Safety Net – Page 4 – immigrationcourtside.com

😎🗽⚖️GOOD NEWS: 9th Cir. Deals Another Blow To Stephen Miller’s Illegal White Nationalist War On Asylum! Now, Will The Supremes’ Majority Stand For Equal Justice Under Law, Or Will They Again Side With A Racist Regime & Its “Crimes Against Humanity?”🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️👎

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-upholds-injunction-against-asylum-rule

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

Immigration Law

Daniel M. Kowalski

6 Jul 2020

asylum

CA9 Upholds Injunction Against Asylum Rule

East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Barr

“On July 16, 2019, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security published a joint interim final Rule without notice and comment, entitled “Asylum Eligibility and Procedural Modifications” (the “Rule”). With limited exceptions, the Rule categorically denies asylum to aliens arriving at our border with Mexico unless they have first applied for, and have been denied, asylum in Mexico or another country through which they have traveled. We describe the Rule in detail below. Plaintiffs are nonprofit organizations that represent asylum seekers. They brought suit in district court seeking an injunction against enforcement of the Rule, contending that the Rule is invalid on three grounds: first, the Rule is not “consistent with” Section 208 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1158; second, the Rule is arbitrary and capricious; third, the Rule was adopted without notice and comment. The district court found that plaintiffs had a likelihood of success on all three grounds and entered a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the Rule, with effect in the four states on our border with Mexico. We hold that plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the first and second grounds. We do not reach the third ground. We affirm.”

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This isn’t rocket science. Neither the legal nor moral issues are particularly difficult in this case. Indeed, the Supremes should unanimously have tossed Solicitor General Noel Francisco out on his tail the last time he unethically requested their intervention. Instead, they rewarded him, thus enabling and encouraging further “crimes against humanity.”

Unfortunately, this Supremes’ majority has had a hard time seeing people of color, and particularly those seeking asylum and other legal protections under our laws, as human. Even though the lower Federal Courts have essentially made things easy by showing exactly why these racist-inspired policies are illegal, a Supremes majority has chosen to advance Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist agenda, sometimes hiding behind a smokescreen of nonsensical legal gobbledygook, while other times choosing to act without bothering to provide any rationale at all.

One thing is for certain. Someday, after the fall of Trump, and the banishment of Miller, the Justices who advanced their unconstitutional, illegal, racist immigration agenda will try to “save their legacies” by putting some distance between themselves and the neo-Nazi ramifications of their votes. It’s critically important for those of us who see exactly what’s happening to insure that the names of justices and judges who sided with Stephen Miller are inextricably linked for the rest of time with his disgraceful racist legacy of “crimes against humanity.”

There is only one side of history here! And, it’s certainly not with Stephen Miller and his enablers, be they judges, legislators, public officials, or voters.

Read today’s op-ed by Sister Norma Pimentel, of the Missionaries of Jesus, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville, Tex whose courage and dedication to human rights and the rule of law puts complicit judges to shame. Sister Pimentel lives and observes every day the grotesque, unforgivable “crimes against humanity” and disparagement of the human dignity of asylum seekers effected by Miller’s judicially-enabled campaign of hate, dehumanization, and abuse of power. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/covid-19-has-come-to-our-migrant-camp-it-makes-ending-the-mpp-policy-even-more-urgent/2020/07/03/455cacf8-bd41-11ea-8cf5-9c1b8d7f84c6_story.html

She writes, in part:

Meanwhile, the pandemic has made it more difficult to care for those who are arriving at the border each day. Since that lone covid-19 case was identified, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute has not allowed the camps to accept any new arrivals. So refugees are being turned away and have no place to go. Some are being placed in hotels or churches, and volunteers are desperately looking for other options.

Within the camp, we have had to limit the volunteers’ activities — there are 10 to 20 volunteers allowed to enter and help provide the people with food, water and basic health care. We have set up areas for washing hands, and try to provide hope and reassurance amid the uncertainty. All this makes it even harder to keep the camps safe from the cartels and gangsters who continue to prey on these largely defenseless asylum seekers.

That young woman who tested positive for the coronavirus has been transferred to a covid-19 center operated by Doctors Without Borders. We pray for her recovery, and we pray for all the families’ safety, for their protection and for a resolution to their untenable situation.

While I know many people in many places are dealing with so much, I urge you not to look away from the border in this moment. Do not ignore the suffering occurring here. It is time that we put an end to it, and to end the MPP policy. Until that happens, we will continue to help those who are defenseless, whose only real “crime” is trying to seek protection for themselves and their families.

In addition to highlighting inhumanity, Sister Pimentel shows the gross intellectual fraud and immorality in the Trump Regime’s bogus claim that asylum seekers present a significant threat of spreading COVID-19. If anything, it’s the exact opposite which is most often the case with the Trump regime’s endless racist false narratives and fake “horror stories” about immigration.

It also exposes yet again both the intellectual dishonesty and immorality of those who present “pretextual justifications” for illegal acts being perpetrated by our Government against the most vulnerable and the spineless performance of judges who claim to accept at face value that which any reasonable person knows to be a pretext for racism and inhumanity.

The intent behind these bogus regulation changes and programs like the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (or, more properly, “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico”) is very clear: dehumanize “the other” – in this case primarily brown skinned asylum seekers. But, in the process of letting this happen and tolerating legislators and judges without the decency to stand up for the rights of our fellow humans, WE are the ones who actually are dehumanized. We’re not allowed to look away from the horrors being perpetrated by the Trump regime in our name!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-06-20

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

By Catherine Rampell

June 29 at 7:16 PM ET

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

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

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

Because Vihaan just finished first grade.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

07-01-20

🏴‍☠️☠️NO, IT’S NOT “JUST ENFORCING THE LAW” AS ALBENCE & THE DHS FALSELY CLAIM — THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S INTENTIONALLY CRUEL, STUPID, WASTEFUL, IMMORAL, & ENTIRELY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE DEPORTATION POLICIES ARE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — We All Are Demeaned & Reduced As Human Beings By Allowing Trump’s DHS & His DOJ to Get Away With This!

