The Economy – Page 21 – immigrationcourtside.com

83% OF AFRICAN AMERICANS SAY TRUMP IS A RACIST: What Planet Has The Other 17% Been Living On? — “He has taken hatred against people of color, in general, from the closet to the front porch.”

https://apple.news/ABd8vQaHZQJm6eDhvbK3j0Q

The WashPost reports:

BY CLEVE R. WOOTSON JR., VANESSA WILLIAMS, DAN BALZ AND SCOTT CLEMENT

President Trump made a stark appeal to black Americans during the 2016 election when he asked, “What have you got to lose?” Three years later, black Americans have rendered their verdict on his presidency with a deeply pessimistic assessment of their place in the United States under a leader seen by an overwhelming majority as racist.

The findings come from a Washington Post-Ipsos poll of African Americans nationwide, which reveals fears about whether their children will have a fair shot to succeed and a belief that white Americans don’t fully appreciate the discrimination that black people experience.

While personally optimistic about their own lives, black Americans today offer a bleaker view about their community as a whole. They also express determination to try to limit Trump to a single term in office.

More than 8 in 10 black Americans say they believe Trump is a racist and that he has made racism a bigger problem in the country. Nine in 10 disapprove of his job performance overall.

The pessimism goes well beyond assessments of the president. A 65 percent majority of African Americans say it is a “bad time” to be a black person in America. That view is widely shared by clear majorities of black adults across income, generational and political lines. By contrast, 77 percent of black Americans say it is a “good time” to be a white person, with a wide majority saying white people don’t understand the discrimination faced by black Americans.

Courtney Tate, 40, an elementary school teacher in Irving, Tex., outside Dallas, said that since Trump was elected, he’s been having more conversations with his co-workers — discussions that are simultaneously enlightening and exhausting — about racial issues he and his students face everyday.

“As a black person, you’ve always seen all the racism, the microaggressions, but as white people they don’t understand this is how things are going for me,” said Tate, who said he is the only black male teacher in his school. “They don’t live those experiences. They don’t live in those neighborhoods. They moved out. It’s so easy to be white and oblivious in this country.”

Francine Cartwright, a 44-year-old mother of three from Moorestown, N.J., said the ascent of Trump has altered the way she thinks about the white people in her life.

“If I’m in a room with white women, I know that 50 percent of them voted for Trump and they believe in his ideas,” said Cartwright, a university researcher. “I look at them and think, ‘How do you see me? What is my humanity to you?’ ”

The president routinely talks about how a steadily growing economy and historically low unemployment have resulted in more African Americans with jobs and the lowest jobless rate for black Americans recorded. Months ago he said, “What I’ve done for African Americans in two-and-a-half years, no president has been able to do anything like it.”

But those factors have not translated positively for the president. A 77 percent majority of black Americans say Trump deserves “only some” or “hardly any” credit for the 5.5 percent unemployment rate among black adults compared with 20 percent who say Trump deserves significant credit.

In follow-up interviews, many said former president Barack Obama deserves more credit for the improvement in the unemployment rate, which declined from a high of 16.8 percent in 2010 to 7.5 percent when he left office.

Others said their personal financial situation is more a product of their own efforts than anything the president has done.

“I don’t think [Trump] has anything to do with unemployment among African Americans,” said Ethel Smith, a 72-year-old nanny who lives in Lithonia, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. “I’ve always been a working poor person. That’s just who I am.”

Black Americans report little change in their personal financial situations in the past few years, with 19 percent saying it has been getting better and 26 percent saying it has been getting worse. Most, 54 percent, say their financial situation has stayed the same.

A similar 56 percent majority of African Americans rate the national economy as “not so good” or “poor,” contrasting with other surveys that find most Americans overall rate the economy positively, although there are sharp political divides on this question.

Beyond questions about the economy, African Americans see a range of concerns impacting the country overall as well as their own communities.

Just 16 percent of black Americans believe that most black children born in the U.S. today have “a good opportunity to achieve a comfortable standard of living.” A 75 percent majority think most white children have such an opportunity.

More than 8 in 10 say they do not trust police in the United States to treat people of all races equally, and 7 in 10 distrust police in their own community.

Black Americans also widely sense that their experiences with discrimination are underappreciated by white Americans. Just about 2 in 10 say that most white Americans understand the level of discrimination black Americans face in their lives, while nearly 8 in 10 say they do not.

The starkly negative outlook appears to be a turnabout from previous points during both the Obama and George W. Bush presidencies, according to surveys asking related questions. A 2011 Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey found 73 percent of black women said it was a “good time” to be a black woman in America, while a similar survey in 2006 found 60 percent of black men saying it was a good time to be a black man.

Yet the Post-Ipsos poll also finds that 65 percent of black Americans say they feel optimistic about their own lives most or all of the time. This positive personal outlook crosses age and political groups, and while it peaks among those who are older and with higher incomes, roughly half of black Americans with incomes under $35,000 annually say they feel optimistic about their own lives.

Dana Clark, a father of 11 children in Ontario, Calif., said he tells all of his children that it’s possible to succeed in America, but that they’ll have to work harder than the white children they encounter.

“I tell them we’re going to set this plan up. Whatever you want to do you’re going to be able to do it,” he said. “But it ain’t going to be easy, especially if [you] want to make some money because you’re going to be in a world where they’re not going to expect you to be there. You can get what you want, but you’ve got to work harder, faster and stronger.”

The survey, by The Post and Ipsos, a nonpartisan research firm, is one of the most extensive recent surveys focused on views of the country and President Trump among black Americans, who are often represented by only small samples in customary national polls. It was conducted among 1,088 non-Hispanic black adults, including 900 registered voters, drawn from a large online survey panel recruited through random sampling of U.S. households.

Few black voters responded positively to Trump’s campaign appeal for their votes. Exit polls taken during the 2016 election showed just 8 percent of African Americans supported Trump and 89 percent backed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, although black turnout was significantly lower than in 2008 and 2012 for the election and reelection of Obama, the country’s first black president.

In the Post-Ipsos poll, roughly three-quarters of black adults say the things that Trump is doing as president are “bad for African Americans,” while a similar majority says Obama’s actions as president were good.

Kenneth Davis, a truck driver who lives outside Detroit, said that when Trump was elected, co-workers who secretly harbored racist thoughts felt emboldened to publicly express them.

“One gentleman is waving the Confederate flag on the back of his pickup truck,” said Davis, 48, who is a Marine Corps veteran. “He was very brave to say ‘Trump’s president, I’m going to get my window (painted).’ ”

Retired federal prison warden Keith Battle said the political climate has exposed “unresolved racial issues” and that Trump has emboldened white supremacists. Battle, who lives in Wake Forest, N.C., said white supremacists “are not the majority of whites in America, but there is a significant amount still, I’d say 30 percent, and I think they’re just leading the country down a path of, eventually, chaos. They’re feeling jeopardized of losing their white privilege.”

Survey respondents were asked to say how Trump’s presidency has affected them personally or African Americans in general. The responses illuminated the data in the poll.

“Donald Trump has not done anything for the African American people,” said one person.

“He has created an atmosphere of division and overt racism and fear of immigrants unseen in many years,” said another.

A third said, “He has taken hatred against people of color, in general, from the closet to the front porch.”

Others echoed that sentiment, saying that the president has emboldened those with racially prejudiced views and therefore set back race relations for years. “I sense a separation between myself and some of my white associates,” one person wrote.

Trump’s overall approval rating among black Americans stands at 7 percent, with 90 percent disapproving, including 75 percent who disapprove “strongly.”

Similarly large majorities of black men and women disapprove of Trump, as do black Americans across different age, education and income levels. Trump receives somewhat higher marks among self-identified black conservatives, with 25 percent approving of his performance, compared with 5 percent of moderates and 3 percent among liberals.

Few black Americans appear open to supporting Trump’s bid for reelection at this point. He receives between 4 and 5 percent support among black registered voters in head-to-head matchups against eight potential Democratic nominees. But the level of Democratic support depends on who is the party’s nominee, peaking at 82 percent for former vice president Joe Biden and falling to 57 percent for former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg.

The Post-Ipsos survey was conducted Jan. 2-8, 2020, through Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, a large online survey panel recruited through random sampling of U.S. households. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points among the sample of 1,088 black adults overall, and four points among the sample of 900 registered voters.

Emily Guskin contributed to this report.

Cleve R. Wootson Jr. is a national political reporter for The Washington Post, covering the 2020 campaign for president. He previously worked on The Post’s General Assignment team. Before that, he was a reporter for the Charlotte Observer.

Vanessa Williams is a reporter on the National desk.

Dan Balz is chief correspondent at The Washington Post. He has served as the paper’s deputy national editor, political editor, White House correspondent and Southwest correspondent.

Scott Clement is the polling director for The Washington Post, conducting national and local polls about politics, elections and social issues. He began his career with the ABC News Polling Unit and came to The Post in 2011 after conducting surveys with the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life

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Unfortunately, it’s painfully simple. The GOP is the “21st Century Party of Jim Crow.” Those of us who believe in the 14th Amendment, equal justice, and human decency had better hang together to remove Trump and as many of his GOP toadies as possible from office in 2020.

Otherwise, we’ll all be reliving one of the worst chapters in American history. And that will be tragic for future generations of Americans of all races.

Make America REALLY great by voting Trump and his White Nationalist kakistocracy out of office on every level of our political system. There are enough of us out there in the majority to get the job done this time — if we only hang together and get out the vote everywhere!

PWS

01-17-20

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

https://apple.news/ASCSwefgISM2mLjzRVdJeWQ

When It Comes to Immigration, Political Centrism is Useless

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interesting thoughts to ponder.

PWS

01-17-20

FRANK RICH @ NY MAGGIE: TRUMP TOADIES WILL FACE A RECKONING — “With time, the ultimate fates of those brutalized immigrant and refugee families will emerge in full. And Trump’s collaborators, our Vichy Republicans, will own all of it . . . .”

