🌳CELEBRATING EARTH DAY: Hon.“Sir Jeffrey” Chase Joins Other Scholars In Exploring “Environmental Refugees” — “The White Paper explains that the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are particularly vulnerable to climate change issues, and that the U.S. bears some responsibility for this fact through its high levels of greenhouse emissions and its historical policies in Central America.”

America has a not so good history of dealing with climate migration.
“Migrant Mom”
PHOTO BY: Dorothea Lange
Public Realm

Kristin Hannah’s latest novel “The Four Winds” centers on the ordeal of a single Mom struggling to save her family during the “Great Migration” of the 1930’s.
PHOTO:WashPost.com

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2021/4/22/climate-change-and-asylum-law

Climate Change and Asylum Law

Today, Earth Day, Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, and the University Network for Human Rights released an important White Paper on the issue of climate displacement and its intersection with U.S. immigration laws, including the law of asylum. The report, Shelter from the Storm: Policy Options to Address Climate Induced Migration from the Northern Triangle, is both a call to action by the Biden Administration, and a tribute to the adaptability of international refugee law to address a vast array of serious discriminatory harms, including those related to climate change.

Seventy years after its enactment, the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees has demonstrated its ability to provide protection to victims of domestic violence, female genital cutting, coercive family planning policies, and violence from third-generation gangs, which function in some areas as de facto governments. It has provided status to those targeted because of their sexual orientation or sexual identity. It has served to afford protection to those suffering from physical or mental illnesses or disabilities.

Attention is now turning to those displaced by climate change. The Biden Administration has issued two Executive Orders devoted to the issue of climate change within days of taking office. The second of those, issued on February 4, included the topic of “planning for the impact of climate change on migration.” Section 6 of the order requires the issuance of a report on the topic within 180 days.

To present, the U.S. has responded in some instances to rapid onset climate events such as hurricanes and earthquakes by designating impacted countries for Temporary Protected Status. One of the interesting points raised in the White Paper involves the ordinarily overlooked issue of displacement caused by slow onset climate events. These include desertification, rising sea levels, salinization of farmland, and shifts in precipitation patterns. The issue lends itself to being addressed through an array of legal responses (such as TPS, Deferred Enforced Departure, humanitarian parole, and even the creation of a new climate visa), and the White Paper explains how each of these legal avenues can be employed to provide protection to those displaced by such events. But the White Paper’s discussion of the idea of analyzing some forms of climate-related harm under our asylum laws is particularly intriguing.

Development of the intellectual groundwork for climate change-based refugee law analysis is underway at the international level. As the White Paper notes, in October 2020, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees issued an important document setting forth “legal considerations regarding claims for international protections made in the context of the adverse effects of climate change and disasters.” This follows the 2020 publication of Matthew Scott’s Climate Change, Disasters, and the Refugee Convention, the first full-length treatise on the topic.

It is important to recognize that asylum is not a cure for all harms that arise in the world. As in the other examples cited above, asylum responds to serious human rights violations from which the state cannot or will not protect that discriminate based on the fundamental characteristics of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. As one scholar has stated, “international standards generally require that the harm be severe and related to a core right as understood under evolving human rights norms.”1 But “the evaluation of persecution requires a universal but flexible standard, capable of evolving and responding to changing conditions and international norms.”2

In the climate change context, governments undertake projects that impact climate issues such as the availability of water, or the contamination of air or farmland, that may benefit one segment of the population at the expense of another. Governments also make politicized decisions whether to address slow-onset climate change (which may include decisions regarding whether to regulate non-state industries engaging in business activities with environmental consequences), and in the speed and scope of their relief efforts on behalf of victims of climate-related disasters. Where these decisions particularly impact a segment of the population in a severe way on account of one of the five statutorily protected grounds, the result may constitute persecution protected under our asylum law. While the impact of these policies may cause serious harm standing alone, it may alternatively serve as the “last straw” in triggering flight where the climate change factors accelerated the degree of harm already suffered on account of a protected ground such as gender or indigenous status.3

Furthermore, a government’s punishment of outspoken critics of its climate change policies or lack of adequate response to a disaster may constitute persecution on account of a political opinion, as that term is defined for asylum purposes.4

Climate change could also play a more indirect but still important role in asylum determinations. For example, an asylum applicant who has established a well-founded fear of persecution must also demonstrate that they could not evade persecution through internal relocation within their home country, provided such relocation would be reasonable under all of the circumstances.5 But in its October 2020 Legal Considerations, UNHCR cautions at paragraph 12 that the progressive effect of slow-onset climate change spreading throughout a country may make relocation “neither relevant nor reasonable.”6 Furthermore, where an applicant who has suffered past persecution is shown to have no future fear due to changed conditions, a grant of humanitarian asylum may be merited where the asylum applicant establishes a reasonable possibility of facing “other serious harm” upon return.7 Harm resulting upon return from climate change should arguably constitute “other serious harm” sufficient to meet this standard.8

The White Paper explains that the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are particularly vulnerable to climate change issues, and that the U.S. bears some responsibility for this fact through its high levels of greenhouse emissions and its historical policies in Central America.9 In the 1980s and 90s, the B.I.A. engaged in logical contortions to avoid providing those fleeing civil wars in the Northern Triangle with the asylum protections it willingly extended to those fleeing similar conditions in other parts of the world.10 And more recently, refugees from violence from third-generation gangs and domestic violence in the region have suffered setbacks to refugee protection through similarly bad precedent decisions of the Attorneys General and the B.I.A.11

As the international community addresses the question of refugee determinations involving factors relating to climate change, it is possible for the U.S. to be at the forefront. Hopefully, today’s White Paper will provide the present administration with useful guidance towards that goal.

