and/or relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”), approximately two-thirds of asylum applicants were receiving well-deserved, often life-saving legal protection in Immigration Court.

Indeed, by that time, asylum grant rates in some of the more due-process oriented courts with asylum expertise like New York and Arlington exceeded 70%, and could have been models for the future. In other words, after a quarter of a century of struggles, the generous promise of Cardoza-Fonseca was finally on the way to being fulfilled. Similarly, the vision of the Immigration Courts as “through teamwork and innovation being the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all” was at least coming into focus, even if not a reality in some Immigration Courts that continued to treat asylum applicants with hostility.

And, that doesn’t count those offered prosecutorial discretion or “PD” by the DHS counsel. Sometimes, this was a humanitarian act to save those who were in danger if returned but didn’t squarely fit the somewhat convoluted “refugee” definition as interpreted by the BIA. Other times, it appeared to be a strategic move by DHS to head off possible precedents granting asylum in “close cases” or in “emerging circumstances.”

In 2014, there was a so-called “surge” in asylum applicants, mostly scared women, children, and families from the Northern Triangle of Central America seeking protection from worsening conditions involving gangs, cartels, and corrupt governments.There was a well-established record of femicide and other widespread and largely unmitigated gender-based violence directed against women and gays, sometimes by the Northern Triangle governments and their agents, other times by gangs and cartels operating with the knowledge and acquiescence of the governments concerned.

Also, given the breakdown of governmental authority and massive corruption, gangs and cartels assumed quasi-governmental status, controlling territories, negotiating “treaties,” exacting involuntary “taxes,” and severely punishing those who publicly opposed their political policies by refusing to join, declining to pay, or attempting to report them to authorities. Indeed, MS-13 eventually became the largest employer in El Salvador. Sometimes, whole family groups, occupational groups, or villages were targeted for their public acts of resistance.

Not surprisingly in this context, the vast majority of those who arrived during the so-called “surge” passed “credible fear” screening by the DHS and were referred to the Immigration Courts, or in the case of “unaccompanied minors,” to the Asylum Offices, to pursue their asylum claims.

The practical legal solution to this humanitarian flow was obvious — help folks find lawyers to assist in documenting and presenting their cases, screen out the non-meritorious claims and those who had prior gang or criminal associations, and grant the rest asylum. Even those not qualifying for asylum because of the arcane “nexus” requirements appeared to fit squarely within the CAT protection based on likelihood of torture with government acquiescence upon return to the Northern Triangle. Some decent BIA precedents, a robust refugee program in the Northern Triangle, along with continued efforts to improve the conditions there would have “sealed the deal.” In other words, the Obama Administration had all of the legal tools necessary to deal effectively and humanely with the misnamed “surge” as what it really was — a humanitarian situation and an opportunity for our country to show human rights leadership!

But, then things took a strange and ominous turn. After years of setting records for deportations and removals, and being disingenuously called “soft on enforcement” by the GOP, the Obama Administration began believing the GOP myths that they were wimps. They panicked! Their collective “manhood” depended on showing that they could quickly return refugees to the Northern Triangle to “deter” others from coming. Thus began the “weaponization” of our Immigration Court system that has continued unabated until today.

They began imprisoning families and children in horrible conditions and establishing so-called “courts” in those often for profit prisons in obscure locations where attorneys generally were not readily available. They absurdly claimed that everyone should be held without bond because as a group they were a “national security risk.” They argued in favor of indefinite detention without bond and making children and toddlers “represent themselves” in Immigration Court.

The Attorney General also sent strong messages to EOIR that hurrying folks through the system by “prioritizing” them, denying their claims, “stuffing” their appeals, and returning them to the Northern Triangle with a mere veneer of due process was an essential part of the Administration’s “get tough” enforcement program. EOIR was there to “send a message” to those who might be considering fleeing for their lives — don’t come, you won’t get in, no matter how strong your claim might be.

They took judges off of their established dockets and sent them to the Southern Border to expeditiously remove folks before they could get legal help. They insisted on jamming unprepared cases of recently arrived juveniles and “adults with children” in front of previously docketed cases, thereby generating total chaos and huge backlogs through what is known as “aimless docket reshuffling” (“ADR”).

Hurry up scheduling and ADR also resulted in more “in absentia” orders because of carelessly prepared and often inadequate or wrongly addressed “notices” sent out by overwhelmed DHS and EOIR court staff. Sometimes DHS could remove those with in absentia orders before they got a chance to reopen their cases. Other times, folks didn’t even realize a removal order had been entered until they were on their way back.

They empowered judges with unusually high asylum denial rates. By a ratio of nine to one they hired new judges from prosecutorial backgrounds, rather than from the large body of qualified candidates with experience in representing asylum applicants who might actually have been capable of working within the system to fairly and efficiently recognize meritorious cases, promote fair access to pro bono counsel, and insure that doubtful cases or those needing more attention did not get “lost” in the artificial backlogs being created in an absurdly mismanaged system. In other words, due process took a back seat to “expedience” and fulfilling inappropriate Administration enforcement goals.

Asylum grant rates began to drop, even as conditions on the ground for refugees worldwide continued to deteriorate. Predictably, however, detention, denial, inhumane treatment, harsh rhetoric, and unfair removals failed to stop refugees from fleeing the Northern Triangle.

But, just when many of us thought things couldn’t get worse, they did. The Trump Administration arrived on the scene. They put lifelong White Nationalist xenophobe nativists Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller in charge of eradicating the asylum process. Sessions decided that even artificially suppressed asylum grant rates weren’t providing enough deterrence; asylum seekers were still winning too many cases. So he did away with A-R-C-G- and made it harder for Immigration Judges to control their dockets.

He tried to blame asylum seekers and their largely pro bono attorneys, whom he called “dirty lawyers,” for having created a population of 11 million undocumented individuals in the U.S. He promoted bogus claims and false narratives about immigrants and crime. Perhaps most disgustingly, he was the “mastermind” behind the policy of “child separation” which inflicted lifetime damage upon the most vulnerable and has resulted in some children still not being reunited with their families.

He urged “judges” to summarily deny asylum claims of women based on domestic violence or because of fear of persecution by gangs. He blamed the judges for the backlogs he was dramatically increasing with more ADR and told them to meet new quotas for churning out final orders or be fired. He made it clear that denials of asylum, not grants, were to be the “new norm” for final orders.

His sycophantic successor, Bill Barr, an immigration hard-liner, immediately picked up the thread by eliminating bond for most individuals who had passed credible fear. Under Barr, the EOIR has boldly and publicly abandoned any semblance of due process, fairness, or unbiased decision making in favor of becoming an Administration anti-asylum propaganda factory. Just last week they put out a “bogus fact sheet” of lies about the asylum process and the dedicated lawyers trying to help asylum seekers. The gist was that the public should believe that almost all asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle are mala fide and that getting them attorneys and explaining their rights are a waste of time and money.

In the meantime, the Administration has refused to promptly process asylum applicants at ports of entry; made those who have passed credible fear “wait in Mexico” in dangerous and sometimes life-threatening conditions; unsuccessfully tried to suspend the law allowing those who enter the U.S. between ports of entry to apply for asylum; expanded the “New American Gulag” with tent cities and more inhumane prisons — dehumanizingly referred to as “beds” as if they existed without reference to those humans confined to them; illegally reprogrammed money that could have gone for additional humanitarian assistance to a stupid and unnecessary “wall;” and threatened to “dump” asylum seekers to “punish” so-called “sanctuary cities.” Perhaps most outrageously, in violation of clear statutory mandates, they have replaced trained Asylum Officers in the “credible fear” process with totally unqualified Border Patrol Agents whose job is to make the system “adversarial” and to insure that fewer individuals pass “credible fear.”

The Administration says the fact that the “credible fear” pass rate is much higher than the asylum grant rate is evidence that the system is being “gamed.” That’s nativist BS! The, reality is just the opposite: that so many of those who pass credible fear are eventually rejected by Immigration Judges shows that something is fundamentally wrong with the Immigration Court system. Under pressure to produce and with too many biased, untrained, and otherwise unqualified “judges,” many claims that should be granted are being wrongfully denied.