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/what-will-happen-to-trumps-republican-collaborators.html

What Will Happen to The Trump Toadies? Look to Nixon’s defenders, and the Vichy collaborators, for clues.

By Frank Rich

@frankrichny

Photo: Getty Images

This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

Irony, declared dead after 9/11, is alive and kicking in Trump’s America. It’s the concepts of truth and shame that are on life support. The definition of “facts” has been so thoroughly vandalized that Americans can no longer agree on what one is, and our president has barreled through so many crimes and misdemeanors with so few consequences that it’s impossible to gainsay his claim that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Donald Trump proves daily that there is no longer any penalty for doing wrong as long as you deny everything, never say you’re sorry, and have co-conspirators stashed in powerful places to put the fix in.

No wonder so many fear that Trump will escape his current predicament scot-free, with a foregone acquittal at his impeachment trial in the GOP-controlled Senate and a pull-from-behind victory in November, buoyed by a booming economy, fractious Democrats, and a stacked Electoral College. The enablers and apologists who have facilitated his triumph over the rule of law happily agree. John Kennedy, the Louisiana senator who parrots Vladimir Putin’s talking points in his supine defense of Trump, acts as if there will never be a reckoning. While he has no relation to the president whose name he incongruously bears, his every craven statement bespeaks a confidence that history will count him among the knights of the buffet table in the gilded Mar-a-Lago renovation of Camelot. He is far from alone.

If we can extricate ourselves even briefly from our fatalistic fog, however, we might give some credence to a wider view. For all the damage inflicted since Inauguration Day 2017, America is still standing, a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump, and the laws of gravity, if not those of the nation, remain in full force. Moral gravity may well reassert its pull, too, with time. Rather than being the end of American history as we know it, the Trump presidency may prove merely a notorious chapter in that history. Heedless lapdogs like Kennedy, Devin Nunes, and Lindsey Graham are acting now as if there is no tomorrow, but tomorrow will come eventually, whatever happens in the near future, and Judgment Day could arrive sooner than they think. That judgment will be rendered by an ever-more demographically diverse America unlikely to be magnanimous toward cynical politicians who prioritized pandering to Trump’s dwindling all-white base over the common good.

All cults come to an end, often abruptly, and Trump’s Republican Party is nothing if not a cult. While cult leaders are generally incapable of remorse — whether they be totalitarian rulers, sexual Svengalis, or the self-declared messiahs of crackpot religions — their followers almost always pay a human and reputational price once the leader is toppled. We don’t know how and when Donald Trump will exit, but under any scenario it won’t be later than January 20, 2025. Even were he to be gone tomorrow, the legacy of his most powerful and servile collaborators is already indelibly bound to his.

Whether these enablers joined his administration in earnest, or aided and abetted it from elite perches in politics, Congress, the media, or the private sector, they will be remembered for cheering on a leader whose record in government (thus far) includes splitting up immigrant families and incarcerating their children in cages; encouraging a spike in racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic vigilantes; leveraging American power to promote ethnic cleansing abroad and punish political opponents at home; actively inciting climate change and environmental wreckage; and surrendering America’s national security to an international rogue’s gallery of despots.

That selective short list doesn’t take into account any new White House felonies still to come, any future repercussions here and abroad of Trump’s actions to date, or any previous foul deeds that have so far eluded public exposure. For all the technological quickening of the media pulse in this century, Trump’s collaborators will one day be viewed through the long lens of history like Nixon’s collaborators before them and the various fools, opportunists, and cowards who tried to appease Hitler in America, England, and France before that. Once Trump has vacated the Oval Office, and possibly for decades thereafter, his government, like any other deposed strongman’s, will be subjected to a forensic colonoscopy to root out buried crimes, whether against humanity or the rule of law or both. With time, everything will come out — it always does. With time, the ultimate fates of those brutalized immigrant and refugee families will emerge in full. And Trump’s collaborators, our Vichy Republicans, will own all of it — whether they were active participants in the wrongdoing like Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Kirstjen Nielsen, Mike Pompeo, and William Barr, or the so-called adults in the room who stood idly by rather than sound public alarms for the good of the Republic (e.g., Gary Cohn, John Kelly, Rex Tillerson), or those elite allies beyond the White House gates who pretended not to notice administration criminality and moral atrocities in exchange for favors like tax cuts and judicial appointments (from Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr.).

. . . .

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

“Tomorrow will come, eventually.” Yup!

Just yesterday, the usually reliable “Trump Toadies” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) were whining and sputtering upon learning what toadyism really means after being “treated like Democrats” during an insulting and clownish “after the fact briefing” on Iran. https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/09/politics/impeachment-watch-january-8/index.html .

But, that moment of lucidity and outrage will pass quickly, and they will undoubtedly rejoin their colleagues like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Teddy Cruz (R-TX), Sen. John “Vladimir” Kennedy (R-LA), Lindsey “Braindead” Graham (R-SC), and the rest of the “Party of Putin” in groveling before their Clown-in-Chief.

I would include the Article III judges who tanked in the face of tyranny and failed to protect the legal and human rights of the most vulnerable in the list of those whose misdeeds, spinelessness, and complicity in the face of tyranny eventually will be “outed.”

PWS

01-09-20

FINALLY, AN APPEALS COURT WITH SOME GUTS: 2D CIRCUIT STANDS UP TO REGIME ON “PUBLIC CHARGE” INJUNCTION!

https://apple.news/AxXENbYxMRByBiI8k3J3MQQ

DEEPTI HAJELA, reports for AP:

Appeals court keeps block of Trump immigration rule in place

A federal appeals court in New York on Wednesday rejected a motion from the Trump administration that would have allowed it to implement a policy connecting the use of public benefits with whether immigrants could become permanent residents.

The ruling from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the administration’s motion to lift a temporary national injunction that had been issued by a New York district court in October after lawsuits had been filed against the new policy.

The new rule would potentially deny green cards to immigrants over their use of public benefits including Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers, as well as other factors.

The New York injunction was one of several that were issued around the time the rule had been scheduled to go into effect in October.

But a regional injunction issued in California and another national injunction issued in Washington have already been lifted by other federal appeals courts. That left New York’s as the only nationwide bar to the Trump administration putting the new rule into practice. An injunction in Illinois also is in effect, but applies only to that state.

The three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit had heard arguments over the motion to lift the injunction on Tuesday.

Judges questioned the government’s attorney on the timing — why the injunction needed to be lifted at this point when the lawsuit itself would be heard by a judge in coming months.

Immigrants applying for permanent residency must show they wouldn’t be public charges, or burdens to the country.

The new policy significantly expands what factors would be considered to make that determination, and if it is decided that immigrants could potentially become public charges at any point in the future, that legal residency could be denied.

Roughly 544,000 people apply for green cards annually. According to the government, 382,000 are in categories that would make them subject to the new review.

Immigrants make up a small portion of those getting public benefits, since many are ineligible to get them because of their immigration status.

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Compare this with recent decisions by the 9^th and 4^th circuits that “rolled over and caved” to the regime’s disingenuous arguments that there was a pressing public interest in lifting the injunction. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/12/10/complicit-court-update-4th-circuit-joins-9th-in-tanking-for-trump-on-public-charge-rule-judges-harvie-wilkinson-paul-niemeyer-go-belly-up-for-trump-while-judge-pame/;https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/12/06/complicit-9th-circuit-judges-continue-to-coddle-trump-this-time-legal-immigrants-are-the-victims-of-trumps-judicially-enabled-white-nationalist-agenda-judges-jay-bybee-sandra-i/.

The individual impact of these new policies could potentially be devastating to immigrants and their families: however, the overall public financial impact of throwing up new bars to permanent immigration would be minuscule, as pointed out in this article. The lack of any real emergency reason for exempting the Government from going through the full litigation process at the District Court level (where preliminary injunctions had been issued), as others must, was noted by dissenting judges in both circuits that “rolled” for Trump.

PWS

01-08-20

WASHPOST EDITORIAL: HOW THE TRUMP REGIME’S NATIVIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA ENDANGERS AMERICA’S FUTURE – “But the fact that starting a new life in the United States has come to seem less attractive, both to prospective parents already living here and to prospective arrivals from abroad, is a warning this country cannot afford to ignore.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americans-dip-in-population-growth-is-a-warning-we-shouldnt-ignore/2020/01/03/4f65d1c0-2d90-11ea-bcd4-24597950008f_story.html

The Post’s View

Opinion

American’s dip in population growth is a warning

By Editorial Board

Jan. 4, 2020 at 1:58 p.m. EST

Like all social change, population growth has costs (increased use of limited resources) and benefits (fresh ideas, more people to do necessary work). On the whole, history — both global and American — refutes the Malthusian belief that more people means more misery. To the contrary, a growing labor force is one factor that determines an economy’s capacity to grow. On that basis alone, it would be concerning that the Census Bureau has released new data showing that the U.S. population grew only 6.7 percent in the past decade, which is the slowest 10-year rate since the census began in 1790. Add that all living members of the baby boom generation will have turned 65 by 2030 — and that 18 percent of the nation will be at least that age, according to Pew Research Center population projections — and demographic stagnation begins to seem uncomfortably realistic.

The good news is that, even at reduced rates of growth, the U.S. population, 328.2 million, is still expanding more rapidly than populations of peer nations such as Japan (whose population of 126 million is actually shrinking). The bad news, though, is that both sources of the U.S. edge in population dynamism — a relatively strong birthrate and immigration — are implicated in the Census Bureau’s report. Net international migration — permanent moves to the United States minus permanent departures — was 595,348 between 2018 and 2019. In 2016, by contrast, the figure was 1,046,709. The Census Bureau and other experts have yet to identify a specific cause, but it’s certainly plausible to link the decline to the anti-immigration posture adopted by President Trump during that interval.

