Japan – immigrationcourtside.com

SEN. BRIAN SCHATZ (D-HI) @ LA TIMES: NO, FAILURE TO REUNITE MORE MIGRANT FAMILIES ISN’T JUST ABOUT THIS ADMINISTRATION’S UNDOUBTED INCOMPETENCE – IT’S REALLY ABOUT SESSIONS’S PURE, INTENTIONAL CRUELTY & RACISM! — “This policy reveals a darker side of America that has dehumanized black and brown people since our nation’s founding. Americans have stolen and enslaved black people, killed indigenous peoples and imprisoned Japanese Americans. The reason why this administration has pumped out racist rhetoric casting people as fish to be caught, infestations to be eradicated, and animals to be caged is because it has worked before.”

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-schatz-family-reunification-20180727-story.html

Senator Schatz writes:

The failure of the U.S. government to reverse the kidnapping of migrant children from their parents has been chalked up to incompetence. People want to believe that this act of extraordinary cruelty — and the Trump administration’s inability to fix it — stems from our leaders’ lack of experience or common sense.

But this too is a failure — of our collective imagination. Although the government claimed it met the Thursday deadline to reunite families, it admitted that hundreds of parents had been deported without their children. The separation policy was designed to inflict harm. And the resolution process is chaotic by design.

How else can we explain what has happened to these families? Some 14 million checked bags are managed by the Transportation Security Administration — and that’s just during Thanksgiving weekend. Even high school students can manage a coat check for an evening without losing everyone’s coats. They match each coat and owner with corresponding tickets, and do not store the coats outside the building, or even thousands of miles away from the event.

This administration will harm children in order to force Congress to agree to its absurd immigration policies.

The administration did not take even these basic measures when it began to separate children — not coats! — from their parents. It did not use corresponding numbers for the files of parents and children, or take photos of families together, or hand out hospital-style bracelets. It did not house families near one another, choosing instead to hold mothers in California and daughters in Chicago, fathers in Texas and sons in New York City.

In fact, the administration seems to have taken a comprehensive inventory of confiscated items — sneakers, toothpaste, rosaries — everything except which child belongs to which parent.

These are the actions of a government that intended to separate families but did not intend to reunite them. It meant to inflict so much suffering that other families wouldn’t make the dangerous trek. No matter how bad the violence might be in Central America, surely these families would choose to stay united rather than come and be separated.

In fact, through all the blather, the Trump administration has admitted as much.

“I would do almost anything to deter the people from Central America,” White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly said in 2017. Even separate children from their parents, asked CNN’s Wolf Blitzer? “Yes.”

“We expect that the new policy will result in a deterrence effect,” Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Steven Wagner told reporters in June.

“Hopefully people will get the message,” Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions said casually on Fox News in June.

But according to the Department of Homeland Security, no one has been deterred. The number of families stopped at the border actually increased by 64% in the months after the administration began to separate families. So even if you could stomach traumatizing toddlers, this policy did not accomplish Sessions’ objective of sending a warning across the desert.

Still, cruelty has its uses. Across the country, Republicans have made the Trump administration’s immigration stance their rallying cry for reelection, running more than 14,000 campaign ads this year bragging about their efforts to “stop illegals.” And last month, Sessions spelled out the administration’s plan to use all the bad press for good.

“We do not want to separate parents from their children,” he clarified. “If we build the wall, if we pass legislation to end the lawlessness, we won’t face these terrible choices.”

In other words, this administration will harm children in order to force Congress to agree to its absurd immigration policies. But let’s be clear: No lawmaker of any party should ever accede to a legislative demand in response to the intentional infliction of harm.

The American people must also speak up. Our government has kidnapped children from their parents. It forces these lost boys and girls to say the Pledge of Allegiance while they are held captive in building wings named for U.S. presidents. (It is not hard to believe that President Reagan would be aghast.)

This is not who we are, we want to say, but that isn’t quite true. This policy reveals a darker side of America that has dehumanized black and brown people since our nation’s founding. Americans have stolen and enslaved black people, killed indigenous peoples and imprisoned Japanese Americans. The reason why this administration has pumped out racist rhetoric casting people as fish to be caught, infestations to be eradicated, and animals to be caged is because it has worked before.