Today, the Immigration Courts have become an openly hostile environment for asylum seekers and their representatives. Sadly, the Article III Courts aren’t much better, having largely “swallowed the whistle” on a system that every day blatantly mocks due process, the rule of law, and fair and unbiased treatment of asylum seekers. Many Article IIIs continue to “defer” to decisions produced not by “expert tribunals,” but by a fraudulent court system that has replaced due process with expediency and enforcement.

But, all is not lost. Even in this toxic environment, there are pockets of judges at both the administrative and Article III level who still care about their oaths of office and are continuing to grant asylum to battered women and other refugees from the Northern Triangle. Indeed, I have been told that more than 60 gender-based cases from Northern Triangle countries have been granted by Immigration Judges across the country even after Sessions’s blatant attempt to snuff out protection for battered women in Matter of A-B-. Along with dependent family members, that means hundreds of human lives of refugees saved, even in the current age.

Also significantly, by continuing to insist that asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle be treated fairly in accordance with due process and the applicable laws, we are making a record of the current legal and constitutional travesty for future generations. We are building a case for an independent Article I Immigration Court, for resisting nativist calls for further legislative restrictions on the rights of asylum seekers, and for eventually holding the modern day “Jim Crows” who have abused the rule of law and human values, at all levels of our system, accountable, before the “court of history” if nothing else!

Eventually, we will return to the evolving protection of asylum seekers in the pre-2014 era and eradicate the damage to our fundamental values and the rule of law being done by this Administration’s nativist, White Nationalist policies.That’s what the “New Due Process Army” is all about.

Here to tell you how to effectively litigate for the New Due Process Army and to save even more lives of deserving refugees from all areas of the world, particularly from the Northern Triangle, are three of the “best ever.” I know that, because each of them appeared before me during my tenure at the Arlington Immigration Court. They certainly brightened up my day whenever they appeared, and I know they will enlighten you with their legal knowledge, energy, wit, and humanity.

Andrea Rodriguez is the principal of Rodriguez Law in Arlington Virginia. Prior to opening her own practice, Andrea was the Director of Legal Services at the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN). She is a graduate of the City University of New York Law and George Mason University.

Eileen Blessinger is the principal of Blessinger Legal in Falls Church, Virginia. Eileen is a graduate of the Washington College of Law at American University. In addition to heading a multi-attorney practice firm, she is a frequent commentator on legal issues on television and in the print media.

Lisa Johnson-Firth is the principal of Immigrants First, specializing in removal defense, waivers, family-based adjustment, asylum and Convention Against Torture claims, naturalization, U and T visas, and Violence Against Women Act petitions. She holds a J.D. from Northeastern University, an LLB from the University of Sheffield in the U.K., and a B.A. degree from Allegheny College.

Andrea, starting with you, what’s the real situation in the Northern Triangle and the sordid history of the chronic failure of state protection?

PWS

05-20-19

COLBERT I. KING @ WASHPOST: The Ugly Endurance Of Racism In America: “I used to think America would age out of racism. What was I thinking?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-used-to-think-america-would-age-out-of-racism-what-was-i-thinking/2019/05/10/32e89c8a-7274-11e9-9f06-5fc2ee80027a_story.html

King writes:

There was a time when I believed, almost as an article of faith, that with the passage of time, America would age out of racism. What in the world was I thinking?

But that is what I told myself in the fall of 1954 — five months after the Supreme Court’s school desegregation decision — when I learned that students attending then-all-white Eastern, Anacostia and McKinley Technical high schools, and several white junior high schools in the District, had staged walkouts to protest the assignment of black kids to their schools. I was enrolled at then-all-black Dunbar High School at the time.

I really believed that racial integration was a step toward the goal of full equality and that, as the months wore on, those who walked out would shed their fear and anger. Instead, they and their families devoted the time remaining before the black students arrived to finding a means to flee the city.

Still I dreamed.

When, in 1956, students and adults shouted racial epithets and threw rotten eggs and rocks at a young black woman named Autherine Lucy who tried to enter the University of Alabama to obtain a degree in library science, I consoled myself with the thought that the hurlers of eggs and epithets would age out of the picture. Even when the University of Alabama expelled Lucy, under the guise of ensuring her personal safety, I thought those elders would one day be off the scene.

The same thought was in my head in the fall of 1957, when Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called the National Guard to surround Central High School in Little Rock to prevent nine African American students from attending the all-white school, declaring “blood will run in the streets” if black students attempted to enter.

One day, oh one fine day, I believed, it’s gonna be over because one day, folks such as Orval Faubus are gonna be dead and gone.

But they were still around years later when, in the summer of 1964, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, two white New Yorkers, and James Chaney, a black Mississippian, were in Mississippi helping to register voters. Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney disappeared on their way back from investigating the burning of an African American church by the Ku Klux Klan. Their bodies were later discovered buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Miss.

Through it all, I clung firmly to the belief that because those white men and women hellbent on making life miserable for people unlike themselves were getting up in age, they would soon die out and be replaced by a younger, more broad-minded, racially tolerant generation of white Americans. Unlike many of their elders, these young people would be unencumbered by ingrained racist ideas, I said to myself.

What a fool was I. Bigotry doesn’t age out.

Evidence of that smacks us in the face.

Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who shot and killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., in 2015, including the pastor and a state senator, was 21 at the time.

Holden Matthews, charged with burning three historically black churches in Louisiana a week before Easter, was 21 .

John Earnest, accused of a shooting that killed one and injured three at a synagogue in Poway, Calif., a few weeks after launching an arson attack at a San Diego County mosque, was 19 .

The man charged with the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh that left 11 dead was no septuagenarian; Robert Bowers was 46 .

Then there are the two ninth-grade students at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda who posted an image of themselves in blackface on social media and used the n-word as they described the photo. They were driven by the same racial animus that caused students to walk out of Eastern, Anacostia and McKinley Tech high schools 65 years ago.

Bigotry is a disease of the mind — a poisonous infection unbounded by age, time or space. It is transmissible, capable of being passed down from elders to child, from community to community, from racial and religious kin to racial and religious kin.

The newly appointed archbishop of Washington, Wilton Daniel Gregory, has called racism “a grave moral disease whose recurrence, aggressiveness and persistence should frighten every one of us.”

What’s striking about today’s disease, Gregory wrote in a December 2016 article carried by the Catholic News Service, is that it “may seem to have been brought under control”; that it was on the wane.

Presciently, Gregory wrote, “We have returned to a moment in our nation’s history when racist feelings and sentiments have been condoned as acceptable to express publicly and publish openly.”

The response he called for would reflect the sentiment of my youth: to “disavow any vestige of racism and hatred of other people because of race, religion, legal status or gender.”

Eradicating and inoculating us from this disease is our hope and never-ending challenge — for each of us. For certain, hate won’t outgrow itself.

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I have noticed before the similarity between the faces and expressions of the overwhelmingly white, mindlessly cheering crowds, behind Trump at his rallies as he rattles off his “normal litany” of lies, insults, and racist provocations and the absurd, yet ugly and dangerous, faces of white racists in the 1950’s and 1960’s South —- captured in black and white photos as they bullied and taunted African Americans at lunch counters or African American kids attempting to attend school. Really, I also wanted to believe that those days were gone, and the white folks pictured were either gone or would be embarrassed and humiliated by the cowardice, ignorance, and inhumanity of their past actions.

King is right: “hate won’t outgrow itself.” And Trump and his followers are are nurturing, growing, and harvesting that hate on a daily basis. The majority of us who don’t believe in Trump’s vile messages and unacceptable methods must take our country back before hate and bigotry consume it!

PWS

056-11-19

COURTSIDE HISTORY: BEYOND TRUMP’S MYTHICAL “WHITE NATIONALIST NATION” LET’S SEE WHO BESIDES ENSLAVED AFRICAN AMERICAN FORCED MIGRANTS DID THE WORK THAT MADE AMERICA GREAT — The Essential Role Of Despised Chinese Immigrants! — “Chinese workers were often left out of the official story because their alienage and suffering did not fit well with celebration. . . .Without them, Leland Stanford would probably be at best a footnote in history — and the West and the United States would not exist as we know it today.”