This report was coordinated and written by teams from the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (HIRC) and the HLS Immigration Project (HIP) at Harvard Law School (collectively “Harvard”) and the University Network for Human Rights, Yale Immigrant Justice Project, and Yale Environmental Law Association (collectively “University Network/Yale”). The coordinators/authors from Harvard were John Willshire Carrera and Deborah Anker. The coordinators/authors from University Network/Yale were Camila Bustos and Thomas Becker. I am greatly honored to be listed as a co-author for my work with the Harvard team.

The following fellows participated in researching and drafting the report: Yong Ho Song (Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Fellow at Greater Boston Legal Services) and Fabiola Alvelais (Harvard Law School Henigson Human Rights Fellow and University Network for Human Rights Fellow).

The following Harvard students participated in researching and drafting the report: Rachel Landry (HIRC), Grant Charness (HIRC), Justin Bogda (HIRC), Regina Paparo (HIRC), Mira Nasser (HIRC), Lily Cohen (HIRC), Kira Hessekiel (HIRC), Nicholas Dantzler (HIRC), Shaza Loutfi (HIRC), Ariel Sarandinaki (HIRC), Gabrielle Kim (HIRC), Katie Quigley (HIP), Gina Starfield (HIP).

The following students supervised by and in coordination with University Network for Human Rights participated in researching and drafting the report: Natasha Brunstein (Yale), Alisa White (Yale), Aaron Troncoso (Yale), Rubin Danberg Biggs (Yale), Ram Dolom (Yale), A.J. Hudson (Yale), Rekha Kennedy (Yale), Liz Jacob (Yale), Eleanor Runde (Yale), Eric Eisner (Yale), Juan Luna Leon (Yale), Karen Sung (Yale), Abby Sodie (Wesleyan), Ericka Ekhator (Wesleyan), Gabrielle Ouellette (Wesleyan), Jesse de la Bastide (Wesleyan), Stella Ramsey (Wesleyan), and Luis Martinez (Vanderbilt).

The report was edited by: Sabrineh Ardalan, James Cavallaro, Nancy Kelly, Ruhan Nagra, Gina Starfield, Katie Quigley, and Cindy Zapata.

Notes:

Deborah E. Anker, The Law of Asylum in the United States (2020 Ed.) (Thomson Reuters) at § 4.4.

Id. at § 4.3.

White Paper at 35.

Id. at 35.

8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(1)(i)(B).

White Paper at 36-37.

8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(2)(i)(C).

See White Paper at 33; Matter of L-S-, 25 I&N Dec. 705, 714 (BIA 2012) (holding that “other serious harm” requires no nexus to a protected ground, and can be found in “situations where the claimant could experience severe mental or emotional harm or physical injury.”

White Paper at 4.

See, e.g., Matter of Maldonado-Cruz, 19 I&N Dec. 509 (BIA 1988); and cf., e.g. Matter of Vigil, 19 I&N Dec. 572 (BIA 1987) with Matter of Salim, 18 I&N Dec. 311 (BIA 1982)

See, e.g., Matter of A-B-, 28 I&N Dec. 28 I&N Dec. 199 (A.G. 2021); Matter of A-C-A-A-, 28 I&N Dec. 84 (A.G. 2020); Matter of E-R-A-L-, 27 I&N Dec. 767 (BIA 2020); Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I&N Dec. 581 (A.G. 2019); Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018); Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I&N Dec. 40 (BIA 2017); Matter of M-E-V-G-, 26 I&N Dec. 227 (BIA 2014); Matter of W-G-R-, 26 I&NM Dec. 208 (BIA 2014).

Copyright 2021 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Republished by permission.

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

Such important work! These are the folks who should be running Government policy, not just writing “White Papers,” no matter how brilliant.

In this NBC News video from yesterday, Hallie Jackson highlights upper class “climate migrants” already relocating from places like the Georgia coast to Asheville, NC, to insulate themselves from the worst effects of ongoing climate change and global warming. Things are going to get much more serious when Bangladesh and other sea-level nations and island nations (e.g., Indonesia) start going under water. Probably not so good for Florida either!

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/cities-prepare-for-future-influx-of-new-residents-fleeing-climate-change-110693957661

🇺🇸⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-22-21

☠️⚰️21ST CENTURY NAZISM: OF COURSE “IT COULD HAPPEN HERE” — Trump Proved That America Has the Key Ingredient Of The Nazi State: Indifference To Human Suffering On A Massive Scale 🤮 — “The Trump administration, in this light, was proposing what one answer could be: dead bodies, piled up until they’re out of view. The country, it seems, can live with that.”

Death On The Rio Grande — Supremes Sign Death Warrants For Vulnerable Refugees, Trash Refugee Act of 1980

Trump Dumping Asylum Seekers in Hondiras — Dumping Asylum Seekers in Honduras
Artist: Monte Wolverton
Reproduced under license

Star Chamber Justice — “Justice”
Star Chamber
Style

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/trump-what-we-learned-suffering-death.html

Tom Scocca writes in Slate:

This is part of What We Learned, a series of reflections on the meaning and legacy of the Trump years.