Will it work again? That’s up to us.

Brian Schatz representsHawaii in the U.S. Senate.

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Senator Schatz provides a clear, succinct, powerful statement as to why we need regime change if American is to remain a great, diverse nation that uses the full abilities and respects the lives, dignity, potential, and rights of all of those who reside here now and may do so in the future.

“MAGA” has always been a not-so-thinly veiled exhortation to “Keep America As White As Possible For As Long As Possible No Matter How Much Damage We Inflict.”

Yeah, I remember that after his confirmation, I was willing to give Sessions “the benefit of the doubt” and hope that he meant his sworn testimony that he would rise above his past as a partisan Senator and represent the rights and dignity of all Americans (which, of course, would include those Americans residing here and protected by our Constitution regardless of “status”).

However, it didn’t take long to see that it was just more of the perjury and lies that roll so effortlessly off Sessions’s tongue. What he actually intended all along was to use his good fortune in being somewhat unexpectedly elevated to the Attorney Generalship to carry out a heinous, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, restrictionist, extreme right program directed against people of color, women, children, and other vulnerable minorities. This is the type of horrible program that had always driven him, but that had been able to inflict little actual damage on America due to Sessions’s “outlier” position, even among his fellow GOP Senators.

To be fair, that’s precisely what Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Corey Booker, and the Black Caucus tried to tell the Senate and the rest of American during the confirmation process. But, they were silenced or ignored. Now, innocent kids, families, abused women, and the international reputation of our entire nation are all “paying the price” for Sessions as AG.

Vote for “regime change” this November. Vote for accountability, decency, the real “rule of law,” and to rein in and ideally remove Jeff Sessions from office before he can do further damage to humanity and to our country!

PWS

07-27-18

FRED HIATT @ WASHPOST: NOTE TO GOP RESTRICTIONISTS: ANTI-IMMIGRATION = ANTI GROWTH! — “A vote to choke off immigration is a vote for stagnation and decline!” – EXACTLY!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/without-immigration-america-will-stagnate/2018/01/28/e659aa94-02d5-11e8-8acf-ad2991367d9d_story.html

Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt writes:

“Message to Republicans: You can be pro-growth. You can be anti-immigration. But, honestly, you can’t be both.

Now, within the immigration debate, there are a lot of questions with no obvious right answers.

What’s the right balance of immigrants admitted for their skills and those allowed in because they have relatives here?

Politics newsletter

The big stories and commentary shaping the day.

How much effort should be devoted to tracking down the undocumented, and how much to punishing companies that hire them?

What should we do about the millions of immigrants who came here illegally a decade or more ago and have become established members of their communities?

And — what is the right number of legal immigrants every year from now on?

Big, complicated questions — which is why Congress shouldn’t try to solve them all between now and Feb. 8, its self-imposed deadline for resolving the issue of the “dreamers.” In the few days that remain, the best it could do would be to, well, resolve the issue of the dreamers — the undocumented immigrants who were brought here as young children through no fault of their own, who obey the law and who go to school or work or serve in the military.

They are American in all but legal status. Give them a path to citizenship, as President Trump has proposed. Give Trump the money for his wall (until he gets that check from Mexico). Punt on the big, complicated questions, something Congress certainly knows how to do. Everyone declares victory, and the government doesn’t shut down.

Of course, that would leave us still facing the big questions. Ideally, Congress would schedule a serious debate on them for the spring. Ideally, it would be conducted in a constructive spirit — acknowledging, for example, that reasonable people can disagree on skills vs. family.

But ideally, also, it would also be conducted with an understanding that those who favor a drastic, absolute drop in the level of immigration, as many Republicans do, would be making a choice about America’s future.

They would be turning us into Japan.

Now, to be clear, Japan is a wondrous nation, with an ancient, complex culture, welcoming people, innovative industry — a great deal to teach the world.

But Japan also is a country that admits few immigrants — and, as a result, it is an aging, shrinking nation. By 2030, more than half the country will be over age 50. By 2050 there will be more than three times as many old people (65 and over) as children (14 and under). Already, deaths substantially outnumber births. Its population of 127 million is forecast to shrink by a third over the next half-century.