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=258d1f6b-0c42-4c29-925d-a144ec4f47b1

Professor Gordon Chang of Stanford University writes in the LA Times:

Immigrants got the job done

History finally has its eyes on Chinese laborers who built transcontinental railroad’s western leg

By Gordon H. Chang

The nation’s first transcontinental railroad, completed 150 years ago today at Promontory Summit in Utah, connected the vast United States and brought America into the modern age. Chinese immigrants contributed mightily to this feat, but the historical accounts that first transcontinental followed often marginalized their role.

Between 1863 and 1869, as many as 20,000 Chinese workers helped build the treacherous western portion of the railroad, a winding ribbon of track known as the Central Pacific that began in Sacramento.

At first, the Central Pacific Railroad’s directors wanted a whites-only workforce. Leland Stanford, the railroad’s president, had advocated for keeping Asians out of the state in his 1862 inaugural address as governor of California. When not enough white men signed up, the railroad began hiring Chinese men for the backbreaking labor. No women worked on the line.

Company leaders were skeptical of the new recruits’ ability to do the work, but the Chinese laborers proved themselves more than capable — and the railroad barons came to consider them superior to the other workers.

My colleagues and I initiated an international research project — based, appropriately, at Stanford University — to investigate the enormous contribution Chinese workers made to the transcontinental project. It proved to be a formidable task, not least because no written record produced by what were called “railroad Chinese” is known to exist. Without letters, diaries and other primary sources that are historians’ stock in trade, we amassed a sizable collection of evidence that included archaeological findings, ship manifests, payroll records, photographs and observers’ accounts.

The material allowed us to recover a sense of the lived experiences of the thousands of Chinese migrants Leland Stanford came to greatly admire. He told President Andrew Johnson that the Chinese were indispensable to building the railroad: They were “quiet, peaceable, patient, industrious and economical.” In a stockholder report, Stanford described construction as a “herculean task” and said it had been accomplished thanks to the Chinese, who made up 90% of the Central Pacific Railroad’s labor force.

These workers showed their mettle, and sealed their legacy, on the peaks of the Sierra Nevada. Many observers at the time had assumed that Stanford and the railroad were daft for thinking they could link California with the East because an immense mountain range separated the state from Nevada and beyond. The Sierra Nevada is a rugged, formidable range, its inhospitableness encapsulated by the gruesome tragedy of the Donner party in 1847 and 1848. Trapped by winter storms in the mountains, they resorted to cannibalism.

To get to the High Sierra, Chinese workers cut through dense forests, filled deep ravines, constructed long trestles and built enormous retaining walls — some of which remain intact today. All work was done by hand using carts, shovels and picks but no machinery.

The greatest challenge was to push the line through the Sierra summit. Solid granite peaks soared to 14,000 feet in elevation. The railroad bed snaked through passes at more than 7,000 feet. The men who came from humid south China labored through two of the worst winters on record, surviving in caverns dug beneath the snow.

They blasted out 15 tunnels, the longest nearly 1,700 feet. To speed up the carving of the tunnels, the Chinese laborers worked from several directions. After opening portals along the rock face on either side of the mountain, they dug an 80-foot shaft down to the estimated midway point. From there, they carved out toward the portals, doubling the rate of progress by tunneling from both sides. It still took two years to accomplish the task.

The Chinese workers were paid 30% to 50% less than their white counterparts and were given the most dangerous work. In June 1867, they protested. Three-thousand workers along the railroad route went on strike, demanding wage parity, better working conditions and shorter hours. At the time it was the largest worker action in American history. The railroad refused to negotiate but eventually raised the Chinese workers’ pay, though not to parity.

After the Sierra, the Chinese workers faced the blistering heat of the Nevada and Utah deserts, yet they drove ahead at an astonishing rate.

As they approached the meeting point with the Union Pacific, thousands of them laid down a phenomenal 10 miles of track in less than 24 hours, a record that has never been equaled. A Civil War officer who witnessed the drama declared that the Chinese were “just like an army marching over the ground and leaving the track behind.”

Progress came at great cost: Many Chinese laborers died along the Central Pacific route. The company kept no records of deaths. But soon after the line was completed, Chinese civic organizations retrieved an estimated 1,200 bodies along the route and sent them home to China for burial.

The transcontinental railroad’s completion allowed travelers to journey across the country in a week — a trip that had previously taken more than a month. Politicians pointed to the achievement as they declared the United States the leading nation of the world.

The transcontinental railroad has been viewed in a similarly nationalistic way ever since. Chinese workers were often left out of the official story because their alienage and suffering did not fit well with celebration. And attitudes toward them soon soured, with anti-Chinese riots sweeping the country. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States and placed restrictions on those already here.

Federal immigration law prohibited Chinese citizens from becoming Americans until 1943.

As a faculty member of the university that bears his name, I am painfully aware that Leland Stanford became one of the world’s richest men by using Chinese labor. But I also try to remember that Stanford University exists because of those Chinese workers. Without them, Leland Stanford would probably be at best a footnote in history — and the West and the United States would not exist as we know it today.

Gordon H. Chang is a professor of history at Stanford University.

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Sometimes, it takes too long. Often, the “real heroes” die unrecognized (like the more than 1,200 Chinese workers mentioned in this article or the many anonymous enslaved African-Americans whose uncompensated labor and ingenuity “propped up” at least five of our first seven Presdients) long before justice comes. And, frequently, the flawed folks who were wrongly acclaimed “popular heroes” of their day escape judgement within their lifetimes.

But, history has a way of eventually “getting it right.” Trump and his misguided followers eventually will be in for a reckoning.

It won’t be pretty. Once the subpoenas can’t be ignored, the testimony perjured, the innumerable lies, intentional misrepresentations, and squalid distortions presented as “business as normal,” and the full historical record becomes available for study and analysis, free from the political hoopla of the present, it will be much, much worse than we can possibly imagine. The true unpalatable nature of Trump and his enablers will be revealed for some future generations. And, those who stood against them and their racism, greed, dishonesty, and cruelty will be vindicated.

PWS

05-10-19

COURTSIDE HISTORY: Trump’s American White Nationalist Antecedents Were The Racist Pols & Pseudo-Scientists Of A Century Ago! — The Lies & Ugliness Of The Past Are Being Repeated — Only This Time It’s People Of Color Rather Than Italians, Irish, Slavs, Catholics, & Jews Who Are Targeted For “Dehumanization” (Although It Would Be Wrong To Underestimate Trump’s Responsibility For The Revival Of Anti-Semitism)!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/opinion/sunday/anti-immigrant-hatred-1920s.html

Daniel Okrent writes in the NY Times:

In early 1921, an article in Good Housekeeping signaled the coming of a law that makes President Trump’s campaign for immigration restriction seem mild by comparison. “Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend,” it read. “The dead weight of alien accretion stifles national progress.” The author was Calvin Coolidge, about to be sworn in as vice president of the United States. Three years later, the most severe immigration law in American history entered the statute books, shepherded by believers in those “biological laws.”

The anti-immigrant fervor at the heart of current White House policymaking is not a new phenomenon, nor is the xenophobia that has infected the political mainstream. In fact, race-based nativism comes with an exalted pedigree — and that pedigree is something we all should remember as the Trump administration continues its assault on immigrants of specific nationalities. The scientific arguments Coolidge invoked were advanced by men bearing imposing credentials. Some were highly regarded scholars from Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford. One ran the nation’s foremost genetics laboratory. Another was America’s leading environmentalist at the time. Yet another was the director of the country’s most respected natural history museum.

Together, they popularized “racial eugenics,” a junk science that made ethnically based racism respectable. “The day of the sociologist is passing,” said the Harvard professor Robert DeCourcy Ward, “and the day of the biologist has come.” The biologists and their publicists achieved what their political allies had failed to accomplish for 30 years: enactment of a law stemming the influx of Jews, Italians, Greeks and other eastern and southern Europeans. “The need of restriction is manifest,” The New York Times declared in an editorial, for “American institutions are menaced” by “swarms of aliens.”

Image

Protesters rallied last June against family separations in front of the United States Port of Entry in downtown El Paso, Texas. CreditVictor J. Blue for The New York Times

Keeping people out of the country because of their nationality was hardly a novel idea. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was avowedly racist. In 1923 a unanimous Supreme Court declared that immigrants from India could be barred from citizenship strictly on racial grounds.

What was different about the new, putatively scientific campaign was that even whiteness was no ticket to entry.