One of the last things the Trump administration did, while it still had the power to do it, was reportedly kidnap a 9-year-old boy from his family. Customs and Border Protection officials at San Francisco International Airport denied entry to 19-year-old Christian Laporte and his younger brother, Vladimir Fardin, traveling from Haiti on U.S.-issued student and tourist visas respectively last Sunday—and then separated them from each other, declared Vladimir to therefore be an unaccompanied minor, and shipped him off to a detention center.

This was, by this point in Donald Trump’s term, not particularly surprising. Child abuse was at the center of the country’s immigration policy for these past four years, part of an intentional effort to scare people away from trying to come here. Hundreds of children disappeared into custody with no effort to keep track of them or reunite them with their families. A regime that had already been inhumane under President Obama, pushing migrants toward deadly desert crossings, turned fully malignant, with federal agents destroying water supplies and prosecutors targeting humanitarian workers. Asylum laws were cast aside.

On one level, this was straightforwardly racist, joining the goals of white nationalist policymakers like Stephen Miller to the daily bigotry of many border patrol officers. Rhetorically and conceptually, though, it was an effort to roll back the consensus that the United States is a nation of immigrants. The attack extended to legally documented immigration and residency, and on to citizenship itself, breaking precedent to strip people of what had seemed like a secure membership in the nation.

As Adam Serwer indelibly wrote, the cruelty of this was the point. The politics of Trumpism were built around white people sharing in rituals of viciousness and exclusion, coming together to follow their leader’s rejection of their designated enemies and to revel in how far things would go.

But the longer the administration wore on, the more the cruelty seemed to have another, horrifyingly practical point behind it. Trumpism was not just testing how hateful the country could be. It was exploring the limits of America’s capacity for indifference.

By the end, there were no limits to be found. The people thrown into detention at the border or deported at random may have been the first to be treated as nonpersons, but they soon had more company than anyone could count. Hurricane Maria hit U.S. territory in Puerto Rico, and the administration simply failed to respond, leaving hundreds and then thousands of people to die. It was Katrina all over again, except it wasn’t: No real lasting blame attached itself to the government’s deadly failure. The death toll rarely made it to the top of any lists of the president’s wrongdoing.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article t the link.

Readers of Courtside over the past few years know all about this: “Dred Scottification” — dehumanization of “the other” — often the most vulnerable among us.

It’s the the basic policy of large numbers of GOP politicos, many Federal Judges (including, disgracefully, GOP-appointed Supremes who routinely hide their inhumanity behind wooden, wrong-headed legalisms and complete gobbledygook designed to screen them from the stench of decaying humanity they have betrayed), lots of bureaucrats, and about 74 million American voters who voted to retain a cruel, incompetent, neo-Nazi and his regime based on 30,500 outrageous lies and false narratives, most of them overtly racist, misogynist, bigoted, dehumanizing, or all all of the foregoing.

These are NOT “differences of opinion” or “conservative v liberal philosophy.” Not by any means! They are differences in humanity: how we value truth, justice, and the essence of our fellow humans’ right to exist.

The good news is that there were at least seven million more of those of us willing to give humanity a shot. But, coming to an “equilibrium” in a democracy where nearly half the voting population rejects the basic principles of democracy and indeed the humanity of much of our majority and most of the world beyond us, won’t be easy.

PWS

01-25-21

🇺🇸🗽👍🏼😎MAKING AMERICA BETTER, FINALLY: “Mr. Biden has laid out an immigration program that would genuinely put America first.” (WashPost) — No Wonder GOP Anti-American White Nationalists Like Tom Cotton Are Apoplectic & Spouting Their Racist, White Elitist Nonsense!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bidens-bold-immigration-plan-would-really-put-america-first/2021/01/21/4efa3f42-5a98-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html

From WashPost:

Opinion by the Editorial Board

January 21 at 1:57 PM ET

PRESIDENT BIDEN has served notice that his ambitious immigration plan is in the first rank of his priorities. Some of his program will be immediately implementable; some may get bogged down in Congress, where many Republicans will regard it as an occasion to brandish the word “amnesty,” red meat for their bases. No matter. Mr. Biden’s plan is in keeping with the United States’ best traditions. It responds to the challenge of population stagnation. It would reverse his predecessor’s extravagantly cruel policies. And it is now clear that when it comes to immigration, Mr. Biden is all in.

That courageous stance was not necessarily expected or politically expedient. Unity was the new president’s campaign theme and inaugural touchstone, yet few issues are as divisive as immigration. His evident readiness to tap his modest reserves of political capital for a slugfest on immigration is a signal that the United States has returned to its roots as a beacon for refugees and a humanitarian role model among nations.

The plan is also smart. The U.S. population growth rate in the just-ended decade was the lowest since the first national census in 1790, according to the Brookings Institution — lower even than during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The number of Americans below the age of 18 actually shrank in the 2010s, by more than 1 million.

That stagnation, the product of an aging population and historically low fertility rates, cannot be reversed by immigration alone. But it will certainly be exacerbated, and has been in the past four years, by a policy hostile to newcomers. In President Donald Trump’s penultimate year in office, annual net immigration fell below 600,000, the lowest level in decades; it was more than 1 million in the final years of the Obama presidency.

What’s more, by proposing an eight-year path to citizenship for most of the nation’s 11 million unauthorized migrants — the centerpiece of his plan — Mr. Biden is attempting to align law and reality. By 2029, when they would be eligible for citizenship, most will have been in the United States for more than a quarter-century. At least 4 million are essential workers in construction, food processing, groceries, restaurants, agriculture and transportation — doing jobs critical to practically every American.