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/06/22/the-true-costs-of-deportation

Julia Preston reports for The Marshall Project:

The True Costs of Deportation
When immigrant parents of American children are expelled, the lives of their loved ones can fall apart. Here are the stories of three families who faced financial ruin, mental health crises—and even death.
By JULIA PRESTON

Before her husband was deported, Seleste Hernandez was paying taxes and credit card bills. She was earning her way and liking it.
But after her husband, Pedro, was forced to return to Mexico, her family lost his income from a job at a commercial greenhouse. Seleste had to quit her nursing aide position, staying home to care for her severely disabled son. Now she is trapped, grieving for a faraway spouse and relying on public assistance just to scrape by.
She went, in her eyes, from paying taxes to depending on taxpayers. “I’m back to feeling worthless,” she says.
This story was published in partnership with The Guardian.
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of American families are coping with anguish compounded by steep financial decline after a spouse’s or parent’s deportation, a more enduring form of family separation than President Trump’s policy that took children from parents at the border.
Trump has broadened the targets of deportation to include many immigrants with no serious criminal records. While the benefits to communities from these removals are unclear, the costs—to devastated American families and to the public purse—are coming into focus. The hardships for the families have only deepened with the economic strains of the coronavirus.
A new Marshall Project analysis with the Center for Migration Studies found that just under 6.1 million American citizen children live in households with at least one undocumented family member vulnerable to deportation—and household incomes drop by nearly half after deportation.
About 331,900 American children have a parent who has legal protection under DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that shields immigrants who came here as children. After the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Trump’s cancellation of the DACA program was unlawful, those families still have protection from deportation. But the court’s decision allows the president to try to cancel the program again. The debate cast light on the larger population of 10.7 million undocumented immigrants who have made lives in the country, raising pressure on Congress to open a path to permanent legal status for all of them.
We examined the impact of the wrenching losses after deportation and the potential costs to American taxpayers of expelling immigrants who are parents or spouses of citizens.
After an immigrant breadwinner is gone, many families that once were self-sufficient must rely on social welfare programs to survive. With the trauma of a banished parent, some children fail in schools or require expensive medical and mental health care. As family savings are depleted, American children struggle financially to stay in school or attend college.
Three families in northeastern Ohio, a region where Trump’s deportations have taken a heavy toll, show the high price of these expulsions.

. . . .

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

This isn’t the first time in American history that invidious racially-motivated enforcement of bad laws has been used to dehumanize or abuse “the other” while hiding behind transparently fake law enforcement pretexts. Poll taxes anyone?

A straightforward reading of our Constitution says that removing parents of U.S. citizens and breadwinners of American families without compelling reasons for doing so (lacking in these cases) is unreasonable and therefore a violation of Due Process. It’s time to stop doing the immoral and unconstitutional! And it’s past time to insure that public officials like Albence who promote and defend these assaults on humanity are removed from power.

The current institutions of Government have initiated, carried out, or failed to stop these illegal actions. Disappointing, but perhaps not surprising, considering that the nation, by minority vote, enabled a scofflaw White Nationalist regime in 2016.

But, voters still have the political power to oust the abusers of humanity and purveyors of racially-motivated lies and false narratives, and to insist on long-overdue changes to the system to make due process (reasonability), fundamental fairness, and equality under the law a reality for the first time in U.S. history, rather than continuing to be the Constitution’s intentionally unfulfilled promises.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-24-20

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

https://apple.news/ATn0lgkBSTay-a1C2lMlh4A

Ananya writes in QUARTZ:

GOOD FOR YOU

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

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

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

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

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

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

Entrepreneurship and innovation

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

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

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

Threat of reverse brain drain

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

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

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

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

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

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

Higher wages, more jobs for locals

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

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

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

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

A better tomorrow for America

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

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

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

Quartz Daily Brief

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

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

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

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

PWS

06-09-20

TA-NEHISI COATES IS OPTIMISTIC THAT WE’RE FINALLY AT A MOMENT OF CHANGE IN AMERICA’S APPROACH TO RACE RELATIONS — Read Ezra Klein’s Vox News Interview With Ta-Nehisi to Find Out Why!

https://apple.news/Tn2n0n8PnRUG6W-1mAp_OZw

Why Ta-Nehisi Coates is hopeful

The author of Between the World and Me on why this isn’t 1968, the Colin Kaepernick test, police abolition, nonviolence and the state, and more.

The first question I asked Ta-Nehisi Coates during our recent conversation on The Ezra Klein Show was broad: What does he see right now, as he looks out at the country?

“I can’t believe I’m gonna say this,” he replied, “but I see hope. I see progress right now.”

Coates is the author of the National Book Award winner Between the World and Me and The Water Dancer, among others. We discussed how this moment differs from 1968, the tension between “law” and “order,” the contested legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., Donald Trump’s view of the presidency, police abolition, why we need to renegotiate the idea of “the public,” how the consensus on criminal justice has shifted, what Joe Biden represents, the proper role of the state, and much more.

But there’s one particular thread of this conversation that I haven’t been able to put down: There is now, as there always is amid protests, a loud call for the protesters to follow the principles of nonviolence. And that call, as Coates says, comes from people who neither practice nor heed nonviolence in their own lives. But what if we turned that conversation around? What would it mean to build the state around principles of nonviolence, rather than reserving that exacting standard for those harmed by the state?

An edited transcript from our conversation follows. The full conversation can be heard on The Ezra Klein Show.

Ezra Klein

What do you see right now, as you look out at the country?

Ta-Nehisi Coates

I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but I see hope. I see progress right now, at this moment.

I had an interesting call on Saturday with my dad, who was born in 1946, grew up dirt poor in Philadelphia, lived in a truck, went off to Vietnam, came back, joined the Panther Party, and was in Baltimore for the 1968 riots. Would’ve been about 22 at that time.

I asked him if he could compare what he saw in 1968 to what he was seeing now. And what he said to me was there was no comparison — that this is much more sophisticated. And I say, well, what do you mean? He said it would have been like if somebody from the turn of the 20th century could see the March on Washington.

The idea that black folks in their struggle against the way the law is enforced in their neighborhoods would resonate with white folks in Des Moines, Iowa, in Salt Lake City, in Berlin, in London — that was unfathomable to him in ‘68, when it was mostly black folks in their own communities registering their great anger and great pain.

I don’t want to overstate this, but there are significant swaths of people and communities that are not black, that to some extent have some perception of what that pain and that suffering is. I think that’s different.

