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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

Read the complete article at the link.

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

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

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

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

PWS

02-15-21

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

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

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

Rob Riley in the Portland (ME) Press Herald:

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read Rob’s full article at the link.

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

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

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

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

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

01-02-21

🇺🇸🗽⚖️RACE & CULTURE: HISPANIC AMERICANS ARE BOTH UNDER-APPRECIATED FOR THEIR MANY ESSENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICA & INTENTIONALLY UNDER-REPRESENTED IN THE AMERICAN “POWER STRUCTURE” — Trump, His White Nationalist Brigade, “Moscow Mitch,” & The Roberts’ Court Majority Aim To Keep It That Way!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/opinion/latinos-trump-election.html

By Elizabeth Méndez Berry and Mónica Ramirez in The NY Times:

Ms. Méndez Berry is a journalist, cultural critic and editor. Ms. Ramírez is the founder of the Latinx House, and the author of the “Dear Sisters” letter that helped inspire the Time’s Up movement.

The story about Latinos in America is an old one. And it isn’t true. Created generations ago by whites to demonize Mexicans and then Puerto Ricans, the racist caricature of Latinos as a menacing foreign monolith persists, even as two-thirds of us were born here and we come from more than 20 different countries.

While we are everywhere in this country, from big cities to small towns, Latinos are largely missing from American media and culture, which makes us vulnerable. President Donald Trump knows this and exploits these fictions for political gain.

Mr. Trump has accomplices. White gatekeepers in media, art and entertainment have long excluded or misrepresented Latinos, particularly Indigenous and Black Latinos, building the cultural scaffolding for the current administration. To defang these old falsehoods, we have to go after their enablers, transform media and cultural power structures and amplify and defend Latino storytellers. We must flex our power as a community.

Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas gave voice to this in a recent column for Variety: “There is a dangerous nexus between the racist political rhetoric and the negative images of Latinos as criminals and invaders that Americans see on their screens.” Mr. Castro added, “Hollywood needs to reckon with its systemic injustice and exclusion of our communities.”

Indeed, all media and culture industries must be held accountable, along with the advertisers, investors and funders who bankroll their behavior.

. . . .

We are the second largest ethnic group in this country. Many of us were here before the ancestors of most people who call themselves Americans. Others came as casualties of U.S. colonial experiments, covert operations and trade deals.

No matter how we got here or when, this country should be grateful for the Latino community: during this pandemic, farmworkers, 80 percent of whom are Latino, have put food on the table for us all and scores of other Latino workers have propped this country up, often at great cost to themselves.

The United States must reckon with the fact that Latinos are essential to its survival and to its splendor, and have been for generations. We Latinos need to know it too.

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

Read the full article at the link.

Another place where Hispanics are spectacularly under-represented is among the ranks of  U.S. Immigration Judges. It’s largely a bastion of White male, White female power, with a smattering of African Americans and Asian Americans thrown in. Very few judges of Hispanic ancestry.

Worse yet, a number of Immigration Judges appointed or promoted by this regime have notorious records of anti-immigrant, anti-asylum bias. Much of this bias has been directed specifically against Latino asylum seekers from Central America, particularly women refugees fleeing well-documented systematic persecution because of gender.

Indeed, anyone who actually took the time to educate themselves about conditions in Central America would recognize Jeff “Gonzo Apocalyoto” Sessions’s largely fictionalized “put down” of clear persecution of a Latino female refugee from El Salvador in Matter of  A-B-, 27 I & N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018) for what it really is: an essay promoting anti-immigrant racism, false narratives, and misogyny disguised as jurisprudence. For the true story of Ms. A-B- and her suffering see: https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/01/25/the-human-agony-of-asylum-spend-4-min-with-ms-a-b-human-womens-rights-expert-professor-karen-musalo-beaten-raped-threatened-with-death-by-her-husband-hounded-throughout-h/

The Trump regime’s overtly racist attack on Hispanic migrants, particularly women, children, and asylum seekers, obviously has a larger target: Hispanic Americans as a group, the legitimacy of their political power as citizens, and their very humanity. As I say over and over, it’s what “Dred Scottification,” and its acceptance and disgusting furtherance by a majority of our highest Court, is all about!

Hispanics are going to have to fight for  their fair share of power at the ballot box, no easy task given the GOP’s all-out assault on minority voting rights and the Supremes’ majority’s disgraceful failure to defend the voting rights of Americans of color.

But, it would be in everyone’s interest if we stopped playing the “race game” in America and actually made equal justice and full participation by all in society, regardless of race, the touchstone of a better future for America. Only then, will we rid ourselves of the unnecessary burdens of the past and reach our full potential as a nation of peace, prosperity, productivity, creativity, and humanity!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-03-20

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

Tara Golshan
Tara Golshan
Politics Reporter
HuffPost
UW- Madison Grad

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

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

By Tara Golshan

For HuffPost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
Aug. 29, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

08-29-20

😰👹👺🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮“DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN” — Nicole Narea @ Vox With A Glimpse Of Trump’s Second Term: American Apocalypse — Dark, Ugly, Hateful, Violent, Dishonest, Exclusionary, Stupid, Racist, Diminished, Yet Very White & Privileged — Are People Of Color & Their Allies Really Going To Stand By & Watch While Their Past & Our Future As A Strong, Creative, Tolerant, Diverse, Humane Nation Is Written Out Of History By A Racist GOP & Its Totally Wacko Yet Dangerously Evil Cult Leader?

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN pastedGraphic.png

Album version

Music & Lyrics by Bruce Springsteen

Well, they’re still racing out at the Trestles

But that blood it never burned in her veins

Now I hear she’s got a house up in Fairview

And a style she’s trying to maintain

Well, if she wants to see me

You can tell her that I’m easily found

Tell her there’s a spot out ‘neath Abram’s Bridge

And tell her there’s a darkness on the edge of town

There’s a darkness on the edge of town

Well, everybody’s got a secret, Sonny

Something that they just can’t face

Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it

They carry it with them every step that they take

Till some day they just cut it loose

Cut it loose or let it drag ’em down

Where no one asks any questions

Or looks too long in your face

In the darkness on the edge of town

In the darkness on the edge of town

Well, now some folks are born into a good life

And other folks get it anyway anyhow

Well, I lost my money and I lost my wife

Them things don’t seem to matter much to me now

Tonight I’ll be on that hill ’cause I can’t stop

I’ll be on that hill with everything I’ve got

Well, lives on the line where dreams are found and lost

I’ll be there on time and I’ll pay the cost

For wanting things that can only be found

In the darkness on the edge of town

In the darkness on the edge of town

——— Source: springsteenlyrics.com, click here for music: https://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics.php?song=darknessontheedgeoftown

Nicole Narea
Nicole Narea
Immigration Reporter
Vox.com

https://apple.news/AyEIE9zXYSTeZ-TvO2TLZAQ

Nicole writes at Vox:

. . . .

As he seeks a second term, [Trump has] also made it clear that he hasn’t finished. He still wants to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program once and for all, drive out the millions of unauthorized immigrants living in the US and curb their political power, enact what he calls “merit-based” immigration reform, and pursue a slew of restrictive immigration regulations.

The US has already seen the harms of Trump’s first-term immigration policies, which could cut deeper if he’s given another four years: Legal immigration is plummeting, stymying growth in the labor force and threatening the US’s ability to attract global talent and recover from the coronavirus-induced recession. The US has abdicated its role as a model for how a powerful country should support the world’s most vulnerable people. And the millions of immigrants already living in the US, regardless of their legal status, have been left uncertain of their fate in the country they have come to call home.