Mr. Biden is moving quickly where he can — fully reinstating the Obama-era program providing work permits and deportation protection for “dreamers,” young migrants brought to this country by their parents; rescinding Mr. Trump’s 2017 travel ban from majority-Muslim countries; halting construction of the southern border wall; and reining in the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation policies. He has also signaled he will increase annual refugee admissions, which Mr. Trump poleaxed, and scrap a Trump administration rule that denies green cards to immigrants deemed likely to use public benefits such as food stamps.

Other measures will require congressional action. Under legislation Mr. Biden is sending to Congress, green cards conferring legal permanent residency would be granted to dreamers as well as to immigrants from strife- and disaster-wracked nations who have been here for years.

The president is also pushing tougher border security — in recognition that the new administration is not inviting a wave of new migrants, still less amid a pandemic — though not as a precondition for his immigration reforms. His more impactful, long-term strategy to dissuade new waves of illegal immigrants is a concerted aid effort to boost economies and contain crime in Central America.

Mr. Biden has laid out an immigration program that would genuinely put America first.

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

The GOP White Nationalists/Nativists/White Supremacists are shaking in their cowardly boots. Why?

Because in a diverse meritocracy with equal justice for all and government in the true national interest they would lose their corrupt advantages and disproportionate power over the lives and the future of the majority of Americans who don’t share their repulsive, racist views and did not support their traitor insurrectionist Fuhrer in his attempt to undermine democracy, disenfranchise voters (targeting disproportionately legitimate voters of color for disenfranchisement, while shrugging off the actions, antics, and influence of “magamoron” Q-Anon crazies, conspiracy theorists, and other fringe haters that he and his party relied upon to maintain power), and take over our government by force!

Four things that the GOP fears above all else: 1) democracy, 2) accountability, 3) equality, 4) truth!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-22-21

🤮NO PEACE ON EARTH GOODWILL TOWARD MEN (WOMEN, OR ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) FROM REGIME OF “BAD SANTAS” 🦹🏿‍♂️🎅🏻— Illegally Separated Families Continue To Suffer Irreparable Trauma, 😰 Volunteer Groups 😇🗽⚖️ Left To Pick Up Pieces — A Reminder That Defeated Regime Has Mocked, Disparaged, & Trashed Christ’s Values & Assaulted Humanity Over Four Christmases!🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻

Jacob Soboroff reports for NBC News:

Inside the effort to provide mental health care to migrant families

SHARE THIS –

COPIED

Seneca Family of Agencies provides mental health care to migrant families separated by the Trump administration. NBC News’ Jacob Soboroff reports on the obstacles faced by the nonprofit in locating families.

Dec. 22, 2020

Watch Jacob’s report here.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/inside-the-effort-to-provide-mental-health-care-to-migrant-families-98295877800

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

Jacob and his terrific NBC News colleague Julia Edwards Ainsley have been at the forefront of exposing the irreparable human carnage and lasting trauma caused by the regime’s unlawful, racist, White Nationalist immigration policies (some of which were unconscionably “greenlighted” by an immoral and irresponsible Supremes GOP majority that views themselves and their rotten to the core, inhumane, right-wing ideology as above the needless human suffering they further and encourage).

The “perps” like,”Gonzo” Sessions, Grauleiter Miller, Kirstjen Nielsen, “Big Mac With Lies” McAleenan, Noel Francisco, Rod Rosenstein, et al, walk free while the victims continue to suffer and others, like the Christ-like folks at Seneca Family of Agencies, are left to pick up the pieces! How is this “justice?”

Our national policies have truly abandoned Christ’s values of self-sacrifice, mercy, generosity in spirit and deed, courage in the face of oppression, human compassion, justice, and assistance for the most vulnerable among us under the perverted and immoral “leadership” of a man and his party without humane values or respect for truth who stand for absolutely nothing that is decent in the world.

As Americans suffer and die from the pandemic he mocked, downplayed, and mishandled; unemployed Americans are dissed and shortchanged by his party of underachieving, out of touch fat cats, liars, cowards, and truth deniers; asylum seekers needlessly suffer in squalid camps in Mexico; refugees scorned, unlawfully and immorally abandoned and abused by the world’s richest country face persecution, torture, despair, and death; and non-criminals rot in DHS’s “New American Gulag,” the immoral Grifter-in-Chief lives it up at taxpayer expense for one last Christmas at his Florida resort; fumes about a fair and square election that he lost big time; savors a rash of holiday executions; delays bipartisan COVID relief; ferments treason against our republic; and pardons a wide range of scumbags, felons, war criminals, family members, cronies, fraudsters, and other totally undeserving characters.

But, there is hope for our world at Christmas: 27 days and counting to the end of the kakistocracy, expulsion of the unqualified con-man and his motley crew of criminals and cronies, and the ascension of a real President and Vice President, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, to lead us, and perhaps our world, out of the current mess to a kinder, brighter future. That might be the best present of all this Christmas.

Due Process Forever!⚖️🗽👍🏼

PWS🎅🏻🎄😎

12-24-20

🇺🇸🗽⚖️🆘NY TIMES WITH THE TRUTH: A VOTE FOR TRUMP IS A VOTE AGAINST AMERICA! — The Worst President In History, Not To Mention That Beyond Being Totally Incompetent & Unqualified, A Truly Horrible Human Being With NO Redeeming Values!