Ezra Klein

Do you think there is more multiethnic solidarity today than there was then?

Ta-Nehisi Coates

I do. Within my lifetime, I don’t think there’s been a more effective movement than Black Lives Matter. They brought out the kind of ridiculousness that black folks deal with on a daily basis in the policing in their communities.

George Floyd is not new. The ability to broadcast it the way it was broadcasted is new. But black folks have known things like that were going on in their communities, in their families, for a very long time. You have a generation of people who are out in the streets right now, many of whom only have the vaguest memory of George Bush. They remember George Bush the way I remember Carter. The first real president who they actually grappled with was a black dude. That’s a different type of consciousness.

Ezra Klein

I was watching the speech Trump gave before tear-gassing the protesters in the park in DC. What so chilled me about that speech was how much he clearly wanted this — like this was the presidency as he had always imagined it, directing men with guns and shields to put down protesters so he could walk through a park unafraid and seem tough.

He’s always seemed so disinterested and annoyed by the actual work of being president, even during coronavirus. But this is the thing that he seems energized and excited by. And that’s been the scary part of it to me — that you have somebody in that role who is eager for escalation.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

It is pretty clear that the war-making part of being head of state was the part that most appeals to Donald Trump.

What does this mean for the election? It may be true that Donald Trump will win. Maybe this will lead to some sort of white backlash that ultimately helps him. I can’t really call that. But what I will say is this is a massive denial of legitimacy. Donald Trump may win the election in November, but he will be a ruler and not a president.

I think that those things need to be distinguished. When you’re calling out the military to repress protests that are in cities across the country, not just in ghettos and in hoods, all you have is force at that point. Most likely if he wins, he’ll be someone who won with a minority of the vote two times, which will be a first in American history. And violence will be the tool by which he rules. I think it’s a very different situation to be in.

Ezra Klein

I’m glad you brought in that word legitimacy. I wrote a piece the other day called “America at the breaking point,” and one of the things that I was imagining as I wrote that was a legitimacy crisis. The stakes have been going higher and higher this year: coronavirus, the entire country locked in houses, upset, angry, scared. Then you add on a series of basically televised lynchings.

And then you think: This is an election year. In some ways, I’m more afraid of the situation you just described. If Donald Trump is reelected in a way that does not feel legitimate to people — if he loses by more votes than he did in 2016, or there’s a contested-vote situation — this could turn out badly. Legitimacy crises are scary things. And I don’t think we’re really well equipped for one right now.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

I agree. But when I look back historically, the alternative to me is 1968.

I think, amongst a large swath to a majority of black people in this country, the police are illegitimate. They’re not seen as a force that necessarily causes violent crime to decline. Oftentimes you see black people resorting to the police because they have no other option, but they’re not seen with the level of trust that maybe Americans in other communities bestow upon the police. They know you could be a victim to lethal force because you used a $20 bill that may or may not have been counterfeit, because you were asleep at night in your home and somebody got a warrant to kick down your door without knocking.

I would argue that [feeling] has been nationalized. I don’t know that everybody in America feels that way, but I think large swaths of Americans now feel that Trump is the police. And they feel about Trump the way we feel about cops: This is somebody that rules basically by power. I would prefer that situation to 1968, where we’re alone in our neighborhoods and we know something about the world and we know what the police do, but other folks can’t really see it — and if they can, they’re unsympathetic. I would prefer now.

The long history of black folks in this country is conflict and struggle, between ourselves and the state and other interests within the society so that we can live free. And this is the first time that I think a lot of us have felt that the battle was legitimately joined, not just by white people but other people of color. When I hear that brother in Minneapolis talk about how his store was burned down and him saying, “Let it burn.” That’s a very different world. It’s a very, very different situation. It’s not a great one. It’s not the one we want. But it’s not ‘68.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the interview at the link.

Coincidentally, I just finished reading Coates’s novel about slavery and freedom, The Water Dancer, which I highly recommend.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️I also found the just-released streaming movie Just Mercy instructive. It’s based on the true story of unjustly convicted Alabama death-row inmate Walter McMillan and his courageous young just-out-of-Harvard African-American attorney Bryan Stevenson, played by Michael B. Jordan. In the movie, as in real life, justice was achieved in the end.

But, was it really?

Why should justice in America a be so dependent on both the “right lawyer” and the particular location and judges before whom you are tried? Why should it be so difficult, time consuming, painful, and uncertain to obtain? Why weren’t the crooked sheriff and the other perpetrators of deadly fraud held accountable? Why was such a tone-deaf judge on the bench in the first place? Why was a corrupt system not interested in real justice for the murder victim? Why do we still have the death penalty — clearly “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Constitution by any rational definition?

It’s also worth remembering that one of the greatest advocates of putting African Americans in Alabama to death was none other than White Nationalist prosecutor Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions. Sessions then went on to a further career involving child abuse, squandering of taxpayer funds on “gonzo” prosecutions of legal asylum seekers, and unfairly sentencing Hispanic refugee women to torture, and even death. Yet, Sessions walks free. He even has the audacity to run for public office again based on his perverted, racist views of “justice” in America.

Whether or not he, or the equally repulsive and bigoted other GOP candidate, former football coach Tommy Tuberville, get elected will be a true test of how far we have come as a nation, and in particular, how far Alabama has come in atoning for past wrongs. Anybody who cares about equal justice for all should send at least a few bucks to the re-election campaign of wholly decent, competent, U.S. Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) to help him fight the GOP “forces of darkness, racism, and inequality,” arrayed against him.

I really hope Coates is right. But, based on the “reality of the moment” we still have a long way to go. True social justice would involve accountability for individuals like Trump, Miller, Sessions, and Barr who have been actors and proponents of injustice toward “the other” in our society. When folks like unapologetic White Nationalist provocateur Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) are no longer placed in public office, then, and only then, will social justice and equal justice for all have been achieved.

And, I personally doubt our capacity as a nation for true due process and equal justice under law as long as the “JR Five” rule the Supremes. So far, there haven’t been many racial injustices or “Dred Scottifications” of the other that they have had the courage and integrity to condemn! Better judges, with more humanity and empathy, are a requirement for a truly just nation.