Other concerns — including the coronavirus, racial justice, and unemployment — have recently eclipsed immigration as a top motivating issue for voters. But for Trump, who currently lags former Vice President Joe Biden in the polls, restricting immigration proved a winning message in 2016, and he will likely try to replicate that strategy again.

“It’s the thing he keeps going back to,” Douglas Rivlin, director of communication at the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, said. “It is his comfort zone — to go after people of color and turn them into sort of the specter of scary, violent people as a political strategy.”

. . . .

Whether any version of that proposal will get traction would largely depend on the makeup of the next Congress and whether Democrats win a majority in the Senate. Most immigration policy experts aren’t convinced that Trump will see success in negotiating with Democrats, but the political calculus could change if Democrats control both chambers of Congress and need Trump to sign their legislation.

It also depends on Republicans acting as a unified front on immigration. So far, pro-business Republicans aren’t challenging the restrictions and travel bans Trump has imposed during the pandemic, and as the US continues to grapple with its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and more than a million Americans are out of work, they will likely continue to follow the president’s lead. But in the long term, they might find themselves at philosophical odds with the anti-immigrant wing of the party.

“I think the reality of the economics of immigration and the sort of more ideological agenda are going to come into conflict,” Rivlin said.

But if Trump can overcome those hurdles, the prize would be substantial: the ability the leave his mark on the immigration system beyond a series of executive actions that could be reversed by the next Democrat who assumes office.

“Merit-based immigration reform would be a legacy for him on immigration, more so than a border wall,” the Bipartisan Policy Institute’s Cardinal-Brown said. “That would have impacts on the future of immigration for decades.”

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

Read the rest of Nicole’s gloomy yet (as always) well-written outlook at the link.

Don’t be fooled. In “Trumpspeak” the term “merit-based” means “race-based” (favoring, of course, White guys, preferably rich, English speaking, and prospective GOP toadies). Again, to state the obvious, a “kakistocracy” by definition lacks the ability to recognize and reward true “merit.” That’s why it’s a “kakistocracy,” not a “meritocracy!”

America is a nation of immigrants. To change that, Trump will have to destroy America, which, as this week’s “clown show of hate, fear, loathing, and complete nonsense” (a/k/a “The GOP Convention”) shows, he and his followers are perfectly willing to do. 

This perverted “vision” of America also ties in well with the Trump/GOP approach to racism and social justice: Ignore injustice and double down on violence administered by the largely White power structure against communities of color. Kill, maim, blame, punish, jail, intimidate, disenfranchise, and dehumanize the victims rather than looking for cooperative ways to solve the problems. Sow fear, hate, and division to insure that institutionalized racism and White grievance will be indelibly ingrained in America! As these self-inflicted grievances play out, the Trump family and its cronies will use the ensuing chaos as a diversion to loot the Treasury and use what remains of “government” to further their own personal interests, without regard to the common welfare. Nice folks!

It’s doubtful that America as the majority of us have envisioned it can survive another four years of Trump’s corruption, racism, and malicious incompetence. Despite some liberal wishful thinking, our democratic institutions and apparently overrated “checks and balances” are crumbling before our eyes. 

The “JR Five” on the Supremes and the GOP Senate already have reached “Penceian levels” (“Pence” rhymes with “incompetence”) of mindless sycophantic subservience to the “Clown Prince” and his entourage. None of them would be able to extract their collective heads from the more than ample Presidential rear to see any daylight during a second term. Trump’s re-election would inevitably convert the “City on The Hill” to a “wealthy universally despised third world kleptocracy.” That’s the real “vision” of Trump and the GOP. (I think that Nicole’s “hypothetical” of a Trump victory and a Dem Senate is the “least likely scenario.”)

This November, vote like your life and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do!

Equal Justice & A Diverse America For All! Trump’s Dark, Evil, Dishonest Vision Of America, Never!

PWS

08-27-20

🇺🇸🗽⚖️😎👏🏽👍🏼NDPA IN ACTION: CARECEN, CLINIC & OTHER NGOs SUE “ILLEGAL” COOCH COOCH ON INSANELY STUPID & UNLAWFUL ANTI-TPS POLICY! — CARECEN v. Cuccinelli (a/k/a “The Illegal”)

 

Michelle Mendez
Michelle Mendez
Defending Vulnerable Populations Director
Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (“CLINIC”)

NDPA Superstar ⭐️  Michelle Mendez 🎖 reports for CLINIC 🏆:

New Legal Challenge: CARECEN v. Cuccinelli

Greetings,

 

Representing the CARECEN and seven people with Temporary Protected Status, CLINIC, Democracy Forward, Montagut & Sobral PC and Debevoise & Plimpton LLP sued the Trump administration to block a policy issued by an unauthorized federal executive, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli. The lawsuit, filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to stop the Trump administration from denying access to lawful permanent residency to people with TPS who legally qualify for green cards thanks to their U.S. citizen spouse or child. Cuccinelli’s action, couched as a mere “update” to the agency’s policy manual, eliminates the ability for TPS beneficiaries with prior removal orders to apply to adjust status with USCIS even though they departed the United States and returned with USCIS permission. The suit challenges the policy change as unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution’s Due Process Clause, and because its author, Ken Cuccinelli, was not legally appointed to direct USCIS.

 

Here is our press release.

 

Here is the complaint.

 

Here is a CNN story on this challenge.

 

When the Trump Administration attacks families, we will hold it accountable, be it for the next few months or the next 4 years.

 

Michelle N. Mendez (she/her/ella/elle)

Director, Defending Vulnerable Populations Program

Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC)

Mailing Address: 8757 Georgia Avenue, Suite 850, Silver Spring, MD 20910

Physical Address: University of Baltimore School of Law, 1401 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21201

Website: www.cliniclegal.org

 

Embracing the Gospel value of welcoming the stranger, CLINIC promotes the dignity and protects the rights of immigrants in partnership with a dedicated network of Catholic and community legal immigration programs.

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

Remember, folks, no human being is illegal. But, Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli is an “illegal” serving in a rogue regime!

Many thanks to all of our NDPA fighters who brought this much needed suit!

And, think of the grotesque stupidity, not to mention cruelty and illegality, behind this USCIS “policy.” Those in TPS are part of our community. Many have been here for years, even decades, working, paying taxes, and raising families (including many US citizens). Many are now fully qualified to adjust to “green card” status under existing law, thereby regularizing their status and getting out of “limbo.” 

With LPR status, and eventually US citizenship, they can reach their full potential as humans and as members of our society. That’s a “win-win” that helps us move forward and prosper as a nation.

Yet, “Cooch Cooch” and the rest of the maliciously incompetent kakistocracy at DHS stay up nights thinking of ways to “stiff” our friends and neighbors in the TPS community and to keep them from regularizing their status and achieving their full human and economic potential, not to mention traumatizing US citizen family members. Talk about fraud, waste, and abuse in Government!

Incidentally, current TPS holders would all be entitled to full Immigration Court hearings if the regime attempted to expel them by force after ending TPS. Most have strong claims to relief, from cancellation of removal to asylum and other forms of protection.

Many could apply for adjustment of status in Immigration Court and individually litigate no matter what the USCIS “policy.” With a known backlog of approximately 1.5 million cases and perhaps another 500,000 to 1 million “lost in the docket dysfunction at EOIR,” their Immigration Court dates could easily be a decade, or “2.5 Administrations” from now. So, the Cuccinelli policy is basically a way of inflicting some cruelty and racist harassment on TPS’ers eligible to immigrate, without any realistic chance of “enforced removal.” Wow, talk about using a system already FUBAR’ed, to a major extent by this regime, as an illegal “weapon against humanity!”