Trump Clown — Donald J. Trump
Famous American Clown
(Officially titled “Ass Clown”)
Artist: Scott Scheidly
Orlando, FL
Reproduced by permission

Darth Vader — D. Vader
Minister of Justice
Banana Republic of Trump

Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.

Mr. Trump’s ruinous tenure already has gravely damaged the United States at home and around the world. He has abused the power of his office and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents, shattering the norms that have bound the nation together for generations. He has subsumed the public interest to the profitability of his business and political interests. He has shown a breathtaking disregard for the lives and liberties of Americans. He is a man unworthy of the office he holds.

The editorial board does not lightly indict a duly elected president. During Mr. Trump’s term, we have called out his racism and his xenophobia. We have critiqued his vandalism of the postwar consensus, a system of alliances and relationships around the globe that cost a great many lives to establish and maintain. We have, again and again, deplored his divisive rhetoric and his malicious attacks on fellow Americans. Yet when the Senate refused to convict the president for obvious abuses of power and obstruction, we counseled his political opponents to focus their outrage on defeating him at the ballot box.

Nov. 3 can be a turning point. This is an election about the country’s future, and what path its citizens wish to choose.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the editorial here:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/16/opinion/donald-trump-worst-president.html

Amen! Take back our country! 🇺🇸 We can’t survive another four years of the maliciously incompetent, racist kakistocracy🏴‍☠️!

PWS

10-17-20

“A Complete Abdication of Our Humanitarian and Moral Duty” – Outside News – Immigration Law – LexisNexis® Legal Newsroom

Syrian Refugee photography work by Bengin Ahmad
Creative Commons License

From Dan Kowalski @ LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/outsidenews/posts/a-complete-abdication-of-our-humanitarian-and-moral-duty

“A Complete Abdication of Our Humanitarian and Moral Duty”

LIRS, Oct. 1, 2020

“The Trump administration proposed its annual refugee admissions ceiling just before midnight on Wednesday, September 30, committing to resettle just 15,000 individuals in Fiscal Year 2021, which would be the lowest admissions ceiling since the inception of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).

The announcement comes on the heels of what was previously the lowest level of refugee admissions in American history. For FY 2020, which ended on September 30, the administration had set a goal to welcome just 18,000 refugees, in stark contrast to the average admissions ceiling of approximately 95,000 since the beginning of the USRAP. Despite this historically low target, the administration barely attained 65% of allotted admissions – resettling only 11,814 refugees this fiscal year, according to Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

“In just four years, this Administration has cut the refugee resettlement program from 110,000 to a historic low of fifteen thousand. At a time of unprecedented global need, today’s decision to further cut the refugee admissions ceiling is a complete abdication of our humanitarian and moral duty.” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a resettlement agency that has welcomed hundreds of thousands of refugees since 1939. “Let this serve as a wake-up call to those who believe this administration supports avenues of legal immigration. Refugees go through extreme vetting and have done everything our government has asked of them, yet they continue to be met with open hostility and egregious processing delays from this administration”

The record-low admissions figures have also disproportionately impacted certain groups. Admissions of Muslim refugees have declined to just 2,503, down from approximately 38,900 in FY 2016 and approximately 4,900 in FY 2019. Additionally, the Trump administration set aside 4,000 slots for Iraqi allies who assisted U.S. interests in their home country. However, it fell drastically short, resettling only 123 individuals in this category, or just 3% of the admissions goal.

“It shows the tragic extent to which we have abandoned our Iraqi allies who risked their lives, and those of their family members, to assist U.S. government and military personnel,” noted Vignarajah. “This further undermines our diplomatic and military efforts, rendering it nearly impossible to garner support from regional allies moving forward.”

Given FY2020’s record-low admissions numbers and an FY2021 proposed admissions ceiling of only 15,000, refugee advocates are deeply concerned by the human toll on the most vulnerable.

“In real terms, this means that families who have already waited years are forced to postpone reunification. It means that thousands who would otherwise find safety on our shores are left to languish in refugee camps, with no end in sight,” concluded Vignarajah. “This heartless decision is diametrically opposed to our values as a welcoming nation and it dishonors our common humanity at a time of dire need.”

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

Here’s then”Trump Regression” — From international leader, to outlier, to outlaw state!🏴‍☠️

This Fall, vote for a return to humanity and the rule of law!

PWS

10-02-20

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

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN

Album version

Music & Lyrics by Bruce Springsteen

Well, they’re still racing out at the Trestles

But that blood it never burned in her veins

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

And a style she’s trying to maintain

Well, if she wants to see me

You can tell her that I’m easily found

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

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

There’s a darkness on the edge of town

Well, everybody’s got a secret, Sonny

Something that they just can’t face

Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it

They carry it with them every step that they take

Till some day they just cut it loose

Cut it loose or let it drag ’em down

Where no one asks any questions

Or looks too long in your face

In the darkness on the edge of town

In the darkness on the edge of town

Well, now some folks are born into a good life

And other folks get it anyway anyhow

Well, I lost my money and I lost my wife

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

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

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

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

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

For wanting things that can only be found

In the darkness on the edge of town

In the darkness on the edge of town

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

Nicole Narea
Immigration Reporter
Vox.com

https://apple.news/AyEIE9zXYSTeZ-TvO2TLZAQ

Nicole writes at Vox:

. . . .