That pandering, maliciously incompetent, willfully ignorant, bigot Donald Trump, with his vile, intentionally racially divisive message of fear still polls at 42% shows just how far we have to go to achieve due process and equal justice for all in America. “Equal Justice For All” isn’t just a “snappy slogan;” it requires leaders who really believe in it!

Right now, save for Nancy Pelosi, we conspicuously lack such leaders in all three Branches of our National Government. Better results will require change at the top. It will also require a significant minority of voters to stop enabling the intolerant, incompetent, and divisive to rule.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once wrote:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

The quote isn’t just an “abstract concept;” it has “real life” meaning. It’s from King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail, where he was unjustly imprisoned in 1963 for participation in peaceful protests against racial injustice.

“Social Justice” isn’t just an idealistic concept. It’s an absolute necessity for a well-functioning, just, and fully productive society!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-07-20

GEORGE PACKER @ THE ATLANTIC: With Failed Institutions & Lousy Leaders, Including a President Leading the Charge to the Bottom, America Faces An Uncertain Future — “A responsible establishment doesn’t exist. Our president is one of the rioters.” — Joe Biden & The Dems Could Be The Last, Best Hope For American Democracy & Real Progress Toward “Equal Justice For All!”

George Packer
American Journalist, Author, Playwright

https://apple.news/A-6795FCPQU6LRBMW1_nzvw

Packer writes in The Atlantic:

IDEAS

Shouting Into the Institutional Void

Demonstrators are hammering on a hollowed-out structure, and it very well may collapse.

The urban unrest of the mid-to-late 1960s was more intense than the days and nights of protest since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis policeman. More people died then, more buildings were gutted, more businesses were ransacked. But those years had one advantage over the present. America was coming apart at the seams, but it still had seams. The streets were filled with demonstrators raging against the “system,” but there was still a system to tear down. Its institutions were basically intact. A few leaders, in and outside government, even exercised some moral authority.

In July 1967, immediately after the riots in Newark and Detroit, President Lyndon B. Johnson created a commission to study the causes and prevention of urban unrest. The Kerner Commission—named for its chairman, Governor Otto Kerner Jr. of Illinois—was an emblem of its moment. It didn’t look the way it would today. Just two of the 11 members were black (Roy Wilkins, the leader of the NAACP, and Edward Brooke, a Republican senator from Massachusetts); only one was a woman. The commission was also bipartisan, including a couple of liberal Republicans, a conservative congressman from Ohio with a strong commitment to civil rights, and representatives from business and labor. It reflected a society that was deeply unjust but still in possession of the tools of self-correction.

The commission’s report, written by the executive director, David Ginsburg, an establishment liberal lawyer of New Deal vintage, appeared at the end of February 1968. It became an instant million-copy best seller. Its language is bracing by the standards of any era: “What white Americans have never fully understood—but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” The report called for far-reaching policy reforms in housing, employment, education, and policing, to stop the country from becoming “two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

[Anne Applebaum: History will judge the complicit]

It was too much for Johnson, who resented not being credited for his efforts to achieve civil rights and eradicate poverty, and whose presidency had just been engulfed by the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam. He shelved the report. A few weeks later, on the evening of April 4, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis. The next night, Johnson—who had just announced that he wouldn’t run for reelection—spoke to a country whose cities were burning from coast to coast. “It is the fiber and the fabric of the republic that’s being tested,” he said. “If we are to have the America that we mean to have, all men of all races, all regions, all religions must stand their ground to deny violence its victory in this sorrowful time, and in all times to come. Last evening, after receiving the terrible news of Dr. King’s death, my heart went out to his family and to his people, especially to the young Americans who I know must sometimes wonder if they are to be denied a fullness of life because of the color of their skin.” To an aide, he was more blunt in assessing the uprising: “What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for 300 years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.”

King’s murder and the riots it sparked propelled Congress to pass, by an overwhelming and bipartisan margin, the decade’s last major piece of civil-rights legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which enforced fair standards in housing. Johnson signed it on April 11. It was too late. The very best reports, laws, and presidential speeches couldn’t contain the anger in the streets. That year, 1968, was when reform was overwhelmed by radicalization on the left and reaction on the right. We still live in the aftermath. The language and ideas of the Kerner Report have haunted the years since—a reminder of a missed chance.

The difference between 1968 and 2020 is the difference between a society that failed to solve its biggest problem and a society that no longer has the means to try. A year before his death, King, still insisting on nonviolent resistance, called riots “the language of the unheard.” The phrase implies that someone could be made to hear, and possibly answer. What’s happening today doesn’t feel the same. The protesters aren’t speaking to leaders who might listen, or to a power structure that might yield, except perhaps the structure of white power, which is too vast and diffuse to respond. Congress isn’t preparing a bill to address root causes; Congress no longer even tries to solve problems. No president, least of all this one, could assemble a commission of respected figures from different sectors and parties to study the problem of police brutality and produce a best-selling report with a consensus for fundamental change. A responsible establishment doesn’t exist. Our president is one of the rioters.

After half a century of social dissolution, of polarization by class and race and region and politics, there are no functioning institutions or leaders to fail us with their inadequate response to the moment’s urgency. Levers of influence no longer connect to sources of power. Democratic protections—the eyes of a free press, the impartiality of the law, elected officials acting out of conscience or self-interest—have lost public trust. The protesters are railing against a society that isn’t cohesive enough to summon a response. They’re hammering on a hollowed-out structure, and it very well may collapse.

[James Fallows: Is this the worst year in modern American history?]

If 2020 were at all like 1968, the president would go on national television and speak as the leader of all Americans to try to calm a rattled country in a tumultuous time. But the Trump administration hasn’t answered the unrest like an embattled democracy trying to reestablish legitimacy. Its reflex is that of an autocracy—a display of strength that actually reveals weakness, emptiness. Trump’s short walk from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church had all the trappings of a strongman trying to show that he was still master of the country amid reports that he’d taken refuge in a bunker: the phalanx of armored guards surrounding him as he strutted out of the presidential palace; the tear gas and beatings that cleared his path of demonstrators and journalists; the presence of his daughter, who had come up with the idea, and his top general, wearing combat fatigues as if to signal that the army would defend the regime against the people, and his top justice official, who had given the order to raid the square.