Japan is a pioneer and an extreme version of where much of the First World is headed as longevity increases and fertility declines. The likely consequences are slower economic growth, reduced innovation, labor shortages and huge pressure on pensions. If you think our entitlement politics are fraught, think about this: In Japan in 2050, the old-age dependency ratio — the number of people 65 and over as a percentage of the number who are 15 to 64 — is projected to be 71.2 percent.

The comparable figure for the United States is 36.4 percent, up from 25.7 percent in 2020. Still high, but if it proves manageable, we will have immigration to thank. America still attracts dynamic, hard-working people from around the world, and they and their offspring help keep our population and our economy growing, as recent Pew Research Center and International Monetary Fund papers explain.

The wave of immigration over the past half-century also has changed the face of the nation, reducing the share of the white population from what it would have been and increasing the share of Asians and Hispanics. It’s not surprising that some people find this disorienting.

But as so often with such debates, perceptions lag reality. Nearly half (48 percent) of immigrants these days have college degrees, as a fact sheet from the Migration Policy Institute last year showed. A quarter of technology company start-ups between 2008 and 2012 included at least one foreign-born founder. As incomes and education levels rise around the world, in other words, the skills mix of U.S. immigration is already changing, without any changes in our laws.

Here’s the bottom line: I think we should remain open to immigrants because it’s part of who we are as a nation, because every generation of newcomers — even, or maybe especially, the ones who come with nothing but moxie and a tolerance for risk — has enriched and improved us.

But you don’t have to buy into any of that Statue of Liberty stuff to favor immigration, because naked self-interest leads to the very same conclusion. A vote to choke off immigration is a vote for stagnation and decline.”

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Hiatt clearly “gets it!”

But, maybe the GOP restrictionists do too. Their opposition to legal immigration is grounded in racism, White Nationalism, and xenophobia — none of which have anything to do with rationality, facts, the common good, or even “enlightened self-interest.”

Therefore, neither an appeal to “who we are as a nation” nor “naked self-interest” is likely to change their highly emotional, but essentially irrational anti-immigrant views.

PWS

01-29-18

VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/arrests-along-mexico-border-drop-sharply-under-trump-new-statistics-show/2017/12/05/743c6b54-d9c7-11e7-b859-fb0995360725_story.html

Nick Miroff reports in the Washington Post:

“The number of people caught trying to sneak over the border from Mexico has fallen to the lowest level in 46 years, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics released Tuesday that offer the first comprehensive look at how immigration enforcement is changing under the Trump administration.

During the government’s 2017 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, U.S. border agents made 310,531 arrests, a decline of 24 percent from the previous year and the fewest overall since 1971.

The figures show a sharp drop in apprehensions immediately after President Trump’s election win, possibly reflecting the deterrent effect of his rhetoric on would-be border crossers; starting in May, the number of people taken into custody began increasing again.

Arrests of foreigners living illegally in the United States have surged under Trump. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers made 110,568 such arrests between inauguration and the end of September, according to the figures published Tuesday, a 42 percent increase over the same period during the previous year.

Tom Homan, ICE’s temporary director and Trump’s nominee to lead the agency, praised the president and gave a vigorous defense of ICE’s more aggressive approach.

“This president, like him or love him, is doing the right thing,” Homan told reporters at a news conference in Washington, accompanied by the heads of the U.S. Border Patrol and Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“A 45-year low in border crossings? That’s not a coincidence,” Homan said. “That’s based on this president and his belief and letting the men and women of ICE and the Border Patrol do their job.”

[How Trump is building a border wall no one can see]

Trump’s sweeping promises to crack down on illegal immigration fueled his presidential campaign and are at the center of his most ambitious domestic policy proposals, including construction of a wall along the border with Mexico.

Asked whether such a barrier was justifiable given its high cost and the decline in illegal immigration, DHS officials endorsed the president’s plan.

“In this society, we use walls and fences to protect things. It shouldn’t be different on the border,” said Ronald Vitiello, chief of the Border Patrol.