Writing about Slavic immigrants, the sociologist Edward A. Ross of the University of Wisconsin — later the national chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union — declared, they “are immune to certain kinds of dirt. They can stand what would kill a white man.” The president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology said newcomers from eastern and southern Europe were “vast masses of filth” who were “living like swine.”

The Washington Post editorialized that 90 percent of Italians coming to the United States were “the degenerate spawn” of “Asiatic hordes.” A Boston philanthropist, Joseph Lee, his city’s leading supporter of progressive causes, explained to friends why he became the single largest financial backer of the anti-immigrant campaign: His concern, he wrote, was that without a restriction law, Europe would be “drained of Jews — to its benefit no doubt but not to ours.”

The “biological” justifications for this nativism were first developed in Cold Spring Harbor, on Long Island, in laboratories financed by the widow of the railroad baron E.H. Harriman. (One of her goals, Mary Harriman said, was preventing “the decay of the American race.”) The laboratory’s head, the zoologist Charles B. Davenport, took the ideas of the British gentleman scientist Francis Galton — who had coined the word “eugenics” in 1883 — welded them to a gross misunderstanding of the genetic discoveries of Gregor Mendel, and concluded that the makeup of the nation’s population could be improved by the careful control of human breeding. One of the first steps, he believed, was to impose new controls on open immigration.

At first, Davenport wished to bar the immigration only of people afflicted by specific disorders — epileptics, the “feebleminded” and others of similarly troublesome (to Davenport) disability. But soon he was caught up in a racialist whirlwind initiated by “The Passing of the Great Race,” a book by Madison Grant, the founder of the Bronx Zoo and the era’s most prominent conservationist. A bilious stew of dubious history, bogus anthropology and completely unfounded genetic theory, Grant’s work persuaded Davenport and others that the American bloodstream was threatened not by suspect individuals, but by entire ethnic groups.

First published in 1916 and reissued in a series of revisions over the next eight years — all of them brought into print by Maxwell Perkins, the celebrated editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway — “The Passing of the Great Race” savagely denigrated the peoples of eastern and southern Europe while exalting the “Nordics” of northwestern Europe. With the presumed authority of scholarship, he summarized the essential argument of racial eugenics.

“Whether we like to admit it or not,” Grant wrote, “the result of the mixture of two races, in the long run, gives us a race reverting” to the “lower type.” Lower than Nordics were the questionable “Alpines.” Lower than the “Alpines” were the woeful “Mediterraneans.” And, he concluded, “the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew.”

Grant was not an actual scientist. But Henry Fairfield Osborn, a world-famous paleontologist and his closest friend, definitely was. Osborn, who once expressed his opposition to the extension of the Westchester Parkway near his country estate because it would bring thousands of “East Side Jews” to the area, presided over the American Museum of Natural History for 25 years, and made that institution the beating heart of the combined eugenics and anti-immigration movement. “I am convinced,” said Osborn, that the “spiritual, physical, moral and intellectual structure” of individuals is “based on racial characteristics.” It wasn’t a matter of ethnic bias, he said — it was “cold-blooded” science.

Other scholars rallied to the cause. Robert M. Yerkes — his name immortalized today at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta — conducted a severely flawed series of tests of American servicemen purporting to establish the intellectual inferiority of eastern and southern Europeans. Charles W. Gould, a lawyer in New York, sponsored “A Study of American Intelligence,” by Carl C. Brigham, a young Princeton psychologist (and later the inventor of the SAT). Brigham’s conclusion: “There can be no doubt that recent history has shown a movement of inferior peoples or inferior representatives of peoples to this country.”

At the same time, Perkins and his colleagues at Charles Scribner’s Sons published a raft of books promoting racialized eugenics. Scribner publicists wrote in one promotion piece: “The inrush of lower races is threatening the very blood of our country.” Perkins’s authors were echoed in the country’s leading magazine, The Saturday Evening Post. “Race character is as fixed a fact as race color,” the Post declared. “Thirty years ago,” the magazine insisted in another article, “science had not perhaps sufficiently advanced to make us fully aware” of the danger of open immigration. Now it had.

Read more

Opinion articles about immigration.

Opinion | Janet Murguía

The American Family Makes This Country Great, and It’s in Danger

May 2, 2019

Opinion | Alan Cross

Alabama Is More Pro-Immigrant Than You Think

April 30, 2019

When the 1924 Immigration Act reached the floor of Congress, passage was assured. Albert Johnson, chairman of the House Immigration and Naturalization Committee, declared that “the fundamental reason” for immigration restriction was “biological.” During the floor debate, one congressman said the law was provoked by “the necessity for purifying and keeping pure the blood of America.” Given the arguments presented by so many of the nation’s leading scientific figures, who could disagree?

The resulting law established quotas by nation; they cut like a scythe. In the last year before their introduction, more than 220,000 Italians entered the United States. The quota slashed that number to less than 4,000. Reductions nearly as harsh were imposed on other eastern and southern European groups, while tens of thousands of slots reserved for Britons, Scandinavians and other “Nordics” went unfilled.

The 1924 quotas remained in force for more than 40 years — while the economic devastation of a worldwide depression hit southern Europe especially hard; while a 1939 measure that would have allowed 20,000 German Jewish children into the United States died in Congress, and the savagery of the Holocaust began; while the Nazis and their allies starved 350,000 Greeks and slaughtered 200,000 Serbs; and while displaced-persons camps stretched across the ruins of postwar Europe.

In 1920, Charles Davenport had asked Madison Grant, “Can we build a wall high enough around this country” to keep out the unwanted? They could, and they did.

Daniel Okrent is the author of “The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America.”

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The race-based ”Aryan Nationalism” of 1920’s America helped pave the way for the Nazi atrocities of World War II.

Out of the failure of the West to save lives when it was possible before the start of World War II and the horrible human exterminations that followed came the 1951 U.N. Convention on Refugees. It is that Convention which Trump and other nationalist leaders throughout the Western World are committed to destroying.

At the recent Louisiana State Bar Immigration Conference, held on April 26, 2019, Attorney R. Andrew Free of Nashville, TN, who had been to the border and observed firsthand the lawless, counterproductive, and inhumane behavior of both the Mexican and U.S. authorities toward asylum seekers, particularly women and children, made an excellent “historical perspective” presentation.

Free traced the origins of today’s xenophobic and racist-inspired restrictionist immigration policies policies to two historic events: 1) the Eisenhower Administration’s 1954 “Operation Wetback” directed against Mexicans which resulted in some Mexican-American citizens and lawful residents being swept up in the indiscriminate “dragnet,” without any hint of due process, directed against Hispanic appearing and Spanish speaking individuals along the Southern Border; and 2) the highly racist Immigration Act of 1924, praised by such “modern day Jim Crows” as Jeff Sessions and his acolyte White House Advisor Stephen Miller.

Do we as a people REALLY want to be remembered the way Coolidge, Albert Johnson, and the host of racist “pseudo-scientists” are described in this article? Or, are we willing to take a stand against the White Nationalist restrictionist agenda being pushed by Trump and his many enablers?

How can we forget our own immigrant heritages and the nasty racist stereotypes thrown at almost every group of new immigrants, including of course enslaved African Americans and other “involuntary forced migrants,” who built America into a great nation!

Due Process Forever — White Nationalism Never!

PWS

05-09-19

PROFESSOR FITZ BRUNDAGE @ WASHPOST: Can We Regain Our Humanitarian Values In The Age Of Trump? — “We must shine a spotlight on cruel and illegal policies that undermine our national ideals and find the wisdom and the courage to do better.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/03/can-united-states-retain-its-humanity-even-crisis

Brundage writes in WashPost:

By Fitz Brundage

Fitz Brundage is the William B. Umstead professor of history at UNC-Chapel Hill and the author of “Civilizing Torture,” which was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History.

May 3

Does it violate human rights to hold children in fenced enclosures in grim facilities that are bone-chillingly cold for weeks on end? Is separating children from their parents a form of cruel and unusual punishment? When does a crisis justify the kind of treatment normally seen as inhumane?

The furious debate over migrant detention along the nation’s southwest border with Mexico has put these questions front and center in American politics. But they’re not new. The treatment of people on the margins of American life — criminals, immigrants, civilians in overseas war zones — has always proven a challenge to our democratic ideals.