Where, or where, have the Article IIIs been in taking a strong, unified stand against racism and stupidity (legal term “unreasonable behavior”) by the Trump immigration regime? Cooch Cooch was determined by a Federal Court to be illegally serving at USCIS! Yet, he contemptuously remains in office inflicting illegal harm and suffering on migrants, chewing up legal resources, and insultingly wasting the time of the Federal Courts.

I sort of understand the feckless performance of the Immigration Courts, wholly owned by “Billy the Bigot.” But, what’s the purpose of an independent Article III Judiciary that performs like it’s the “King’s Court” — unwilling or unable to defend our Constitution, humanity, or even their own prerogatives against the tyranny of a dangerous scofflaw moron like Trump?

What’s their excuse for drawing their salaries? The overall systemic failure of the Article III Judiciary, starting with a tone-deaf, racially insensitive, and often eagerly complicit Supreme’s majority, in the face of Trump’s White Nationalist authoritarianism, demands serious national re-examination of the role, qualities, and character we should expect from our Article III Judiciary, assuming that our nation survives the current legal and moral debacle led by Trump and enabled by judges who failed to do their duties!

“When the Trump Administration attacks families, we will hold it accountable, be it for the next few months or the next 4 years.”

That’s the key! With far too many public officials in all three branches spinelessly “tanking” on their constitutional duties to protect our rights and defend humanity from tyranny, the soldiers of the NDPA are among the courageous defenders of democracy and leaders of the long and challenging climb to equal justice and national decency. Support them by throwing the GOP — the anti-American party of bias, hate, lies, racism, institutionalized stupidity, and chaos — out at every level of government!

We’ll never get to equal justice for all with politicos, legislators, judges, and bureaucrats who don’t believe in it! Folks who quote and “honor” MLK, Jr., one day of the year and spend the rest of it trampling on his dreams and trashing his values! 

Thanks to my good friend, colleague, and “NDPA General” Michelle and others for standing up to “Cooch the Illegal” and his toxic anti-American, scofflaw efforts to destroy our nation!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-27-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻KAKISTOCRACY HAS CONSEQUENCES: CLIMATE MIGRATION IS ONE OF THEM! — Trump’s Stupidity & Cruelty On Immigration Climate Science, & Disease Control Promises Horrible Global Human Disaster For Future Generations — Empowering & Enabling A Moron Is Always A Very Bad Idea!  — No Idiotic Wall Or “Drill Baby Drill” Insanity Is Going To Prevent This Human Catastrophe We Are Inflicting On Those Who Follow!

🏴‍☠️

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/climate-migration.html

THE GREAT CLIMATE MIGRATION

By Abrahm Lustgarten | Photographs by Meridith Kohut

Early in 2019, a year before the world shut its borders completely, Jorge A. knew he had to get out of Guatemala. The land was turning against him. For five years, it almost never rained. Then it did rain, and Jorge rushed his last seeds into the ground. The corn sprouted into healthy green stalks, and there was hope — until, without warning, the river flooded. Jorge waded chest-deep into his fields searching in vain for cobs he could still eat. Soon he made a last desperate bet, signing away the tin-roof hut where he lived with his wife and three children against a $1,500 advance in okra seed. But after the flood, the rain stopped again, and everything died. Jorge knew then that if he didn’t get out of Guatemala, his family might die, too.

This article, the first in a series on global climate migration, is a partnership between ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, with support from the Pulitzer Center. Read more about the data project that underlies the reporting.

Even as hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans fled north toward the United States in recent years, in Jorge’s region — a state called Alta Verapaz, where precipitous mountains covered in coffee plantations and dense, dry forest give way to broader gentle valleys — the residents have largely stayed. Now, though, under a relentless confluence of drought, flood, bankruptcy and starvation, they, too, have begun to leave. Almost everyone here experiences some degree of uncertainty about where their next meal will come from. Half the children are chronically hungry, and many are short for their age, with weak bones and bloated bellies. Their families are all facing the same excruciating decision that confronted Jorge.

The odd weather phenomenon that many blame for the suffering here — the drought and sudden storm pattern known as El Niño — is expected to become more frequent as the planet warms. Many semiarid parts of Guatemala will soon be more like a desert. Rainfall is expected to decrease by 60 percent in some parts of the country, and the amount of water replenishing streams and keeping soil moist will drop by as much as 83 percent. Researchers project that by 2070, yields of some staple crops in the state where Jorge lives will decline by nearly a third.

Scientists have learned to project such changes around the world with surprising precision, but — until recently — little has been known about the human consequences of those changes. As their land fails them, hundreds of millions of people from Central America to Sudan to the Mekong Delta will be forced to choose between flight or death. The result will almost certainly be the greatest wave of global migration the world has seen.

In March, Jorge and his 7-year-old son each packed a pair of pants, three T-shirts, underwear and a toothbrush into a single thin black nylon sack with a drawstring. Jorge’s father had pawned his last four goats for $2,000 to help pay for their transit, another loan the family would have to repay at 100 percent interest. The coyote called at 10 p.m. — they would go that night. They had no idea then where they would wind up, or what they would do when they got there.

From decision to departure, it was three days. And then they were gone.

. . . .

Our modeling and the consensus of academics point to the same bottom line: If societies respond aggressively to climate change and migration and increase their resilience to it, food production will be shored up, poverty reduced and international migration slowed — factors that could help the world remain more stable and more peaceful. If leaders take fewer actions against climate change, or more punitive ones against migrants, food insecurity will deepen, as will poverty. Populations will surge, and cross-border movement will be restricted, leading to greater suffering. Whatever actions governments take next — and when they do it — makes a difference.

The window for action is closing. The world can now expect that with every degree of temperature increase, roughly a billion people will be pushed outside the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years. For a long time, the climate alarm has been sounded in terms of its economic toll, but now it can increasingly be counted in people harmed. The worst danger, Hinde warned on our walk, is believing that something so frail and ephemeral as a wall can ever be an effective shield against the tide of history. “If we don’t develop a different attitude,” he said, “we’re going to be like people in the lifeboat, beating on those that are trying to climb in.”

Abrahm Lustgarten is a senior environmental reporter at ProPublica. His 2015 series examining the causes of water scarcity in the American West, “Killing the Colorado,” was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Meridith Kohut is an award-winning photojournalist based in Caracas, Venezuela, who has documented global health and humanitarian crises in Latin America for The New York Times for more than a decade. Her recent assignments include photographing migration and childbirth in Venezuela, antigovernment protests in Haiti and the killing of women in Guatemala.

Reporting and translation were contributed by Pedro Pablo Solares in Guatemala and El Salvador, and Louisa Reynolds and Juan de Dios García Davish in Mexico.

Data for opening globe graphic from “Future of the Human Climate Niche,” by Chi Xu, Timothy A. Kohler, Timothy M. Lenton, Jens-Christian Svenning and Marten Scheffer, from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Graphic by Bryan Christie Design/Joe Lertola.

Maps in Central America graphics sequence show total population shift under the SSP5 / RCP 8.5 and SSP3 / RCP 8.5 scenarios used by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and it is calculated on a 15-kilometer grid. A cube-root scale was used to compress the largest peaks.

Projections based on research by The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica, with support from the Pulitzer Center. Model graphics and additional data analysis by Matthew Conlen.

Additional design and development by Jacky Myint and Shannon Lin.

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Read the full article, with pictures and neat graphics, at the link!

“Safe Third Countries” indeed! It’s total fraud-enhanced immorality by the Trump regime, with our failed and failing “governing institutions” and the rest of the world fecklessly watching us be driven by the irrational hate and stupidity filled agenda of a madman and his toadies! 

No wall will be high enough, no “American Gulag” cruel enough, no rhetoric racist enough, no laws hateful enough, no Supreme Court dehumanizing enough, no immorality and stupidity gross enough to stop mass human migration driven by climate change. “Desperate people do desperate things!”