Apprehensions by Border Patrol agents peaked at more than 1.6 million in 2000 and began falling substantially after 2008. The previous low point was 331,333 arrests, during fiscal 2015. Experts have attributed the decline to tougher U.S. enforcement, improving job prospects in Mexico and long-term demographic changes that have driven down the country’s birthrate.

3:32
On the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump supporters wait for th
Still, the drop in border arrests is among the sharpest year-to-year changes on record, one that only casts more doubt on the wisdom of building a border wall, said Doris Meissner, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.

“It’s a throwback response to yesterday’s problems,” she said, arguing that the money would be better spent addressing what accounts for a growing share of illegal migration: families with children fleeing rampant violence and dismal poverty in Central America.

Border agents took more than 75,000 “family units,” classified as at least one child and a related adult, into custody during fiscal 2017. But the number of unaccompanied minors fell 31 percent, to 41,435.”

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Read the complete article at the link.

This has to be what true greatness looks like! Imagine a world without those pesky undocumented workers to support our economy, our society, and our “American” way of life! That’s making America Great Again!

I’m sure future generations will be inspired by Homan’s humanity and wisdom as they pick produce or pound shingles in 100 degree heat, clean toilets, empty urine bags for the elderly and handicapped, clean tables, wash dishes, limb trees, shuck oysters, schlep concrete blocks, dig ditches, and, horror of horrors, take care of their own children while working full-time. Man, that’s going to be “America the Great” just as Trump, Sessions, Bannon, Miller, Homan, and others envision it!

And, the best part: we won’t have to worry about any of that burdensome, nasty “globalism” and the unfair burden of global leadership! That’s because the Chinese, Indians, Canadians, Mexicans, and Europeans will be in charge of the world economy and the Ruskies will control world politics. So we can enjoy our little White Nationalist enclave modeled on post-revolutionary Cuba — life in the 1950’s preserved forever! Save those “Classic ’57 Chevies!”

Kinda sorry I won’t be here to enjoy it! But, then again, I already lived through the real 1950’s once — Cold War, Jim Crow, segregation, anti-semitism, racial covenants, no women doctors, lawyers, or execs, African Americans only welcome on the football fields and basketball courts of a few Northern colleges! Boy, it was great! But, not sure I want to do it again, even to experience the pure, unadulterated joy of having “my Milwaukee Braves” win the 1957 World Series (before fleeing to Atlanta)!

On the flip side, at Homan’s “record pace” of “law enforcement,” he and his minions will have every single undocumented American resident removed from the U.S by 2080 — that’s if no more arrive in the interim. And, the really great thing — they and those around them (including U.S. citizen kids and family members) will be living in fear every moment for the next six decades! Now, that’s something of which we can be truly proud! Of course, this all assumes that the North Koreans don’t nuke us and the rest of the world out of existence first!

PWS

12-06-17

IMMIGRATIONPROF BLOG: PROFESSOR BILL ONG HING LAYS BARE THE WHITE NATIONALIST INTENT BEHIND THE RAISE ACT — “Asian, Latino, and African Exclusion Act of 2017” — And, It’s Bad For Our Economy To Boot!

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2017/08/trumps-asian-latino-and-african-exclusion-act-of-2017.html

Professor Ong Hing writes:

“From the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal:

President Trump’s recent call for overhauling the legal immigration system suffers from serious racial implications and violations of basic family values. Earlier this month he endorsed the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (RAISE) Act, which would eliminate all family reunification categories beyond spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents (reducing the age limit for minor children from 21 to 18), and would lower capped family categories from 226,000 green cards presently to 88,000. The prime relatives targeted for elimination are siblings of U.S. citizens and adult children of citizens and lawful residents. The diversity immigration lottery program, which grants 50,000 green cards to immigrants from low-admission countries, also would be terminated. The RAISE Act is essentially the Asian, Latino, and African Exclusion Act of 2017. Why? Because the biggest users of family immigration categories are Asians and Latinos, and the biggest beneficiaries of the diversity lottery are Africans.

The RAISE Act is an elitist point system that favors those with post-secondary STEM degrees (science, technology, engineering, or mathematics), extraordinary achievement (Nobel laureates and Olympic medalists), $1.35 to $1.8 million to invest, and high English proficiency. However, it fails to connect prospective immigrants with job openings and makes incorrect assumptions about family immigrants.