Meanwhile, the natural increase in the population between 2018 and 2019 — births minus deaths — was 956,674, the first reading under 1 million in “decades,” according to the Census Bureau. As of 2018, the United States’ total fertility ratestood at 1,728 births per 1,000 women over their lifetimes, well below the replacement rate of 2,100 births per 1,000 women. The causes are unknown, though there may be a continued hangover from the economic uncertainty of the Great Recession.

Unchecked, these trends may mean less economic growth and a diminished support base for a large retired cohort. Boosting birthrates, to be sure, is notoriously difficult, as a number of European countries and Japan have already discovered. Of course, compared with those other countries, the United States has done little to provide paid family leave or subsidized child care — and could do more.

Boosting immigration, by contrast, is relatively easy to accomplish. Or it would be, if the president and many in his party were not engaged in a simplistic campaign to demonize it, one result of which has been to slash refugee admissions from 85,000 in fiscal 2016 to 30,000 in fiscal 2019. Immigration should come through legal channels and be more closely tailored to fit labor force needs. But the need for more of it is real.

The recent dip in population growth need not prove irreversible. But the fact that starting a new life in the United States has come to seem less attractive, both to prospective parents already living here and to prospective arrivals from abroad, is a warning this country cannot afford to ignore.

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

Not surprisingly, largely fact-free policy making based on a White Nationalist agenda and the myths about immigrants it necessarily generates will contravene the national interests in many ways while serving the narrow political and sociological interests of a vocal and motivated minority.

PWS

01-06-19

GRETA THUNBERG: AN INSPIRATIONAL LEADER FOR OUR TIMES & THE FUTURE: “She is committed to the foremost emergency of our time, to the science behind it, and to the people who are working every day to try to rapidly change our energy systems and consumption patterns.”

Carolyn Kormann writes in The New Yorker:

News Desk

The Pure Spirit of Greta Thunberg is the Perfect Antidote to Donald Trump

She is committed to the foremost emergency of our time, to the science behind it, and to the people who are working every day to try to rapidly change our energy systems and consumption patterns.

On December 3rd, Greta Thunberg, the sixteen-year-old climate activist from Sweden, completed her second transatlantic voyage, by almost entirely emissions-free sailboats, in the span of four months. Her small figure, dressed in black, stood, waving, on the bow of a catamaran, as it approached the port of Lisbon. Hundreds of people, standing onshore, cheered, welcoming her back to Europe. “I’m not travelling like this because I want everyone to do so,” she told reporters after walking off the boat onto dry land. “I’m doing this to send a message that it is impossible to live sustainably today, and that needs to change.” The scene felt both ancient and precisely of this moment, like Thunberg herself, who writes regularly in a paper journal but has mastered social-media virality, who can seem ageless and androgynous (the fierce stare) while also strikingly young and girlish (the braids), who acts with an otherworldly grace while delivering an outraged message grounded in the latest, best climate science. Her lightning-strike emergence as the planet’s hero, her capacity to inspire students around the world—all in the span of little more than a year—can seem like a prophesied story, an epic poem, a fable. Margaret Atwood (and others, including myself) have compared her to Joan of Arc—if the teen-age medieval warrior, who was burned at the stake in part for impersonating a man, had been inspired by scientific reports instead of divine voices and visions of angels. Centuries from now, we hope, people will live in a thriving, equitable civilization and tell Thunberg’s tale, too.

But it is, as Thunberg says repeatedly, precisely what we do during this century that will determine the fate of those future centuries, and what we do during the next decade that will determine the climate for the nearly two billion children alive today. They are the ones Thunberg represents, whom she is fighting for, and whom she has mobilized, since August, 2018, when she first sat outside the Swedish Parliament with a simple handwritten sign that read, in black letters, “SKOLSTREJK FOR KLIMATET.” Hundreds of thousands of students (and, gradually, their parents), in cities around the world, have followed her lead, striking from school and marching in the streets to protest for climate action. “You say you love your children above all else,” she said in her first big address, at last December’s United Nations climate talks. “And yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.”

From Lisbon, Thunberg took a train to Madrid, where leaders from around the world were gathering for another round—the twenty-fifth since 1995—of U.N. climate negotiations (known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP25). The point of this year’s talks was for countries to lay the groundwork for ambitious new targets in the reduction of their greenhouse-gas emissions. By the end of 2020, according to the terms of the Paris Agreement, countries are to commit to new nationally determined contributions (N.D.C.s, in U.N.-speak) that reflect the scale of global decarbonization necessary to limit global heating to two degrees Celsius. (The current pool of N.D.C.s, which many countries are not even meeting, would lead to more than three degrees warming by century’s end.) A related issue at the talks has involved carbon markets—detailed in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement—in which one country can pay another country for its emissions reductions (the equivalent of buying a carbon credit) and then count those reductions towards its own N.D.C. Australia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and India have, reportedly, all been blocking text that would provide strong regulations of these kinds of markets and accounting mechanisms. Though the final text of this year’s agreement is due today, the deliberations will likely continue at least until Saturday.

Thunberg, meanwhile, has increasingly referred, in mathematical detail, to carbon budgets, or the amount of carbon dioxide that we have left to emit into the atmosphere if we want to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. In her speech to world leaders in Madrid, on Tuesday, she referred her audiences to page 108, chapter 2, of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, and she said that, if we are to have a sixty-seven per cent chance of achieving that goal, we had, as of the first of January, 2018, four-hundred-and-twenty gigatons of carbon dioxide left in our carbon budget. That number is now much lower, considering that we emit approximately forty-two gigatons of carbon dioxide every year. This means that we have roughly eight years left to burn fossil fuels at current levels before our budget is empty. For all the efforts underway to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, they are nowhere near enough. Global emissions again hit a record high in 2019. As Thunberg also said, in the same speech, “The biggest danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and C.E.O.s are making it look like real action is happening, when in fact almost nothing is being done, apart from clever accounting and creative P.R.”

On Wednesday, Time named Thunberg the magazine’s Person of the Year. Donald Trump, who is famously obsessed with being on the cover of Time, could not stand it. He has campaigned on fossil-fuel expansion, has betrayed on numerous occasions that he does not understand what climate change is, and, on November 4th, he officially began proceedings to remove the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. (Every other country in the world remains a signatory to the pact.) On Thursday, in response to Thunberg’s news, he tweeted: “So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!” Thunberg, as always, took the President’s mockery in stride, changing her Twitter bio, minutes later, to “A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend.”

This is not the first time that Thunberg has one-upped Trump’s mocking tweets. In September, she gave a historic speech with the kind of rhetorical vigor that exemplifies her gifts as an orator. “This is all wrong,” she said. “I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!” Later, Trump retweeted a video clip of her remarks, adding, “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!” The same day, Thunberg put the exact words in her Twitter bio: “A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”

Thunberg is Trump’s perfect foil. She is pure spirit, committed to the foremost emergency of our time, to the science behind it, and to the people who are working every day to rapidly change our energy systems and consumption patterns so that we avert climate change’s deadliest impacts and destabilizing tipping points. Thunberg is devoted to learning, writing, and understanding the world around her. She constantly lifts up other young climate leaders—especially those from indigenous and frontline communities—and begs reporters to focus on them, not her. (On Monday, she and Germany’s most prominent youth activist, Luisa Neubauer, hosted a press conference with young leaders from the Marshall Islands, the Philippines, Russia, and Uganda.) She is a gifted public speaker, not because she stirs up chaos and hate through incoherent rants, but because she speaks elegantly and intelligently, in logical, pithy, unmuddied sentences. Her rhetorical gifts are, perhaps, all the more remarkable considering that, when she was younger, she fell into a major depression concerning climate change and stopped speaking altogether for months. As she said at the start of her speech on Tuesday, “A year and a half ago, I didn’t speak to anyone unless I really had to. But then I found a reason to speak.”

Carolyn Kormann is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Read more.

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

Wow! No wonder Trump and his cronies are so scared of her!

PWS

12-14-19

NEW FROM CMS: Accessible Citizenship Is A Huge Win – Win For The U.S. & The Citizens — Trump Regime Works Overtime To Create A Lose – Lose!

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

Robert Warren
Senior Visiting Fellow
Center For Migration Studies

View this email in your browser

The Center for Migration Studies Releases New Report on the Benefits of Citizenship and the Barriers to Naturalization

The well-being and contributions of immigrants increase as they advance toward citizenship, but new impediments to permanent residence and naturalization deny access to citizenship.

New York, NY — The Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) today released a report finding that the well-being of immigrants and their contributions to the United States increase as they advance to more permanent and secure immigration statuses, culminating in naturalization. The report finds that naturalized citizens match or exceed the native-born by key metrics, including: college degrees (35% vs. 29%); percent employed (96% vs. 95%); and average personal income ($45,600 vs. $40,600).

The report – authored by CMS Executive Director Donald Kerwin and CMS Senior Visiting Fellow Robert Warren – argues that the administration’s “America first” ideology obscures a far-reaching set of policies that significantly impede the ability of immigrants to “move forward” on the path to naturalization, to their own detriment and the detriment of their families and communities.

“The report finds that policy makers should encourage naturalization rather than making it unnecessarily difficult,” said Warren. “Another important finding is that the US legal immigration system currently produces the same percentage of high skilled workers as the native-born population.”

The report documents the Trump administration’s policies that seek to prevent undocumented persons from gaining status, divest documented persons of status, cut legal admissions and immigration by decree, create new barriers to permanent residence and naturalization, and make citizenship a less valuable and less secure status.

It finds that at least 5.2 million current US citizens – 4.5 million children and 730,000 adults – who are living with at least one undocumented parent, obtained US citizenship by birth. It concludes that current immigration enforcement priorities effectively deny the full rights and benefits of citizenship to the US citizen children of undocumented parents, and it warns that eliminating birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented parents would create a permanent underclass of US-born denizens.