Yet beginning in the 1920s, activists waged a half-century-long struggle to persuade the Supreme Court to stop abusive practices by authorities. After World War II, the United States also committed itself to the promotion of international human rights. These two signal developments have been seriously eroded, first by the excesses of the war on terrorism and now by the Trump administration’s targeting of the unwelcome and powerless, whether they are undocumented immigrants in the United States or asylum seekers. We have returned to a pattern of willful ignorance, one that allows us to avoid grappling with deeply immoral policies.

Threats to our safety, perceived or real, have long justified the kind of “tougher policies” that President Trump has demanded for the southern border. He may not be well versed in history, but the president is joining a long line of elected officials who found that rights and basic norms are easily jettisoned when they collide with demands for greater security. Across our history, from the Indian wars to the war on terrorism, officials were quick to call for “tougher policies” and slow to fill in the details. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered military commanders in the Philippines to adopt “the most stern measures” to punish Filipino guerrillas; in a subsequent campaign the Marines followed orders and left a trail of devastation and death across the island of Samar. But such methods were justified as a “military necessity.”

Roosevelt rationalized the brutal treatment of alleged guerrillas by citing the need to stanch the threat to security. This kind of evasive language has repeatedly prevented us from coming to terms with acts of cruelty carried out in the name of national security. We’re seeing that pattern again.

What precisely did Trump officials mean when they announced “a tougher direction” for immigration? They certainly imply more than just the proposals for new fees and regulations reducing the numbers of asylum seekers. Are the American people ready to confront the reality of harsh security measures? Or will we retreat into euphemisms such as a “hardened” border and “zero tolerance” for migrants that covers up the reality of what is actually happening on the border?

As early as 2014, immigrants-rights advocates appealed to the Department of Homeland Security to investigate more than 100 instances of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents abusing child immigrants. A quarter of the children reported physical abuse, including sexual assault, the use of stress positions and beatings. Many more suffered verbal abuse, including death threats. Since then, goaded by Trump, CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have applied even more extreme measures, including harsh confinement and prolonged separation of families.

We are deciding day by day whether to extend the basic protections of law and civilization to the people arriving on our border. For much of the nation’s history, the prohibition on cruelty and torture in American law rested on the premise that the fundamental decency of Americans, especially empathy for fellow citizens, would make such violations unthinkable.

But our capacity to empathize begins to fray at the margins, and we grow less certain about who, exactly, deserves protection. Those deemed undeserving, unwelcome or powerless — Native Americans, the enslaved, prison inmates and criminal suspects — have commonly suffered forms of violence and abuse that violated our national principles. Some people are inside the protection of the law, and some are cast out from it.

We’re seeing a replay of that ugly history unfold along our southern border. If the Trump administration codifies its get-tough rhetoric into harsher policies, we will see far more allegations of human rights abuses against the men and women charged with securing our border. And we probably will rationalize it by claiming that those responsible are just a few bad apples rather than reckoning with the ways cruelty has been embedded in the policy itself. Like the euphemistic language of security, this choice allows us to avoid uncomfortable questions about our moral values.

In fact, we’ve already seen this pattern. Accusations of cruelty and torture by ICE and CBP agents have been circulating for years, and they follow this well-worn pattern. Official denials are followed by investigations that almost always find limited violations by “a few bad apples,” not the kind of systemic abuse that would call our broader policies into question.

This pattern has long historical roots: When investigations of police brutality in Washington during the 1930s revealed widespread use of abusive interrogation methods, the police superintendent, whose predecessors had dismissed similar allegations for decades, only grudgingly conceded that a few officers may have gone too far in their resolve to protect the public.

By seeing violations of human rights as rare exceptions, unfortunate lapses that don’t challenge our fundamental sense of decency, Americans can avoid any real reckoning with the policies we’ve approved — which often violate our purported values. Very few of the officers and soldiers responsible for the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam in 1968 and none of the architects of the George W. Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation” policies have faced legal consequences. Even Jon Burge, a notorious ringleader of lawless police in Chicago during the 1970s and 1980s, was convicted of perjury for lying to police investigators rather than torturing countless suspects.

Focusing on bad apples has long allowed us to excuse morally bankrupt policies. We need to realize that human rights abuses on the southern border aren’t spurred by immoral actors in ICE or CBP, but rather because of a political leadership that can’t or won’t come up with humane immigration policies.

Congress needs to do its job and exercise scrupulous oversight of Trump’s immigration policies. But the real solution to our border crisis is to demand that all elected officials, from local sheriffs to senators, responsibly address immigration and human rights. Trump declared that he wants immigration to be a key campaign issue in 2020. His opponents should accept that challenge. We must shine a spotlight on cruel and illegal policies that undermine our national ideals and find the wisdom and the courage to do better.

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Join the New Due Process Army today and fight for human rights, the rule of law, accountability for Government scofflaws, and a return to basic human decency! Fight for a better future for ALL Americans!

PWS

05-07-19

SONIA C. GOMEZ @ WASHPOST: Historical Perspective: Restrictionists Have Constantly Feared & Targeted Migrant Women

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/03/22/why-women-have-become-targets-immigration-fight/?utm_term=.79f3c2236f38

Gomez writes in WashPost:

Sonia C. Gomez is a historian of gender and immigration in the 20th century United States, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University.

March 22

On Feb. 22, a young Honduran migrant woman went into premature labor and gave birth to a stillborn baby boy at the Port Isabel Detention Center in South Texas, four daysafter being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The incident raises new questions about the detention of pregnant migrant women, and concerns that border control officials are infringing on the reproductive rights of migrant women and undermining their health and that of their babies. And there’s reason to worry: Such actions have historically been frequent and quite intentional. Nativist movements have long feared the reproductive capacity of migrant women and its potential for changing the demographic contours of the United States. This incident, and others like it, remind us once again how deeply intertwined women’s rights are with questions of immigration today.

In 1901, a Japanese teenager named Kaoru Yamataya arrived in Seattle visibly pregnant. Her pregnancy made Yamataya a target of a zealous immigration inspector named Thomas Fisher. Fisher claimed that Yamataya was “likely to become a public charge,” grounds for deportation under the dominant immigration law, and took her into U.S. custody. Two months after her arrival, Yamataya gave birth to a baby boy. Two months later, the infant died of pneumonia while he and his mother were still in the custody of the U.S. government.

This death created hardly a ripple in the press, a sign of shifting winds in U.S. immigration policy. Targeting women, particularly of Asian descent, as “public charges” was already commonplace. Its roots were in the Page Law of 1875, which barred contract laborers and prostitutes from “any Oriental country” from entering the United States. The Page Law created a system of immigration control that targeted women’s sexual practices.

But Yamataya’s case was at the leading edge of this desire to control immigrant women’s bodies extending to include greater focus on their reproductive capabilities. By 1924, Sen. James D. Phelan (Calif.) openly pleaded with Congress to pass legislation to exclude all Japanese women because, as he falsely claimed, they accounted for 33 percent of all births in California. Phelan’s fear was that “every child born is an American citizen under our very generous Constitution, intended to encourage population by European immigration of an earlier date when Asia was a closed book. What a Pandora’s box we opened when Admiral Perry went there and opened the gates of Japan!”

While Fisher said nothing so explicit in adjudicating Yamataya’s case, he pushed forward with the deportation process despite the death of her son. The inspector charged Yamataya with entering the United States under “surreptitiously clandestine” intentions, code for prostitution. Throughout the hearing in 1903, Yamataya denied the charge. She claimed to have immigrated to the United States for educational purposes, a claim backed by family members on both sides of the Pacific. Still, Fisher was unrelenting, and the law was on his side, giving him discretionary power to interpret and execute the law as he wished.

But Yamataya refused to give up the fight. She retained legal counsel, who argued that the 1891 Immigration Act was unconstitutional because it had deprived her of due process of law. Her attorney argued that Fisher whose “inspection” of Yamataya and subsequent investigation was “garbled, incomplete, misleading, and in many respects untrue” detained her unlawfully. During Fisher’s proceeding, Yamataya did not have adequate counsel nor did she receive an opportunity to present evidence to counter Fisher’s claims against her. Finally, she was not given the opportunity to consult with a language interpreter, made all the worse by the fact that Yamataya did not speak any English. At the time of Fisher’s initial investigation Yamataya had not even realized she was under investigation.