Promoting family reunification has been a major feature of immigration policy for decades. Prior to 1965, permitting spouses of U.S. citizens, relatives of lawful permanent residents, and even siblings of U.S. citizens to immigrate were important aspects of the immigration selection system. Since the 1965 reforms, family reunification has been the major cornerstone of the immigration admission system. Those reforms, extended in 1976, allowed twenty thousand immigrant visas for every country. Of the worldwide numerical limits, about 80 percent were specified for “preference” relatives of citizens and lawful permanent residents, and an unlimited number was available to immediate relatives of U.S. citizens. The unlimited immediate relative category included spouses, parents of adult citizens, and minor, unmarried children of citizens. The family preference categories were established for adult, unmarried sons and daughters of citizens, spouses and unmarried children of lawful permanent resident aliens, married children of citizens, and siblings of citizens. Two other preferences (expanded in 1990) were established for employment-based immigration.

Asian and Latino immigration came to dominate these immigration categories. The nations with large numbers of descendants in the United States in 1965, i.e., western Europe, were expected to benefit the most from a kinship-based system. But gradually, by using the family categories and the labor employment route, Asians built a family base from which to use the kinship categories more and more. By the late 1980s, virtually 90 percent of all immigration to the United States – including Asian immigration – was through the kinship categories. And by the 1990s, the vast majority of these immigrants were from Asia and Latin America. The top countries of origin of authorized immigrants to the United States today include Mexico, China, India, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador.

As Asian and Latin immigrants began to dominate the family-based immigration system in the 1970s and 1980s, somehow the preference for family reunification made less sense to some policymakers. Since the early 1980s, attacking kinship categories – especially the sibling category – has become a political sport played every few years. Often the complaint is based on arguments such as we should be bringing in skilled immigrants, a point system would be better, and in the case of the sibling category, brothers and sisters are not part of the “nuclear” family. Proposals to eliminate or reduce family immigration were led by Senator Alan Simpson throughout the 1980s, Congressman Bruce Morrison in 1990, and Senator Simpson and Congressman Lamar Smith in 1996. As prelude to the RAISE Act, the Senate actually passed S.744 in 2013 that would have eliminated family categories and installed a point system in exchange for a legalization program for undocumented immigrants.

Pitting so-called “merit-based” visas in opposition to family visas implies that family immigration represents the soft side of immigration while point-based immigration is more about being tough and strategic. The wrongheadedness of that suggestion is that family immigration has served our country well even from a purely economic perspective. The country needs workers with all levels of skill, and family immigration provides many of the needed workers.

A concern that the current system raises for some policymakers is based on their belief that the vast majority of immigrants who enter in kinship categories are working class or low-skilled. They wonder whether this is good for the country. Interestingly enough, many immigrants who enter in the sibling category actually are highly skilled. The vast majority of family immigrants are working age, who arrive anxious to work and ready to put their time and sweat into the job. But beyond that oversight by the complainants, what we know about the country and its general need for workers in the short and long terms is instructive.

The Wharton School of Business projects that the RAISE Act would actually lead to less economic growth and fewer jobs. Job losses would emerge because domestic workers will not fill all the jobs that current types of immigrant workers would have filled. In the long run, per capita GDP would dip. Furthermore, in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s forecast of large-growth occupations, most jobs require only short- or moderate-term on-the-job training, suggesting lower skilled immigrants could contribute to meeting the demand for these types of jobs.

The economic data on today’s kinship immigrants are favorable for the country. The entry of low-skilled as well as high-skilled immigrants leads to faster economic growth by increasing the size of the market, thereby boosting productivity, investment, and technological practice. Technological advances are made by many immigrants who are neither well-educated nor well-paid. Moreover, many kinship-based immigrants open new businesses that employ natives as well as other immigrants; this is important because small businesses are now the most important source of new jobs in the United States. The current family-centered system results in designers, business leaders, investors, and Silicon Valley–type engineers. And much of the flexibility available to American entrepreneurs in experimenting with risky labor-intensive business ventures is afforded by the presence of low-wage immigrant workers. In short, kinship immigrants contribute greatly to this country’s vitality and growth, beyond the psychological benefits to family members who are able to reunite.

The preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights highlights the unity of the family as the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” for good reason. Our families make us whole. Our families define us as human beings. Our families are at the center of our most treasured values. Our families make the nation strong.

Bill Ong Hing is the Founder and General Counsel of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, and Professor of Law and Migration Studies, University of San Francisco”

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Unhappily, America has a sad history of using bogus arguments about the economy and protecting American labor to justify racist immigration acts. Among other things, the Chinese Exclusion Act was supposed to protect the U.S. against the adverse effects of “coolie labor.”

I find it remarkable that those pushing the RASE Act are so ready to damage American families, the fabric of our society, and our economy in a futile attempt to achieve their White Nationalist vision.

PWS

08-18-17

TRUMP’S NEXT ATTACK ON AMERICA: LEGAL IMMIGRATION!

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/trump-legal-immigration-crackdown

Bess Levin writes in Vanity Fair:

“The most public components of Donald Trump’s nativist agenda are also, somewhat reassuringly, the most symbolic. Yes, the president wants to build an expensive wall along the southern border to keep “rapists” and “criminals” from Mexico from illegally entering the country, but as even Republicans have pointed out, building a wall is just about the least effective way to secure the border. Life will go on, regardless of whether the president adds an extra foot or two of barbed wire to the eyesore that already stretches across several hundred miles of Texas, Arizona, and California. Trump also wants a figurative fence around the country, in the form of his executive order banning travel from several Muslim-majority countries, but said ban was always designed to be temporary. The president’s long-term ambitions to curtail immigration, meanwhile, have mostly flown under the radar: a plan dreamt up by the White House’s resident nationalists Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller to crack down on legal immigration.

Now, Trump’s endgame appears to be moving into public view. According to a new report from Politico, Miller and Bannon—the latter of whom apparently keeps reminders to himself to restrict immigration “scribbled on the walls of his office” like other people keep reminders to order more ink for the printer—have been working on a bill with Republican Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue that would cut the number of legal immigrants coming into the U.S. by half, to 500,000, as of 2027. The bill is said to be a “revised and expanded” version of the RAISE Act that Cotton and Perdue presented in February and discussed with the president in March.

The lawmakers, along with Miller, Bannon, and Trump, argue that allowing lower-skilled immigrants into the country hurts job prospects and suppresses wages for American-born workers. In addition to wanting to restrict the overall number of legal immigrants, they want to shift to a merit-based system in which foreigners who are granted entry, for example, hold advanced degrees or demonstrate a particular “extraordinary ability” in their given field. That dovetails with the White House’s desire to “limit citizenship and migration to those who pay taxes and earn higher wages.” Last month, in a display of his infinite generosity, particularly toward those who haven’t “made a fortune,” Trump promised that legislation banning legal immigrants from coming into the U.S. if they were expected to rely on any kind of welfare would be coming “very shortly.”

The move will likely appeal to Trump’s base. Unfortunately, a restrictionist immigration policy could backfire for the same set of voters. In April, 1,470 economists wrote an open letter to the president explaining that, actually, the economy benefits from immigration, describing it as “not just a good thing” but “a necessity.” Senators like Lindsey Graham and John McCain have also argued that the economy gets a boost from cheaper labor. Mountains of evidence suggest native workers aren’t interested in the kind of grueling, seasonal, low-wage employment that is typically the domain of recent immigrants. Experts have warned that a crackdown on immigration could, for example, destroy the U.S. agriculture industry, whose workforce is disproportionally made up of foreigners.

Of course, wanting to drastically restrict legal immigration and actually getting a bill passed to do so are two very different things, and Team Trump faces a steep uphill battle, given that G.O.P. lawmakers like Graham and McCain are against it. There are also more pressing matters to attend to, including but not limited to: health care, tax reform, and avoiding a government shutdown in September. Building a border wall around the entire country might have to wait.”

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The white nationalist agenda is a threat to America. Immigration is good for America. And, the real answer to the “immigration enforcement issue” is more, not less, legal immigration. This is particularly true with a declining birth rate and an expanding economy. Without the benefits of immigration, the U.S. economy is doomed to stagnate like the economies of Japan and some European countries.