This November, vote like the future of humanity depends on it. Because it does!

PWS

07-26-20

🇺🇸👍🏼🗽😇THE FUTURE WILL BELONG TO NATIONS THAT WELCOME IMMIGRANTS: Getting Rid of Trump, Miller, Cotton, & The Other GOP Racist Restrictionists Is A Key First Step To A Better America For All!

https://apple.news/ApxPyJV3cSBOtEU7c4Xlk4A

Frida Ghitis @ CNN:

The only way the United States can remain the world’s most prosperous, powerful country is by embracing immigration. That’s the inescapable conclusion from a new study published on Tuesday in the Lancet that predicts the world’s population will peak far sooner than anticipated, and start shrinking before the end of this century.

There is, however, no guarantee that the US will embrace immigration, even to save itself. Domestic politics, currently inflamed by divisive nativist leaders, have turned immigration into a contested topic. A country that rose to historic heights of influence and prosperity by welcoming immigrants, is now led by a President who has weaponized the issue with unfathomable cruelty.

One example: At this moment, hundreds of migrant families held in detention facilities face the wrenching choice of whether to let their children be released to third parties, or stay together in detention. This awful decision comes as the result of court order last month that called for the children’s release in light of the coronavirus pandemic — and it is essentially a new version of the family separation policy that tore apart thousands of children from their parents earlier in the Trump administration.

Such heartless political measures flout America’s founding principles — but are also out of step with public opinion on immigration: an overwhelming majority of Americans — 77%, according to a recent 2020 Gallup poll- say it is good for the country. The prospect of falling birth rates predicted by study — from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine — may be a thumb on the scale in favor of more immigration. After all, businesses will need workers. Even the military will likely feel the pressure of contracting numbers of people of military age.

The new study shows how far off the mark earlier assumptions about exploding population growth fell. Some among you, my dear readers, may remember when intellectuals were gripped by the fear of a “Malthusian catastrophe,” fear that population growth would outpace our ability to feed ourselves. But it turns out that Thomas Robert Malthus, the 18th century economist and demographer, got it all wrong.

Not only did agricultural advances undercut his thesis, it turns out the world’s population will start contracting before long, with powerful economic, geopolitical and environmental implications.

. . . .

The result will be increased friction over immigration, with the arguments of immigration advocates bolstered by demographers, economists and a business community anxious to see consumption increase and workers available.

The present may be blazing with the demagogues’ sturm und drang about keeping immigrants out. But the future belongs to the country that welcomes them.

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Read the complete article at the link.

Immigration is both an unstoppable human force and good for America. The sooner we end the current regime’s cruel and stupid White Nationalist policies and develop a robust, thoughtful, inclusive, realistic approach to legal immigration (including refugees), the better off we will be as a nation.

An immediate benefit would be a sharp reduction in the amount of resources and goodwill wasted on counterproductive and often both illegal and immoral restrictionist enforcement gimmicks. That would actually align immigration enforcement with the national interest, rather than undermining it as is now the case with many of the misguided enforcement efforts, particularly “civil” imprisonment and deportations of refugees and long time residents.

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

PWS

07-17-20

CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: More Stupidity, Cruelty, & Racism Behind Trump’s Latest Assault on First Graders, Families, & Legal Immigration — It’s Not About Protecting American Jobs — Just The White Nationalist, Restrictionist Immigration Agenda

 

Catherine Rampell
Catherine Rampell
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

By Catherine Rampell

June 29 at 7:16 PM ET

Last week President Trump suspended visas for huge categories of immigrants, allegedly to “protect American jobs.”

To understand how disingenuous this rationale is, consider the case of Vihaan Baranidharan.

Vihaan is stuck in India, where he went to see his sick grandmother for what was supposed to be a short visit. Thanks to Trump’s order, he’s blocked from getting the visa stamp needed to return to Dallas. But Vihaan has not taken, nor has any plans to take, any American’s job. He doesn’t have the experience to be competitive in the U.S. job market — or even sufficient vocabulary.

Because Vihaan just finished first grade.

“What risk could he pose to the U.S. economy?” pleads his mother, Sindhu Turumalla. “He is 7.”

That doesn’t matter to the Trump administration, which is exploiting the economic downturn as another excuse to punish immigrants — whether legal or undocumented, professional or working class, entrepreneur or student, adult or child.

The United States is so far the only country to “explicitly justify mobility limitations not on grounds of health risk, but to protect the jobs and economic wellbeing of” its citizens, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

In an April executive order, Trump suspended issuance of green cards for most people applying from abroad. Last week’s executive order expanded the ban to large categories of temporary, employment-based visas. This included the highly skilled immigrants the administration usually claims it prioritizes, as well as any spouses and minor children who normally accompany these workers.

The U.S. economy is indeed in bad shape. But it’s hard to fathom that the estimated 377,000 would-be immigrants now barred from entry present much “risk to the U.S. labor market,” as Trump claims.

Keeping them out, however, could actually harm the economy in the long run. Vihaan’s family presents a helpful case study.

His dad, an executive handling cybersecurity at a major global bank, has been based in the United States since 2017 on a visa specifically for executives transferred from abroad within the same company. He manages, and hires, U.S. workers. While unemployment overall is in double digits, in his field — computer-related occupations — unemployment has declined since the pandemic began, hitting 2.5 percent in May.

What’s more, economists generally believe that highly skilled immigrants like him create job opportunities for Americans and make the country more competitive, especially in STEM, or science, technology, engineering and math, fields.

. . . .

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

Let’s see, 21 million Americans out of work. 377,000 foreign workers barred. That’s less than 2% — statistically insignificant. But, politically, it’s “red meat” to Trump’s White Nationalist followers.

Beyond that, it’s largely apples and oranges. Among others, Trump is barring intracompany executives and managers, those with specialized business knowledge, skilled professionals, and those coming under exchange programs. But, the hardest hit sectors of the U.S. workforce have been things like hospitality, government, and mining. 

So, Toyota is going to hire an out of work bartender to run a U.S. Division? An international tech company is going to replace its chief information officer with an out of work coal miner? Or, perhaps a laid off government bureaucrat is going to replace a seasonal camp counselor in Maine? Not likely. More realistic that the employer would simply shift the work abroad or just close or reduce the U.S. operations.

During my years in the INS, we went through various iterations of “programs” to notify state and local employment agencies when a major enforcement operation supposedly “freed up” jobs for U.S. workers — usually in agriculture or manufacturing. None of these efforts created meaningful opportunities that U.S. workers were ready, willing, and qualified to take, at least on any systematic, consistent, or widespread basis.

The oft-cited claim that “they are taking our jobs” or that deportations, exclusions, and bars “protect the American labor market” is largely unsupported by hard data. Let’s just take a look at those who advance such basically mythical claims: nativist immigration groups and GOP politicos.

These are the same folks who oppose increases in minimum wages, bust unions, eliminate health and safety protections, don’t believe in health care, weaken anti-discrimination protections, cut unemployment benefits, and support management’s unilateral right to exploit workers to the max. These are not groups and individuals with any real concerns about the health or welfare of U.S. workers except to the extent that they think their claims — supplemented with racist dog whistles identifying the “foreign invaders” as people of color — might win them some votes at election time.

Or let’s take something more basic. I just listened to a news report saying that the simple act of everyone wearing a mask could save the U.S. economy one trillion dollars. That’s real money!

So, if Trump, Pence, and the GOP really wanted to help American workers and the economy in a meaningful way, they would be pulling out all the stops to promote, actually demand, that all Americans wear masks and practice social distancing. They would be strongly supporting governors, mayors, and public health officials urging these uniform practices. Yet, that’s not what’s happening. 