“US citizenship represents the principle marker of full membership and equality under the law in our constitutional democracy,” said Kerwin. “Yet this administration has adopted policies to make naturalization far less accessible and to make citizenship a less secure and valuable status for some disfavored citizens.”

The report is now available at: https://cmsny.org/publications/citizenship-kerwin-warren/

MEDIA CONTACT

Emma Winters

(212) 337-3080 x. 7012

ewinters@cmsny.org

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

Making losers out of everyone is a specialty of the Trump Regime’s “myth-based” White Nationalist agenda. “Malicious incompetence” in action!

PWS

12-13-19

COMPLICIT 9TH CIRCUIT JUDGES CONTINUE TO CODDLE TRUMP — This Time Legal Immigrants Are The Victims Of Trump’s Judicially-Enabled White Nationalist Agenda — Judges Jay Bybee & Sandra Ikuta Tank, While Judge John Owens Files a Feeble Dissent!

https://apple.news/AJHrFUWorRIyFv_yLCkI5Aw

Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN:

Trump nabs win on rule that could reshape legal immigration, but hold remains in place

Updated 12:17 PM EST December 6, 2019
Washington

A federal appeals court ruled in favor of the Trump administration on a rule that makes it more difficult for immigrants who rely on government assistance to obtain legal status to take effect.

But the decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals doesn’t have an immediate practical effect because the policy is still on hold due to nationwide rulings in two separate federal courts.

In August, the administration unveiled its regulation broadening the definition of “public charge,” a provision that dates back at least to the Immigration Act of 1882. The rule introduced by the Trump administration affects people who receive most forms of Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers. It was immediately met with pushback from advocates and several states who argued that the changes would penalize immigrants who rely on temporary assistance from the government and impose costs on the states.

While the majority of the three-judge panel recognized many of these arguments, they also found that the administration would likely succeed in its argument that it has the legal authority to define what makes someone a public charge.

In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay on rulings that have blocked the so-called “public charge” rule from taking effect. The panel has jurisdiction over nine western states. Legal challenges in other parts of the country continue to halt the rule from being implemented.

The ruling was a rare victory for the President, who has repeatedly railed against the Ninth Circuit.

“We find that the history of the use of ‘public charge’ in federal immigration law demonstrates that ‘public charge’ does not have a fixed, unambiguous meaning,” wrote Judge Jay Bybee. “Rather, the phrase is subject to multiple interpretations, it in fact has been interpreted differently, and the Executive Branch has been afforded the discretion to interpret it.”

Judge John Owens dissented in part because of the “lack of irreparable harm to the government at this early stage.”

The White House lauded the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in a statement Friday, but noted the obstacles the rule still faces before it can be implemented.

“Unfortunately, as a practical matter, the ruling has accomplished nothing to vindicate the rule of law due to the destructive practice of individual district judges taking over national policy issues by issuing nationwide injunctions,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. “Such subversions of the rule of law must come to an end.”

The 73-page majority ruling recounted the history of the rule and noted that Congress didn’t define the regulation, thereby leaving it “subject to multiple interpretations.”

Bybee, however, also recognized the difficulty of the issues at hand, writing separately that “we as a nation are engaged in titanic struggles over the future of immigration in the United States.” He also appeared to take aim at administration officials, including the President, who have accused courts of making decisions based on policy preferences, as well as Congress for lack of legislative action.

“My first point is that even as we are embroiled in these controversies, no one should mistake our judgments for our policy preferences” he wrote, adding: “In the immigration context, whatever dialogue we have been having with the administration over its policies, we are a poor conversant.”

Judges Bybee and Sandra Ikuta were appointed by George W. Bush while Owens was appointed by Barack Obama.

© 2019 Cable News Network, Inc. A WarnerMedia Company. All Rights Reserved.

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

Judge Jay Bybee’s majority opinion reads like something written by White Nationalist Stephen Miller: Judges should never, ever, think of the clear and logical consequences of their actions, nor should they worry themselves about an Administration with a clearly invidious racially motivated agenda of dismembering the Constitution.

And, gosh, the world might come to an end if the Executive were actually forced to act in a reasonable manner, consistent with the facts: This regulation would do far more harm than good and has, even without implementation, already been responsible for the spread of disease and immigrants not getting available health services, sometimes for U.S. citizen family members, because of the fear and confusion that Trump has intentionally sown in ethnic communities. Just because we make the services legally available, doesn’t mean we will allow you to use them if you are an immigrant. This is the kind of nonsense that Bybee promotes in his decision.

Bybee also seems totally indifferent to the simple fact that every time Article III Judges “tank” on their legal and Constitutional responsibilities, actual innocent human beings suffer, and even die, at the hands of Trump, Miller, and the rest of their bullying and cowardly White Nationalist “wrecking crew.” Inaction, particularly in the face of tyranny, can have just as grave consequences as action.

Bybee’s brain-dead colleague Judge Sandra Ikuta joined his blathering subservience to Trump’s White Nationalist mission.

Bybee even wrote separately to absolve himself of any moral responsibility for his complicity and to finger the “real culprit” here, a feckless Congress. The latter point is correct. But, according to Bybee, in the face of a Congress that has abdicated its Constitutional responsibilities, life-tenured Article III Judges also get to ignore theirs. The last thing that should be expected of the life-tenured is any “heaving lifting” or courage in the face of tyranny! Nope, they are there to “go along to get along.”

After all, while most of us have no difficulty recognizing the undisguised ethnic and racial basis for the Trump regime’s anti-immigrant agenda, and while many U.S. District Judges, and even some Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers, are able to figure it out, such level of awareness is completely beyond Court of Appeals Judges. Nor, can they be expected to discern that a regulatory proposal adopted over the objections of most of the 266,077 commenters is likely to be based on something other than reasonable, responsible, fact-based policy making: Like, perhaps racial and ethnic biases or arbitrariness that violate our Constitution. Not to mention that the policy also makes little sense from a socio-economic standpoint.

This is an Administration whose proclivity to present “pretextual reasons” to cover their tracks for improper and illegal motives has been recognized all the way up to the Supreme Court in the “Census Case.” And, while ideally policy-making should be informed by “Executive Expertise,” that clearly isn’t the case with immigration under the Trump Regime. Trump’s utter disdain, disrespect, and disregard for Executive Branch civil servants with expertise and a fact-based approach to policy making is well-established.

But, of course, all of this is too deep for Article III Judges like Bybee and Ituka to be expected to grasp. Better to just turn the other way, put on blinders, ignore the Constitution and the rule of law, and let the abuse of immigrants continue unabated. Leave the “tough stuff” to others.

But, just whom might those “others” be who will eventually put an end to this anti-Constitutional, and ultimately anti-American, rampage of Executive overreach? An interesting question when you consider that those courageous lawyers and U.S. District Judges trying to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law in the face of Trump’s onslaught have too often been “dissed,” ignored, and undercut by Bybee and his complicit colleagues.

Did our “Founding Fathers” really intend to empower a despotic Executive to act freely against individuals without without any realistic restraints? If the Trump Administration is what they aspired to, then why didn’t just stick with good old K. George III? If, on the other hand, the Trump Administration is, in fact, “Our Founders’ Worst Nightmare,” as most informed (e.g., other than GOP toadies, Fox News, and other extremest media) observers have concluded, why are the Article III Appellate Courts too gutless to say so and stand up for our rights?

Got to wonder who is going to stand up for the rights of Judges like Bybee and Ituka, and even Owens, when Trump, Miller, and the rest of the regime come for them?

The case is City and County of San Francisco v. USCIS, and you can read it at the link in Priscilla’s article.

Sadly, Due Process and Fundamental Fairness don’t seem to have any “friends in high places” these days. Ultimately, that’s going to be a problem for our nation even if the Bybees and Itukas of the world are too blind and self-interested in preserving their ivory tower sinecures to recognize it and act accordingly!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

12-06-19

ALAN CUMMING @ NBC NEWS: THE ANTI-IMMIGRATION MOVEMENT IS ALL ABOUT RACISM, PLAIN AND SIMPLE: “This government is trying to brainwash its citizens into believing that the very thing that has made America what it is and has made America great — immigration — is a negative thing. That is complete doublespeak.“

https://apple.news/A9MUmrFflRFuwxRgcWulUGQ

Opinion | The racism behind anti-immigration rhetoric is palpable to every immigrant. Including me.

America is such a young country: It’s only a few hundred years old, and no one who has been here for only a few generations is without an immigrant connection. So, from the outside — from a place like Europe — the idea that Americans are not connected to immigration and our immigrant pasts seems like we are denying ourselves. We sound very self-hating about the very notion of immigration, but we’re actually just confusing racism with a desire to fix the immigration system.

I see that all the time: Things that are being said about immigration and the ideals of immigration are basically just being used as a thinly veiled form of racism. It’s so blatant. The president himself actually said he doesn’t mind people coming from countries like Norway — white people; it’s the people from “shithole countries” he doesn’t want. It seems almost pedantic and obsolete to actually have to talk about the fact that it’s racism.

The contributions of all immigrants has been so derided by our present administration, so I felt that I needed to celebrate immigration rather than have it openly derided. Also, I wanted to try to make people stand back and just see the anti-immigration propaganda that they were being fed, and understand instead how this country is what it is because of immigration. That was the genesis of my cabaret show (now an Audible book) “Legal Immigrant.”

The whole point of the show was to tell my experience from my perspective as immigrant, but also to show that I’m feeling these negative things about being an immigrant and I’m a white man of privilege; I can’t imagine what it must be like for people of color or Muslims. I don’t know the exact percentage, but I would say that, the day I became an American, at least 75 percent of the other people being sworn in with me were people of color.

So I wanted to try and make people stand back from this vehemence and have some fun while analyzing what was going on. I don’t want to be didactic, though: I understand that there are problems with the immigration system; I understand there’s a massive refugee problem in the world. But I will not condone racism or bigotry as part of that debate.