William Barr has reacted to the killing of George Floyd like the head of a secret-police force rather than the attorney general of a democratic republic. His first act was not to order a federal investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department, but—as he’s done before—to rush out ahead of the facts and try to control public opinion, by announcing that the violence following Floyd’s death was the work of left-wing agitators. Streets of the nation’s capital are now blocked by security forces from Barr’s Department of Justice—many from the Federal Bureau of Prisons—wearing uniforms that make them impossible to identify, like paramilitary troops with unknown commanders.

The protests have to be understood in the context of this institutional void. They resemble the spontaneous mass cry of a people suffering under dictatorship more than the organized projection of public opinion aimed at an accountable government. They signify that democratic politics has stopped working. They are both utopian and desperate.

[Read: The double standard of the American riot]

Some public figures—politicians, policy experts, civic leaders—have come forward with proposals for changing the mindset and tactics of the police. Terrence Floyd, the brother of the murdered man, urged protesters to educate themselves and vote. But the overwhelming message of the protests is simply “end racism,” which would be a large step toward ending evil itself. The protesters are demanding an absolute, as if they’ve stopped expecting the state to produce anything that falls a little short. For white protesters—who are joining demonstrations on behalf of black freedom and equality in large numbers for the first time since Selma, Alabama, 55 years ago—this demand means ending an evil that lies within themselves. It would be another sign of a hollow democracy if the main energy in the afterglow of the protests goes into small-group sessions on white privilege rather than a hard push for police reform.

. . . .

This is where we are. Trust is missing everywhere—between black Americans and police, between experts and ordinary people, between the government and the governed, between citizens of different identities and beliefs. There’s an election coming in five months. It won’t end racism or the pandemic, or repair our social bonds, or restore our democracy to health. But it could give us a chance to try, if we get that far.

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

Read the rest of Packer’s article at the above link.

Well said! The only thing missing is specific reference to the toxic failure of the U.S. Supreme Court.

We once had a Court with the legal experience, ethics, vision, and moral courage to lead America forward toward a more just and equal society. That’s been totally dissipated by years of GOP erosion of the Court’s legal expertise, practical problem-solving ability, humanity, courage, vision of a better future for all in America, and integrity.

The “journey downward and march backward” from Brown v. Board of Education to legal travesties like Trump v. Hawaii and Wolf v. Innovation Law Lab (to name just two glaring examples of the Court’s disgraceful and illegal “Dred Scottification” of the other in our society) is certainly one of the most outrageous, disturbing, and disgusting tales in post-Plessy v. Ferguson American jurisprudence.

The Court’s abject failure to move forward and make voting rights and equal justice for all a reality is in no small measure linked to the death of George Floyd and other Americans of color and the nationwide protests of injustice. Failure of judicial integrity, vision, and leadership — in other words failures of both legal and moral justice — imperils our nation and many of its inhabitants.

America already faces long-term threats to our justice system and those it supposedly serves from the irresponsible and poorly-qualified life-tenured judicial appointments of Trump and the Mitch-led GOP. To them, things like “equal justice for all,” “voting rights,” “due process for all,” “women’s rights,” and “human rights” are just cruel hoaxes — things to be privately mocked, publicly “lip-serviced,” then buried forever beneath an avalanche of disingenuous and opaque legal gobbledygook intended to hide their true anti-democratic, White Nationalist enabling intent. The appointment of any more Justices along the lines of the “J.R. Five” likely would be the final “nail in the coffin” for our democratic republic! 🏴‍☠️👎🏻🥵

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

PWS

06-06-20

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

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

https://apple.news/AtzkkrgAGThCSMutjCZCjAg

From SCIENMAG:

New Visa restrictions will make the US economic downturn worse

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

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

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

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

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

Legal protections for immigrants aid entrepreneurship and innovation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rights for immigrants also lower crimes in receiving countries

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

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

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

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

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

Legal protections lower the fiscal burden and reduce deficits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

06-06-20

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

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

Jonah Black writes in International Policy Digest:

The Case for Immigration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yup!

PWS

06-05-20

🗽⚖️A VOICE FOR THE TIMES: Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), Interviewed by Vanity Fair’s Chris Smith — “My vision comes from the pledge of allegiance: liberty and justice for all. That remains a vision—but we’re not doing much to make that vision a reality. Mitch McConnell goes on the floor of the Senate and calls me out, as if there’s something nasty about my vision. He never asked me what my vision was.”

Rep. James Clyburn
D-SC

Chris Smith
Writer
Vanity Fair

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/james-clyburn-on-the-floyd-killing-and-the-role-of-race-in-the-coming-election?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=vf&utm_mailing=VF_HivePS_053020&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bd67c363f92a41245df49eb&cndid=48297443&hasha=8a1f473740b253d8fa4c23b066722737&hashb=26cd42536544e247751ec74095d9cedc67e77edb&hashc=eb7798068820f2944081a20180a0d3a94e025b4a93ea9ae77c7bbe00367c46ef&esrc=newsletteroverlay&utm_campaign=VF_HivePS_053020&utm_term=VYF_Hive

“At Some Point the Country Is Going to Have to Wake Up”: James Clyburn on the Floyd Killing and The Role of Race In The Coming Election

Chris SmithMay 29, 2020

Clyburn, who helped hand Biden his presumptive nomination, talks about Biden’s “you ain’t black” and V.P. possibilities, and why this moment is defined by “raw politics and meanness.”

by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images.

James Clyburn grew up in a segregated South Carolina. He is now the longest-serving member of the state’s congressional delegation and the highest-ranking black Democrat in the House. In February, Clyburn basically saved Joe Biden’s presidential bid, endorsing Biden three days before South Carolina’s pivotal primary and helping deliver the decisive black vote. On Thursday evening, just after landing in his home state for a weekend visit, the 79-year-old Clyburn talked about holding on to his optimism in the wake of yet another brutal killing of a black man by police.

Vanity Fair: What was your reaction when you saw the video of a Minneapolis cop kneeling on the neck of George Floyd?

James Clyburn: I don’t know that I would describe my emotion as anger. I guess I should be angry. Maybe at my age, and as many of these kinds of things as I’ve experienced, you get to the point where you say, but for the video, I would not have seen it; other people would not have seen it; and the official word would be all anyone knew. I do feel, though, that at some point the country is going to have to wake up to this reality.