The visa suspension is just another Trump racist ruse. Something to make the gullible think he is concerned about them when fact is he’s never been concerned for anyone in his life except himself. But, it’s dangerous because it promotes the myth of the link between immigrants and America’s economic problems and shifts the attention from the Trump kakistocracy’s “malicious incompetence” that actually was a major contributing factor to our inept, at best, COVID-19 response and the problems and chaos that have followed.

The real situation looks more like this: 1) with the economy ailing, there would be a natural decline in job-based immigration in certain sectors because of market forces, regardless of what Trump does; 2) with America’s well-advertised failure to deal competently with COVID-19 and Trump’s ugly hate rhetoric, “immigrants with choices” may well choose other destinations (Canada is one that is already benefiting from Trump’s obsession with xenophobic immigration policies); 3) with Americans barred from entry into the EU and perhaps other countries, the vital force of immigration and its overall positive effect on the world economy will be muted in the U.S.; and 4) with the legal immigration system, including the refugee and asylum systems, shut down whatever future immigration does occur under Trump is likely to be of the extralegal variety, unscreened, unmonitored, and uncontrolled. 

The latter are likely to be refugees with limited options, driven more by necessity than economics, although for many refugees persecution and economic factors are inextricably intertwined. Even here, the practical difficulties of travel during a worldwide pandemic are likely to have more of an impact than Trump’s elimination of asylum.  

Indeed, our country has long benefitted from asylum seekers’ (now sadly misplaced) trust in the U.S. legal system that leads to their turning themselves in at ports of entry, surrendering near the border, or voluntarily applying at a USCIS Asylum Office in the U.S. With the U.S. legal system now in “full fraud mode” refugees stand a better chance of  losing themselves in the interior than of gaining protection from a system specifically designed to treat them unfairly and abusively.

Trump claims great “success” for his abrogation of the legal immigration system and crimes against humanity. But, who really knows how many folks cross the border without our knowledge and where they end up? And, no ridiculous and wasteful wall is going to stop that.

That doesn’t mean that the extralegal immigration won’t be beneficial — past extralegal immigration has benefited the U.S. overall and often, but not always, the migrants themselves. But, by keeping migrant populations underground, living in fear and uncertainty, and subject to exploitation, we limit the immigrants’ abilities to reach their full potential and to contribute fully to our society. In other words, we limit our own capacity to get the full benefit of the reality of human migration in a global society.

In November, we have a chance to end the stupidity and cruelty and to establish a more just society that recognizes the benefits of equal justice for all and treats migrants fairly, humanely, rationally, and with respect for their legal and human rights. We can’t afford to blow it, again!

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

PWS

07-01-20

 

Ananya Bhattacharya @ QUARTZ: Yes, Trump’s B.S. White Nationalist Attack on Immigrants, Using COVID-19 as a Pretext, Will Harm U.S. Workers & the U.S. Economy, Says New Study by U.C. San Diego Profs!

Ananya Bhattacharya
Ananya Bhattacharya
Tech Reporter
QUARTZ

 

https://apple.news/ATn0lgkBSTay-a1C2lMlh4A

 

Ananya writes in QUARTZ:

GOOD FOR YOU

A new study shows Trump’s anti-immigration policies will end up hurting the US

The Donald Trump administration’s planned measures to help American graduates find jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic may backfire in the long term.

Over the past couple of months, the US government has proposed several restrictions on foreign skilled workers, which it believes will open up opportunities for locals. However, a recent University of California San Diego immigrant rights study (pdf) has said immigrant rights enhance the lives and livelihoods of native workers in many ways such as improvement in incomes, sparking innovation, reducing crime and increasing tax revenues.

“We find there are several areas where strengthening migrant worker rights benefits native-born workers, outweighing any costs borne by them,” researchers Gaurav Khanna and Anna Brown found.

The research comes after Trump hit pause on immigration into the US via employment and family routes in April, affecting more than 20,000 people each month. A May 7 letter from a group of four Republican senators urged Trump to suspend the Optional Practical Training programme (OPT), which allows international students to work in the US for up to three years. Six days later, the New York Times reported Trump is considering barring the issuance of new visas in certain employment-based categories, including H-1B.

Here’s a break-down of how hurting immigrant sentiment is tied to the welfare of the US economy:

Entrepreneurship and innovation

Any change to immigrant laws could hurt the US’s long-term plans around innovation and new ventures because giving immigrants legal permanence and a sense of stability incentivises local investments.

“These new businesses may lead to an increase in jobs and a larger tax base,” the researchers said. “While much of the literature has focused on the potential of H-1B visa-holders to develop new patents and technologies, there is strong evidence suggesting that this relationship between immigration and innovation holds more broadly.”

Around 45% of Fortune 500 companies have been founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. These companies amass more than $6 trillion in revenue per year and include tech giants like Google-Alphabet, Microsoft, Tesla, and Apple. A previous study by Khanna revealed that hiring H-1B workers was strongly associated with firms introducing newer products.

Threat of reverse brain drain

The report also says America’s talent crunch could worsen if foreign professionals are not retained.

“When the US crisis abates, there may be a scarcity of high-skill professionals, which could stall a robust recovery,” Khanna, co-author and assistant professor of economics at the school of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS), said in a June 4 press release.

Silicon Valley’s gaping tech skills gap has long been plugged by foreign talent.

Back in 1994, the number of computer scientists in the US who were born abroad was less than one in 10. By 2012, the share was up to a quarter.

Most tech workers are employed under the H-1B programme, which is only renewable for up to six years. Workers who are not on track for a green card have to return home. “Such forces, set into motion by the six-year H-1B limit, have shifted production from the United States to India,” the research states. Extending the H-1B limit or making the green card process easier would allow employers to retain this high-skill talent.

And it’s not just about Silicon Valley. The IT sector has downstream effects on other industries that use software, such as banking and manufacturing.

Higher wages, more jobs for locals

The presence of immigrants had a more favourable effect on incomes, the researchers found. A study conducted by the US Department of Labor showed that granting legal status to migrant workers resulted in their wages rising by 15.1%.

Restrictions on the H-1B will have an outsize effect on Indians, who receive three-quarters of the visa, but they wouldn’t be the first group to fall prey. Historically, Chinese, European, and Mexican labour flow into the US has been limited or stopped altogether based on unsubstantiated evidence about these workers depressing wages.

“Often, such policies have been motivated by resentment against foreign workers; however, this fear may be based on false perceptions and lack of evidence,” the authors of the paper write. “This resentment may also be driven by racial prejudices and xenophobia.”

However, the reality is that protecting migrant workers from exploitation eventually levels the playing field between immigrants and non-immigrants. “Migrant workers, who are not legally protected, face much lower wages compared with their native counterparts,” according to Khanna. “This is detrimental to US-born workers, who are less likely to be hired. Ensuring migrant workers have substantial rights inadvertently helps US-born workers as well.”

A better tomorrow for America

Less crime: Trump has often tried to draw a link between immigrants and rising crime rates. But there is little truth in these claims. Between 1970 and 2010, increases in immigration in US metropolitan areas were correlated with decreases in both violent (homicides, assaults, etc) and property crimes (burglary, motor vehicle theft, etc), past research shows. Then, a 2007 studyfound that incarceration rates are lower for immigrants and far lower for newly arrived immigrants.

More taxes: Contrary to popular belief, undocumented migrant workers pay taxes, mostly income taxes, which are estimated to be at $11.7 billion. This number would rise by $2.2 billion if undocumented migrants were granted legal status. For a country with $804 billion in fiscal debt, every penny counts.