PWS

07-13-17

Immigrants Bridge The Gap With Local Communities — “The Haters Are Always Wrong, And The Haters Will Eventually Lose.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/working-to-build-bridges-between-immigrants-and-their-new-communities/2017/06/23/03c1bb1a-4d2a-11e7-a186-60c031eab644_story.html?utm_term=.2bcde1762b2f

Steven V. Roberts writes in a WashPost op-ed:

“These are all good examples that will, hopefully, ease the “cultural anxiety” Noorani writes about. But he shies away from discussing a key dimension of Trump’s appeal: racism. “A significant portion of the American electorate felt their country had been taken away,” he writes, but he doesn’t complete the thought. Taken away by whom? Let’s be honest. Many of those voters believe that their country has been overrun by dark-skinned, foreign-language-speaking aliens.

While it is wildly unfair to call all Trump supporters racists, it is equally inaccurate to ignore that the president deliberately inflamed racist impulses to win the election.

Moreover, Noorani lacks a larger perspective. Trump is a very American figure. Anti-immigrant fears didn’t start with globalization and weren’t “triggered” by the election of Barack Obama. Throughout our history, spasms of nativist hostility have erupted against each new group arriving on our shores: Germans and Jews, Irish and Italians, Japanese and Chinese.

Hispanics and Muslims are now the objects of this animosity, and the language directed against them is the same that’s been used to demonize newcomers for more than two centuries: This group will degrade our culture and alter our identity. But today’s targets can take comfort from the clear lessons of history.

Immigrants do change our culture — for the better. They reenergize and revitalize our civic spirit. The haters are always wrong, and the haters will eventually lose. Tiwana and Noorani himself prove that truth.

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Read the entire op-ed at the link.

Trump and his supporters might be on the right side of the political equation at this point in time, but they are squarely on the wrong side of history. Before joining up with the Trump Team, folks ought to think about being remembered by their grandchildren and great grandchildren in the same way that we think about such notorious racists as Alabama Governor George Wallace, Georgia Governor Lester “Pickax” Maddox, and Arkansas Governor Orvil Faubis, or those who engineered and championed such abominations as the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Even iconic American historical figures like President Woodrow Wilson and Gen. Robert E. Lee have recently had their racism and support for racist causes eventually catch up with them and tarnish their reputations. In the long run, the cause of intolerance, fear, and bias promoted by Trump, Pence, and today’s GOP will look pretty bad. Yeah, we’ll all be gone by then. But, our descendants and history will remember where we stood.

PWS

06-25-17

IMMIGRATION HISTORY: Here’s The Chase-Burman Mini-Library Of Immigration History, Courtesy Of “The Green Card!”

75 Years of the BIA

http://www.fedbar.org/Image-Library/Sections-and-Divisions/Immigration/Green-Card-Spring-2016-updated.aspx

“Matter of L-, 1 I&N Dec. 1 (BIA 1940), was issued on August 29, 1940, the day before the Board of Immigration Appeals came into existence.2 Some background about the Board’s early history is required to explain this. From 1922 until 1940, a five-member Board of Review existed within the Department of Labor to review all immigration cases. The Board of Review had no decision- making authority of its own; it could only recommend action to the Secretary of Labor. In 1933, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was formed within the Department of Labor,3 and from 1933 until 1939 the Board of Review made its recommendations to the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization.4″

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Commentary on “Pattern or Practice” Persecution

http://www.fedbar.org/Image-Library/Sections-and-Divisions/Immigration/Green-Card-Fall-2016-.aspx

In INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, its landmark 1987 decision establishing that the burden of proving a “well-founded fear of persecution” is significantly less than fifty percent, the Supreme Court relied on the following scholarly example: “Let us…presume that it is known that in applicant’s country of origin every tenth adult male person is either put to death or sent to some remote labor camp… In such a case it would be only too apparent that anyone who managed to escape from the country would have ‘well-founded fear of being persecuted’ on his eventual return.”2 While the Court’s decision predates the “pattern or practice” regulation by more than three years, the example it relies on (which predates the regulation by 24 years) presents a classic “pattern or practice” scenario. The hypotheti- cal establishes (1) a group, i.e., all adult males in a particular country; and (2) information establishing systemic persecution of one in ten members of such group. all members of the group therefore have a well-founded without the need to explain their individual circumstances.”