What do you tell black Americans, particularly young black male Americans, who say the country is long past the point when it should have awakened, and that the reality is just racism and hatred?

Going back to the student movement and the civil rights movement, I’ve really questioned many times whether or not what we were doing made any real sense. Whether there was any possibility of success. But along with people like John Lewis, who I met in October 1960, he’s held on to his faith in the country, and I’ve held on to mine. I went to jail several times. I ran for office three times before I got elected. You don’t give up. You aren’t going to win by giving up.

by Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images.

The four Minneapolis police officers have been fired. Should they be tried for murder?

They certainly should stand trial. The hand of one is the hand of all, so four people need to be on trial.

In a conference call with House leaders two days after Floyd’s death, you talked about it being a symptom of larger problems that plague minority communities, and that it showed the need for systemic change. What did you mean?

I have been saying for a long time now that so much in this country needs to be restructured. Health care, education, the judicial system. Every time these issues are raised, folks on the Republican side find a way to parse the words and turn it to their agenda, and they get accommodated by too many people in the media. When we first started discussing the CARES Act, I said to my caucus, in a Zoom call, that this was a tremendous opportunity for us to restructure things in our vision. My vision comes from the pledge of allegiance: liberty and justice for all. That remains a vision—but we’re not doing much to make that vision a reality. Mitch McConnell goes on the floor of the Senate and calls me out, as if there’s something nasty about my vision. He never asked me what my vision was. I’ve got it on billboards all over Charleston: “Making America’s Greatness Accessible and Affordable for All.” What’s wrong with that? And that’s been weaponized by the other side as something untoward. It’s ideology, it’s raw politics, and meanness. That’s why we can’t fix these things.

Do you think the Floyd killing will end Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar’s chances of being picked as Joe Biden’s running mate?

It certainly won’t help. But it’s not just this. Her history with similar situations when she was a prosecutor came up time and again during the campaign. I suspect this incident plays into that.

You said you cringed when Biden told a radio host, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or for Trump, then you ain’t black.”

I compare Joe Biden to the alternative, not the Almighty. One of the things I learned early in this business is that one of the worst things you can do in politics is to make a joke out of any serious matter. He would have been better off not doing that.

Senator Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina who happens to be black, said that Biden’s remark showed him to be “condescending and arrogant.”

I’ve known Joe Biden for a long, long time. I don’t perceive anything about him to be arrogant. Tim Scott supports [Donald] Trump, and I don’t. If he can reconcile his blackness with Trump, that’s fine. I can’t reconcile mine with Trump. I’ll never ever accept the president of the United States looking into a camera and calling a black woman a dog. I will never get over that. Nothing else he says will matter to me. And he said that not about one of his opponents—that was about one of his staffers! Who supported him! I have three daughters, and I know how I’d feel about any man calling one of them a dog.

With his attacks on former president Barack Obama, among other things, it’s clear that Trump is going to play the race card in his reelection campaign. Do you worry about the tensions becoming dangerous, or is it better to have the issue out in the open?

I think we’re in much better shape for it to be out in the open than for it to be hidden under a bushel. That’s what happened in 2016. The whole thing about African American males responding to Trump saying, “What do you have to lose?” I know from my visits to barber shops that it resonated. But if you fool me once, that’s on you. If you fool me twice, that’s on me. If black men allow themselves to be fooled twice, it’s on them. Four years later, if it ain’t clear what they have to lose, if they can’t count up their losses with Trump, ask them to ask me.

You have said that it isn’t “a must” for Biden to pick a black woman as the vice presidential nominee. Why not?

I remember Sarah Palin. She was fine until it turned out the vetting hadn’t been thoroughly done. I remember Geraldine Ferraro. She was fine. It was her husband that got exposed during the campaign. So if I say it’s a must and something turns up in the vetting, what does that make me? I’m never going to say it’s a must for him to choose a black woman. It would be a plus.

Are you confident that black turnout will be high enough to win no matter whom Biden chooses?

I don’t know about that. Black voters are incentivized already. You can always stimulate the vote. There are picks that could energize the vote.

If Biden said, “Jim, I’ll choose whomever you want,” what would say?

I’m not gonna tell you! But I would tell him.

There’s a tremendous amount of outrage right now about the George Floyd and the Ahmaud Arbery killings. But unfortunately, we’ve seen this cycle many times before, where attention fades after a few weeks.

I think something’s going to be different about this. After the Minneapolis killing, I saw the Minnesota attorney general on TV. For the first time in the state’s history, that attorney general is African American. Also Muslim. That, to me, helps set this whole issue on a different plane. Minneapolis had issues with the former mayor and the police. This mayor says he’s calling for these men to be indicted. To me, that’s progress in something all of us need to work on. You can’t take these things in silos. I’m a history guy. I’ve been studying this country’s history pretty much all my life. It’s pretty sordid in some areas. But that history ought to inform us. Everybody’s not going to learn the lessons. The ones who learn, you hope they change the world.

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Our country can’t get to the better future we need with horrible, unqualified, bigoted leaders like Trump, Pence, Mitch, et al.

One of the most unhelpful of our failed institutions: A Supreme Court that has abandoned the courageous heritage of Brown v. Board of Education and instead encouraged, embraced, aided, and abetted the “Dred Scottification of the other” by a corrupt, bigoted, racist, overtly White Nationalist Executive and his equally corrupt cronies and toadies.

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

PWS

05-31-20

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

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

Gabriel Thompson reports for The Guardian:

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

•••

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

05-29-20

PSA FROM COURTSIDE: Migrants Are Essential To Our Country — So Is Their Good Health — Here Are Some Timely Tips Compiled By “Guest Contributor” Diane Harrison!

Help for Migrants in the Time of COVID-19

By Diane Harrison*

There’s no question that everyone is struggling to navigate a world marred by a serious pandemic that’s brought about serious repercussions, especially economic and financial. However, it can be argued that immigrants are having it so much worse at this time as the government, in an effort to protect its own, has chosen to overlook their plight. As a result, countless migrant workers are now on unsure footing. So, let’s dig deeper to understand the problem and see what solutions may be at hand.