Future workforce: Children of currently undocumented individuals who are born in the US can join the country’s workforce, adding to productivity and expanding the tax base.

Quartz Daily Brief

Subscribe to the Daily Brief, our morning email with news and insights you need to understand our changing world.

 

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I’ve featured this particular study in prior posts. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/06/06/debunking-the-trump-regimes-white-nationalist-myths%EF%B8%8F-furthering-protecting-immigrants-rights-benefits-society-bogus-covid-19-visa-rest/

 But, Ananya’s summary is so highly relevant and beautifully written that it deserves its own post. One of her most important points: “[T]he reality is that protecting migrant workers from exploitation eventually levels the playing field between immigrants and non-immigrants.”

I’ve pointed out to my students that bigger investments by the Feds in Wage & Hour and OSHA enforcement, as an alternative to expensive, inhumane, wasteful, and often counterproductive civil immigration detention and enforcement, is something that a wiser and more intellectually honest Administration should consider in the future, in combination with a more robust and realistic legal immigration system.

 

PWS

 

06-09-20

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

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

https://apple.news/AtzkkrgAGThCSMutjCZCjAg

 From SCIENMAG:

New Visa restrictions will make the US economic downturn worse

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

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

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

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

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

Legal protections for immigrants aid entrepreneurship and innovation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rights for immigrants also lower crimes in receiving countries

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

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

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

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

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

Legal protections lower the fiscal burden and reduce deficits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 PWS

06-06-20

🗽👍REBUKING THE WHITE NATIONALIST MYTHS: A Nation of Immigrants Will Continue to Need Robust Immigration

 

 

Jonah Black
Jonah Black
Writer
International Policy Digest

https://apple.news/A2Vejg2BpTx-0GpMm0VcwCw

Jonah Black writes in International Policy Digest:

The Case for Immigration

America’s identity for the past two centuries or so has been largely defined by its acceptance of, as Emma Lazarus so eloquently puts it, the world’s “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” This is what distinguishes us from otherwise similar European nations, and is arguably what makes our nation the most socially advanced in the world. However, our melting pot structure has long faced opposition from Americans seeking to limit ethnic diversity. This is sometimes a result of supremacist sentiment, but it more often stems from a desire to limit conflict. The latter argument holds some validity; cultural differences will ensue discord in a civilization, at least to some extent. But we are America. A land where individuality should be appreciated, and where coexistence should, therefore, be possible. We ought not to deny anyone the opportunity to contribute to the world’s largest and most valuable social experiment, regardless of their country of origin.

Currently, the requirements to become a naturalized American citizen are extensive and unrealistic. When seeking citizenship, they must first apply for a green card which, if obtained, gives them a “permanent resident” status. This sounds simple enough, but the reality is that as of late September 2019 there were still 572,501 pending I-485 forms (green card applications) from both that year and years past. And while that number is large, it was still a significant improvement from the 681,898 pending forms as of late June 2018.

Now, let’s say they get lucky and are approved for permanent residency status; they will have to leave their home and move themselves and their immediate family to a foreign country with no guarantee of a place to live or work. Despite what conditions they may endure there, they must persist for five whole years in order to fulfill a naturalization requirement. So they somehow manage to do so, and assuming they meet all the other criteria, they are now eligible to apply for naturalization. They fill out the N-400 form (of which there were still 647,585 pending at the end of 2019), and after all they’ve been through, applicants still have around a ten percent chance of being denied citizenship. It’s clear why so many immigrants choose to enter our country illegally, and why we therefore have a detainee crisis on the southern border.

The solution for the first issue, unfortunately, cannot easily be brought to fruition. Ideally, we could just revert immigration policy to what it was for the hundred or so years after our country’s inception. After all, assuming everyone in the world who wanted to live here did so, we’d only have around 135 people per square mile; far less than many of our first-world counterparts. Furthermore, this policy would be more demonstrative of the “freedom for all” doctrine our country is supposed to stand for. Unfortunately, while pro-immigration sentiment has steadily increased over the past couple of decades, only about thirty percent of Americans are keen to see immigration rates rise further. Many of those opposed continuously argue the same point: an increase in immigration would lead to fewer employment opportunities for those already living here.

However, the reality is that immigrants, particularly those of the lower class, often take jobs that others don’t want and that their continued immigration is essential to maintaining America’s workforce. These facts suggest that those making the aforementioned argument are doing so to conceal their true rationale for opposing heightened immigration rates. But as long as these people constitute the majority of our society, there isn’t a lot we can do besides continuing to make our case to the proper authority and anyone who will listen.

As for the detainee crisis, I still do not have a solution with which I am satisfied that would coincide with our current immigration policies. Those who came here seeking political asylum should be granted it; their extended detention is in violation of international law. But many of those being detained are not seeking asylum, and do not have the necessary documents to prove that they are either a permanent resident or a naturalized citizen. It’d be nice if we could just give them a green card and be done with it, but that would be unfair to those who have been waiting months, or even years, for the same opportunity. Alternatively, if we put them at the back of the queue, they themselves might have to wait for a similar amount of time. In which case, would they remain in detainment (potentially for years) until they are approved permanent resident status.

The only solution I can find calls for a complete revision of U.S. immigration laws, which makes it of utmost importance that we keep pushing for such revisions. One thing I can say though is that conditions in our detainment facilities need to be improved. Firsthand accounts of those residing within reveal the hypocrisy in our nation’s propagated doctrines of liberty and democracy. Our treatment of non-citizens, whom we have no legal duty to provide for, demonstrates our character to the rest of the world.

To quote the Russian Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine, “entropy is the price of structure.” If we want progress, we must accept the disharmony that precedes it. Increased immigration rates would surely elicit an uproar from a significant portion of the population. But ultimately, the range of unique ideas brought forth by those entering our country would be invaluable. When used correctly, ideological conflict is the most effective way to stimulate growth. What better way to create such conflict than to integrate people from all over the world into a single society? For the rest of the world, we are the pioneers. It is our task to demonstrate that coexistence is not only possible in an institution but beneficial towards that institution’s progress.

Jonah Black has participated in several mentoring programs throughout his community in both privileged and underserved areas. His goal has always been to maximize his kids’ potential in their respective areas of interest while still maintaining a low-pressure environment. In his free time, Jonah likes to hang out with his dogs and play chess. His career goal is to become a doctor, mostly because he sees medicine as one of the world’s highest callings.

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Yup!  

PWS

06-05-20

GREAT 👍🏼 NEWS IN DIFFICULT TIMES: THANKS IOWA! — Vile White Supremacist Rep. Steve King (R-IA) Defeated in GOP Primary!

Siobhan Hughes
Siobhan Hughes
Congressional Correspondent
WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gop-rep-steve-king-loses-his-iowa-primary-11591157600?emailToken=92379459485ce6d394ff609e4a1e650b5Nbcn9B6kp27b+RJDBSpEvek123RwFfHo2RJK9zWX1CNzY78xZsArP4fILyl8kziMlDrQMcOKv9HhbsTI3GOC0ugwz8YzsaL35M4ip7fEsU%3D&reflink=article_email_share

Siobhan Hughes reports for the WSJ:

WASH­ING­TON—Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa), who was stripped of com­mit­tee as­sign­ments last year for ques­tion­ing what was wrong with white supremacy in the U.S., lost his bid for a 10th term af­ter Re­pub­li­cans aban­doned his cam­paign and en­dorsed a pri­mary chal­lenger.

Randy Feen­stra, a state leg­is­la­tor, had 45.8% of the vote with 36 of 39 coun­ties re­port­ing, ac­cord­ing to Iowa’s sec­re­tary of state. He was po­si­tioned to win a five-way pri­mary, the As­so­ci­ated Press pro­jected, and eas­ily clear a 35% thresh­old that un­der state law al­lows him to avoid a state con­ven­tion choos­ing the nom­i­nee. Mr. Feen­stra will com­pete against De­mo­c­rat J.D. Scholten, a for­mer pro­fes­sional baseball player who also tried to win the seat in 2018.