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

08-27-20

🤯🤯🤯👽💩🤖👾THE TWILIGHT ZONE “PRESIDENCY” — “There are times I get online, see the latest news, and wonder how we are living in a world where Kafka writes for the Twilight Zone starring the Marx Brothers!” — Dan Rather

Click here for the “Trump Regime/GOP Theme Song:”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b5aW08ivHU

Amen!

This is what American “Government” is these days. An absurdist parody where the architect of death, disorder, hate, inequality, international ridicule, unemployment, and White Supremacist violence blames a former Vice President for the absolute mess the incumbent has made of our nation! And, guess what — a crowd of sycophants actually has the audacity to cheer and (apparently) believe this evil, absurdist fantasy and to claim that their selfish, tone-deaf, dishonest minority views represent the “real America!”

In other words, Trump is essentially “running against his own record” while taking no responsibility for the mess he has made. In a pure Kafka/Twilight Zone moment, his GOP toadies let him get away with it. Worse yet, they contemptuously and arrogantly think the rest of us are stupid or clueless enough to believe this fantastic nonsense!

But, maybe there is some historical reason for this contempt. Trump’s mess is also to some extent the fault of the majority of us who “failed to make the sale” and get out the vote in 2016. We won a clear majority of the votes, but were’t smart, motivated, or diligent enough to turn our majority into political power. Some would call that the height of ineptitude and failure of resolve! That, in turn, has unleashed great, unnecessary, pain, suffering, death, and despair on America and the world.

Even allowing for the unreliability of polls, Trump apparently has never had the support of the majority of Americans, let alone voters. Yet, he “governs” as if the minority he represents are the only Americans! And, the rest of us have let him get away with it!

Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that ended “The American Experiment” and replaced it with “The American Kakistocracy?” We have a chance this Fall to get it right and to put America back on track to fairness, decency, humanity, equality, and a better life for all Americans — to take America to another level and to resume a positive position of world leadership. To address racial and economic inequality and to improve and value the lives of all Americans (including, of course, Trump supporters). The chance might not come again.

So, don’t blow it! Put Joe Biden in office, a decent, experienced, highly competent, thoughtful, caring, forward looking human being with a positive vision for all Americans and a commitment to a better world. Give Joe and his able and inspirational partner Kamala Harris a Democratic-led Senate that will help them govern for the common welfare, rather than for the benefit of one family and a few of their cronies at their top!

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

Due Process Forever! Kafka, The Twilight Zone, and the Marx Brothers, Never!

PWS

08-28-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎KAKISTOCRACY KORNER: SPOTLIGHT ON AMERICA’S MOST DANGEROUS HATE GROUP: THE RNC!

Paul,

This past weekend, the Republican National Committee caved to white supremacist and other hate groups by adopting a resolution titled Refuting the Legitimacy of the Southern Poverty Law Center to Identify Hate Groups.

The focus of the resolution is that “the SPLC is a radical organization” that harms conservative organizations and voices through our hate group designations.

This attack on our work is an attempt to excuse the Trump administration’s pattern and practice of working with individuals and organizations that malign entire groups of people — immigrants, Muslims and the LGBTQ community — while promoting policies that undermine their very existence. It comes from the same vein as Trump’s claim that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

Simply put, it’s an audacious attempt by Trump and the GOP to paper over the bigotry and racism that has been allowed to infect their policies.

This resolution comes at a moment when Trump will argue at the Republican National Convention that he will combat hate and bigotry, despite welcoming the support of QAnon. It also comes days after the indictment of Stephen Bannon, reminding us that Bannon was once the White House chief strategist and senior counselor and CEO of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. And it comes just after our special investigation shined a light on One America News Network’s Jack Posobiec, a reporter at Trump’s favorite network who is aligned with white supremacy and has used his platform to further hate speech and propaganda.

Trump should sever these ties to hate groups and extremists instead of doubling down through this RNC resolution.

The Trump administration has filled its ranks and consulted with alumni and allies from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigrant hate group that has ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists. They include Julie Kirchner, Kris Kobach, Jeff Sessions and, most notably, Stephen Miller.

The Trump administration has worked with hate groups like the Family Research Council (FRC) to roll back LGBTQ rights. FRC was designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group for decades of demonizing LGBTQ people and spreading harmful pseudoscience about them. Over the years, the organization has published books, reports and brochures that have linked being LGBTQ to pedophilia, claimed that LGBTQ people are dangerous to children and claimed that LGBTQ people are promiscuous and violent.

Anti-Muslim groups have also been welcomed into the administration, including the Center for Security Policy (CSP). Fred Fleitz, a longtime staffer, was appointed the executive secretary and chief of staff of the National Security Council. For decades, CSP has peddled absurd accusations that shadowy Muslim Brotherhood operatives have infiltrated all levels of government.

These extremists are seeking a license to continue spreading their bigotry and will do anything to undermine those — like the SPLC, which tracks and monitors hate groups — who expose their extremist views and oppose their attacks on communities. With this resolution, Trump and members of the GOP have shown the extent to which they will carry their water.

This past weekend, the RNC also released a resolution titled Resolution to Conserve History and Combat Prejudice – Christopher Columbus. It’s a remarkably transparent statement that hate and bigotry stem from Black Lives Matter protesters. The RNC and Trump did not denounce organizations that promote antisemitism, Islamophobia, neo-Nazis, anti-LGBTQ sentiment or racism. It only criticized the SPLC for challenging those groups.