Anticipating the Challenges

It’s undeniable that migrant workers are among the hardest hit by COVID-19 — not in terms of infections, per se, but by the fallout. While the government is quick to come to the aid of its citizens affected by the pandemic, the same can’t be said for immigrants, leaving countless migrant workers to fend for themselves.

The fact that immigrants are essential to the economy is undeniable.
Many are even working on the frontlines of this pandemic, making them truly vital to the country’s COVID-19 response.
Unfortunately, they are all but neglected right now in the pandemic, lacking assistance in almost all avenues from healthcare to economic.

Getting the Help You Need

Despite the direness of the situation, there’s still hope on the horizon. Migrant workers will likely have their work cut out for them as they seek much-needed help in their adoptive countries. But the fact is, help and support are available out there.

Despite the general lack of healthcare for migrants, there are some healthcare resources that can prove to be useful.
Some states and local governments have also stepped up to provide resources for immigrants, running the gamut from legal to financial to healthcare.
There are also those devoted to protecting migrant farmworkers and, by extension, the country’s food supply.

Tapping the Right Services

Of course, it definitely pays to take matters into one’s own hands. In fact, it will serve migrant workers well to look into the many services that can be leveraged.

Knowing one’s rights as an immigrant is more important now than ever.
In fact, it can be wise to hire freelancers to help navigate through the red tape, so consider engaging an immigration lawyer or even just a translator.
Of course, find a nanny who can be trusted to care for your kids as you work on improving your situation.

Indeed, it’s a difficult time that’s been made even more so with the multitude of uncertainties that migrant workers face on a daily basis. But really, there’s no reason to make this situation more overwhelming than it already is. Again, help can be had, and regardless if it comes from you, the government or other kind-hearted souls no longer matter. It just needs to be accepted.

Photo via Pexels.com

I’m Diane Harrison, a former librarian of 15 years turned non-profit marketing guru. Although I’m no longer a librarian and have switched career gears completely, I’ve combined my passion for helping others as well as my writing and researching skills to gather helpful health information.

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Thanks for informing us Diane!

PWS

05-28-20

🏴‍☠️THE REAL COVID-19: BEYOND THE PRESSING NEED TO PLAY GOLF, HIT THE CROWDED BEACH, HAVE A BEER AT THE PACKED BAR, & THE “RIGHT” TO ENDANGER OTHERS WITH MINDLESS, SELF-INDULGENT CONDUCT — STRANDED SYRIAN REFUGEES KNOW A MORE SOBERING SIDE OF THE PANDEMIC!

From the LA Times:

Click here for link to picture:

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=9cee50d0-0728-42f4-a318-bfea6d085bb8&v=sdk

A Syrian girl is among the residents in an apartment building where foreign workers have tested positive for the coronavirus. Long before the pandemic in Lebanon, they lived and worked in conditions that rights groups called exploitative — low wages, long hours, no labor law protections. Now, about 250,000 registered migrant laborers in the country — maids, garbage collectors, and farm and construction workers — are growing more desperate as an economic and financial crisis sets in, coupled with coronavirus restrictions.

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A crisis is no excuse for a President and a regime that “checks humanity at the door” and encourages others to do so.

Trump is now threatening to “shut down Twitter” because it fact-checks him. But, what other forum would allow him to spread his lies and vile, hateful rhetoric so widely and rapidly? I could live without Twitter. Others probably could too. But, could Trump?

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

PWS

05-27-20

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

https://apple.news/AiY6v3tN0SU6ES08RMUe29g

Natascha Uhlmann writes in Teen Vogue:

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

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

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

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

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

DISTINGUISHING “REAL” REFUGEES FROM ECONOMIC MIGRANTS

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Bill Gelfeld wrote recently in International Policy Digest:

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

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

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

PWS

05-25-20

NICOLE NAREA @ VOX: Sen. Booker Introduces Bill to Aid Migrant Health Care

https://apple.news/A-RCQm3FvRseAEFDQaZ6_Ug

Nicole writes:

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said he is planning to introduce legislation on Wednesday that would expand legal immigrants’ access to health care subsidy programs and allow unauthorized immigrants to buy health plans from federal insurance marketplaces.

The bill, known as the HEAL for Immigrant Women and Families Act, would permit legal immigrants to enroll in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), provided that they meet the programs’ income requirements. Rep. Pramila Jayapal introduced the bill in the House in October 2019, but it would be the first time that the Senate would consider the legislation.

The bill isn’t likely to advance in a Republican-controlled Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already rejected relief for unauthorized immigrants. But it’s the latest effort by Democrats to rectify inequalities in access to health care laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic.

Only a fraction of immigrants is eligible for Medicaid and CHIP: naturalized citizens, green card holders who have lived in the US for at least five years, immigrants who come to the US on humanitarian grounds (such as receiving asylum), members of the military and their families, and, in certain states, children and pregnant women with lawful immigration status. But many other categories of immigrants — including temporary visa holders and young immigrants who have been allowed to live and work in the US under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — would become eligible under Booker’s bill.

“Covid-19 has shined a punishing light on the unjust health care inequities that exist for communities of color broadly, and immigrant communities in particular,” Booker told Vox. “While we should always be working to expand access to health care for everyone, the dire current situation highlights the urgency of addressing these gaps in health care coverage. Health care is a right, and it shouldn’t depend on immigration status. We’re never going to be able to slow and stop the spread of the virus be if we continue to deny entire communities access to testing, treatment, or care.”

The bill also contains provisions expanding health care options for unauthorized immigrants, who are often uninsured and have so far been largely left out of Congress’s coronavirus relief efforts. Booker’s bill would allow them to buy health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace, from which they’re currently barred. It would also allow unauthorized immigrants to become eligible for health care subsidies if they have purchased such an insurance plan and meet other criteria, including minimum income requirements.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Nicole’s always outstanding and accessible analysis at the above link.

Good luck with getting this through the Senate with Moscow Mitch and the GOP in charge! Not going to happen. And, Booker knows it!

Few groups in America have been as screwed over as migrants, regardless of status, in this pandemic. They perform some of the most difficult and essential jobs that have kept us going through this crisis. But, when it comes to safety, stimulus, health care, unemployment and pretty much anything else they are left out in the cold by the GOP nativists.