Mr. King, whose dis­trict is home to gi­ant meat-pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties with a large im­mi­grant work­force, has a his­tory of crit­i­ciz­ing im­mi­grants.

In 2013, Mr. King, the only Iowa Re­pub­li­can in the House, com­pared His­panic im­mi­grants to drug mules, say­ing that “for every one who’s a vale­dic­to­rian, there’s an­other 100 out there that, they weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes be­cause they’re haul­ing 75 pounds of mar­i­juana across the desert.” That trig­gered a re­buke from then-House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), who said that “what he said does not re­flect the val­ues of the Amer­i­can peo­ple or the Re­pub­li­can Party.”

. . . .

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

Probably the best news of the week.

In 21 years on the immigration bench, at both the trial and appellate levels, I saw first-hand the amazing, essential, and largely unheralded contributions of immigrants (both documented and undocumented) to our society, at all levels. King’s racist rhetoric was so outrageously and demonstrably unfair and untrue! 

As the essential workers who have basically kept America afloat during the pandemic, many at risk of their own health and safety, have shown, it is long past time for us to “lose” the Trump/Miller White Nationalist nonsense, stop caging kids and returning asylum seekers to danger, and integrate the millions of law abiding undocumented residents into our society. The “Dred Scottification of the other” by Trump, which has been disgracefully enabled by a tone-deaf Supreme Court and feckless Congress, needs to end! Removal of King is a small, but significant, step.

Thanks again to Siobhan for giving this story the clear and timely reporting it deserves.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-03-20

ESSENTIAL AMERICAN WORKERS PUT FOOD ON OUR TABLES EVEN IN TIMES OF CRISIS: So, Why Do Trump & His White Nationalist Buddies Dump On Hard Working Members of Our Society Performing Necessary Services? — It’s All About Racism, Bigotry, & Weaponizing the “Fear of the Other” For Perceived Political Gain! — “We are the people who are feeding the country. No one else is going to be able to do this. We are the only ones who know how.”

Gabriel Thompson
Gabriel Thompson
Author & Journalist
Photo by Pandora Young

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/28/undocumented-farmworker-us-immigration-california?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Gabriel Thompson reports for The Guardian:

For more than two decades, Roberto Valdez has harvested crops in California’s eastern Coachella Valley, a scorching region dotted with impoverished communities that are surrounded by bountiful fields of grapes, bell peppers, broccoli, watermelon and more. In 2005, after his son nearly died from heatstroke while picking grapes, Valdez advocated for improved safety measures for farm workers, which culminated in new state regulations that protect workers from heat stress. An undocumented immigrant, he is not eligible for federal relief during the Covid-19 pandemic, but while millions of people shelter in place, he continues to work in the fields with his wife. Here he tells Gabriel Thompson about his life as an essential worker.

•••

Right now I’m harvesting eggplant for $13 an hour. The company gives the crew a 50 cent bonus for each box we fill, so in eight hours we can earn an extra $15 or so. The plants are about 4ft tall and the eggplants grow low, so we usually work on our knees in the dirt. You cut off the eggplants with scissors and fill up buckets that weigh between 40 and 50 pounds, carry them to a large tub where they are washed and packed, and dump them in.

California’s farm workers pick America’s essential produce – unprotected from coronavirus

It tires you out, especially when it’s hot. It was 105 degrees today. By 10 in the morning your clothes are completely soaked with sweat and it’s hard to make it through the eight hours. In fact, some days there are people who leave, who can’t make it.

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Because of the coronavirus we always cover our faces now, no matter what the temperature is. The company has given us disposable blue masks, but we mostly use bandannas. The masks don’t stay clean for very long and they start to smell. When they’re dirty, it’s very hard to breathe. The sun is hot, the ground is hot, you’re working fast, and you can’t breathe. A bandanna you can wash and use again. I bring three bandannas every day: one that goes over my head to protect my neck, and two that I use as masks. We have breaks every four hours, and I use that time to wash the old one out with water and soap and put on a new one. My wife and I work together on the crew, and I bought 16 bandannas that we use.

We leave two rows between each person now, a distance of about 8ft. Before, we ate lunch together around portable tables in the shade. We’d share food. “Hey, grab a taco!” That’s all over. Now we eat apart, mostly in our cars. I also can’t greet people like I used to do, either. I’m the kind of person who likes to shake hands, pat people on the back. “How’s it going? How’re you doing this morning?” Among us Latinos, that’s very common. That’s over, too.

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Farm workers wear protective equipment and work behind plastic dividers in the field. Photograph: Brent Stirton/Getty Images

But we still joke and talk, even though we’re separated. There are about 30 people in the crew, and some of us have worked together for years. There are people who are tired, and we’ll tell them a story, just so they’ll be able to get through the day – that’s how we make the work more bearable. Some people have had to stop working because of the coronavirus. There’s a young woman, a single mother with two kids, and she couldn’t keep working because the schools and daycares have shut down. It’s very hard right now – so many mothers have had to stay home.

You have to respect this disease. My brother-in-law died eight days ago, in Mexicali. He was in his 40s and worked at a plant that makes glass. He had high blood pressure and kidney problems, and they had to operate on his kidneys in March. While he was in the hospital he had a hard time breathing, and they suspected he had the coronavirus. They isolated him and put him in an area where the Covid-19 patients were. They didn’t give my sister any information about how he was doing. The government said he died of the coronavirus, but we’re still waiting for the official cause of death. It hurt us a lot, because he was a very good person and no one could visit him.

I saw a news report from New York, where doctors were saying that people weren’t keeping quarantine – going out even when they were supposed to be at home, and more people got infected. That’s something we think a lot about. We stay very clean at work, because we know innocent people are buying the food we harvest, with money they have earned, so that their families will be healthy. And the majority of farm workers, we’re happy to work, we do so with love, and the coronavirus won’t stop us. It’s not going to stop us. Because we know that our work supports the whole nation.

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Right now, Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed giving undocumented immigrants $500 each. There are people who have sued to try and stop this, a woman named Jessica Martinez and a man from El Salvador, Ricardo Benitez. I’d like these people to come out and meet us. I’d like them to see us working. There are people out here who really need this $500, especially people who have lost their jobs. We are the people who are feeding the country. No one else is going to be able to do this. We are the only ones who know how.

We are people who’ve lived in the country 10 and 20 years, and we don’t have a social security number. From my point of view – I say this from my heart – we are like chess pieces that politicians move around. They haven’t done anything, since Barack Obama, since Bill Clinton, since 9/11. I remember I was picking grapes in Arvin when they attacked the twin towers. Back then there was talk of immigration reform for workers. We’ve had hope for a long time, and nothing has happened. We pay taxes. We go to stores and we buy things. Our kids are studying in school. My daughter is about to graduate high school. It’s hard for me to understand why they aren’t letting us become legal residents.

In the media, they’re now calling us “essential workers”. But that’s what we’ve always been. We think of doctors, firefighters and police as important. People who never saw us before now see that we also have value. The coronavirus has brought us both good and bad opportunities. It has hurt us, and it has also made many people realize something they didn’t realize before: that they need us.

Last Monday I arrived home from work and there was a box at my door. The box was filled with milk, bags of lettuce, cabbage, onions and potatoes. I don’t know who brought us the food. I asked the person who manages the trailer park, and he just said some people came to drop off food for everyone. It made me want to cry. It meant that someone was thinking about us, that someone was worrying about us. This was a gesture of kindness toward us. Nothing like that had happened before.