That doesn’t mean I’m not open to dialogue. I like when people engage, that’s why I do theater. I don’t want to just be behind a screen; I actually enjoy the fact that I can hear how people are reacting to me. And I’ve been heckled doing the show — from both sides. I want to hear what people have to say and I totally engage with some people. A couple of times it got quite rowdy, but that’s why I wanted to do these cabarets. They’re good ways to get people to engage and be provoked, and to maybe change their minds … or at least consider other options. And, at the end of the show, I make everyone in the audience sing “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow,” so I’m obviously someone who likes bringing people together, even though I also like provoking them.

There’s a thing in this country right now: Any dissent against the president or any disagreement with his views is seen as a red flag and people immediately respond in an aggressive way. People are just screaming at one another right now; it makes it very difficult to engage. And so, aside from trying to celebrate immigration, I’m trying to get people to also stand back and try to not let the tropes of this awful rhetoric blind us to what is actually going on.

This government is trying to brainwash its citizens into believing that the very thing that has made America what it is and has made America great — immigration — is a negative thing. That is complete doublespeak. The idea that if you’re pro-immigrant, you’re anti-America, and if you’re anti-immigration, you are pro-America is completely wrong. That’s not just my opinion; if you stand back from it and look at the history of this country, you can’t deny that is the truth.

I really do believe that people have lost the power of analysis in this country because of the duality of the political system: Politics in this country is a team sport. I also think that, with people like Betsy DeVos running the Education Department, it’s going to take a long time before we have a generation who can regain the powers of analysis. It’s all a multilayered effort to dumb us down, in order to be able to brainwash us and feed us propaganda. We need to stand up and take heed before it’s too late.

As told to THINK editor Megan Carpentier, edited and condensed for clarity.

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

Yup!

It’s hard to have a “debate” or a “dialogue” when one side is wedded to myths and bogus narratives, rather than facts: when one side is driven by what it wants to believe, egged on by those who find it politically advantageous, rather than truth.

One of the worst of the many horrible things about the Trump Regime is that supposedly responsible public officials spread the anti-immigrant, anti-refugee White Nationalist myths and false narratives (see, e.g., “Gonzo Apocalypto,” Barr, “Big Mac With Lies,” Nielsen, “Cooch Cooch,” Mark “Fund My TGIF” Morgan, Matt Albence, EOIR, etc.).

PWS

12-01-19

ANOTHER ILLEGAL TRUMP IMMIGRATION POLICY PUT ON HOLD: This Time It’s His “Insurance Scam” To Slash Legal Immigration — But, Will The Supremes Ultimately Uphold The Rule Of Law, Or Cave To The Trump Regime Again?

Susannah Liuthi — Susannah Luthi
Healthcare Reporter
Politico

https://apple.news/A-uzpmvT_TDyK8JGHsQ60ZA

Susannah Luthi for Politico:

Policy: Employment & Immigration

Judge halts Trump’s insurance mandate for immigrants

A federal judge in Oregon blocked President Donald Trump’s bid to deny immigrants visas unless they buy health insurance within 30 days of entering the country or otherwise show they can cover their medical costs.

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon issued an order on Tuesday to stop the State Department from enforcing a policy that officials unveiled in late October under a mandate from President Donald Trump, and which could drastically curtail the ability of people to legally migrate to the United States.

Simon noted that the requirement that immigrants buy unsubsidized insurance — meaning they couldn’t get financial assistance through Obamacare — barred poor people from entering the country, which he said clearly infringed on the law.

“The proclamation is anticipated to affect approximately 60 percent of all immigrant visa applicants,” the judge wrote. “The president offers no national security or foreign relations justification for this sweeping change in immigration law.”

Simon agreed with plaintiffs, including U.S. citizens and their overseas family members as well as the non-profit Latino Network, that the rule violated the Constitution’s separation of powers. His decision applies nationwide.

Immigration officials could have begun enforcing the requirement on Dec. 1. The administration is expected to appeal.

Simon, a Barack Obama appointee, had already temporarily blocked the policy from taking effect early this month, saying there was sufficient concern about the legality of the new requirements to merit a delay, particularly since the administration didn’t use a standard public comment period for the new rules.

The plaintiffs argued the sweeping nature of the executive action showed an attempt “to rewrite our country’s immigration laws and fundamentally shift the balance of power between the branches of government.”

The policy originated with a proclamation Trump issued on Oct. 4 that cast confusion and uncertainty onto the immigrant community and raised immediate concerns it could be unworkable. In the original order, Trump laid out the parameters for the types of health insurance legal immigrants could buy as a condition for getting a visa.

They wouldn’t be able to use federal subsidies to buy coverage on Obamacare exchanges, but could buy short-term insurance plans the administration has promoted that are cheaper but only offer barebone coverage.

That latter option layered Trump’s tough immigration policies on top of the fight over short-term plans. Democrat-led states including New York and California — which happen to draw a large share of immigrants — have banned the sale of such plans.

The plaintiffs also argued that since short-term plans leave people underinsured, the directive is undermining its own stated goal of cutting some of the uncompensated care costs from the U.S. health care system.

They also estimated the State Department through the policy would bar up to 375,000 people who could otherwise legally enter the country, shrinking the annual number of legal immigrants by nearly two-thirds.

The administration contends the criticisms are overblown and that the policy wouldn’t affect all legal immigrants, such as parents coming to the country to reunite with their children or vice versa.

Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get top news and scoops, every morning — in your inbox.

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

Of course Trump’s intent was to invidiously discriminate against immigrants of color and the poor. Of course, that’s unconstitutional. It’s not rocket science! It’s not even very complicated constitutional law.

But, then again, Trump’s “Muslim Ban,” his rewriting of asylum statutes, and his misappropriation of funds for his border wall stunt were also clearly unconstitutional. That didn’t seem to bother the Supreme’s GOP majority a bit in their “race to roll over for the Trump Regime.” After all, as Trump and his chump Solicitor General Noel Francisco keep not too subtly reminding the “Gang of Five,” they are “bought and paid for” and expected to perform as Regime toadies. Most of the time, they get the message.

So far, the Supremes and many Circuit Courts have lacked the guts and integrity to stand up consistently and powerfully to the Trump Regime’s attacks on our Constitution and humanity.

They apparently think that they are above the fray, particularly when the rights of the most vulnerable and defenseless are involved. But, maybe they are wrong. Perhaps, when Trump has finished eradicating constitutional norms and imposed his unique form of authoritarian dysfunction on our nation, these “robed wondermen” will be refugees along with the rest of us.

Nobody that I’ve ever met expects or wants to be a refugee. It can happen to anyone, at any time, no matter how fat, content, above the fray, and complicit you might be in your current position. Disturbingly, a majority of our very highest judges appear to lack the human perspective, historical knowledge, decency, courage, and empathy to see themselves in the position of those whose legal rights they abuse in Trump’s behalf. They certainly try hard not to understand the situation of refugees and migrants.

Yes, we want fair and impartial judges (something the Supremes have conveniently overlooked in dealing with the Immigration Courts). But, we don’t want or need judges who are detached from or indifferent to humanity and human suffering. After all, our laws are made by humans to regulate human conduct. When detached from its human roots and consequences, it becomes a tool for disorder and tyranny.

PWS

11-27-19

SURPRISE (NOT): Many Of Us Already Knew That CBP Acting Commish Mark Morgan Is Sleazy, Cruel, Immoral, Unethical, & Not Very Bright — Now, It’s Confirmed By The DOJ’s Inspector General — That’s Why He’s A Perfect Fit For The Trump Regime’s Immigration Kakistocracy!

Tal Kopan reports for the SF Chronicle:

Exclusive: Trump’s top border official broke FBI rules to fund happy hours

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s top border official broke federal ethics rules in a previous job by seeking sponsors to buy alcohol and fancy food for FBI happy hours, according to a watchdog report exclusively obtained by The Chronicle.

Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection agency, continued asking the outside entities to pay for the social events even after being warned it was against federal rules, the Justice Department’s inspector general found.

The previously unreported finding raises questions about the Trump administration’s vetting process for top officials. Although Morgan’s role is typically subject to Senate confirmation, Trump has not nominated him for the job. That has circumvented the traditional review by the Senate — leaving it unclear whether the ethical lapse was ever known to the administration.

Customs and Border Protection and Morgan declined to comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The violations occurred when Morgan was working at the FBI in 2015 as deputy assistant director of the training division, according to the inspector general’s report. Midway through the investigation in the summer of 2016, Morgan retired from the FBI and was named under then-President Barack Obama to head the Border Patrol. He declined to cooperate with the probe after that, the report said.

More: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Exclusive-Trump-s-top-border-official-broke-14864340.php#

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

Let’s see. Morgan is the racist charlatan who claimed that he could identify a future gang member just by “looking in their eyes.” He was also an enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s threatened (but never fully implemented) “reign of terror” directed against families in ethnic communities. And, of course, as acting CBP Honcho, he encourages and presides over parts of the “New American Gulag,” “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico,” and other human rights violations every day.

Plus, Morgan is as dim as he is evil if he considers government ethics advice to be “mere suggestions.” But, of course, when funding of a TGIF is on the line, why not “push the envelope.” He does exhibit the arrogance and disregard for the rules that apply to others that is a hallmark of the Trump Regime’s Kakistocracy.

However, it’s also significant that this information was available when Obama appointed Morgan Border Patrol Chief. Lots of today’s gross abuses by the Trump Regime have their roots in the Obama Administration’s overall poor, often uninformed, and sometimes negligent approach to immigration issues.

Travesties like “family detention,” “insider-only” hiring at the Immigration Courts and the BIA, absolutist positions on indefinite detention, defense of “toddlers representing themselves” in Immigration Court, and use of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” at the Immigration Courts in support of inappropriate and unethical “enforcement goals” all helped create unnecessary disorder and inhumanity in the already poorly functioning system.