Outraged? Here are two ways to take action today:

1. Sign up for our next Power Hour Virtual Phone Bank on August 27. We’ll be calling likely unregistered voters of color in Georgia to share information on how they can register to vote.

2. Listen and subscribe to our new podcast, Sounds Like Hate. Episode 2 is about the connections between extremists and the Trump administration.

Onward,

Margaret Huang
SPLC President & CEO

DONATE

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400 Washington Avenue
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Copyright 2020

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

Pretty much says it all about today’s GOP and the Trump Administration.

· No platform

· No values

· No truth

· No humanity

· No decency

· No America

· No inclusion

· The party of “Dred Scottification,” Jim Crow, and White Supremacy

Sure “Sounds Like Hate” to me!

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

PWS

08-25-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️IS THIS HOW WE WANT TO BE REMEMBERED BY FUTURE GENERATIONS? – America “is no longer committed to basic standards of decency!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/canada-gives-americas-treatment-of-refugees-a-failing-grade/2020/07/27/3eabeb8e-cdfa-11ea-b0e3-d55bda07d66a_story.html

From the WashPost Editorial Board:

Opinion by Editorial Board

July 27, 2020 at 1:23 p.m. EDT

NOT SO long ago, asylum seekers turned to the United States, seeking refuge from repressive states. Now the United States is one of those repressive states.

That’s the gist of a Canadian federal court ruling, which would scrap a 16-year-old bilateral treaty called the Safe Third Country Agreement, under which Canada and the United States each recognize the other as a safe place to seek refuge. Justice Ann Marie McDonald ruled that Canada’s practice of turning back third-country refugees who try to cross at official points of entry along the U.S.-Canada frontier — on the theory that they have already reached a safe harbor in the United States — no longer makes sense given the atrocious treatment to which they are subjected south of the border. Canada, she wrote, can no longer turn a blind eye to the reality that the United States denies decent and dignified treatment to asylum seekers.

Justice McDonald based her ruling partly on testimony from asylum seekers who described harrowing conditions of confinement in U.S. detention, to which they are automatically taken when turned back by Canada. One of them, a refugee from Ethiopia named Nedira Jemal Mustefa, recounted what she called a “terrifying, isolating and psychologically traumatic” experience at a “freezing” facility where she was held in upstate New York. Other testimony in the Canadian court provided evidence that detainees in U.S. facilities were denied access to counsel, phone calls and translators, and some were subjected to solitary confinement.

The judge found that the “accounts of the detainees demonstrate both physical and psychological suffering because of detention, and a real risk that they will not be able to assert asylum claims” in the United States.

None of this is surprising to advocates and others who have monitored the travails of asylum seekers, especially since President Trump took office. In the past two years, his anti-immigration policies have prompted more than 50,000 asylum seekers to cross into Canada outside official ports of entry, thereby skirting the treaty’s automatic-return provision — until the pandemic forced the border’s closing this spring. After arriving in Canada and undergoing security and medical screening, they have been allowed to work and receive basic benefits such as medical care as they await adjudication of their asylum claims.

Canada is among the United States’s closest allies; gratuitous America-bashing is not the norm there. That a Canadian judge would give a failing grade to this country’s commitment to human rights where they concern refugees is a damning rebuke.

Before her ruling takes effect, the judge gave the Canadian government six months to appeal, should it choose to do so. Until now, the treaty’s supporters have justified it on the grounds that it bars “asylum shopping” by refugees. The question facing the administration of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is whether its neighbor to the south still adheres to what Western democracies regard as the basic standards of dignity and decency on which the original treaty was based. The evidence suggests it does not.

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

Actually, this is a “Duh” for those of us who have been speaking out for the last three years about the Trump regime’s racist White Nationalist hate inspired anti-asylum, anti-immigrant, anti-human rights agenda. The only “shocker” is that neither the Congress nor the Article III Courts have put up meaningful resistance to these clearly illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral actions.

Basically, “Brown Lives Don’t Matter” to this gang of nativist thugs and their legislative and judicial enablers. Perhaps most disgustingly, the Supremes’ majority has been an eager participant in this “Dred Scottification” of “the other” based largely on race and covered by only the most transparent pretexts of “national emergency” and the like.

America needs not only a qualified, non-racist Executive, but also better qualified legislators and judges who reject institutionalized racism and hate masquerading as “emergency justifications” for suspending the rule of law and the Constitution as it applies to human rights, human lives, and human dignity. To state the obvious, our nation is disintegrating because far too many of those we have entrusted to govern reject the basic concept that equal justice for all, ending racism, and due process for all persons in the U.S. are both Constitutional requirements and moral imperatives.

This November, vote like your life and the future of America depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

07-26-20

🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻GOP POLITICO SUMS UP TRUMP’S INCREDIBLY NOXIOUS & DANGEROUS KAKISTOCRACY IN A FEW PARAGRAPHS: “Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically,” Says Steve Schmidt (No Relation)!

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/politics/steve-schmidt-donald-trump/index.html

“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.

“When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.

“It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.”

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

That about sums it up!

Or, you could just say: “A kakistocracy led by a maliciously incompetent racist moron!”

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

PWS

087-27-20

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

🏴‍☠️

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

THE GREAT CLIMATE MIGRATION

By Abrahm Lustgarten | Photographs by Meridith Kohut

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Additional design and development by Jacky Myint and Shannon Lin.