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The History of Racism in U.S. Immigration

http://www.fedbar.org/Image-Library/Sections-and-Divisions/Immigration/the-green-card-winter-2017.aspx

“Racism was codified in this country’s original natu- ralization law. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited the right to naturalize to “free white persons.” Following the Civil War, the Act of July 14, 1870, added “aliens of African nativity” and “aliens of African descent” to those eligible to naturalize. However, all others considered “non-white” continued to be barred from obtaining United States citizenship. In 1922, the Supreme Court denied Takao Ozawa, a Japanese immigrant who had lived in the U.S. for 20 years, the right to become a naturalized citizen because he “clearly” was “not Caucasian.” In interpreting the term “free white persons,” the Court found that “the framers did not have in mind the brown or yellow races of Asia.”1 In United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind,2 the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion regarding an “upper-caste Hindu” who claimed a lineage classi ed as “Aryan” or “Caucasian.” The Court determined that “Aryan” related to “linguistic, and not at all with physical, characteristics,” and concluded that the term “free white persons” as understood by the common man, would not include those of Hindu ancestry.3 It was not until passage of the McCarran-Walter Act in 1952 that the naturalization law was amended to read that “[t]he right of a person to become a naturalized citizen shall not be denied or abridged because of race or sex…”4

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Read all three of Judge Chase’s outstanding histories and get some “instant perspective” on how we got to where we are today as a nation of immigrants. There was no shortage of hypocracy. And, I submit that in the course of history some of today’s politicians advocating restrictive racially and religiously charged immigration policies are going to look just as distasteful, arrogant, prejudiced, and ignorant as some of the judges, lawmakers, and government officials described in these articles.

PWS

06-19-17

UPDATE

Judge Chase has reminded me that there is a fourth part to this collection:

The History of U.S. Asylum Law

http://www.fedbar.org/Image-Library/Sections-and-Divisions/Immigration/Green-Card-Summer-2016.aspx

“U.S. asylum policy is a product of the tension between the public sentiments of compassion and fear. In the words of a former Deputy UN High Commissioner: “The public will not allow governments to be generous if it believes they have lost control.” 1 Although asylum can be traced back at least to the Old Testament, for all practical purposes, U.S. asylum policy began on the eve of World War II.”

PWS

06-21-17

NYT: Japan Finds Out (The Hard Way) How Limiting Immigration Limits Future Economic Growth

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/business/japan-immigrants-workers-trump.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Jonathan Soble writes in the NYT:

“Japan, on the other hand, long ago achieved what Mr. Trump has promised: It has very little illegal immigration and is officially closed to people seeking blue-collar work.

Now, though, its tough stance on immigration — legal and illegal — is causing problems. Many Japanese industries are suffering from severe labor shortages, which has helped put a brake on economic growth.

That is prompting Japan to question some fundamental assumptions about its labor needs. The debate is politically delicate, but changing realities on the ground — in Japan’s factories and fields — are forcing politicians to catch up. Japan’s total foreign-born labor force topped one million for the first time last year, according to the government, lifted in part by people entering the country on visas reserved for technical trainees.

That growth has also led to an increase in cases of worker abuse and fraud, labor activists say.”

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Yup. When my parents went into a very “high end” retirement home in this area, I noticed that virtually all of the dedicated staff, from doctors and nurses down to the janitors, were recent immigrants. I never ran into a high school kid, when our kids were at that stage or later, who said he or she aspired to be an orderly, a janitor, or even a Certified Nursing Assistant. But, I don’t think most of our kids and grandkids want to take care of us to that degree, either. So, those of us who plan to live to a ripe old age had better hope that Trump’s upcoming “war on immigrant workers (legal and undocumented)” is less than fully successful. Or else, we’ll be emptying our own bedpans.

PWS

02/10/17

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Commentary on “Pattern or Practice” Persecution

The History of Racism in U.S. Immigration

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