Obama had a golden chance both to resolve Dreamers and create an Article I Immigration Court at the beginning of his Administration with badly needed, straightforward statutory reforms. Instead, by putting all of his attention on healthcare, to the exclusion of other pressing humanitarian problems, he more or less insured the later “weaponization” of the Immigration Courts, the creation and expansion of the “New American Gulag,” and holding “Dreamers” hostage.

If Obama had taken bold action in 2009, many of the “original Dreamers” would be fully integrated into our society and on their way to citizenship and full participation in our political process by now. Instead, they are being “hung out to dry” by Trump, the GOP, and likely the Supremes. A generation of American youth is being denied the opportunity to contribute and achieve their full potential in the United States.

And, think of how a “real” independent Immigration Court system, with a diverse judiciary with true immigration, human rights, and due process expertise, might have dealt with Trump’s consistent legal overreach on immigration and asylum issues. Indeed, while the Immigration Court backlog might not have been eliminated by an Article I Court, I’ll be it would be considerably less than it is now with an independent court where judges, not enforcement-driven bureaucrats, are in charge of managing their own dockets.

Obviously, we can’t change the past. But, we certainly can avoid repeating its mistakes in the future. Something to consider when looking at Democratic Presidential contenders.

PWS

11-27-19

IT’S NEVER BEEN ABOUT “LEGAL V. ILLEGAL,” “BORDER SECURITY,” “JOBS,” OR “GETTING IN (NON-EXISTENT) LINES” — The Trump Regime Has Always Been About A White Nationalist Immigration Agenda Of Hate!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-no-other-way-to-explain-trumps-immigration-policy-its-just-bigotry/2019/11/25/348b38f4-0fcc-11ea-9cd7-a1becbc82f5e_story.html

Catherine Rampell in the WashPost:

November 25, 2019 at 7:58 p.m. EST

It was never about protecting the border, rule of law or the U.S. economy. And it was never about “illegal” immigration, for that matter.

Trump’s anti-immigrant bigotry was always just anti-immigrant bigotry.

There’s no other way to explain the Trump administration’s latest onslaught against foreigners of all kinds, regardless of their potential economic contributions, our own international commitments or any given immigrant’s propensity to follow the law. Trump’s rhetoric may focus on “illegals,” but recent data releases suggest this administration has been blocking off every available avenue for legal immigration, too.

Last month, the number of refugees admitted to the United States hit zero. That’s the first month on record this has ever happened, according to data going back nearly three decades from both the State Department and World Relief, a faith-based resettlement organization.

So what happened?

The problem wasn’t that the 26-million-strong global refugee population lacked a single person who met America’s strict screening requirements. No, our admissions flatlined because Trump announced and then delayed signing a new refugee ceiling for the 2020 fiscal year. This delay led to a complete moratorium on admissions.

Hundreds of flights were canceled for approved refugees who had waited years or decades to come — once again, legally — to our shining city on a hill. As the moratorium dragged on, some refugees’ eligibility expired. At least four were minors who have now turned 18. This means they’ve aged out of the resettlement program they were accepted under and now must get back in line, perhaps indefinitely, to reapply under a different system as adults.

By the way, when Trump finally did sign off on that new fiscal 2020 refugee ceiling, it was for a mere 18,000 admissions. That too is an all-time low. The Trump administration has also thrown up other roadblocks for refugees, such as allowing states and localities to veto any resettlements within their borders. (This policy is being challenged in court.)

Trump supporters might argue that, whatever our moral obligations to the world’s destitute and desperate, the president is merely keeping immigrants out to protect our economy.

They are wrong.

The Trump administration’s own research — which it attempted to suppress — found that refugees are a net positive for the U.S. economy and government budgets. That is, over the course of a decade, refugees pay more in taxes than they receive in public benefits.

The Trump administration is also turning away categories of legal would-be immigrants who are historically admitted because they are economically valuable.

Last week, for instance, we learned that enrollment of new international students has fallen more than 10 percent over the past three years, according to the Institute of International Education.

This is a shame. Higher education has been one of our most successful industries, adding $45 billion to the U.S. economy last year alone. International students spend money in the local economies where they study — on lodging, food, books, entertainment. They are also more likely to pay full freight in tuition. This means they cross-subsidize American students, especially in states where public education funding has fallen.

International students are also more likely to major in high-demand STEM fields, providing U.S. employers with a pipeline of talent that supports the jobs of native-born Americans.

New international student enrollment is declining for a number of reasons, including high tuition and fear of campus gun violence. But the barrier most frequently cited by universities lately is problems with the visa-application process. Meanwhile, other developed countries, such as Canada and Australia, are poaching students who might otherwise have contributed their talents here.

These are hardly the only signs we’re discouraging or denying legions of desirable and legal would-be immigrants.

Denial rates for H-1B visas — awarded to high-skilled workers — have more than doubled since Trump took office, according to tabulations from National Foundation for American Policy. Processing delays for citizenship applications have doubled. Naturalization and visa fees have skyrocketed.

Meanwhile, when families apply for their legal right to asylum at the border, we tell them to await processing in Mexico, in a region so dangerous that Americans are instructed not to visit. (“Violent crime, such as murder, armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, extortion, and sexual assault, is common,” the State Department website advises.)

There, asylum seekers live outdoors, in filthy, flooded, freezing tents. Agonized parents send sick and frostbitten toddlers to cross into the U.S. alone, because they fear they’ll die waiting in Mexico.

And if these desperate families don’t like living in squalor, we tell them they should just return home, get in line and apply through another legal route into the United States. Perhaps as refugees, students or workers.

As though there were still such routes to be found.

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

It’s institutionalized hate, racism, sexism, lawlessness, and cruelty.

One of the worst things is that’s it’s basically enabled by Federal Appellate Courts who see the same problems as many U.S. District Judge do, but “go along to get along” by “normalizing” Trump’s disgraceful racist behavior and “deferring” to pretextual Executive actions that are merely facades for a dishonest, illegal, and unconstitutional White Nationalist agenda. Sort of reminds me of the bogus “separate but equal” doctrine of judicial cowardice.

Apparently, too many life-tenured Article IIIs in the ivory tower think that they and their privileged circles will escape the gratuitous harm being inflicted on our nation and on vulnerable individuals by a scofflaw executive. Certainly, not unlike the enabling white male judges and Supreme Court Justices who “looked the other way” and thereby enabled Jim Crow regimes to corruptly use our legal system to disenfranchise, murder, oppress, and otherwise abuse African American citizens.

Where has judicial courage among the higher levels of our Federal Judiciary gone?

PWS

11-26-19

WHITE NATIONALIST AGENDA: Trump Regime Announces Plans For All-Out Assault On Legal Immigration — “It’s an attempt to lock into place changes to immigration policy that cannot be easily undone, regardless of the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.”

https://apple.news/AKO1peXCgQpS_Ol7Hfyg_6g

Stuart Anderson writes in Forbes:

Trump Plans Far-Reaching Set Of New Immigration Regulations

The Trump administration plans a far-reaching set of new immigration regulations that, if enacted, would profoundly affect employers, international students, H-1B and L-1 visa holders, EB-5 investors, asylum seekers and others. The proposed forthcoming rules are detailed in the administration’s just-released Unified Agenda for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

H-1B Visas: “As a result of more restrictive Trump administration policies, denial rates for H-1B petitions have increased significantly, rising from 6% in FY 2015 to 24% through the third quarter of FY 2019 for new H-1B petitions for initial employment,” according to a recent National Foundation for American Policy analysis. A new H-1B regulation would make life even more difficult for employers and high-skilled foreign nationals.

The summary of a forthcoming H-1B rule states it would: “[R]evise the definition of specialty occupation to increase focus on obtaining the best and the brightest foreign nationals via the H-1B program, and revise the definition of employment and employer-employee relationship to better protect U.S. workers and wages. In addition, DHS will propose additional requirements designed to ensure employers pay appropriate wages to H-1B visa holders.” (The target date for publishing a proposed rule is December 2019.)

The rule could be used to defend the administration against lawsuits from companies that contend many actions by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on H-1B petitions have violated the Administrative Procedure Act by not going through the rulemaking process.

“Undoubtedly they will push the boundaries and aim for long-term, structural changes to the H-1B visa category,” said Lynden Melmed, a partner at Berry Appleman & Leiden and former Chief Counsel for USCIS, in an interview. “But absent new authority from Congress, going too far risks a court injunction and they could end up with nothing.”

One way USCIS may try to push the boundaries would be to place into regulation the theory behind a March 31, 2017, internal document now used in adjudications that excluded computer programmers from qualifying as a specialty occupation. The document discusses computer programmers and tells adjudicators that since the Department of Labor Occupational Outlook Handbook states that “. . . some employers hire workers with an associate’s degree . . . it suggests that entry level computer programmer positions do not necessarily require a bachelor’s degree and would not generally qualify as a position in a specialty occupation.” (Emphasis added.)

The March 31, 2017, document notes this has applicability to many occupations and states: “The Policy Memorandum is specific to the computer programmer occupation. However, this same analysis should be conducted for occupations where the Occupational Outlook Handbook does not specify that the minimum requirement for a particular position is normally a bachelor’s or higher degree in a specific specialty.” (Emphasis added.)

“Companies may be surprised to learn how many different positions do not require a bachelor’s degree under Department of Labor standards,” said Melmed. “Employers may have to rethink how they approach their talent strategy.”

A new regulation that would “revise the definition of employment and employer-employee” will make it even more difficult for IT services companies and others that place employees at customer locations. Such companies already have experienced much higher H-1B denial rates due to USCIS policies that, attorneys say, have targeted the companies for tougher scrutiny.

H-4 EAD: The administration continues to place on the regulatory agenda a measure to rescind an existing rule that allows many spouses of H-1B visa holders to work. The target date for a proposed rule is March 2020. (See here for more background.)