Get back to work: no PPE, social distancing, hazard pay, testing, unemployment benefits, home computers, or health care for you! This isn’t the “GOP playing Soup Nazi” – it’s the real deal, the 21^st Century version of completely expendable workers and intentional “dehumanization” of the “other.” Already, xenophobic GOP nativists are whining about the very modest economic emergency money that the State of California has provided to their migrant residents, many “essential workers,” regardless of status.

But, Booker’s HEAL bill is a significant “ready for prime-time marker” if we get regime change! Health care and immigration are huge issues in the Hispanic community. Biden needs to get out the Hispanic vote and having legislation like this “ready to roll” on “Day 1” will be key in energizing voters to “work through the obstacles” and vote Trump & the GOP Senators out in the key states to finally get some much needed aid out to the American Hispanic community and others, including folks in rural areas of so-called “Red States,” and disproportionately adversely affected African-American communities in need who are excluded from “Trump’s America” (except, of course, when the chips are down and we need workers for thankless jobs or when Trump needs votes). You can also add in Asian Americans who have been working hard for America but face a barrage of racist-inspired incidents. There’s a “community of interest” there that the Dems’ should be able to attract and build upon with “good government” that furthers the common interests.

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

PWS

05-20-20

THE WORLD CHANNELS “COURTSIDE” — A Shocked & Dismayed World Now Sees America Under The Trump Clown 🤡🤡 Kakistocracy For What It Is: A Rich, Arrogant, Willfully Ignorant, Dishonest, Dangerous “Failing State” To Be Pitied — Not To Be Trusted, Followed, Or Admired — “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/15/donald-trump-coronavirus-response-world-leaders?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

THE WORLD CHANNELS “COURTSIDE” — A Shocked & Dismayed World Now Sees America Under The Trump Clown 🤡🤡 Kakistocracy For What It Is: A Rich, Arrogant, Willfully Ignorant, Dishonest, Dangerous “Failing State” To Be Pitied — Not To Be Trusted, Followed, Or Admired — “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/15/donald-trump-coronavirus-response-world-leaders?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

From The Guardian:

The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the US is “leading the world” with its response to the pandemic, but it does not seem to be going in any direction the world wants to follow.

Across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, views of the US handling of the coronavirus crisis are uniformly negative and range from horror through derision to sympathy. Donald Trump’s musings from the White House briefing room, particularly his thoughts on injecting disinfectant, have drawn the attention of the planet.

“Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,” the columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote in the Irish Times. “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life

The US has emerged as a global hotspot for the pandemic, a giant petri dish for the Sars-CoV-2 virus. As the death toll rises, Trump’s claims to global leadership have became more far-fetched. He told Republicans last week that he had had a round of phone calls with Angela Merkel, Shinzo Abe and other unnamed world leaders and insisted “so many of them, almost all of them, I would say all of them” believe the US is leading the way.

None of the leaders he mentioned has said anything to suggest that was true. At each milestone of the crisis, European leaders have been taken aback by Trump’s lack of consultation with them – when he suspended travel to the US from Europe on 12 March without warning Brussels, for example. A week later, politicians in Berlin accused Trump of an “unfriendly act” for offering “large sums of money” to get a German company developing a vaccine to move its research wing to the US.

People gather to protest the stay-at-home orders outside the state capitol building in Sacramento, California, this month. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

The president’s abrupt decision to cut funding to the World Health Organization last month also came as a shock. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, a former Spanish foreign minister, wrote on Twitter: “There is no reason justifying this move at a moment when their efforts are needed more than ever to help contain & mitigate the coronavirus pandemic.”

A poll in France last week found Merkel to be far and away the most trusted world leader. Just 2% had confidence Trump was leading the world in the right direction. Only Boris Johnson and Xi Jinping inspired less faith.

A survey this week by the British Foreign Policy Group found 28% of Britons trusted the US to act responsibly on the world stage, a drop of 13 percentage points since January, with the biggest drop in confidence coming among Conservative voters.

Dacian Cioloș, a former prime minister of Romania who now leads the Renew Europe group in the European parliament, captured a general European view this week as the latest statistics on deaths in the US were reported.

“Post-truth communication techniques used by rightwing populism movements simply do not work to beat Covid-19,” he told the Guardian. “And we see that populism cost lives.”

Around the globe, the “America first” response pursued by the Trump administration has alienated close allies. In Canada, it was the White House order in April to halt shipments of critical N95 protective masks to Canadian hospitals that was the breaking point.

The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, who had previously spoken out in support of Trump on several occasions, said the decision was like letting a family member “starve” during a crisis.

‘It will disappear’: the disinformation Trump spread about the coronavirus – timeline

“When the cards are down, you see who your friends are,” said Ford. “And I think it’s been very clear over the last couple of days who our friends are.”

In countries known for chronic problems of governance, there has been a sense of wonder that the US appears to have joined their ranks.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the above link.

Are we still “to be feared,” even if no longer admired or respected? Good question!

Probably, insofar as our collapse would take down a chunk of the world’s economy with it, leave a leadership vacuum, and change the balance of power, perhaps in favor of China, Russia, South Korea, Canada, and India. We also still have a big military and lots of sophisticated weapons, although modern terrorism has shown that sophistication in expensive weaponry is not always the “be all and end all” either for winning wars or causing mass disorder, death, and mayhem.

Still, as our civil governance and international influence disintegrates, what happens with and to our military is a huge concern and a “big X factor.” Will the tradition of “civilian control over the military” also fall victim to the kakistocracy and the failure of civilian governing institutions? What’s happened to our intelligence community under the Trump kakistocracy is likely a bad omen.

Who would have thought that Trump could do so much permanent or at least long-term damage in such a short period of time? And who would have believed that our centuries-old constitutional and democratic institutions, meant to protect individual rights, enforce the rule of law, and check unrestrained abuses of power by a megalomaniac, yet highly incompetent, dishonest, dangerous, and evil Executive would have crumbled so quickly and performed so haplessly when confronted by a President and an unscrupulous, corrupt, authoritarian regime and party of toadies perfectly willing to press aggressively inane and illegal policies and false narratives to destroy the nation and everyone in it as a means of pillaging and enhancing their own power?

Yet, here we are! Much of the rest of the world appears to “get” it. Yet tens of millions of Americans who continue to support and enable the kakistocracy don’t, or they simply don’t care about our nation and the common good.

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

PWS

05-15-20

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