Yamataya’s case went to the Supreme Court, and on April 6, 1903, the court upheld the constitutionality of Immigration Act of 1891, as well as Yamataya’s deportation. However, it also established an immigrant’s right to a deportation hearing. Unfortunately for Yamataya, the court ruled that the ad hoc hearing conducted by Fisher and his colleagues constituted a legitimate hearing, and she returned to Japan in 1906.

Cases like Yamataya’s or that of the Honduran woman have become a major flash point over the past two decades, as a new nativist movement focuses on the threat that migrant mothers, especially those visibly pregnant, pose to their conceptions of America. The key is, as Phelan lamented nearly a century ago, the birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th Amendment. This provision guarantees citizenship to all who are born in the United States, including the children of immigrant parents.

In 1994, fears that migrants taking advantage of this provision could dramatically alter the racial and ethnic composition of America spurred the passage of California Proposition 187, dubbed the Save our State initiative, which sought to bar undocumented immigrants from accessing education, welfare and health-care services. This measure targeted migrant women and children, particularly those of Mexican and Central American origins.

In the 21st century, such fears drove the rise of a new term: anchor babies. The Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington popularized this phrase in the early 2000s to pejoratively refer to the American-born children of undocumented immigrants, and it stuck, giving nativists a new language to express their fears.

But this new language should not obscure the reality: Suspicions about migrant women’s reproduction have historically shaped immigration policy and practice. Given this history, we need to understand the current immigration crisis from a different perspective. At stake are not just migrant rights, but women’s rights as well.

Activism to safeguard women’s reproductive rights must extend to migrant women. Women’s rights groups should be demanding answers to an array of questions surrounding the 24-year-old Honduran women who gave birth to a stillborn while in ICE custody: What were the circumstances surrounding her premature labor? Was she given proper medical attention and care? Did she suffer additional abuse because of her visible pregnancy?

Migrant mothers, whether carrying a child in their wombs or in their arms, have faced the brunt of anti-immigration fervor, and they need allies to publicize such abuses and to mobilize to change the law that has failed women for over a century.

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Fear, loathing, bias, contempt, and total disrespect for the humane intent behind asylum laws and the true desperate situation of female refugees fleeing from the Northern Triangle radiates from Sessions’s decision in Matter of A-B-. How such a biased and unqualified individual would be in a position to make such a “quasi-judicial” decision is another question. That’s why we need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court now!

PWS

03-27-19

COLBY KING @ WASHPOST: The “Original Dreamers” Were Disenfranchised African Americans! — “That fight must continue on behalf of today’s dreamers, the disenfranchised, the demeaned and left out, and all freedom-loving people in this nation.“

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-black-men-of-the-civil-war-were-americas-original-dreamers/2019/02/15/8c00088e-30a8-11e9-813a-0ab2f17e305b_story.html

Colby King writes in WashPost:

Today, a wall looms large in my thoughts. It isn’t the structure President Trump has in mind for our southern border. I’m thinking of the Wall of Honor at the African American Civil War Memorial, located at Vermont Avenue and U Street NW.

Listed on the wall are the names of 209,145 U.S. Colored Troops who fought during the Civil War. One of those names is that of Isaiah King, my great-grandfather.

I think of those courageous black men as America’s original “dreamers.”

Today’s dreamers are in their teens and 20s, having arrived in this country as children. King’s generation of dreamers were former slaves or descendants of slaves brought to these shores against their will.

However, the black men who fought in the Civil War had the same status as today’s dreamers: noncitizens without a discernable path to citizenship.

Like dreamers of today, those black soldiers and sailors also had families and attended churches; some were enrolled in schools. They could dream of a future, anchored in the rights and privileges that come with democracy. But they had no legal claim to an existence within America’s borders.

My great-grandfather was born in the slave-holding city of Washington in 1848, but his mother was a freed woman. She moved the family to New Bedford, Mass., when he was 4. Around the time of his 17th birthday, Isaiah King enlistedin the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry (Colored), thinking, “I would have it easier riding than walking,” he told the New Bedford Evening Standard in an interview on the eve of Memorial Day services in 1932.

Black men such as my great-grandfather signed on to fight for a Union in which the right to citizenship was reserved for white people. The Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford, in 1857, that black people were not citizens of the United States. Putting it bluntly, the high court said black people were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

And even then, they started their service to the United States one step behind.

In his book “The Fifth Massachusetts Colored Cavalry in the Civil War,” Steven M. LaBarre cited the first disparity: It was enshrined in the Second Confiscation and Militia Act of July 17, 1862, which authorized recruitment of black men into the Union army. The law stated that a “person of African descent [of any rank] . . . shall receive ten dollars per month . . . three dollars of which monthly pay may be in clothing.” White privates at the time received $13 per month plus a $3.50 clothing allowance. It wasn’t until July 15, 1864, that Congress granted equal pay to black soldiers.

Yet, serve they did.

As evidence of the regard in which they were held, LaBarre quoted Massachusetts Gov. John Albion Andrew’s commendation of the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry when it was launched: “In this hour of hope for our common country and for themselves; at a time when they hold the destiny of their race in their own grasp; and when its certain emancipation from prejudice, as well as slavery, is in the hands of those now invited to unite in the final blow which will annihilate the rebel power, let no brave and strong man hesitate. One cannot exaggerate the call sounding in the ears of all men, in whose veins flows the blood of Africa, and whose color has been the badge of slavery. It offers the opportunity of years, crowded into an hour.”

Volunteering was a start. They still had something to prove.

According to National Archives, by the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men were serving as soldiers — 10 percent of the Union army — and 19,000 served in the Union navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war — 30,000 of infection or disease. By war’s end, 16 black soldiers had been awarded the Medal of Honor .

King came back to the capital in May 1864 as a private with the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry to defend the city against attack by Confederate troops. His unit participated in the Siege of Petersburg. They guarded Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout, Md. And his unit was among the first Union regiments to enter Richmond, capital of the dying Confederacy, on April 3, 1865.

The Civil War ended, but not his service. Three months later, the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry was sent to Texas to defend against threats from Mexico. (Sound familiar?) He was mustered out of service on Oct. 31, 1865, at Clarksville, Tex. — still not a citizen of the United States.

It wasn’t until 1868 that the threat of removal from the United States was lifted by the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in this country, including former slaves.

The men with names on the African American Civil War Memorial’s Wall of Honor fought and died to end two centuries of slavery, without being able to count democracy as their own.

For their descendants, the fight for full rights, for full participation in every part of our democracy, goes on.

That fight must continue on behalf of today’s dreamers, the disenfranchised, the demeaned and left out, and all freedom-loving people in this nation.

Read more from Colbert King’s archive.

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Thanks, Colby, for putting the current plight of “Dreamers” (and I might add refugees and other migrants who are serving, contributing, and building our society despite their disenfranchisement and the government-sponsored dehumanization being inflicted upon them) in the historical context of the fight for civil rights and human dignity in America.

That’s why the “21st Century Jim Crows” like Trump, Sessions, Stephen Miller, Sen. Tom Cotton, Rep. Steve King, and others (largely associated with the GOP) are so pernicious. Like the “Jim Crows of the past,” these guys use degrading racial stereotypes, intentionally false narratives, and bogus “rule of law” arguments to generate hate and bias, sow division, and use the law to suppress and violate rights rather than advancing them.

While sycophant DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen does not appear to be an “ideological racist,” her mindless and disingenuous parroting of the Trump White Nationalist “party lies” and “enforcement” (read “de-humanization”) agenda certainly makes her a “functional racist.”

It’s quite outrageous and dangerous that individuals with these types of views have been elevated to powerful public offices in the modern era, after the death of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?

PWS

02-16-19

“VACATION WITH A PURPOSE” THIS AUGUST: COME SPEND A WEEK OF FUN AND GROUP LEARNING WITH PROFESSOR JENNIFER ESPERANZA (BELOIT COLLEGE) AND ME AT LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY’S BEAUTIFUL BJÖRKLUNDEN CAMPUS ON THE SHORES OF LAKE MICHIGAN IN BEAUTIFUL DOOR COUNTY, WI! – Register For “American Immigration” Aug. 4-9, 2019 Here!