L-1 Visas: The irony of USCIS trying to tighten the L-1 visa category is companies complain the Trump administration already has made it nearly impossible to gain approval of L-1 visas at U.S. consulates in India to transfer employees into the United States. Companies also cite U.S. consular posts in China as a problem. “Our refusal rate for L visas at consular posts in India is 80% to 90%,” an executive of a major U.S. company told me in an interview. Denial rates have also increased considerably at USCIS for individual L-1B petitions (used for employees with “specialized knowledge”).

According to the summary of a new item placed on the regulatory agenda: “In order to improve the integrity of the L-1 program, the Department of Homeland Security will propose to revise the definition of specialized knowledge, to clarify the definition of employment and employer-employee relationship, and ensure employers pay appropriate wages to L-1 visa holders.” (September 2020 is the target date for publishing a proposed rule.)

Companies note they already endure visa denials by consular officers who, with little background knowledge, decide that a company should only have a limited number of people who possess “specialized knowledge” – even though there is nothing in the law or regulation about a numerical limit within a company on employees with specialized knowledge of a company’s “product, service, research, equipment, techniques, management, or . . . expertise in the organization’s processes and procedures.”

Regulating on L-1 wages may place USCIS in legal difficulties. “As a practical matter, most employers already pay their L-1 workers at high rates of pay,” said Kevin Miner, a partner at the Fragomen law firm, in an interview. “We will want to see what specific regulatory proposals are made regarding wage rates for L-1 workers, since Congress specifically did not impose prevailing wage requirements in the L-1 statute. Adding requirements that Congress has not put into the statute would be an overreach by the agency and would call into question the legal viability of the new regulations.”

International Students, OPT and Unlawful Presence: New enrollment of international students at U.S. universities declined by more than 10% between the 2015-16 and 2018-2019 academic years – and new Trump administration regulations are likely to further discourage international students from coming to America.

The ability to gain practical work experience following a course of studies attracts many international students to the United States. Many competitors for talent and students, such as Canada and Australia, already make it easier than the United States for international students to work after graduation.

The administration continues to target Optional Practical Training (OPT), which allows international students to work for 12 months after graduation and 24 additional months in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. A summary of a rule proposal on the agenda states: “ICE [Immigration and Custom Enforcement] will amend existing regulations and revise the practical training options available to nonimmigrant students on F and M visas.” (August 2020 is the target date for a proposed rule.)

Ironically, Trump administration officials from the State Department recently praised Optional Practical Training. “OPT is one of our greatest strengths,” said Caroline Casagrande, a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of State, during a November 18, 2019, press event on international students. “And we know that students value the practical experience that they gain here in the United States and it is one of our most helpful recruitment tools as a reason that a student chooses to study in the United States.”

A 2019 National Foundation for American Policy study by economist Madeline Zavodny concluded, “There is no evidence that foreign students participating in the OPT program reduce job opportunities for U.S. workers.”

In 2018, USCIS issued policy memos that could cause many international students who unknowingly violate their immigration status to be barred from the United States for 10 years. On May 3, 2019, a U.S. District Court issued an injunction blocking the two policy memos following a lawsuit (Guilford College) filed by universities.

USCIS placed on the regulatory agenda plans for a proposed rule (with a September 2020 prospective date) called “Enhancing the Integrity of the Unlawful Presence Inadmissibility Provisions.”

“The recent announcement in the regulatory agenda regarding unlawful presence is likely a response to the Guilford College litigation,” Paul Hughes, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery and the lead attorney in the case, told me. “In Guilford College, the court issued a nationwide injunction blocking USCIS from applying this memo, both because it did not undertake the notice-and-comment rulemaking required by the Administrative Procedure Act, and because it was at odds with the statutory text. It appears that the administration is now trying to use rulemaking in an apparent effort to cure the procedural errors they made the first time.”

The Department of Homeland Security regulatory agenda contains at least two other measures of interest to the education community and international students. An item on the agenda (with a June 2020 target date for a proposed rule) states: “ICE proposes to vet all designated school officials (DSOs) and responsible officers (ROs), who ensure that ICE has access to accurate data on covered individuals via the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS).”

An item that remains on the regulatory agenda – with a February 2020 target date for publishing a proposed rule – would establish a “maximum period of authorized stay for students.” Currently, international students are admitted for the “duration of status” until they complete their studies. Universities warn changing to a maximum period of stay is likely to carry negative consequences for students.

EB-5: USCIS has proposed and finalized (November 21, 2019) a rule governing EB-5 (employment-based fifth preference) “immigrant investor classification and associated regional centers” that made significant changes to the category, including substantially raising the minimum investment amount for a foreign investor. The administration appears interested in further restricting the category with two items placed on the agenda. One would make regulatory changes to the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Regional Center Program, including how they file, and their designation, termination and continued participation. The other rule would “increase monitoring and oversight of the EB-5 program as well as encourage investment in rural areas.”

Family Sponsorship: After failing to convince Congress to reduce or eliminate most family-sponsored immigration, the Trump administration put forward two measures that could significantly reduce legal immigration to the United States: 1) an October 4, 2019, presidential proclamation (blocked at least temporarily by a court) would bar new immigrants from entering the United States without health insurance and 2) a rule on Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds – finalized on August 14, 2019, but blocked by an injunction.

A proposed rule on “Enhancing the Integrity of the Affidavit of Support” shows the administration wants to restrict and discourage Americans from sponsoring family members. “DHS intends to update regulations at 8 CFR 213a by aligning the requirements with the statutory provisions and amending sponsorship requirements to better ensure a sponsor has the assets and resources to support the intended immigrant at the statutorily required level,” according to a summary. “DHS further intends to update the provisions to allow the public benefit granting agencies to more easily obtain information from USCIS in order to seek reimbursement from a sponsor when the sponsored immigrant has received public benefits.”

Asylum: Many items on the regulatory agenda aim to restrict asylum, which has already seen wholesale changes in procedures in the past three years. All of the proposed rules are designed to make it more difficult for individuals to avail themselves of the U.S. asylum system.

In one measure, “The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security propose to amend their respective regulations governing the bars to asylum eligibility. The Departments also propose to remove their respective regulations governing the automatic reconsideration of discretionary denials of asylum applications.” In another proposed rule, DOJ and DHS would “amend regulations governing the standards and procedures for making credible fear determinations or reasonable fear determinations for aliens who are subject to expedited removal, but who want to seek asylum or express a fear of persecution or torture.” Others would affect asylum interviews, work authorization and procedures.

Other Rules on the Agenda: The administration proposes to continue with its announced fee increases for immigration benefits, make changes that could affect adjustment of status and limit a future administration’s use of parole and employment authorization. “Removal of International Entrepreneur Parole Program” is listed on the agenda with a “final action” date of December 2019.

The Trump administration’s regulatory agenda on immigration is ambitious and far-reaching. It’s an attempt to lock into place changes to immigration policy that cannot be easily undone, regardless of the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. There is one glaring omission from the Trump administration’s regulatory agenda – any measure to make it easier for foreign-born individuals to work, study or live in the United States.

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

With “Moscow Mitch” and the GOP making sure that Congress can’t do its job and the Supremes and much of the Federal Judiciary apparently in his pocket, Trump’s plans for a White Nationalist Fascist State are on a roll. As Stuart points out, once the damage is done to our nation, it’s likely to take a long time to repair, regardless of when Trump finally leaves office.

Who would have thought that institutions and values developed painstakingly over centuries would be so easily thrust aside by a lawless authoritarian and his gang.

PWS

11-22-19

GREAT MOMENTS IN U.S. HISTORY WITH HEATHER COX RICHARDSON & AL KAMEN: Reliving The “Brooks Brothers Riots” of ‘00! — “Al Gore thought the recount was a high-minded policy debate. He didn’t understand that it was an extension of a war, of a political campaign,” Said Recently Convicted Trumpster Roger Stone!

American Historian Heather Cox Richardson writes in her daily e-mail for today:

A friend read the proofs for me, and asked why I had not mentioned the Brooks Brothers Riot. I had no good answer, so today I went back to the sources.

For those of you who don’t remember everything that happened in those crazy days when we were all trying to figure out what the heck had happened in the 2000 election, the Brooks Brothers Riot was made up of a bunch of Republican operatives, many of whom had flown in from other states, who gathered on November 22, 2000 at the Miami-Dade polling station where Florida officials were attempting to recount the confusing ballots, to insist that the Democrats were trying to steal the election. Their noise and outrage helped to get the recount called off. As I was reading through the articles about the riot, the name Roger Stone jumped out at me. That name meant nothing to me in 2000, but it sure does today.

This is the same Roger Stone who advised the Trump campaign and who has just been convicted for lying to Congress about his connections to Wikileaks before the 2016 election. Wikileaks worked to hurt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and promote Donald Trump by dumping emails that Russia had hacked from the Democratic National Committee. Stone is a no-holds-barred political operative who got his start on the 1972 reelection campaign of Richard Nixon, whose face is tattooed on Stone’s back (no, I’m not kidding) and who, after Nixon’s fall, went on to start a political consulting firm with Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman from June to August 2016 (who is also now a convicted felon), and Lee Atwater, the man behind the viciously racist Willie Horton ad that sank Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988 (Atwater apologized for his actions as he was dying).

At the time of the Brooks Brother’s Riot, Stone claimed he was there “as a volunteer,” and “knew nothing about the protesters other than the fact I approve of Republicans expressing their First Amendment rights.”

This was a lie. In reality, Stone was a key operative, eavesdropping on the Democratic recount team with a walkie-talkie and determined to undermine the recount to get Bush in office, regardless of the popular vote or the real outcome in Florida. “What I admire about Nixon was his resilience,” he later told a reporter, “It’s attack, attack, attack. Al Gore thought the recount was a high-minded policy debate. He didn’t understand that it was an extension of a war, of a political campaign.”