Roberto’s name has been changed to protect his identity.

  • This is an excerpt from the Unheard Voices of the Pandemic series from Voice of Witness. Thompson is editor of Chasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture.

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It’s time to stop the disgraceful waste of taxpayer resources by the Trump regime’s cruel, wasteful, and just plain dumb efforts to penalize, dehumanize, and deport productive members of our society whom we have failed to offer a path to full membership. 

The Trump Family, Steven Miller, Chad Wolf, Billy Barr, Cooch Cooch, and the rest of the White Nationalist restrictionists wouldn’t last a day picking fruits and vegetables in the hot sun, and I guarantee they wouldn’t do a very good job at it.

The pandemic is teaching us lots about who’s really essential; and who’s not!

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

PWS

05-29-20

NATASCHA UHLMANN: We Shouldn’t Let Restrictionist Terms & Myths Frame The “Immigration Debate” — “What if Democrats approached immigration not as something to be restricted or controlled, but as a basic human right?“

 

Natascha Uhlmann
Natascha Uhlmann
Writer, Activist

https://apple.news/AiY6v3tN0SU6ES08RMUe29g

Natascha Uhlmann writes in Teen Vogue:

This op-ed argues that the terms we use to discuss immigration rely on a lot of anti-immigrant assumptions.

The United States has a long history of hostility toward immigrants, from barringundesirables” (a shifting category that has targeted the nonwhite, the disabled, and women) to turning away desperate asylum seekers who went on to gruesome deaths. Even after these cruel laws have been rolled back (and some haven’t), they’ve fundamentally shaped the way we as a nation think of immigration. A lot of the modern policy we consider “common sense” was directly molded by this history. It means that often the terms of the immigration debate rely on a lot of anti-immigrant assumptions. Even the best-intentioned progressives can fall into these traps, which is why examining how we talk about these issues is so important.

THE NOTION THAT THERE ARE “GOOD” AND “BAD” IMMIGRANTS

One common talking point holds that we should welcome the “good” immigrants while getting rid of the “bad” or “criminal” ones. This framing obscures the realities of the U.S. justice system, which disproportionately arrests, convicts, and incarcerates people of color. Black immigrants make up just 7.2% of the noncitizen population, yet they make up over 20% of people facing deportation on criminal grounds. The “good” vs. “bad” framework also obscures how laws are an expression of class power: Financial crimes committed by wealthy individuals and corporations often go unpunished, while everyday people are often punished for their poverty. And even people convicted of crimes shouldn’t lose their humanity, especially in a system that is incentivized to incarcerate.

Anti-immigration advocates often invoke misleading language and statistics suggesting that immigrants commit more crime, while ignoring a vast legal framework set out to criminalize immigrants for minor infractions. Many studies have found that undocumented immigrants actually commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans, but our very definition of what constitutes a crime has grown dramatically over the past few decades. A set of 1996 laws expanded deportable offenses by reclassifying more minor crimes as “aggravated felonies” in the context of immigration. As a result, immigrants can be considered felons for acts like drug possession or failing to appear in court.

DISTINGUISHING “REAL” REFUGEES FROM ECONOMIC MIGRANTS

Another dangerous misconception is the differentiation between “real” refugees (people whose search for safety we consider valid) and “economic migrants,” who are perceived as “gaming the system” to obtain a higher standard of living in America. This is a fundamentally false dichotomy: People, and the systems we live in, are far too complex to fit in these binaries. Who gets to be considered a “real” refugee is significantly informed by America’s ideological attitudes; for decades, the system was based more on Cold War politics than any real concern for the safety of asylum seekers. Those fleeing political or religious persecution are seen as legitimate, while those fleeing violent crime or a lack of economic opportunity — causes that also have political roots — are, too often, not. It’s a pattern that continues today: People coming to the U.S. from countries where America has vested geopolitical interests have historically had a harder time gaining asylum than those from countries the U.S. ideologically opposes, even if they have strong claims of persecution.

This hierarchy has stark consequences. As the bar becomes ever higher for who is a “true” refugee, many who flee certain death are turned away. Meanwhile, those who flee “less serious” violence, like poverty and starvation, often have no avenue for help. Their experiences expose the glaring gaps in our asylum policy. Why should certain types of violence be taken more seriously than others? Who is to say that the fear of gang violence is worse than that of not being able to feed your children?

. . . .

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Read the rest of the op-ed at the link.

Whether you accept Uhlmann’s conclusions or not, her point that immigrants’ advocates often accept the terms and framework set forth by nativists and restrictionists is basically valid. One false concept that appears to govern much of the debate is that immigration is fundamentally “negative” and therefore 1) must be limited to those who can provide immediate economic benefits to us (leaving aside the range of human interests of the immigrants themselves), and 2) that any increases in “desirable” immigration must be offset by cuts, restrictions, and/or removals of “undesirables.” 

In many ways, this explains the sad failure of the Obama Administration to adopt more humane and effective immigration policies. They apparently never could get over the idea that they had to “prove their toughness” by deporting record numbers of folks and inflicting some gratuitous cruelty on migrants, particularly helpless asylum seekers, to “establish their creds” and get the GOP to the table to discuss serious immigration reform. No chance!

With restrictionists, even record levels of removals and historically low levels of border apprehensions are “never enough.” That’s because they are coming from a place of ideological nativism which is neither fact nor reality driven. It’s driven by inherent biases and nativist myths.

Overall, immigration is both a human reality — one that actually predated the establishment of “nation-states” — and a plus for both the immigrants and the receiving countries. 

That being said, I personally think that immigration should be robust, legal, humane, and orderly. But, I doubt that “immigration without limits” is politically realistic, particularly in today’s climate.

Generally, global “market forces” affect immigration much more than nativists are willing to admit. When the legal system is too far out of line with the realities of “supply and demand” the excess is simply forced into the “extralegal market.” 

That’s why we have approximately 11 million so-called “undocumented immigrants” residing in the U.S. today. Most are law abiding, gainfully employed, and have helped fuel our recent economic success. Many have formed the backbone of the unheralded “essential workforce” that has gotten us through the pandemic to this point. Many pay taxes now and all could be brought into the tax system by wiser government policies.

That’s why the mass removals touted by Trump and his White Nationalists are both impractical and counterproductive, as well as being incredibly cruel, inhumane, and cost ineffective. 

There is a theory out there that although Trump’s uber-enforcement policies might be doomed to long-term failure, he is “succeeding” in another, much more damaging, way. By attacking the safety net, government, education, science, the environment, worker safety, and the rule of law while spreading racism, xenophobia, divisiveness, and maximizing income inequality, Trump has finally succeeded in making the U.S. a less desirable place for “immigrants with choices” to live. 

As Bill Gelfeld wrote recently in International Policy Digest:

This pandemic has laid bare national weaknesses, and these weaknesses will have not gone unnoticed by potential and future migrants. Where they have a choice, and many skilled and even unskilled migrants do indeed have a choice, they will increasingly opt for those locales that have figured out universal health care, pandemic and crisis response, and unified national action, and these are the nations that now stand to gain from this migratory boon. https://apple.news/AiY6v3tN0SU6ES08RMUe29g

In the “post-pandemic world economy,” as our birthrate continues to go down and we need immigrants to fuel continued economic growth, the U.S. might well find itself losing the international competition for immigrants, particularly those we most want to attract. 

The latter is likely if we give in to the restrictionist demand that we cut legal immigration. That simply forces more immigrants into the “extralegal market.” “Immigrants with choices” are more likely to choose destinations where they can live legally, integrate into society, and fully utilize their skills over a destination that forces them to live underground.

PWS

05-25-20