American Immigration

A Legal, Cultural, & Historical Approach to Understanding the Complex and Controversial Issue Dominating Our National Dialogue. All Americans are products of immigration. Even Native Americans were massively affected by the waves of European, involuntary African-American, Asian, and Hispanic migration. Are we a nation of immigrants or a nation that fears immigration? Should we welcome refugees or shun them as potential terrorists? Do we favor family members or workers? Rocket scientists or maids and landscapers? Build a wall or a welcome center? Get behind some of the divisive rhetoric and enter the dialogue in this participatory class that will give you a chance to “learn and do” in a group setting. Be part of a team designing and explaining your own immigration system. Your faculty leaders will be retired U.S. Immigration Judge Paul Wickham Schmidt, currently an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law, and Professor Jennifer Esperanza of the Beloit College Anthropology Department, who will also share her compelling experiences as the daughter of immigrants. Professor Esperanza and Judge Schmidt have successfully used their unique “legal/cultural anthropological approach” in undergraduate teaching and will now offer it in a post-graduate seminar.

Paul Wickham Schmidt ’70, retired in 2016 after 13 years as a U.S. Immigration Judge at the Arlington (VA) Immigration Court. Prior to that, he was an Appellate Immigration Judge on the Board of Immigration Appeals, U.S. Department of Justice, serving as the Chairman for six years. He also practiced business immigration law as a partner at Jones Day and managing partner of the D.C. Office of Fragomen. He was Senior Executive in the “Legacy INS” under administrations of both parties. Following graduation from Lawrence, he received a J.D from the University of Wisconsin Law School. He also received the 2010 Lucia Briggs Distinguished Achievement Award from Lawrence. Currently, he is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law, writes the blog immigrationcourtside.com, and is a frequent speaker, radio, and tv commentator on current immigration issues.

Jennifer Esperanza received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from UCLA. She also holds a M.A. from UCLA and a B.A. from USC. She has been a Professor of Anthropology at Beloit College since 2008. As one of two socio-cultural anthropologists in the Department of Anthropology, her primary areas of expertise include political economy, Southeast Asia (Indonesia and the Philippines), tourism and handicrafts, language and identity, consumerism and immigration and refugee resettlement in the United States. She believes students must learn that culture cannot be properly understood without examining its economic and political contexts. In addition to authoring a number of scholarly publications, she received a Marvin Weisberg Foundation for Human Rights Faculty Research Grant in 2015, and a Mellon Foundation research grant in 2018-19.

Date:

Sunday, August 4, 2019 to Friday, August 9, 2019

Fee(s):

$925 – Double; $1,200 – Single; $465 – Commuter

Topic(s):

Law & Politics

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Come join us this summer in Door County for an exciting and unforgettable vacation and learning experience.

Paul & Jennifer

Here’s the link for registration:

https://mailchi.mp/8a23e32650fd/2018-bjrklunden-seminars-vacation-with-a-focus-34469?e=82d2406b76

INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”

http://time.com/longform/migrants/

Haley Sweetland Edwards writes in Time Magazine:

But they were willing to do whatever it took. Going back to Guatemala was simply not an option, they said. Monterroso explained that in October, their family was forced to flee after a gang threatened to murder the children if they didn’t pay an exorbitant bribe, five months’ worth of profits from their tiny juice stall. The family hid for a day and a half in their house and then sneaked away before dawn. “There is nobody that can protect us there,” Monterroso said. “We have seen in the other cases, they kill the people and kill their children.” Her voice caught. “The first thing is to have security for them,” she said of her kids, “that nothing bad happens to them.”

All told, more than 159,000 migrants filed for asylum in the U.S. in fiscal year 2018, a 274% increase over 2008. Meanwhile, the total number of apprehensions along the southern border has decreased substantially—nearly 70% since fiscal year 2000. President Donald Trump has labeled the southern border a national crisis. He refused to sign any bill funding the federal government that did not include money for construction of a wall along the frontier, triggering the longest shutdown in American history, and when Democrats refused to budge, he threatened to formally invoke emergency powers. The President says the barrier, which was the centerpiece of his election campaign, is needed to thwart a dangerous “invasion” of undocumented foreigners.

But the situation on the southern border, however the political battle in Washington plays out, will continue to frustrate this U.S. President, and likely his successors too, and not just because of continuing caravans making their way to the desert southwest. Months of reporting by TIME correspondents around the world reveal a stubborn reality: we are living today in a global society increasingly roiled by challenges that can be neither defined nor contained by physical barriers. That goes for climate change, terrorism, pandemics, nascent technologies and cyber-attacks. It also applies to one of the most significant global developments of the past quarter-century: the unprecedented explosion of global migration.

. . . .

They abandoned their homes for different reasons: tens of millions went in search of better jobs or better education or medical care, and tens of millions more had no choice. More than 5.6 million fled the war in Syria, and a million more were Rohingya, chased from their villages in Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands fled their neighborhoods in Central America and villages in sub-Saharan Africa, driven by poverty and violence. Others were displaced by catastrophic weather linked to climate change.

Taken one at a time, each is an individual, a mixture of strengths and weaknesses, hope and despair. But collectively, they represent something greater than the sum of their parts. The forces that pushed them from their homes have combined with a series of global factors that pulled them abroad: the long peace that followed the Cold War in the developed world, the accompanying expansion of international travel, liberalized policies for refugees and the relative wealth of developed countries, especially in Europe and the U.S., the No. 1 destination for migrants. The force is tidal and has not been reversed by walls, by separating children from their parents or by deploying troops. Were the world’s total population of international migrants in 2018 gathered from the places where they have sought new lives and placed under one flag, they would be its fifth largest country.

The mass movement of people has changed the world both for better and for worse. Migrants tend to be productive. Though worldwide they make up about 3% of the population, in 2015 they generated about 9% of global GDP, according to the U.N. Much of that money is wired home—$480 billion in 2017, also according to the U.N.—where the cash has immense impact. Some will pay for the passage of the next migrant, and the smartphone he or she will keep close at hand. The technology not only makes the journey more efficient and safer—smugglers identify their clients by photos on instant-messaging—but, upon arrival, allows those who left to keep in constant contact with those who remain behind, across oceans and time zones.

Yet attention of late is mostly focused on the impact on host countries. There, national leaders have grappled with a powerful irony: the ways in which they react to new migrants—tactically, politically, culturally—shape them as much as the migrants themselves do. In some countries, migrants have been welcomed by crowds at train stations. In others, images of migrants moving in miles-long caravans through Central America or spilling out of boats on Mediterranean shores were wielded to persuade native-born citizens to lock down borders, narrow social safety nets and jettison long-standing humanitarian commitments to those in need.

. . . .

The U.S., though founded by Europeans fleeing persecution, now largely reflects the will of its Chief Executive: subverting decades of asylum law and imposing a policy that separated migrant toddlers from their parents and placed children behind cyclone fencing. Trump floated the possibility of revoking birthright citizenship, characterized migrants as “stone cold criminals” and ordered 5,800 active-duty U.S. troops to reinforce the southern border. Italy refused to allow ships carrying rescued migrants to dock at its ports. Hungary passed laws to criminalize the act of helping undocumented people. Anti-immigrant leaders saw their political power grow in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Italy and Hungary, and migration continued to be a factor in the Brexit debate in the U.K.

These political reactions fail to grapple with a hard truth: in the long run, new migration is nearly always a boon to host countries. In acting as entrepreneurs and innovators, and by providing inexpensive labor, immigrants overwhelmingly repay in long-term economic contributions what they use in short-term social services, studies show. But to maximize that future good, governments must act -rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.

. . . .

But protocols and treaties can, at best, hope to respond to the human emotions and hard realities that drive migration. No wall, sheriff or headscarf law would have prevented Monterroso and Calderón, or Yaquelin and Albertina Contreras, or Sami Baladi and Mirey Darwich from leaving their homes. Migrants will continue to flee bombs, look for better-paying jobs and accept extraordinary risks as the price of providing a better life for their children.