That comment jumped out to me, just as Stone’s name had. That’s it, isn’t it? While the rest of us believe in the rules of democracy, people like Stone and Manafort see political engagement as a war in which winning is everything. It is worth lying, cheating, and stealing, because the goal is not better government, the goal is to win, and then to use that victory to reward your friends and hurt your enemies. After working for Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, Stone and Manafort advised dictators. Then they turned their hands to the Trump campaign. Their approach to politics appears by now to be embedded in today’s Republican Party. Jennifer Rubin, a conservative writer at the Washington Post, had a story today entitled “The Party of Lying Liars,” in which she laid out a litany of Republican whoppers, designed solely to appeal their base and thus stay in office.”

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

Heather’s write-up inspired me to dig a little deeper “into the archives.” Here’s what I found:

A picture of “The Rioters” (note the diversity):

And a 2005 article by Al Kamen, then with the Washington Post, with a “numbered key” to “to Rioters of note:”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31074-2005Jan23.html

Miami ‘Riot’ Squad: Where Are They Now?

By Al Kamen

Monday, January 24, 2005; Page A13

As we begin the second Bush administration, let’s take a moment to reflect upon one of the most historic episodes of the 2000 battle for the White House — the now-legendary “Brooks Brothers Riot” at the Miami-Dade County polling headquarters.

This was when dozens of “local protesters,” actually mostly Republican House aides from Washington, chanted “Stop the fraud!” and “Let us in!” when the local election board tried to move the re-counting from an open conference room to a smaller space.

With help from their GOP colleagues and others, we identified some of these Republican heroes of yore in a photo of the event.

Some of those pictured have gone on to other things, including stints at the White House. For example, Matt Schlapp, No. 6, a former House aide and then a Bush campaign aide, has risen to be White House political director. Garry Malphrus, No. 2 in the photo, a former staff director of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on criminal justice, is now deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. And Rory Cooper, No. 3, who was at the National Republican Congressional Committee, later worked at the White House Homeland Security Council and was seen last week working for the Presidential Inaugural Committee.

Here’s what some of the others went on to do:

No. 1. Tom Pyle, who had worked for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), went private sector a few months later, getting a job as director of federal affairs for Koch Industries.

No. 7. Roger Morse, another House aide, moved on to the law and lobbying firm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds. “I was also privileged to lead a team of Republicans to Florida to help in the recount fight,” he told a legal trade magazine in a 2003 interview.

No. 8. Duane Gibson, an aide on the House Resources Committee, was a solo lobbyist and formerly with the Greenberg Traurig lobby operation. He is now with the Livingston Group as a consultant.

No. 9. Chuck Royal was and still is a legislative assistant to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a former House member.

No. 10. Layna McConkey Peltier, who had been a Senate and House aide and was at Steelman Health Strategies during the effort, is now at Capital Health Group.

(We couldn’t find No. 4, Kevin Smith, a former GOP House aide who later worked with Voter.com, or No. 5, Steven Brophy, a former GOP Senate aide and then at consulting firm KPMG. If you know what they are doing these days, please e-mail shackelford@washpost.comso we can update our records.)

Sources say the “rioters” proudly note their participation on résumés and in interviews. But while the original hardy band of demonstrators numbered barely a couple of dozen, the numbers apparently have grown with the legend.

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

How to build a great GOP resume!

Interestingly, “Rioter # 2,” Garry D. Malphrus (face partially obscured in the photo) went on to become a U.S. Immigration Judge and later an Appellate Immigration Judge on the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”), supposedly the highest administrative tribunal in immigration (although it now functions within the Department of Justice more or less as an extension of DHS Enforcement and Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist, anti-immigrant agenda).

Judge Malphrus was recently named the Acting Chair of the BIA by Billy Barr. Although Barr is a notorious “law enforcement hard liner,” I guess his strong commitment to “law and order” only goes so far.

Got to focus on the “real threats” to our democracy: the Dreamers and other hard working, law abiding, tax paying long-time American residents who are propping up our society and our economy so that Barr, Stone, Trump, and the former rioters can “live the good life.” And certainly, insuring the death or abuse of as many asylum applicants and kids as possible should be high on the list of worthy expenditures of our taxpayer dollars and moral capital.

The moral: Liberals get in trouble for rioting; conservatives get promoted!

Meanwhile, who knows? Could the Supremes be the next stop for Judge Malphrus?

PWS

11-18-19

“CONSTITUTIONAL CASTRATION”– CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: HOW THE FECKLESS GOP CONGRESS IS SCREWING THE MOST VULNERABLE AMONG US BY LETTING THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TRASH THE IMMIGRATION LAWS AND END-RUN THE CONSTITUTION WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL PARTICIPATION! – “The Trump administration keeps scolding desperate immigrants to shape up and “follow the law.” When will cowardly members of Congress insist that the president do the same?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-has-bulldozed-over-congress-on-immigration-will-lawmakers-ever-act/2019/11/14/67401466-0722-11ea-8292-c46ee8cb3dce_story.html

Catherine writes @ WashPost:

By

Catherine Rampell

Columnist

November 14, 2019 at 7:09 p.m. EST

Republican lawmakers seem to be having self-esteem issues.

The legislature, after all, is an equal branch of government with constitutionally granted powers. Lately, nearly all of those powers have been siphoned off by the president and his team of unelected bureaucrats. Yet, again and again, GOP lawmakers meekly submit to this constitutional castration.

To wit: Congress’s power of the purse? Gone. Regardless of how much money Congress appropriates for, say, a border wall or military aid to Ukraine, President Trump has made clear that he’ll ignore the number and pencil in his own.

Congress’s power to regulate commerce with foreign nations? Hijacked by a president who cites bogus “national security” rationales to impose tariffs whenever he likes.

Congress’s duty to “advise and consent” on major appointments? Cabinet and other senior government posts that require Senate confirmation have been atypically littered with “acting” officials instead. In fact, while immigration is ostensibly the president’s signature issue, Trump hasn’t had a single Senate-confirmed director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement since he took office. And though Democratic lawmakers may complain, nothing will change as long as Republicans control the Senate.

Which brings me to the most significant power Trump has stripped from Congress: its lawmaking authority. This is best illustrated by the administration’s actions basically rewriting immigration law wholesale, with nary a peep from GOP legislators.

Sure, on some immigration matters, Congress has relinquished its responsibilities, effectively giving Trump the ability to contort immigration policy as he sees fit.

Consider the “dreamers,” the young immigrants brought here as children who know no other country than the United States. They have long been in a legal limbo. Congress could resolve that limbo swiftly and easily by granting the dreamers permanent legal status and a pathway to citizenship. This would have the support of majorities of voters from both parties, and the Democratic-controlled House has already passed such legislation.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in the GOP-controlled Senate wrung their hands and watched helplessly from the sidelines as Trump announced his decision to kill the Obama-era program that protects the dreamers from deportation. Based on a hearing this week, the Supreme Court appears poised to uphold the president’s decision. Yet, despite claiming to care about the issue, Republicans remain unwilling to act.

Similarly, Congress long ago gave the president authority to set the annual cap on refugee admissions. Not surprisingly, if disappointingly, the Trump administration has used that authority to ratchet the ceiling down to a record low of 18,000. For context, during President Barack Obama’s last year of office, the ceiling was 110,000.

But there are other areas of immigration law on which Congress has acted, definitively and clearly, with legislative language that leaves little room for maneuvering by the executive. The Trump administration has flouted these laws anyway.

Take asylum law.

“Refugees” and “asylum seekers” both refer to immigrants fleeing violence or persecution, but, technically, “refugees” apply for sanctuary while still abroad, and asylum seekers apply while in the country of their destination. Unlike with refugeeadmissions, there are no legal caps on the number of people who may qualify for and receive asylum. The law does not allow the executive branch to set them, either.

But the Trump administration has effectively set its own limits.

Last year, for instance, the Trump administration tried to ban people from applying for asylum if they crossed between ports of entry — as most asylum seekers are now forced to do, because the administration has severely throttled (or “metered”) the number of people who may apply through a given port of entry per day.

This “asylum ban” was blocked by the courts — because Congress has explicitly said asylum seekers can apply whether or not they entered the United States “at a designated port of arrival.”

“The law is crystal, crystal clear on this,” says Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council.

With virtually no pushback from Republicans in Congress, Trump administration then implemented a sort of asylum ban 2.0. This one disqualifies asylum seekers who passed through another country on their way to the United States without first applying for asylum there. A separate legal challenge — one among many — is now working its way through the courts.

A host of other changes designed to serve as a backdoor limit on asylee admissions have also been announced in recent weeks. Last week, the administration announced a new processing fee for asylum seekers, which would effectively disqualify families fleeing with nothing but the clothes on their backs. This week, it proposed a rule denying many asylum seekers authorization to work while their cases are being adjudicated, which can take years. This will force more immigrants into the shadows, contrary to Congress’s intentions.

The Trump administration keeps scolding desperate immigrants to shape up and “follow the law.” When will cowardly members of Congress insist that the president do the same?

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

Catherine and some other reporters “get it” as to what Trump is doing to the law, our democratic institutions, and our Constitution. How come Federal Appellate Judges, Supreme Court Justices, and GOP legislators stick their collective heads in their sand and pretend not to understand the true long-term ramifications of what they are letting Trump do? Why aren’t they protecting our Constitutional and civil rights, not to mention human rights?

It’s all part of “Dred Scottification” – the degradation and dehumanization of individuals while stripping them of their rights combined with a constant barrage of outright lies and false narratives. And, contrary to the apparent belief of many “Trump Toadies” throughout our system and the electorate, once Trump turns on them, which he eventually will, the rights they counted on for protection will be long gone. The total lack of empathy, the ability to understand and appreciate the pain and suffering of others, is perhaps the worst aspect of the Trump kakistocracy.

Thanks, Catherine, for your courageous and insightful writing!

PWS

11-15-19

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