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

07-26-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎AS TRUMP LITERALLY KILLS AMERICA, “WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE,” ASKS CHARLES M. BLOW @ NY TIMES? — Good Question!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/opinion/trump-coronavirus-us.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

So again I must ask, where is your outrage? How is this happening? How is it being allowed to happen? Real people, Americans, are being allowed to get sick and die while Trump plays a political game. How long can this continue?

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

Read the complete op-ed at the link.

No wonder the rest of the world is aghast at the massive failure of American democracy and our public institutions that were supposed to protect us from an evil, “maliciously incompetent,” totally unqualified “leader!”

PWS

07-20-20

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

https://apple.news/ApxPyJV3cSBOtEU7c4Xlk4A

Frida Ghitis @ CNN:

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

Read the complete article at the link.

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

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

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

PWS

07-17-20

WE MUST DEFEAT THE “END OF AMERICA” CAMPAIGN: Lacking Constructive Ideas, Positive Achievements, or Human Values, Trump Makes Hate, Racism, & Lies His Message — It’s Joe Biden’s Time to Shine!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

July 5, 2020

Upon hearing Donald Trump declare his candidacy for President, I turned to my wife Cathy and said “The guy is totally without values and redeeming qualities.” While I didn’t get the outcome of the election right, I nailed the Trump kakistocracy. If anything, it’s been much worse than my bleak outlook.

Who would have thought that our un-President would dance on the graves of 130,000 dead Americans while urging his followers to “drink the Kool-Aid?” Who would have believed that our supposed leader would urge the maximum spread of deadly disease, intentionally overload an already stressed healthcare system, while looking to insure thousands of unnecessary deaths and disabilities by maliciously seeking to ax health insurance for some of America’s most vulnerable? With a “Jim Jones style” false leader like this, who needs enemies?

But, speaking of “enemies,” why not suck up to Putin while turning against long-time allies like the EU, Canada, and Mexico? Why not give the PRC an opening to subsume Hong Kong, while increasing its influence in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean as U.S. foreign policy crumbles?

Worldwide pandemic — embrace it. Climate change — deny it. Inevitable increase in worldwide migration driven by the preceding — build walls and prisons. High unemployment — end the Federal supplement. Failing bridges and unsafe highways — who cares. Falling revenues — cut taxes for the rich and services for the poor. Institutional racism — double down and glorify past racists. Voting rights — suppress them. Police brutality — enable it. Free speech —punish it. Environmental degradation — deregulate. Truth — be damned. Human decency — mock it. Justice — only for some. Reports of bounties on American soldiers — look the other way. Hate crimes — encourage them. Trump’s “malicious incompetence,” cruelty, corruption, and downright stupidity is endless and on public display every day.

Now, with no message of hope, healing, improvement, or a better future for all Americans and the world, Trump spews and babbles the only things he actually stands for (other than his own self-aggrandizement): hate and racism. Is this “Know Nothing/KKK Redux” really the message on which the GOP seeks to govern in 21st Century America? Outrageously, the answer clearly is “yes,” even if the Tim Scotts, Clarence Thomases, Herman Cains, and Ben Carsons of the world feign ignorance or believe that their privileged positions will save them, if not their souls.

For the rest of us, the time has come to rise up and throw the imposter out. Joe Biden might not be the “perfect candidate.” Has there ever been such a thing? As humans, we all have our warts and past mistakes. But, unlike Trump, Biden has a message and a plan for healing America, correcting long-standing injustices, and moving forward.

Biden’s July 4 message emphasized the positives that will make a better future for all in America, regardless of race, religion, status, or economic power:

Enhancing voting rights and maximizing participation in elections;
Safeguarding elections from Putin and other corrupt foreign governments leaders;
Reversing inhumane and counterproductive asylum, visa, “baby jails,” and family separation policies;
Reaffirming our identity as a proud nation of immigrants;
Protecting and enhancing judicial independence;
Honoring freedom of the press and independent journalism;
Rooting out institutionalized racism from every part of society where it is now embedded;
Leading the world to better times by example, encouragement, and mutual assistance, rather than constantly issuing threats, reacting with childish petulance to every perceived slight, and spewing the ugly, disproven gospel of selfish nationalism, that has nearly destroyed our world in the past, as the vision of the future.

Joe Biden is an accomplished public servant, capable leader, decent human being, and advocate for true American values. He will restore our humanity, reinvigorate our democratic institutions, bring Americans of goodwill together, rebuild our economy, protect our health, care about our environment, address racism and inequality, maximize everyone’s human potential, and reestablish our international political, economic, and moral leadership.

This is our chance to join together to retake our Government from the forces of darkness and hate and to finally achieve that which our Constitution has demanded for the last century: Equal justice for all. This November, vote like your life, the life of every American, and the future of our world depend on it. Because they do!

🇺🇸⚖️Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼Due Process Forever!

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Amen! Take back our country! 🇺🇸 We can’t survive another four years of the maliciously incompetent, racist kakistocracy🏴‍☠️!

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🏴‍☠️

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

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So again I must ask, where is your outrage? How is this happening? How is it being allowed to happen? Real people, Americans, are being allowed to get sick and die while Trump plays a political game. How long can this continue?

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WE MUST DEFEAT THE “END OF AMERICA” CAMPAIGN: Lacking Constructive Ideas, Positive Achievements, or Human Values, Trump Makes Hate, Racism, & Lies His Message — It’s Joe Biden’s Time to Shine!

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