The question now is whether the world can come to define the enormous population of international migrants as an opportunity. No matter when that happens, Eman Albadawi, a teacher from Syria who arrived in Anröchte, Germany, in 2015, will continue to make a habit of reading German-language children’s books to her three Syrian-born kids at night. Their German is better than hers, and they make fun of her pronunciation, but she doesn’t mind. She is proud of them. At a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric is on the rise, she tells them, “We must be brave, but we must also be successful and strong.” —With reporting by Aryn Baker/Anröchte, Germany; Melissa Chan, Julia Lull, Gina Martinez, Thea Traff/New York; Ioan Grillo/Tijuana; Abby Vesoulis/Murfreesboro, Tenn.; and Vivienne Walt/Paris •

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I strongly encourage everyone to read Haley’s outstanding article at the link. It is one of the best and most easily understandable explanations of a complex phenomenon that I have seen recently. As I always say, “lots of moving parts.” But Haley and her colleagues have distilled the fundamental truths concealed by this complexity. Congrats and appreciation to Haley and everyone who worked on this masterpiece!

Haley debunks and eviscerates the restrictionist, racist “fear and loathing” baloney that Trump and his White Nationalist gang peddle. The simple truth always has been and continues to be that America needs more immigration.

The only real question is whether we are going to be smart and funnel it into expanded legal and humanitarian channels or dumb like Trump and push the inevitable migration into an extra-legal system. The latter best serves neither our country nor the humans pushed into an underground existence where they can be exploited and are artificially prevented from achieving their full potential for themselves and for us. Right now, we have a mix skewed toward forcing far, far too many good folks to use the extra-legal system.

We’ll only be able to improve the situation by pushing the mix toward the legal and the humanitarian, rather than the extra-legal. That’s why it’s virtually impossible to have a rational immigration debate with folks like Trump who start with the racist-inspired fiction that migrants are a “threat” who can be deterred, punished, and diminished.

Contrary to Trump and the White Nationalists, the real immigration problems facing America are 1) how can we best integrate the millions of law-abiding and productive undocumented individuals already residing here into our society, and 2) how can we most fairly and efficiently insure that in the future individuals like them can be properly screened and come to our country through expanded humanitarian and legal channels. Until we resolve these, American will continue to founder with immigration and fail to maximize its many benefits. That’s bad for us, for migrants, and for the future of our nation.

As a reminder, in the context of Congressional negotiations on border security, I recently put together a list of “practical fixes” to the immigration system which would address border security, humanitarian relief, and improved compliance with Constitutional Due process without major legislative changes — mostly “tweaks” and other common sense amendments that would make outsized improvements and certainly would be an improvement on squandering $5.7 billion and getting nothing but a largely symbolic “instant white elephant” border wall in return. So, here it is again in all its hypothetical glory: “THE SMARTS ACT OF 2019:

https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3E3

SECURITY, MIGRATION ASSISTANCE RENEWAL, & TECHNICAL SYSTEMS ACT (“SMARTS ACT”) OF 2019

Federal Employees

Restart the Government

Retroactive pay raise

Enhanced Border Security

Fund half of “Trump’s Wall”

Triple the number of USCIS Asylum Officers

Double the number of U.S. Immigration Judges and Court Staff

Additional Port of Entry (“POE”) Inspectors

Improvements in POE infrastructure, technology, and technology between POEs

Additional Intelligence, Anti-Smuggling, and Undercover Agents for DHS

Anything else that both parties agree upon

Humanitarian Assistance

Road to citizenship for a Dreamers & TPSers

Prohibit family separation

Funding for alternatives to detention

Grants to NGOs for assisting arriving asylum applicants with temporary housing and resettlement issues

Require re-establishment of U.S. Refugee Program in the Northern Triangle

Asylum Process

Require Asylum Offices to consider in the first instance all asylum applications including those generated by the “credible fear” process as well as all so-called “defensive applications”

Immigration Court Improvements

Grants and requirements that DHS & EOIR work with NGOs and the private bar with a goal of achieving 100% representation of asylum applicants

Money to expand and encourage the training and certification of more non-attorneys as “accredited representatives” to represent asylum seekers pro bono before the Asylum Offices and the Immigration Courts on behalf of approved NGOs

Vacate Matter of A-B-and reinstate Matter of A-R-C-G-as the rule for domestic violence asylum applications

Vacate Matter of Castro-Tum and reinstate Matter of Avetisyan to allow Immigration Judges to control dockets by administratively closing certain “low priority” cases

Eliminate Attorney General’s authority to interfere in Immigration Court proceedings through “certification”

Re-establish weighing of interests of both parties consistent with Due Process as the standard for Immigration Court continuances

Bar AG & EOIR Director from promulgating substantive or procedural rules for Immigration Courts — grant authority to BIA to promulgate procedural rules for Immigration Courts

Authorize Immigration Courts to consider all Constitutional issues in proceedings

Authorize DHS to appeal rulings of the BIA to Circuit Courts of Appeal

Require EOIR to implement the statutory contempt authority of Immigration Judges, applicable equally to all parties before the courts, within 180 days

Bar “performance quotas” and “performance work plans” for Immigration Judges and BIA Members

Authorize the Immigration Court to set bonds in all cases coming within their jurisdiction

Fund and require EOIR to implement a nationwide electronic filing system within one year

Eliminate the annual 4,000 numerical cap on grants of “cancellation of removal” based on “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship”

Require the Asylum Office to adjudicate cancellation of removal applications with renewal in Immigration Court for those denied

Require EOIR to establish a credible, transparent judicial discipline and continued tenure system within one year that must include: opportunity for participation by the complainant (whether Government or private) and the Immigration Judge; representation permitted for both parties; peer input; public input; DHS input; referral to an impartial decision maker for final decision; a transparent and consistent system of sanctions incorporating principles of rehabilitation and progressive discipline; appeal rights to the MSPB

International Cooperation

Fund and require efforts to work with the UNHCR, Mexico, and other countries in the Hemisphere to improve asylum systems and encourage asylum seekers to exercise options besides the U.S.

Fund efforts to improve conditions and the rule of law in the Northern Triangle

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No, it wouldn’t solve all problems overnight. But, everything beyond “Trump’s Wall” would make a substantial improvement over our current situation that would benefit enforcement, border security, human rights, Due Process, humanitarian assistance, and America. Not a bad “deal” in my view!

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PWS

01-27-19

Due Process Forever!

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BJORKLUNDEN REPORT, PART I: “American Immigration: A Legal, Cultural, & Historical Approach to Understanding the Complex and Controversial Issues Dominating Our National Dialogue”

Here’s what we set out to achieve:

Here are our “five major themes:”

Day 1: An Introduction to Immigration (From the Top Down and the Bottom Up)

Highlight: Getting the “immigration histories” of the participants

Day 2: Labor Migration: Push/Pull Factors

Highlight: Stories and examples of the “hard-work culture” created by various groups of hard-working immigrants to the U.S. both documented and undocumented with a particular emphasis on the culture created by Hispanic restaurant workers

Day 3: “Making Home”

Highlight: Watching and discussing NPR broadcast on German immigrants in rural Wisconsin which related directly to the family histories of many of us in the class (including me)

Day 4: “Well Founded Fear”

Highlights: Jenn’s live storytelling performance of her own family immigration experience, watch on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEODrtuj_Pk&t=323s

My coverage of the entirety of refugee history and modern U.S. refugee and asylum laws in 70 minutes (favorite student comment/compliment: “I expected this to be deadly, but it wasn’t.”)

Day 5: Contemporary Issues: The Future of Immigration, Refuges, & Asylum

Highlight: The class presentations of the famous (or infamous) “Mother Hen v. Dick’s Last Resort” “Build Your Own Refugee System” Exercise

Here’s the complete Course Outline (although admittedly we varied from this when necessary):

Here’s my “Closing Statement:”

Here’s our “Class Photo” taken on the deck outside the Lakeside Seminar Room where we met:

Here are some shots of Bjorklunden:

And, this is Jenn and me conducting our “exit session” @ the Door County Brewing Co. in Bailey’s Harbor:

Due Process Forever!

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Ken Cuccinelli: Statue Of Liberty Poem About ‘People Coming From Europe’

TRUMP OFFICIAL REWRITES STATUE OF LIBERTY POEM TO REFLECT TRUMP’S “NO POORS” POLICY

WATCH NOW:

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Join the New Due Process Army today and fight for human rights, the rule of law, accountability for Government scofflaws, and a return to basic human decency! Fight for a better future for ALL Americans!

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American Immigration

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